"Mystical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear. When I was a child I have stared at the darkness until the whole black bulk of it turned into one negro giant taller than heaven. If there was one ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... well as the waywardness of his nephew, all of which tended to draw him to the spiritual life. The character of Beethoven's work changed from the period of the Mass in D. An altered condition, an altogether new, different strain is apparent thenceforth. The deeply religious, mystical character of the first movement of the Ninth Symphony can be attributed to his previous absorption on the Mass. He worked out of this vein somewhat in the other movements as not being adapted to the uses for which the symphony is designed, ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... he had ordered to be brought, and going round them with a solemn pace, cast in a strong and grateful perfume; then collected in himself, with downcast eyes, and his hands upon his breast, he ran three times about the horse, making as if he pronounced some mystical words. The moment the pots sent forth a dark cloud of pleasant smell, which so surrounded the princess, that neither she nor the horse could be discerned, watching his opportunity, the prince jumped nimbly up behind her, and reaching his hand to the peg, turned it; and just as the horse rose ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... perhaps not so famous as the two preceding dramas, is intended to be given by Don P. De la Escosura, in a selection of Calderon's finest "comedias", now being edited by him for the Spanish Academy, as the representative piece of its class — namely, the mystical drama founded on the lives of Saints. Mr. Ticknor prefers it to the more celebrated "Devotion of the Cross," and says that it "is commonly ranked among the best religious plays of the Spanish theatre ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... he was fastening the last hook of the traces with swift, trained fingers. He stood dumfounded for a moment. The superstitious, half-mystical thing in him came trembling to his eyes; then he saw Stafford's body, and he realized the situation. A look of savage hatred came into his face, and he made a step forward with sudden impulse, as though he would spring ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... important was his Christian faith, which was not only confident and sincere, but prompted him at times to high speculation. He had friends among the Cambridge Platonists, and he found in Newton a brilliant example of scientific rigour capped with mystical insights. Yet if we consider Locke's philosophical position in the abstract, his Christianity almost disappears. In form his theology and ethics were strictly rationalistic; yet one who was a Deist in philosophy might remain a Christian in religion. There was no great harm ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... arrow of death fell on his flock, and pierced the heart of his dearest! Silent the music now, as the shepherd entered the mystical temple of sorrow: Long he tarried in darkness there: but when he came out he ...
— The White Bees • Henry Van Dyke
... without confession, and it was only by this king's orders that there was a relaxation of this severity. Besides, communion is not absolutely necessary to salvation, and one may communicate spiritually in reading the word, which is like the body; in uniting oneself with the Church, which is the mystical substance of Christ; and in suffering for Him and with Him, this last communion of agony that is your portion, madame, and is the most perfect communion of all. If you heartily detest your crime and love God with all your soul, if you have faith and charity, your ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... notwithstanding, he perceive devotion to these interests, he calls it desinteresse, and wonders how it is possible to act "disinterestedly." There have been philosophers who could give this popular astonishment a seductive and mystical, other-worldly expression (perhaps because they did not know the higher nature by experience?), instead of stating the naked and candidly reasonable truth that "disinterested" action is very interesting ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... unhappy Countess Delphina Potocka, immortalized by her friendship with Chopin, who both before and for several years after Krasinski's marriage was his Egeria, and to whom he inscribed a series of love lyrics and the mystical poem 'Dawn,' in which two exiles on the Lake of Como dream of the resurrection of their nation. The idealistic nature of Krasinski's love for Delphina Potocka, as compared with his infatuation for Mme. Bobrowa, is emphasized by his latest biographer. She was his ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... the priest after a silence, "you are doing this too drastically? Religion, it seems to me, has to be apprehended in a different region, the mystical region, the region of intuition ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... by sorrow, distress, uncertainty, and an oppressive sense of desertion and desolation. Stories were told by her attendant so closely resembling her own in their circumstances, that she was gradually led to converse upon such tragic and mystical subjects with the beldam, and to repose a sort of confidence in the sibyl, whom she still regarded with involuntary shuddering. Dame Gourlay knew how to avail herself of this imperfect confidence. She directed Lucy's thoughts ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... philosophy of Greece and Rome fail to substantiate the reality of an immortal existence; other philosophical systems, as well the mystical conceptions of Eastern nations, as the metaphysical speculations of modern Europe, have equally failed to arrive at certainty respecting this verity. Now, it will be found, I think, to be established by the argument of this essay, that in ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis
... have seen, informed with inspiring Hellenic beauty rather than depressing Hebraic moralization. It was in his sad moments, says Henry C. Whitney, that the mind of Lincoln "gravitated toward the weird, sombre and mystical. In his normal and tranquil state of mind, 'The Last Leaf,' by Oliver Wendell Holmes, was his favorite" (poem). It was Lincoln's happy lot to rise in the realm of oratory by the power of his poetic spirit higher than any American, save ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... the mother of our friend Amenhotep the Fourth; but I don't think that could have been so, because the device on it was the Eye of Osiris, and Ti, as you know, was an Aten-worshipper. However, it was a very charming ring, and Uncle John, who had a queer sort of devotion to the mystical Eye of Osiris, commissioned a very clever goldsmith to make two exact copies of it, one for himself and one for me. The goldsmith naturally wanted to take the measurements of our fingers, but this Uncle John would not hear of; the rings were to be exact copies, and an exact copy must be the same ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... while every later historian was himself a Confucian. Western scholars often treat him as one of the greatest men in world history. Closer research has shown that Shih Huang-ti was evidently an average man without any great gifts, that he was superstitious, and shared the tendency of his time to mystical and shamanistic notions. His own opinion was that he was the first of a series of ten thousand emperors of his dynasty (Shih Huang-ti means "First Emperor"), and this merely suggests megalomania. The basic principles of his administration ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... the doctor is a good, honest, pudding-headed German, of much merit in his own way, but fond of the mystical, like many of his countrymen. You and he had a traffic the whole evening in which you received tales of Mesmer, Shropfer, Cagliostro, and other modern pretenders to the mystery of raising spirits, discovering hidden treasure, and so forth, in exchange for your ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... taper, high spire or pyramid, raised perpendicularly, and terminating in a point, to serve as an ornament to some open square; and is very often covered with inscriptions or hieroglyphics, that is, with mystical characters or symbols used by the Egyptians to conceal and disguise their sacred things, and ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... only in the mystical caverns of beauty, poetry, and romance are hidden the graves of buried hopes, but even amid the corn and potatoes of daily life rise the ghostly head and foot stones of aspirations dead and put away out of sight, dead in the body, in daily act, but living yet in spirit, and influencing ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... puff-balls, and when you trod on them a brown dust flew out. Then he sat by to see what would happen. The first that came into the net was a snow-white bird, with dove's eyes, and he sang a beautiful song—"A human-God! a human-God! a human-God!" it sang. The second that came was black and mystical, with dark, lovely eyes, that looked into the depths of your soul, ...
