"Occult" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for him, apart from everything else, to accept the easy "all rot" theory, for Bubbles' occult gifts were really very remarkable and striking. They had become known to the now large circle of intelligent people who make a study of psychic phenomena, and among them, just because she was an "amateur," ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... in the clear May morning, with what occult trepidations I cannot say. You may depend upon it, though, ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... made their appearance in the neighbourhood of Augsburg. These vagabonds gave out that they were exiles from Lower Egypt, and pretended to know the art of predicting coming events. It was soon found out that they were much less versed in divination and in the occult sciences than in the arts of plundering, ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... Helvetius, "is factitious." "Nature," said Godwin, "never made a dunce." The failures of education are due primarily to the teacher's error in substituting compulsion for persuasion and despotism for encouragement. The excellences and defects of the human character are not due to occult causes beyond the reach of ingenuity to modify or correct, nor are false views the offspring of an irresistible destiny. Our conventional schools are the slaughterhouses of mind; but of all the external ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... ever been put in charge of the sanitation of a District. He was cursed by the ignorant in the Muktiarbad bazaar and at Panipara village itself, but so far his person had been respected, as it was known by some occult means that he secretly ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... ever been known in the district, and since it had not only baffled Mooty's skill, but had irreverently seized him—the only physician of credit and renown—its cause must be supernatural. Thus did he reason, as he began occult investigations. Jack and Rosey lay in their camp passively dying. Mooty prowled about, the sleeves of a discarded shirt tied under his distended jaws. No physical origin for the mysterious disease was found during the two days he devoted to methodic search and secret rite. ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... Jack Fyfe's eyes rested on her she steeled herself to resist—what, she did not know. Something intangible, something that disturbed her. She had never experienced anything like that before; it tantalized her, roused her curiosity. There was nothing occult about the man. He was nowise fascinating, either in face or manner. He made no bid for her attention. Yet during the half hour he sat there, Stella's mind revolved constantly about him. She recalled all that she had heard of him, much of it, from her ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... with those which cause the fall of an apple, knows something which only requires more definite treatment to be made into a genuine theory of gravitation. If, on the contrary, he merely pays himself with words, with vague guesses about occult properties, or a supposed angel who directs the moon's course, he is still in the unscientific stage. His theory is not science still in the vague, but something which stops the way to science. Now, if we can never hope to get further than the step which in the problem of gravitation represents ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... stoicism, the prevailing idea that incurable grief is merely "morbid," yet, in their own apartments where their own love had been lived, was every mute image and eloquent trifle belonging to its broken arc. Here, with Strang's books on occult science, with other books of her own choosing, the wife lived secretly, unknown of any other human being, the long vigil of waiting for some sign or word from the spirit of one who by every token of religion and faith she could not believe dead—only to her wistful earthly ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... discredit the movement metrically. Meanwhile Tennyson and Kingsley, followed later by William Watson, and still enthusiastically by the present Poet Laureate, undertook to harmonize syllabic length and stress by more or less occult processes. As a matter of learned experiment and debate these problems have a certain academic interest, but only the staunchest and (one may say) blindest adherents find ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... profound silence, glide out of the room, and return shortly loaded with ponderous tomes, upon which the other would fall, tooth and nail, with famished voracity. I had no longer a doubt that I had happened upon a body of magi, deeply engaged in the study of occult sciences. The scene reminded me of an old Arabian tale, of a philosopher shut up in an enchanted library, in the bosom of a mountain, which opened only once a year; where he made the spirits of the place bring him books of all kinds of dark knowledge, so that at the end of the year, ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... spring in a desire for the marvelous. The search for the philosopher's stone has done as much for chemistry as the legend of the elixir of life for exploration and geographical discovery. From the excitements of these suggestions of the occult, the world settled down into a reasonable understanding of the facts of which they were but the enlarged ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... evening, my friends," the one Pash was saying, "a very remarkable lady—if I may use so democratic a term in the connection—to whom the limits of Time and Space are empty words, and before whose supreme Will the most portentous Forces of Occult Nature mutely confess themselves her attending slaves—" But at that moment the rolling drums of Kiang-ti's thunder drowned his words, although he subsequently raised his voice above it to entreat that any knives or other articles of a bright and attractive kind ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... at home, and one evening when, during the course of a gay party, the conversation came around to the subject of mysticism and occult occurrences, I dished up my story of the enigmatical manuscript. The Unknown, the Occult, was the rage just then, and my story was received with great applause and called forth numerous