— Dreams • Olive Schreiner
... that the headmaster had said, and presently, his mind taken up entirely with the ceremony that was before him, a mystical rapture seized him. His spirit seemed to free itself from the bonds of the flesh and he seemed to be living a new life. He aspired to perfection with all the passion that was in him. He wanted to surrender himself entirely to the ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... brother in comfortable but worn jerkin and hose of a dark leaf green. His manner to the little boy is full of affection, though occasionally he is superior after the manner of big brothers. Throughout the play, two moods alternate in Holger, a certain grave, half-mystical dreaminess and bubbling through it, the high spirits ...
— Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act • Elizabeth Apthorp McFadden
... I am censurable. This, indeed, was not the limit of my deviations. Deception was often unnecessarily practised, and my biloquial faculty did not lie unemployed. What has happened to yourselves may enable you, in some degree, to judge of the scenes in which my mystical exploits engaged me. In none of them, indeed, were the effects equally disastrous, and they were, for the most part, the ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... and of that empty recklessness and horseplay which is sometimes more irritating than any vice. It accounts also for the return of the virtue of politeness, for that also is a nameless thing ignored by logical codes. Politeness has indeed about it something mystical; like religion, it is everywhere understood and nowhere defined. Charles is not entirely to be despised because, as the type of this movement, he let himself float upon this new tide of politeness. ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... mystical. I think his Swedenborgian studies had crossed his notions of religion with strange lights. I never could follow him quite in these excursions into the region of symbolism. I only recollect that he talked of the deluge and the waters of Mara, and said, 'I am washed—I am sprinkled,' ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... recondite, cabalistic, inscrutable, secret, dark, mystic, transcendental, enigmatical, mystical, unfathomable, hidden, obscure, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... because of the noon-meal, as I really begrudge myself the time necessary to eat it, but because I cannot make Cha understand that I want to visit a Buddhist temple. Now Cha understands; my landlord has uttered the mystical words: ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... German theology; the result was to commend to the general attention aspects of truth, philosophical, theological, and historical, not previously current among American Protestants. The book of Dr. John Williamson Nevin, entitled "The Mystical Presence: A Vindication of the Reformed or Calvinistic Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist," revealed to the vast multitude of churches and ministers that gloried in the name of Calvinist the fact that on the most distinctive article of Calvinism they ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... "Carrying out the Death," though we do not know the exact date at which it was celebrated. It had its sequel in another festival at Delphi called Herois, or the "Heroine." Plutarch[23] says it was too mystical and secret to describe, but he lets us ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... flight Uncleanness. Poverty occupies the third space, treading on thorns with her bare feet; behind her barks a dog, while a boy is throwing stones at her and another is pushing thorns into her legs with a stick. Poverty here is espoused by St Francis, while Jesus Christ holds her hand in the mystical presence of Hope and Chastity. In the fourth and last of these places is a St Francis in glory, clothed in the white tunic of a deacon, in triumph and surrounded by a multitude of angels who form a choir about ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... of longing beat pitilessly upon his senses, never, it seemed, to ebb again. And yet, at times, when his whole soul so cried out for her that he stretched his arms, in yearning, toward the myriad phantom Ediths that peopled the room, mystical assurance would come from somewhere that she, too, was keeping ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... in the follies of the Republic, a little reflection on that eloquence of ruin ought to put the Republic on its guard. A sentimental tourist may venture to remark that in the presence of several chateaux which appeal in this mystical manner to the retrospective imagination, it cannot afford to be foolish. I thought of all this as I drove back to Blois by the way of the Chateau de Cheverny. The road took us out of the park of Chambord, but through a region of flat woodland, where the trees ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... the round table, and treated her with marked consideration—cordial but courteous, and easy, with a certain degree of deference. His wife, who piqued herself on her perception of character, threw her brown velvet eyes on her neighbour, Mr. Penruddock, and cross-examined him in mystical whispers. She soon recognised his love of nature; and this allowed her to dissert on the subject, at once sublime and inexhaustible, with copiousness worthy of the theme. When she found he was an entomologist, and that it was not so much mountains as insects which interested him, ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... third or fourth visit this child began to recognise favourites among the pictures, and being somewhat melancholy and mystical by nature, liking trees, beechwood glades, cathedral aisles, and the end of day, he would drag upon his mother's arm when they passed two pictures hanging together in the Dutch room. One was called The Woman taken in Adultery, the other, The ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes
... moral teachings valuable for life: there are truths of religion to be laid hold of by the reason: there are the consolations of religion to comfort the heart: but the root of all religion is this mystical union, a communion with the Unseen, a friendship with God open to man. Religion is not an acceptance of a creed, or a burden of commandments, but a personal secret of the soul, to be attained each man for himself. It is the experience ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... religion of Mohammed is not calculated to appeal to the highly poetic mind of India. It is too severe and prosaic in its character. The mind of India delights in mystical elaborations and in the multiplication of fanciful incarnations and other divine manifestations. The Allah of Islam is almost as remote and as unknowable a deity as is the Brahm of the Vedantist. But in the absence of a personal god the Vedantist and ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... nature of man to desire to do whatever he is forbidden. Notwithstanding all their mystical admonitions, Swaby still persevered in his evil intents, and accordingly he was seen lurking, without his sword, about the heel of the evening, on Hallowe'en, near the skirts of the clachan where Mysie Gilmour lived. And, as it had ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... this poem the average reader might have to consult the dictionary for the precise meaning of "Crystalline" [clear, unalloyed], "Runic" [old-fashioned, mystical], "Tintinnabulation" [bell-ringing], "Monody" [a monotonous sound], "Ghouls" [imaginary evil beings supposed to prey upon human bodies], and "Paean" [a song of triumph]. The pupil should understand that except in ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... been profoundly impressed by William Law's pious and mystical book, "A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life," which was published in 1729. Law lived in London, and Wesley, who desired to be in frequent intercourse with him, used to walk to and from the metropolis for the purpose. The money he ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... lawful. Soldiers, or more exactly "men on military service," possibly acting as local police, were told to extort no money by violence and to seek for none by false charges, and to be content with their wages. All who are to receive Christ in any age must turn from their sins. Repentance is not a mystical experience; it is plain and simple and practical. It consists in turning from greed and dishonesty and unkindness and violence and discontent, and from all that is contrary to the revealed ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... likes them best. The commonest flowers—God thinks them out, says Jesus, and takes care of them (Matt. 6:28-30). Hence there is little need of special machinery for contact with God—priesthoods, trances, visions, or mystical states—abnormal means for contact with the normal. When Jesus speaks of the very highest and holiest things, he is as simple and natural as when he is making a table in the carpenter-shop. Sense and sanity are the ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... gazing out with wild eyes at the Pup's mystical performance. "I'll give back them boots to the b'y. I'll give 'em back, Dan! Let me be now, ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... mystical meaning of the Jewish tabernacle and its vessels, with the garments of the high priest, is taken out of Philo, and fitted to Gentile philosophical notions. This may possibly be forgiven in Jews, greatly versed in heathen learning and philosophy, as Philo had ever been, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... first essay, "The Treasure of the Humble," is, undoubtedly, mystical. He does not argue, or define, or explain, he asserts, but even in that book and far more so in his second, "Wisdom and Destiny," it is real life which absorbs him as Alfred de Sutro his translator points out. In this book "he endeavours in all simplicity ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne
... life, his periods of professorship, we can not help but wonder at the amount of writing Mickiewicz did. And his life was not a long one; it did not reach to sixty years. But during the working years allotted him, before a mystical melancholy—which was threatening to degenerate into madness—had impaired his faculties, his mind was unusually brilliant, creative and marvelously disciplined. It obeyed at will. At one time he was professor of Latin in Lausanne; ...
— Sonnets from the Crimea • Adam Mickiewicz
... exquisite food. To approach it one must be in a state of grace; only a priest can tell of its marvels. To find these sacred relics after the passage of a thousand trials,—such is the object of Peredur's chivalry, at once worldly and mystical. In the end he becomes a priest; he takes the Grail and the lance into his hermitage; on the day of his death an angel bears them up to Heaven. Let us add that many traits prove that in the mind of the French trouvere the Grail is confounded with the ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... Bhagavadgita, Psycho-analysis and Religion, Plato, Sufism, and other subjects on the programme; anyway I would have no prepossessions and prejudices in listening to Dr. G. R. S. Meads' course of lectures on The Mystical Philosophy and Gnosis of ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... to embrace a lofty, victorious personality. In real life she has found the fulfilment of her longing in her husband, the strange prophet who as half a Turk gathered about himself in Munich a queer circle of auditors for his mystical Oriental philosophy. To his memory she erected a dutiful monument in her last work Isebies (1911), an apology for her own life, her longing, her seeking, and her salvation. But even in this work the finest and the clearest portion is the narrative of her ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... sunset we drove back to the Point, I giving up my seat in Mrs. Woodruff's barouche to a lady and joining Frank Woolsey and Thorpe in a dog-cart. We none of us spoke, but smoked incessantly, our eyes upturned to the sky, which was lovely, mystical, wonderful, with the pale after-glow thrilling it with the most beautiful hues. Before we had reached the town a strange yellow moonlight had crept over the landscape, making the trees gloom together in solemn masses, while the sea glimmered in a thousand lines of trembling light away, away into ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... was a change. For imperialism is a faith as well as a business; as it grew the mysticism in English public life grew with it and simultaneously a new importance began to attach to the crown. The need for a symbol—a symbol of England's might, of England's worth, of England's extraordinary mystical destiny—became felt more urgently than before. The crown was the symbol and the crown rested ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... that goodness is for crowds. It has discovered that crosses, to common people in common things, seem oriental and mystical. The common people of the western world instead of being born with dreamy imaginations are born with pointed and applied ones. It is not impossible that the comparative failure of the Christian religion in the western world and in the later generations is that it has been trying to be ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... Japan. It is to be found not only upon stone monuments, but also in religious paintings,—especially certain kakemono suspended in temples. These kakemono usually display the footprints upon a very large scale, with a multitude of mystical symbols and characters. The sculptures may be less common; but in Tokyo alone there are a number of Butsu-soku-seki, or "Buddha- foot stones," which I have seen,—and probably several which I have not seen. There is one at the temple of Eko-In, ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... colour flamed to the zenith, the whole east burned with crimson and glowed with gold, and from that far, mystical arc of heaven and earth, a javelin of molten light leaped to the farthest hill. The pearl and opal changed to softest green, mellowed by turquoise and gold, the slow blue surges chimed softly on the singing shore, and Barbara's heart ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... here is an interesting study. In fact, the whole Caernarvon coast, which stretches away to the south-west in the long peninsula that forms Cardigan Bay, is full of pleasant and attractive locations for student and tourist, and entwined around all are weird legends of the heroes and doings of the mystical days of the dim past, when Briton and Roman contended for the mastery of this ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... brighter the rose, as they gathered it, glowed. Not the valleys Heraean (though watered by rills Of the pearliest flow, from those pastoral hills.[2] Where the Song of the Shepherd, primeval and wild, Was taught to the nymphs by their mystical child,) Could boast such a lustre o'er land and o'er wave As the magic of love ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... O marvellous, mystical maiden, With the way of the wind on the wing; Low laughter thy lithe lips hath laden, Thy smile is a Song of the Spring. O typical, tropical tiger, With wicked and wheedlesome wiles; O lovely lost lady of Niger, Our Lady ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... England. Philippe de Than, one of the most ancient Anglo-Norman poets, wrote a work describing the character of each bird and beast, upon which he grounded moral reflections. Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, who died in 1253, was celebrated for a copious dissertation on mystical divinity, and a poem is extant ascribed to him, called the "Castle of Love" by Leland, in which the creation and redemption are represented as an allegory—our Lord being supposed to enter a magnificent castle, the body of the Virgin. The "Gesta Romanorum" strongly exhibits ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... simple mind usually occupied the space that worldly feelings filled in that of Judith, and she was not without an expectation of witnessing some open manifestation of divine power, on an occasion so solemn. Still she was neither mystical nor exaggerated; her mental imbecility denying both. Nevertheless her thoughts had generally so much of the purity of a better world about them that it was easy for her to forget earth altogether, and to think only of heaven. Hist was serious, attentive and interested, for she ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... was greeted by the loud laughter of all the company, except Cary who did not understand its significance. When it was explained to him that she would wear the mystical tresses who was destined to remain an old maid, he smiled ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... far off Keoza; [8] Remnica, [a] too, furnished a share of the legions that thronged to the races, And a bountiful feast was prepared by the diligent hands of the women, And gaily the multitudes fared in the generous tees of Kathaga. The chief of the mystical clan appointed a feast to Unktehee— The mystic "Wacipee Wakan" [b]— at the end of the day and the races. A band of sworn brothers are they, and the secrets of each one are sacred. And death to the lips that betray is the doom of the swarthy avengers, And the son of tall Wazi-kute ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... different mediums, are they clear? Alas! there are not two men who understand them alike. Those who explain them to others do not agree among themselves; in order to make them clear, they have recourse to interpretations, to commentaries, to allegories, to parables, in which is found a mystical sense very different from the literal one. Men are needed everywhere to explain the wishes of God, who could not or would not explain Himself clearly to those whom He desired to enlighten. God always prefers to use as mediums ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... caprice of man can make it. If it be correct to express human thought by writing whole pages of vague and bald abstract metaphysic, and then trying to explain them by concrete concetti, which bear an entirely accidental and mystical likeness to the notion which they are to illustrate, then let the metaphysic be as abstract as possible, the concetti as fanciful and far-fetched as possible. If Marino and Cowley be greater poets than Ariosto and Milton, let young poets imitate the former with might and main, and avoid spoiling ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... analysis of vital force; they employed it in a wholly mystical form as a convenient explanation of all sorts of vital phenomena.... In place of a real explanation a simple phrase such as "vital force" was satisfactory, and signified a mystical force belonging to organisms only. Thus it was easy to "explain" ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose
... slowly and seemed filled with joy on seeing suddenly the violet stole, no doubt finding again, in the midst of a temporary lull in her pain, the lost voluptuousness of her first mystical transports, with the visions of eternal beatitude ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... which was of the nature of the Tussaud Museum or a masquerade, positively frightened Amedee. He had recently been to his first communion, and was still burning with the mystical fever, but so much ugliness offended his already fastidious taste and threw ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... aware that many educators consider such reading foolish and harmful, but I care nothing for wire-drawn pedagogic theories. That I did nothing to mar the mystical beauty of the world in which my daughter then dwelt, is my present satisfaction, and I shamelessly acknowledge that I experienced keen pangs of regret as her tender illusions, one after another faded into the chill white light of later day. Without actually deceiving her, ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... composed as it was of scattered and discordant parts, then became a source of future punishments and rewards, in which divine justice was supposed to correct the vices and errors of this transitory state. A spiritual and mystical system, such as have mentioned, acquired so much the more credit as it applied itself to the mind by every argument suited to it. The oppressed looked thither for an indemnification, and entertained the consoling ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... as merry as affluence and innocence could make them. However, as they were now preparing for a very solemn ceremony, their laughter entirely displeased me. I told them of the grave, becoming and sublime deportment they should assume upon this Mystical occasion, and read them two homilies and a thesis of my own composing, in order to prepare them. Yet they still seemed perfectly refractory and ungovernable. Even as we were going along to church, to which I led the way, all gravity had ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... version of the Septuagint, other learned men contend that it hath the meaning of a witch also, and may be understood as denoting a person who pretended to hurt his or her neighbours in life, limb, or goods, either by noxious potions, by charms, or similar mystical means. In this particular the witches of Scripture had probably some resemblance to those of ancient Europe, who, although their skill and power might be safely despised, as long as they confined themselves to their charms and spells, were very apt to eke out ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... don't be mystical. Mr. Waverton comes here to do his poor possible to make mischief between us. I suppose you saw that. He tells us that he went blundering with my father into a muddle ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... majesty whatever was to befall me every individual moment, and hour, and pahar, and day, and month, and year, [of my life]. They all assembled according to the king's order, and consulting together, they, from their mystical science, ascertained my future fate, and said, 'By the blessing of God, the prince has been begotten and born under such a propitious planet, and in such a lucky moment, that he ought to be equal to Alexander in extent of dominion, ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... is a fact, that such a mystical sense of wrong does attach to untruthfulness, not only among the higher classes of civilized people, but among whole tribes of utter savages. Sir Walter Elliott tells us (in his paper "On the Characteristics ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... personal malignity and strange mode of revenge presumptuous and uninteresting." Scott's genius was antipathetic to Dante's; and he was as incapable of taking a lasting imprint from his intense, austere, and mystical spirit, as from the nebulous gloom of the Ossianic poetry. Though conservative, he was not reactionary after the fashion of the German "throne-and-altar" romanticists, but remained always a good Church of England ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... able to officiate at sacrifices, and he has gone over to Vasava (Indra), and is engaged in performing his sacrifices, do thou therefore have thy sacrifice performed by him. My elder brother has forcibly taken away from me all my household goods and mystical gods, and sacrificing clients, and has now left to me only this physical body of mine, and, O son of Avikshit, as he is worthy of all respect from me, I cannot by any means officiate at thy sacrifice, unless with his permission. Thou must therefore go to Vrihaspati first, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... with the first chant of forever united, and consequently holy love. It hallows at the baptismal font the introduction of the infant into the mystical oneness of the children of Christ. Even at the grave it softens human sorrow by its heavenly