quotations as to 'more things in ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... different guarantee. The believers in what are ordinarily called miracles—those who accept the miraculous narratives which they are taught to think are essential elements of religious doctrine—are in the one category; the spirit-rappers, table-turners, and all the other devotees of the occult sciences of our day are in the other: and, if they disagree in most things they agree in this, namely, that they ascribe to science a dictum that is not scientific; and that they endeavour to upset the dictum thus foisted ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... superwoman, and cannot call up spirits.' And the children are hopeless about it, too. Frank says we are not intended to 'lift the curtain' (that is what he calls it). He is such a thorough clergyman, and never had my imagination; he calls my explorations 'dabbling in the occult.' His wife jeers, and asks me if I've been talking to many spooks lately. But then her family are hard-headed business people, quite different from me. Clare says the whole thing frightens her to death. For her part she is content with what the Church allows of spiritual exploration, which ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... be; while men grope in the darkness of their outward nature; which receives no light from the inward, because they will not open the doors of the temple, where a shrine is placed, from which it ever beams forth with occult and ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... girl called to an approaching group who seemed to have heard by wireless or occult means the report of new activity in the casting office. "Hurry, you troupers. You can eat to-morrow night, maybe!" They hurried. She turned to Merton Gill. "Seems ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... ways have occurred to me of dealing with the matter," continued Dr. Cairn quietly. "One is to find that cavern and to kill, in the occult sense, by means of a stake, the vampire who lies there; the other which, I confess, might only result in the permanent 'possession' of Lady Lashmore—is to get at the power which controls this ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... in some ways, crucial. I have spoken with Jesuits and Plymouth Brethren, mathematicians and poets, dogmatic republicans and dear old gentlemen in bird's-eye neckcloths; and each understood the word "facts" in an occult sense of his own. Try as I might, I could get no nearer the principle of their division. What was essential to them seemed to me trivial or untrue. We could come to no compromise as to what was, or what was not, important in the life of man. Turn as we pleased, we all stood back to back in a big ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... she?" I inquired. "Come—you need not be afraid of me. I have come here solely because the occult has always interested me. Who was Jane, and why should her ghost haunt ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... authors, roll their "r's"; and if their names are pseudonyms, so much the greater proof that some occult instinct makes them elect for that virile letter. Who are our leading actors and actor-managers? The double-r's: Henry Irving, Herbert Beerbohm Tree (two pairs), Forbes-Robertson, George Alexander, Arthur Roberts, Edward S. Willard, Edward Terry, ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... asked Somerset; 'to stake one's life for others? to deracinate occult and powerful evil? I appeal to Mr. Godall. He, at least, as a philosophic looker-on at life, will spit upon such philistine opinions. He knows that the policeman, as he is called upon continually to face greater odds, and that both worse equipped ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... considered how frequently his love-affairs had left disastrous souvenirs: yes, for a man in middle life so often patched up by quack doctors, Ormskirk looked wholesome enough, said Mr. Bulmer. He may have had his occult purposes, this poor cousin, but of Ormskirk he undoubtedly spoke with engaging candor. Here was no parasite cringingly praising his patron to the skies. The Duke's career was touched on, with its grimy passages no whit extenuated: before Dettingen ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... how Lady Kew came to know this fact, whether her maid corresponded with Lady Anne's maid, what her ladyship's means of information were, avowed or occult, this biographer has never been able to ascertain. Very likely Ethel, who in these last three weeks had been made aware of that interesting circumstance, had announced it to Lady Kew in the course of a cross-examination, and ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... this knowledge. To a high-bred dog, every human of his acquaintance has a distinctive scent; which cannot be mistaken. Lad used no occult power inn returning to the rightful owner any article he chanced to find on ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... such as would not find much favour in ordinary English circles," he said smilingly. "But I should do away with much of the nonsense of ordinary English education, and deal with the more occult sciences." ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... thinking about it now, obscurely, without images, barely with words, as if it had been indeed a thing occult ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... reflection of it in the labour of the landscape gardener create not merely an impression of beauty, but a mood in the soul. The grand old landscape gardeners, those Buddhist monks who first introduced the art into Japan, and subsequently developed it into an almost occult science, carried their theory yet farther than this. They held it possible to express moral lessons in the design of a garden, and abstract ideas, such as Chastity, Faith, Piety, Content, Calm, and Connubial Bliss. Therefore were gardens contrived according to the character ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... not to find ideas, but words. If he had been a talker you would have felt that he was out of keeping with himself. Reflecting that this elephant minus a trumpet and without a mind was called Minoret-Levrault, we are compelled to agree with Sterne as to the occult power of names, which sometimes ridicule and ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... the lights, would of a sudden feel a spell clamped upon them. They would hear a strange, quavering note in the preacher's voice, catch the sense of a piercing, soul-commanding gleam in his eye—not at all to be resisted. These occult forces would take control of them, drag them forward as in a dream to the benches under the pulpit, and abase them there like worms in the dust. And then the preacher would descend, and the elders advance, and the torch-fires would sway and dip before ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... and other rites supposed to be propitiatory of the deity. He was also, however, greatly addicted to opium-smoking, and when under the influence of the drug, of which, as an old stager, he could consume great quantities without being stupefied, the idea of the occult power of the goddess, never absent from his mind, was turned completely upside down. When free from the fumes of opium nobody could have been more respectful to the Josses, but when intoxicated, ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... their turn. Then, carrying assegais in their hands, they must take their stand within fifty paces of each other upon a certain patch of ground where the big thunderbolts were observed to strike continually, and by the exercise of their occult powers and invocations to the lightning, must strive to avert death from themselves and bring it on their rival. The terms of this singular match had been arranged a month previously, but no storm worthy of the occasion had arisen. Now the local weather-prophets ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... what lurks beyond the NOW; Could we but see what the dim future hides; Had we some power occult that would us show The joy and sorrow which in THEN abides; Would life be happier,—or less fraught with ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... trade, but did no trading; was anxious to buy, and bought not; willing to sell and sold not; it need not be inferred he transacted no business. Had any of these coast residents been blessed with the occult ability to see beyond the apparent facts, and to overhear, they might have learned of certain hard, if illegal, bargains made between Wolf and one or more of their number, and they might have witnessed late at night ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... it discourage you if the moment you leave your room you encounter a trouble or a disaster. This usually happens. When we make any boasts, spiritually or physically, we are put to the test. The occult forces about us are not unlike human beings. When a school-boy boasts of his strength, and says he can "lick any boy in school," he generally gets a chance to ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... not relish having his big occult smoke blown away in this fashion; he looked at us with rather a sickish expression, as a boy might have if someone stuck a pin in his toy balloon. But it was such a relief to get back to practicalities ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... gift, which developed into ever-increasing perfection as her hair grew whiter, of being able to express ideas by means of words which had no relation to them at all. Within three minutes, by three different remarks whose occult message no stranger could have understood but which forced itself with unpleasant clearness upon Edwin, Mrs Hamps had conveyed, "Janet Orgreave only cultivates Maggie because Maggie is the sister of ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... launched on the river at night, in flame. A geomancer proclaimed that a bamboo grove behind the town formed an angle most correct, germane, and pleasant to the Azure Dragon and the White Tiger, whose occult currents, male and female, run throughout Nature. For any or all of these reasons, the town was delivered. The pestilence vanished, as though it had come but to grant Monsieur Jolivet his silence, and to add a few score uncounted living wretches ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... other than that which should be in a lover's eyes when contemplating his mistress. Indeed, it was a dangerous amusement for Miss Burgoyne to indulge in. It was easy to wound; it might be less easy to efface the memory of those wounds. And then there was a kind of devilish ingenuity about her occult taunts. For example, she dared not say that doubtless Miss Nina Ross had gone away back to Naples, and had taken up with a sweetheart, with whom she was now walking about; but she described the sort of young man calculated to capture the fancy of an ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... the king's kitchen was a member of parliament. Such sinecures and the pensions on the civil list or the Irish establishment provided the funds by which the king could build up a personal influence, which was yet occult, irresponsible, and corrupt. The measure passed by Burke in 1782[2] made a beginning in ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... cool appraisement of her costume did not incense the young lady as it ought to have done. On the contrary, for some occult feminine reason, it amused and interested her. It would be such a good story to tell her friends of a "drummer's" idea of gallantry; and to tease the flirtatious young West Pointer who had just joined. And the appraisement was truthful—Major Cantire had only his pay—and Miss Cantire had been obliged ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... were also found, with Arabic characters written upon them; and in the box which they first took up was a powder similar to that which Mynheer Poots had given to Amine. There were many articles and writings which made it appear that the old man had dabbled in the occult sciences, as they were practised at that period, and those they hastened to commit to ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the languages, and a few useful words and phrases stuck. He plunged into the sciences, and arose from the immersion dripping with a smattering of astronomy, chemistry, biology, archaeology, and what not. The occult was to him an open book, and he was wont temporarily to paralyze the small talk of social gatherings with dissertations upon the teachings of the ancients which he had swallowed at a gulp. He criticised the schools ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... were made so that the Finn MacCool, the champion of the giants, could take a running jump over to Scotland and he going deer-hunting in the forests of Argyll. So the country folk said, but wee Shane thought different, knew different. The Druids had made it for their own occult designs, the Druids, that terrible, powerful clan with their magic batons, and their sinister cursing-stones, and ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... to be formed of lines of fire within the stone, glowed, redly, through the greenness. The ring was old—incalculably old—as anyone could see at a glance. And, in some occult fashion, it spoke to Baron Hague; spoke to that which was within him—stirred up the Jewish blood and set it leaping ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... here," continued the father, "told me a curious story. It seems that Mr. Crisp here has toiled and moiled for many years, keeping you in comparative luxury and idleness. Not a word, sir. It's an open secret. For some occult reason he likes to pay this price for your company. Having supported you so long, I presume he is prepared to support you to ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... power of reason is no occult power: it is simply the capacity for finding and establishing systems of means for the attainment of ends; or it may be defined as the power of acquiring experience and of self-applying this experience in ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... apparition rose from behind the rock at the back of the cavern, the first figure, which I had believed up to now really to be the negro cook's ghost or spirit, permitted for some occult purpose or other to revisit the earth, also jumped up out of the corner, ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Protestant princes of Germany, in regard to the great contest of the age. In this mission, young as he was, he acquitted himself, not only to the satisfaction, but to the admiration of Walsingham, certainly a master himself in that occult science, the diplomacy of the sixteenth century. "There hath not been," said he, "any gentleman, I am sure, that hath gone through so honourable a charge with as ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... French lawyer is simply a man extensively acquainted with the statutes of his country; but the English or American lawyer resembles the hierophants of Egypt, for, like them, he is the sole interpreter of an occult science. ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... had come to him to get back a faithless lover, and has been convicted of bigamy since then. Sometimes, however, they are of quite a different stamp—men who pretend to nothing, and are with difficulty persuaded to exercise their occult arts in the ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... he can out-speed the fleetest hound or horse; he has but feeble weapons in his organization, and yet he can slay or master all the great beasts; his eye is not so sharp as that of the eagle or the vulture, and yet he can see into the farthest depths of siderial space; he has only very feeble occult powers of communication with his fellows, and yet he can talk around the world and send his voice across mountains and deserts; his hands are weak things beside a lion's paw or an elephant's trunk, and yet he can ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... Perished in a tumult many years ago, Accused—our learning's fate—of wizardry, Rebellion, to the setting up a rule And creed prodigious as described to me. His death, which happened when the earthquake fell (Prefiguring, as soon appeared, the loss To occult learning in our lord the sage Who lived there in the pyramid alone) Was wrought by the mad people—that's their wont! On vain recourse, as I conjecture it, To his tried virtue, for miraculous help— How could he stop ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... other. In common with most men who had lived in the tense atmosphere of the most dangerous form of racing yet evolved, he had witnessed more than one case where a presentiment did not fail of fulfilment. Irrespective of whether catalogued as coincidence, occult foresight or absurdity, the facts did exist, occasionally to be read in the prosaic columns of a newspaper, more often lost except in camp annals. He knew, and Rupert knew, of a mechanician who suddenly refused absolutely to go out with the driver by whose side he had ridden countless miles, ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... his treasures from his pocket—'That's a wassher—for makkin motor-cars!'" Nineteen hundred and twelve pinned its faith on matter and nothing else; Nineteen hundred and thirteen assured us that "occurrences now regarded as occult can be examined and reduced to order by the methods of science carefully and persistently applied."[2] Further, the examination of those facts had convinced the deliverer of the address "that memory and affection are not limited to that association with matter by which alone they can manifest themselves ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... a compound of matter and something else miraculously united with it, to which they give the name of mind or soul, and then they proudly looked on themselves as beings apart from the rest of creation. In plain truth, Mind is only an occult force, invented to explain occult qualities and actions, and really explaining nothing. By Mind they mean no more than the unknown cause of phenomena that they cannot explain naturally, just as the Red Indians believed that it was spirits who produced the terrible effects of gunpowder, and just as the ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... and, by some occult process, the fact of their presence soon became known to the entire slave population of the neighborhood, who came flocking in throughout the day. Such an important occasion would have been incomplete without a prayer-meeting, Aunt Katy herself being a pillar of the Colored ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... personages revealed a neatness due to the most scrupulous personal care. The same hand, and it was that of Manon, could be seen in every detail. Their coats were perhaps ten years old, but they were preserved, like the coats of vicars, by the occult power of the servant-woman, and the