whisperings of eternal union in the bosom ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... himself with essays that would have been voted brilliant had they dealt with things less extravagant than Universal Harmony and Fraternal Happiness; with verses that all admitted to be highly polished and melodious, but something too mystical in meaning for the understanding of an every-day world; with music, whereof he was conceded an ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... always thus with mystical influences. There is in them something vague, tenuous, and penetrating which escapes an exact estimation. Let two choice souls meet, and they will find it a difficult thing to analyze and name the impressions ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... contrast to this meek northern saint of a flower, there is a southern flush of oleander bloom, that pours out hymns of mystical devotion, overflowing with the exuberant vitality, glowing with the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... when he began to write, and that to express them then would have been fatal to his success; yet he was not a man to indulge in rank hypocrisy. He, accordingly, adopted a studied and ambiguous phraseology, which for long imposed upon the religious public, who put their own interpretation upon his mystical utterances, and gave him the benefit of any doubts. In the "Life of Sterling" he threw off the mask, but still was not taken at his word. Had there been a perfect tolerance of all opinions he would have begun ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... question of government and control. They had no essential political teaching. Many, but by no means all, were inspired by the democratic idealism of the first French Revolution. They believed in a mystical something that was wiser and better than any individual,—the People, the Common Man. But that was by no means the case with all of them. The Noyes community was a sort of Theocratic autocracy; the Saint Simonian tendency was aristocratic. The English Socialism that in the middle Victorian ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... mystical quality, Admiral. His men would follow him into an atomic furnace. And—and I almost believe he could bring them through safely if he wanted to." The ...
— The Adventurer • Cyril M. Kornbluth
... consideration, and under advice of skilful friends. Almost every event in life has a numerical signification; and such is the reverence paid to dreams, that a large book exists of several hundred pages, called "Libro dei Sogni," containing, besides various cabala and mystical figures and lists of numbers which are "sympathetic," with directions for their use, a dictionary of thousands of objects with the numbers supposed to be represented by each, as well as rules for interpreting into numbers all dreams in which these objects ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... listened to her. Evidently the woman was mad, or else she played some mystical part for ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... back upon the spiritual authority of the successive candidates of the holy family, whom they proclaimed to be the imams or spiritual leaders of the faithful. This doctrine of the imamate gradually acquired a more mystical meaning, supported by an allegorical interpretation of the Koran; and a mysterious influence was ascribed to the imam, who, though hidden from mortal eye, on account of the persecution of his enemies, would soon come forward publicly in the character of the ever-expected mahdi, sweep ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... which the possession of a gem of marvelous beauty and great value has upon several sharply differentiated characters is the thread with which this dramatic tale of events is woven. The combination of the mystical, the imaginative and the realistic makes very unusual reading. The diamond has the power of making its owner love it not for what it means in money, but for itself; it also has in it a lurking devil which portends evil happenings. The series of incidents which these qualities ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale
... familiar and commonplace, the other more mystical than anything else, interested Priscilla mightily during her early youth. Jerry and Michael McAlpin, with little Jerry-Jo, the son of old Jerry, were vital factors in Kenmore. They occupied the exalted position of rural expressmen, and distributed, when various things did not interfere, ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... a stranger, wilder chant than this which now went swelling up from that frenzied, swaying mass of humanity surely never stirred all that is most mystical in the soul of man! Pealing grandly, awfully upward through the star-lit spaces of a grander temple than ever was reared by human hands, it rolled heavenward, on and on, and higher and higher, to the ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... which has been sent to you, or who may be its author, I have heard nothing but through your letter. If the person you suspect, it may be known from the quaint, mystical, and hyperbolical ideas, involved in affected, newfangled, and pedantic terms, which stamp his writings. Whatever it be, I hope your quiet is not to be affected at this day by the rudeness or intemperance of scribblers; but that you may continue in tranquillity to live and to ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... than not more expressive than a long poem; the Red Badge of Courage reveals more impressively than does the Dynasts the absolute essential horror of war. There are present, apparently, in the more pronounced mystical visions, characteristics similar to those of significant esthetic apprehensions. These visions are extremely rare and fleeting. But then we can be at the highest peaks only seldom and for a short while. But in a moment we see eternity, and ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... and meet; or as to Matthew Arnold a refuge from pain and disillusionment. Browning regards the world about him more in the sane, unsentimental, straightforward, intelligible way of Chaucer or of Shakespeare. The mystical elements in Wordsworth's feeling for nature were foreign to Browning's mind. An instructive comparison might be made between Wordsworth's "Ode on Intimations of Immortality" and Browning's "Prologue to Asolando." The poems have the same starting ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... introduced into their writings a wonderful degree of metaphysical subtilty. But, if their doctrine be divested of those subtilties, and expressed in plain language, it will be found that nothing in what our author, with other spiritualists, calls mystical theology, contradicts common sense. With them he divides the progress of a Christian, in his advances towards perfection, into three stages, the purgative, the contemplative, and the unitive. In the first stage he places sinners on their first entrance, after their ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... fairly read. And should you set your heart upon them, We lack not beets—but some are dead, While others have policemen on them. And be the dewfall dear to you, Possess your poet's soul in patience! Your notes shall soon be falling dew,— Most mystical of transformations! ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... on the contrary, how insignificant he was and how insignificant every one is in this world where beings, agitated like grains in a van, are mixed and separated by a shake of the rustic or of the god. This idea of the agricultural or mystical van represented measure and order too well to be exactly applied to life. It seemed to him that men were grains in a coffee-mill. He had had a vivid sensation of this the day before, when he saw Madame Fusellier grinding coffee ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... nothing of all these fables and fancies. Her own singular experiences in this enchanted region were certainly not suggested by anything she had heard, and may be considered psychologically curious by those who would not think of attributing any mystical meaning to them. We are at liberty to report many things without attempting to explain them, or committing ourselves to anything beyond the fact that so they were told us. The reader will find Myrtle's "Vision," ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... [sic] to the reverend bishops, counselling them if they will needs be barrelled up for fear of smelling in the nostrils of her Majesty and the State, that they would use the advice of Reverend Martin for the providing of their Cooper; because the Reverend T. C. (by which mystical letters is understood either the bouncing parson of East Meon or Tom Cokes his chaplain), hath shewed himself in his late admonition to the people of England to be an unskilful and beceitful [sic] tub-trimmer. Wherein worthy Martin quits him like a man, I warrant you in the ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... hungry men's natural desire to mass behind a tribune and follow him onwards, they hope, along the high road to excitement, fame, power and riches. He warns us against our readiness to believe in myth and metaphysics, demonstrating how Man will believe anything, even the most mystical or incomprehensible religion or ideology, provided it is preached by his leaders. History, as seen by Taine, is one long series of such adventures and horrors and nowhere was this more evident than in France before, during and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... 'the fierce sectaries of Lower Germany,' on Anabaptism, and on the illuminati of the ultra Puritans in England, bringing forth Independent Fifth Monarchy men, George Fox, Flood, Law, and Pordage. The seeds of this mystical heresy were obscurely transmitted to New England, which has always had some 'GOD-Smith,' or Mathias with his 'Impostures,' lurking among the vulgar. I have no doubt that, through traditional influence at least, a Joe Smith and the beginning of Mormonism might be found to have a direct ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... disapproval to pass unpunished. Wolf suspected that the time was not far distant when yonder monarch at the window, who had won so many victories, would have a reckoning with the Smalcalds, the allied Protestants of Germany, and his vivid imagination surrounded him with an almost mystical power. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... west end of the hall, on lofty pedestals, are the celebrated figures of the giants Gog and Magog. They have been believed by some to be Gogmagog and Corinaeus, two mystical personages who were said to have fought together in some of those imaginary conflicts between the Trojans and the early inhabitants of Britain, which are recorded by monkish chroniclers of the Middle Ages. These figures were made by Captain Richard Saunders, a noted carver ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... is the glorious Summer Night, which came near the middle of the book. There is a cheering doctrine of mystical optimism which will have it that a sufficiently intense devotion to any ideal never fails of at least one moment of consummate realisation and enjoyment. Such a moment was granted to Matthew Arnold when he wrote A Summer Night. ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... auditor whom Messire Miles d'Isliers, doctor in decretals, saw arrive every Monday morning, all breathless, at the opening of the gates of the school of the Chef-Saint-Denis, was Claude Frollo. Thus, at sixteen years of age, the young clerk might have held his own, in mystical theology, against a father of the church; in canonical theology, against a father of the councils; in scholastic theology, against ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... tongue they were known as Bogomilians, or men constant in prayer. In Greek they were called Cathari, or "Puritans." They accepted the New Testament, but set little store by the Old; they laughed at transubstantiation, denied any mystical efficiency to baptism, frowned upon image-worship as no better than idolatry, despised the intercession of saints, and condemned the worship of the Virgin Mary. As for the symbol of the cross, they scornfully ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... the piano and the violin give her a fluttering drape. But there are things to be seen. This is not the Aphrodite of the Blue Danube waltz—but a duskier, more mystical lady. There are no roses on her cheeks, no lilies in her skin. She is colored like a panther flower and her limbs are heavy with taboo magic. But she is still imperial. In vain the mountebanks and burlesqueries of her court. Her lips place ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... me that she had not spoken of any gateway through my garden fence, but of another one, mystical, hidden, infinitely more sacred. For her voice descended almost in a whisper, and her face, as she bent down towards me, had on it I know not what angelic expression. She seemed ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... box at a theatre, and is in fact the tribune reserved for the masters of the Castle. (In former days those masters were the Sforzas. So, from this tribune, the members of that race of iron and blood, of fierceness and of guile, have assisted at the mystical sacrifice of the Lamb of God!) Heretofore, during John's residence at the presbytery, the tribune had stood vacant. To-day it was occupied by Maria Dolores and Frau Brandt. Maria Dolores, instead of wearing a hat, had adopted the ancient and beautiful use of draping a long ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... Glorious God, and. his Angels, and the Resurrection, and the Rewards and Punishments of a future State. Now Asal us'd to make a deeper Search into the inside of Things, and was more inclin'd to study Mystical Meanings and Interpretations. But as for his Friend Salaman, he kept close to the literal Sense, and never troubled himself with such Interpretations, but refrain'd from such curious Examination and Speculation of things. However, notwithstanding ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail
... incidents of actual contemporary life. George Eliot's psychologic novels are different from those of either Scott or Dickens. Bryant's clear descriptions of nature stand in striking contrast with Poe's mystical melodies. ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... old master attracts the spectator's attention and keeps it directed towards the more sublime parts of the human figure, and in particular the eyes, which we ordinarily describe as the spiritual organs. In this picture, colouring and design conspire to produce an ideal and mystical impression. The vermilion of the cheeks does not recall the natural appearance of the skin; it rather seems as if the old master has applied the roses of Paradise to the faces of the Mother ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... reasonings, and solder one stray rivet; man being a writing animal, there still remains the question, what is writing? Ah, there's the rub: a very comfortable definition would it be, if every pen-holder and pen-wiper could truly claim that kingship of the universe—that imagery of his Maker—that mystical, marvellous, immortal, intellectual, abstraction, manhood: but, what then is WRITING? Ye tons of invoices, groaning shelves of incalculable legers, parchment abhorrences of rare Charles Lamb, we think not now of you; dreary piles of unhealthy-looking law-books, hypochondriacal heaps of ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... world and gathered the gods about you, and if you do not throw yourself at their feet, you will be always full of lassitude, and of wavering purpose, for a man must forget he is miserable in the bustle and noise of the multitude in this world and in time; or seek a mystical union with the multitude who govern this world and time.' And then he murmured something I could not hear, and as though to someone I ...
— Rosa Alchemica • W. B. Yeats
... American indigenes with Osiris Unnefer ("Hare God"). These are the lines upon which investigation should run. And of late years there is a notable improvement of tone in treating of symbolism or idolatry: the Lingam and the Yoni are now described as "mystical representations, and perhaps the best possible impersonal representatives of the abstract expressions paternity and maternity" (Prof. Monier Williams in "Folk-lore Record" vol. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... the mining wisdom which circumstances had denied that he should acquire in college. His Nevada experiences had given him a taste of the desert and he liked it. There was a broad strain of poetry in his make-up, inherited perhaps from his mother, and the desert appealed to that mystical sixth sense in him, arousing his imagination, taunting him with a desire that was almost pre-natal to investigate the formation on the other side of the sky-line. It pandered to the spirit of adventure ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... being called nature, and the other humanity. What strangely increases the confusion is that all the terms of language change meaning as employed by their pen. They speak of God, of duty, of religion, of immortality; their pages seem sometimes to be extracted from mystical writings; but these sacred words have for them a totally different meaning than for the ordinary run of their readers. Their God is not a Being, their religion is not a worship, their duty is not a law, their immortality is not the hope of a world to come. ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... so gracious and bland, With the sword of Saint George in her royal right hand, Instructing this trio of marvellous Knights In the mystical meanings ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... from those who want food and the comforts of life. The people will be unable to pay the grinding taxes which a fanatical spirit will attempt to impose upon them. Nay, more, sir; you will see further separation. I hope it is not "the sunset of life gives me mystical lore," but in my mind's eye I plainly see "coming events cast their shadows before." The Pacific slope now, doubtless, is devoted to the union of States. Let this war go on till they find the burdens of taxation greater than the burdens ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... his aspiring heart to acquire understanding of those sublime mystical teachings he transcends the form-side of nature, comprising various realms of which we have been speaking, and finds himself "in the spirit," as did the prophets in olden times. He is then in the Region of abstract Thought and sees ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... and hunt up the homeless, that he may convert his home into a promiscuous orphan-asylum. As before remarked, his creed is of the simplest, and there exists a complete and explicit understanding between his God and himself. There are no mystical, hidden meanings in Scripture for the Jew; nor does he dread any eternal, unheard-of, and inexplicable torments. His laws are very clear, and the punishments for their infraction very explicit. To the Jew it is a straight and ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... admire them so much, as, from the Edinburgh Review, the English appeared to do." To another question—"which of Shakspeare's plays pleased him most?" he replied, unhesitatingly, "Romeo and Juliet." I own, I should have thought that the mystical, or philosophy-loving, brain of a ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... His people. "I need not speak," says Miller, "of the joy that filled my heart in view of the delightful prospect, nor of the ardent longings of my soul for a participation in the joys of the redeemed. The Bible was now to me a new book. It was indeed a feast of reason; all that was dark, mystical, or obscure to me in its teachings, had been dissipated from my mind before the clear light that now dawned from its sacred pages; and oh, how bright and glorious the truth appeared! All the contradictions and inconsistencies ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... picture becomes more wonderful to us than it really is, and reveals to us a secret of which, in truth, it knows nothing, and the music of the mystical prose is as sweet in our ears as was that flute- player's music that lent to the lips of La Gioconda those subtle and poisonous curves. Do you ask me what Lionardo would have said had any one told him ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... another Picture, reader mine! I gave you one in the first Canto;[13]— This is more solemn, mystical, and fine,— Like something in the Castle ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... Butler, his eyes becoming yellow and fixed. And, as Boyd carelessly repeated the rapid and mystical appeal, "Oh!" he said coolly. "So that is what ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... the modern man, springs from his recognition, instinctive when not conscious, that she is in an express sense, as he is not, the type, the representative, and the symbol of the race from which he springs, of that immortal and mystical life in which the secret of his own is hid. She is this by virtue, not of her personal qualities, but of the mother-sex, which, overbearing in part her individuality, consecrates her to the interests of the race, and makes her the channel of those irresistible ...