constant care with which they were worn. These men seemed to wear on their backs the livery of a system of life; they belonged to one thought, their looks said the same word, their faces breathed a ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... in reality a philosopher, that is to say, an experimenter and a manipulator of general ideas. Proof of this may be found in his biography, which shows him to us, during his college days at Vendome, plunged into a whirl of abstract reading. The entire theological and occult library which he discovered in the old Oratorian institution was absorbed by the child, till he had to quit school sick, his brain benumbed by this strange opium. The story of Louis Lambert is a monograph of his own mind. During his youth and in the moments snatched ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... which they're fraught; He may be a friend of Nature And may understand her laws; He may prove embryo creature Has within itself a "cause"; He may fathom all creation And dwell among the stars, Visit every land and nation And return with honor's scars; Yet he may lack a power,— Occult to scientific truth— Which is Heaven's richest dower To ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... I wasn't just so far wrong neither, as I shall readily prove to those of my distinguished audience who have been to college like myself, and learned to read Greek like their mother tongue. For what is the very name Apollyon, but an occult prophecy concerning the great conqueror of Europe! nothing can be plainer! Of course the first letter, N, stands for nothing—a mere veil to cover the prophecy till the time of revealing. In all languages it is the sign of negation—no, and ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... thought which came from him, impinging on her system, and bringing his presence with them. It is a common sensation, and occurs to many people of sensitive organization when asleep or thinking on some one with whom they are in a high state of sympathy, and doubtless indicates some occult communication. But, as it chanced, it had never before visited Angela in this form, and she abandoned herself to its influence with delight. It ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... gives my design the complex character of a mythic, heroic, and Christian poem, and, at the same time, constitutes the unity of its parts. The ancients, whose representative types I introduce, knew and appreciated but two kinds of power, brute or physical, and spiritual, including all occult and supernatural efficacy, and strength of intellect and will. Virtue, triumphant by the aid of adventitious force, or relying upon unconquerable pride and disdain to resist it, was the highest reach ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... a well-read man. His Sermons are as full of classical and patristic allusions and pat sayings from the most occult ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... notorious crime by the crude expedient of impersonating the criminal's victim—a murdered woman—and appearing to him at night before a concealed witness. But spirits are doomed. The present extraordinary wave of superstition and the immense prosperity of the dealers in the 'occult' is a direct result of the war. They are profiteers—every one of them—crystal gazers, mediums, fortune tellers, and the rest. They are reaping a rare harvest for the moment. We punish the humbler rogues, but we don't punish ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... Edition. Author's Remarks To First Edition Chapter I. The Character of Occult Science Chapter II. The Nature of Man Chapter III. Sleep and Death Chapter IV. The Evolution of the World and Man Chapter V. Knowledge of the Higher Worlds Chapter VI. The Present and Future Evolution of the World ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... that old Tausend-Kunstlerin (witch of a thousand tricks) is in the position of parent? I guess as much. He said he had connived with her, one who is the actual though occult ruler of the filthy region. We have had to pay her blackmail regularly, like the other artists, for we are obliged to go home after midnight. Well, if he is in their hands, it is among congenial spirits. Tell me your name and as much of your affairs as you please ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... object of which I never fathomed, though I was an active member of the body during the remainder of my residence at Rivermouth, and at one time held the onerous position of F. C., First Centipede. Each of the elect wore a copper cent (some occult association being established between a cent apiece and a centipedes suspended by a string round his neck). The medals were worn next the skin, and it was while bathing one day at Grave Point, with Jack Harris and Fred Langdon, that I had my curiosity roused to the highest ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... a thousand Years ago I was an Indian Brachman, and versed in all those mysterious Secrets which your European Philosopher, called Pythagoras, is said to have learned from our Fraternity. I had so ingratiated my self by my great Skill in the occult Sciences with a Daemon whom I used to converse with, that he promised to grant me whatever I should ask of him. I desired that my Soul might never pass into the Body of a brute Creature; but this he told me was not in ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Bates badly. It was almost inconceivable that two such men, one a powerfully-built athlete and the other an ex-soldier, should even imagine that any marauder could be secreted in the flat; but the European insensibly credits the Oriental with occult powers, and they took their ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... well-known halting periods, scarcely saved by long training and use from being a stutter. The female population eagerly listened, while she painted in vivid colours the aim of education, in raising the status of women, and extending their spheres not only of influence in the occult manner which had hitherto been their way of working through others, but in an open manner, which compelled attention; and she dwelt on certain brilliant achievements of women, and of others which stood before them, and ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... design. Those of the penultimate citation and its context are all of the same stamp. The differences which begin as variations are said to be spontaneous—a metaphorical word of wide meanings—are inferred to be casual (whereas we only know them to be occult), or to be originated by surrounding agencies (which is not in a just sense true); they are legitimately inferred to be led on by natural selection, wholly new structures or organs appear, no one can say how, certainly no one can show that they are necessary outcomes of what ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... hours of the Abbe Troubert fled by as eagerly, laden with thoughts as anxious, harassed by despairs and hopes as deep as the cruellest hours of the gambler, the lover, or the statesman. God alone is in the secret of the energy we expend upon our occult triumphs over man, over things, over ourselves. Though we know not always whither we are going we know well what the journey costs us. If it be permissible for the historian to turn aside for a moment from the drama he is narrating and ask his readers to cast a glance ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... monarchies as Italy and Germany, for they, too, for all their legal difference, rest also on the grey. The party conflicts of the future will turn very largely on the discovery of the true patriot, on the suspicion that the crown or the machine in possession is in some more or less occult way traitorous, and almost all other matters of contention will be shelved and allowed to stagnate, for fear of breaking the unity ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... through mirrors, and we soon make the necessary alterations to put our bodies in harmony with existing formalities. Then, why not study more seriously the mental images reflected from the mirror of the soul upon our minds through the occult processes within us? ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... that these penmen require any fresh inflation; for never has there been a race of professors in any art who have exceeded in solemnity and pretensions the practitioners in this simple and mechanical craft. I must leave to more ingenious investigators of human nature to reveal the occult cause which has operated such powerful delusions on these "Vive la Plume!" men, who have been generally observed to possess least intellectual ability in proportion to the excellence they have obtained in their own art. I suspect this maniacal vanity is ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... most quiet and sequestered apartment: but, our Lady defend us! how pale you look;—surely, you are not ill?—La virgen nos valga.[32] Samuel Mendez shall be commanded here forthwith; for this same Samuel, you must know, is a very sapient leech, and well versed in occult medical science, though a very dog of a cursed unbelieving Jew;[33] he shall be sent for anon; there is no cause to fear him, for the infidel dare not use any of his poisonous drugs to such as you, my sweet ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... were going to do with such a piece of wood. "To make a post for a house," said he. "But why don't they get a straight one, there are plenty here?" said I. "Oh," replied he, "they prefer some like that in a house, because then it won't fall," evidently imputing the effect to some occult property of crooked timber. A little consideration and a diagram will, however, show, that the effect imputed to the crooked post may be really produced by it. A true square changes its figure readily into a rhomboid or oblique figure, but ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... but wouldn't it be possible, Godfrey, to explain all this by hypnosis, or occult influence, ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... glance. "What is that?" exclaimed Queen Sigrid. "Nothing," answered they, or endeavored to answer, dreading mischief. But Sigrid compelled them to break open the ring; and there was found, all along the inside of it, an occult ring of copper, not a heart of gold at all! "Ha," said the proud queen, flinging it away, "he that could deceive in this matter can deceive in many others!" And was in hot wrath with Olaf; though, by degrees, again she took ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... their own acquaintances whom they met at J... s Street, or Hannah had introduced them to gentlemen there. They were not a bit like whores in dress, appearance or manner, and my acquaintance with them opened my mind to the fact, that there is a large amount of occult fucking going on with needy, middle-class women, whose mode of living and dressing, is a mystery to their friends, and who mingle with their own class of society without its being suspected; that their ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... of other men. That position, he argued, was not worth the life-long effort required. Withal, he could not bring himself to quite understand why he had married Mary Greenwater, unless that she possessed some occult power and gained control over forces of his nature which he did not understand. True, there was but little or no obligation to the ceremony. It held good in the Cherokee Indian nation, that government within a government. Outside that limited space of ground it was null and void. ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... may be known; important in the reconstruction of the history of philosophy; and important in furnishing necessary data to psychology. No labor can be more fruitless than the search in mythology for true philosophy; and the efforts to build up from the terminology and narratives of mythologies an occult symbolism and system of allegory is but to create a new and ...
— On Limitations To The Use Of Some Anthropologic Data - (1881 N 01 / 1879-1880 (pages 73-86)) • J. W. Powell
... not have been astonishing," said Valentine. "For this little room has seen marvels, and strange things that happen perhaps stamp their strange impression upon the places in which they happen. We ought to discuss the occult, doctor, on the last ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... had not spoken one word since the disappearance of the sonnet—that sonnet which would have told her of her future; for had not Marescotti, by some occult power, read her secret? Alas! too, was she not about to reenter her gloomy home without catching so much as a glimpse of Nobili? Count Marescotti had no opportunity of saying a word to Enrica that ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... distance of the sun or moon, as we find it to conceive an end to space or time, or two straight lines inclosing a space. Newton himself had not been able to realize the conception, or we should not have had his hypothesis of a subtle ether, the occult cause of gravitation; and his writings prove, that though he deemed the particular nature of the intermediate agency a matter of conjecture, the necessity of some such agency appeared ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... agent of the San Tome Administration in Sta. Marta (a polished, well-informed gentleman, Sir John thought him) had certainly helped so greatly in bringing about the presidential tour that he began to think that there was something in the faint whispers hinting at the immense occult influence of the Gould Concession. What was currently whispered was this—that the San Tome Administration had, in part, at least, financed the last revolution, which had brought into a five-year dictatorship ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... into Europe. The Spanish Arabs, in particular, are commended by Sprengel above their brethren for their observations on the practice of medicine. [41] But whatever real knowledge they possessed was corrupted by their inveterate propensity for mystical and occult science. They too often exhausted both health and fortune in fruitless researches after the elixir of life and the philosopher's stone. Their medical prescriptions were regulated by the aspect of the stars. Their physics were debased by magic, their chemistry degenerated into alchemy, their astronomy ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... and psychology, each with its characteristic questions, categories, and formulae. Of course, there are, and equally, of course, physical laws will not cover biological facts; nor will biological laws cover psychological ones. This is not due to any occult cause, but to the simple fact that as each group of phenomena has its characteristic features, each set of laws are framed to cover the phenomena presented by that group. Otherwise there would be no need of these special laws. It is astonishing how paralysing is the effect of the theistic obsession ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... rags and tatters of a storm, and Valentin regarded it with a wistfulness unusual in such scientific natures as his. Perhaps such scientific natures have some psychic prevision of the most tremendous problem of their lives. From any such occult mood, at least, he quickly recovered, for he knew he was late, and that his guests had already begun to arrive. A glance at his drawing-room when he entered it was enough to make certain that his principal guest was not there, at any rate. He saw all the other pillars of the little party; ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... my Holy Order, I know no longer what to say!— My pulse beats temperately—my hand is cool—I am fasting from everything but sin, and possessed of my ordinary faculties—Either some fiend is permitted to bewilder me, or the tales of Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, and others who treat of occult philosophy, are not without foundation.—At the crook of the glen? I could have desired to avoid a second meeting, but I am on the service of the Church, and the gates of hell shall not ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... with age. It looked a small house from the street, five windows in front, if I remember right, but it deepened into a single long chamber at the back. It was here that Dacre had that singular library of occult literature, and the fantastic curiosities which served as a hobby for himself, and an amusement for his friends. A wealthy man of refined and eccentric tastes, he had spent much of his life and fortune in gathering together what was said to be a unique private collection of Talmudic, ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... time—all in good time," said Marvin, with that faith in some occult power, seemingly the Government and Providence working in conjunction, to which parsons and many women confide their worldly affairs and sit with ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... something in it of the sea; and the murmur of the tide against the pier, the hoarse voices of the sailor men, the scent of the salt water, and all the occult unrecognized, but keenly felt life of the ocean, were ministers to their love, and forever and ever blended in the heart and memory of the youth and maid who had set their early dream of each other to its potent witchery. Time went swiftly, and suddenly Cornelia ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... shape words, but the silent one before him gave unuttered command for silence. The conflict was on. Not a conflict of gleaming blades; not a conflict of cunning, neither of Senatorial oratory, nor contention of the wise gone mad. In the arena of the occult was the conflict on between such forces as move constellations and give birth to worlds. And the one force was white and the one was black. The one was the will of God leading by way of man's reason to Liberty and Life. The other was perversion leading by way of servile ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... What was the occult power within this man—whom no one liked, yet who seemed mysteriously to fascinate all who came inside the charmed circle of his personal influence? Instead of answering defiantly, as she had done to Isabel, Custance contented herself with ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... As for the title, it should be remembered that there was just then a tendency to look for curious analogies between physical law and the operations of the human mind. Great interest was felt in suggestion, occult influence, and all that sort of thing. Goethe himself had lately been lecturing on magnetism. He had also observed, as no one can fail to observe, that the sexual attraction sometimes seems to act ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Ambassador at St. Petersburg, and he spoke to one in Persian, and the other in Russian, but neither of them could understand him. I have never, however, been able to make up my mind whether the point of the story told against him or against them. [420] Although Burton was a student of occult science, I could never lead him to talk about crystals or kindred subjects; and this gave me the idea that he was perhaps pledged to secrecy. Still, he related his experiences freely in print." Oddly, enough, Burton used to call Mr. Kirby "Mr. Rigby," and he never could ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... two countries, we find at the outset a striking difference. The Chinese did not conceive any creator, ineffable, formless, living in space; whereas the Japanese imagined a great central Kami and two producing powers, invisible and working by occult processes. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... thought. I must have recovered in spite of it. But the old woman spoke with pride of her skill, and if she had not saved me by her occult powers, she had at least helped to drag me from the creek. For that I was grateful, so I smiled to ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... himself up in Chicago as a Persian Magus, teaching Yogi breathing exercises and occult sex-lore to the elegant society ladies of the pork-packing metropolis. The Sun God, worshipped for two score centuries in India, Egypt, Greece and Rome, has a new shrine on Lake Park Avenue, and the prophet gives tea-parties at which his disciples are fed on lilac-blossoms—"the ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... tanned and bloodless, White and wild his eyeballs glisten; And his smile, occult and tragic, Yet so ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... you generally live here?" asked Claudius, who was as yet in complete ignorance of the Countess's name, title, nationality, and mode of life, for Mr. Barker had, for some occult reason, ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... with it, the explanation of his mesmeric entrancement on the occasion to which I have alluded. I repeat the story because it is literally true, and because some of its incidents may be classed among those psychological phenomena which form the most occult, the most interesting, and the least understood of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... sort, of course, are familiar wherever a successful occult creed makes its way against ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... that our hope lies. If this were all that we could look for, our condition would be as miserable as the condition of those unhappy ones who seek intermittent and fantastic relief in attempted intercourse with the psychic and the occult. ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... to the mind of the average medical practitioner, is (or has been) something mysterious or occult. He uses much psychotherapy himself but it is nearly always applied unconsciously and indirectly through some form of physical or chemical therapy that he believes will cure. He is usually quite devoid of insight ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... permanent, though its interactions with matter are discontinuous and temporary; and I conjecture that it is subject to a law of evolution—that a linear advance is open to it—whether it be in its phenomenal or in its occult state. ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... unconsciously eat the lotus in some occult fashion, are straightway bewitched and held willing captives. I have looked up the lotus, about which so much is said or sung and so little definitely known, and find it is a prickly shrub of Africa, bearing a fruit of a sweet taste, and the ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... to vive occult to mortal eyes, Dorm on the herb with none to supervise, Carp the suave berries from the crescent vine, And bibe the flow ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... number of causes. It may be due to a lack of poetic appreciation on the part of the teacher, leading to poor judgment in selecting and presenting poetry. It may be due to the feeling that there is something occult and mysterious about poetry that puts it outside the range of common interests, or to the idea that the technique of verse must in some way be emphasized. The first step in using poetry successfully with children is to brush away all these and other extraneous matters and to realize that poetry ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... detective agency, situated just off Broadway and Eighth Street, had a large office divided into several small offices. For some occult reason only one person could get in or out at a time, and this made confidential conversation a necessity rather than a matter of choice. The senior member of the firm was in when Von Barwig called. Be it understood ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... often in the eyes of those Italian faces you like. It is most obvious in the eye. As we look on such eyes, we think on the tiger, the serpent, beings who lurk, glide, fascinate, mysteriously control. For it is occult by its nature, and if it could meet you on the highway, and be familiarly known as an acquaintance, could not exist. The angels of light do not love, yet they do ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the pastor. A few monks whom Patience had unmasked hated Patience. Hence, both pastor and pupil were persecuted. The ignorant monks did not scruple to accuse the cure to his bishop of devoting himself to the occult sciences in concert with the magician Patience. A sort of religious war broke out in the village and neighbourhood. All who were not for the convent were for the cure, and vice versa. Patience scorned to take part in this struggle. One morning ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... confuse Arbois of Carthage with Procles de Jubainville. Later, I shall have to see about filling up those gaps. But just now, I should like to know where we are, if we are free, and if not, what occult power holds us. You have the appearance, sir, of being sufficiently at home in this house to be able to enlighten us upon this point, which I must confess, I weakly consider of ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... of existence first published in "The Rosicrucian Cosmo Conception" in November, 1909, more than a year before the expiration of the first decade of the twentieth century. This book marked a new era in so-called "