— A Positive Romance - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... works of literature which we had always been hearing about from the lips of others, but had never been able to know directly. How we should revel in the prospect before us! At last to be able to read the "Iliad"! To follow the fortunes of wandering Ulysses! To accompany Dante in his mystical journey through the three worlds! To dare with Macbeth and to doubt with Hamlet! Our trouble would be that we should not know which to select first. We should wish we had the eyes of an insect that we might ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... as he pressed it a Peal of thunder and paled the firelight, paled the lamps, Such a sudden stream of splendour flooded the Feast with miraculous light; Whilst, O Wonder! round the Table swathed in samite, dazzling bright, Passed the Presence, mystical, shadowy, ghostly gliding—the Holy Grail, Passed, though none could its shape discover, nay, not even the Virgin Knight, Passed, passed with strains seraphic, incense odours, rainbow hues— Passed, passed, and where it entered, suddenly melted out ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... it will. All evil and all good come from your heart. Your heart alone has the key of life and death for you.' I was just about to ask you at this point which of our two authors, our allegorical or our mystical author upon the heart, you like best. But that would be a stupid and a wayward question since you have them both before you, and both at their best, to possess and to enjoy. To go back then to John Bunyan, and to his allegory of the ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... another festival in which they appeared, though without any mystical signification. In the Panathena, the daughters of the Metceci, or foreign residents, carried Parasols over the heads of Athenian women as a mark ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... speck upon the blossoming of its Mystical Rose,—unless it be the silhouette of some passing gull, whirling his sickle-wings against the crimsoning. Ever, as the sun floats higher, the flood shifts its color. Sometimes smooth and gray, yet flickering with the morning gold, it is the vision of John,—the apocalyptic ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... our thoughts for a few moments to the cause of the resurrection of these two prophets. We are all of us too much in the habit of passing it by, as a thing mystical and inconceivable, taking place in the life of Christ for some purpose not by us to be understood, or, at the best, merely as a manifestation of His divinity by brightness of heavenly light, and ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... was walking below, the sight of whom suddenly aroused her from the folly, the strange charm of which had just laid hold so powerfully upon her. She drew back. She rubbed her eyes with her hands, and she, who was accustomed to mystical enthusiasm, said aloud: ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... its members strove to keep the Augustinian ideal of a parochial and monastic life. But the chief fame of the abbey itself comes from its scholastic work, and it became known both as the stronghold of a somewhat rigid orthodoxy and as the home of a mystical theology which was developed ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... the Imperio-Davido-classical school of French art, and the namby-pamby mystical German school, which is for carrying us back to Cranach and Duerer, and which ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... commenced, with that mystical involution of his subject which practice had rendered nearly inseparable from all his communications; "Captain Content Heathcote, this hath been a day of awful visitations, and of gracious temporal gifts. The heathen hath been ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... sigh of relief broke from her. The bridge still swayed from her weight; and the cables hummed like the wires of a harp; near at hand the waterfall tumbled down through the mystical starlight. ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... fifty years had passed between my first and last visits to London, but I think I had kept for it throughout that long interval much more of the earlier sentiment than for any other city that I have known. I do not wish to be mystical, and I hesitate to say that this sentiment was continuous through the smell of the coal-smoke, or that the smoke formed a solution in which all associations were held, and from which they were, from time to time, precipitated in specific memories. The peculiar ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... physical sex activity, in dreams of the night, in day-dreams, in shapes of literature and art, in symptoms of nervous disorder such as some forms of hysteria, and even in the most exalted phases of mystical devotion. Since then, a more elaborate attempt to develop a similar dynamic conception of sexual activity has been made by Freud; and the psycho-analysts who have followed him, or sometimes diverged, have with endless ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... W. Shaumann. Bio-Dynamic Agriculture: An Introduction. Spring Valley, New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1976. A good introduction to this philosophical/mystical system of farming and gardening that ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... hermit, that he may remain an anchorite.—A zahid, or hermit, stands in need of neither diram nor dinar; when an anchorite takes either, look out for another.—Whoever is virtuously disposed, and holds a mystical communication with God, is sufficient of a hermit without requiring the bread of charity, or the crumbs of mendicity. The tapering finger of the lovely, and her soul-deluding ear-lobe, are decoration enough ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... though the day were wet or dry, fair or frowning, trotted thither at noon. Here were trees under which lay, in happy season, over-ripe Bartlett pears; here, too, was one mulberry-tree, whereof the suggestion was strange and wonderful, and the fruit less appealing to taste than to a mystical fancy. But outside the bank wall grew the balm-of-Gileads, in a stately, benevolent row,—trees of healing, of fragrance and romantic charm. No child ever sought the old home to beg pears and mulberries, or to fill the school-house pail ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... very people over whom he is in authority and in whom he is the energizing power. For this reason this class of humanity believes least in his reality, and ignorantly rejects its real leader as a mystical person. When he is worshipped it is through some idol as a medium, or through his own impersonation of Jehovah; and when he rules it is by what seems to be the voice of a King or the voice of the people. However, the ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... middle of the 14th century there was a revival of the Old English alliterative verse in romances like William and the Werewolf, and Sir Gawayne, and in religious pieces such as Clannesse (purity), Patience and The Perle, the last named a mystical poem of much beauty, in which a bereaved father sees a vision of his daughter among the glorified. Some of these employed rhyme as well as alliteration. They are in the West Midland dialect, although Chaucer implies that alliteration was most common in the north. ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... out of his mind. But it was keenly alive in Jeff's mind, and he was in the strange necessity which men in the flush of life and health often feel of seeking counsel of those who stand in the presence of death, as if their words should have something of the mystical authority of the unknown wisdom ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... according to the occasion, to the sounds that express it—this is poetry. The musical in sound is the sustained and continuous; the musical in thought is the sustained and continuous also. There is a near connection between music and deep-rooted passion."[78] In this mystical direction a definition could go no further, but like nearly all writers and speakers Hazlitt is inclined to use the word poetry in a variety of more or less connected meanings,[79] ordinarily legitimate enough, but somewhat embarrassing ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin |
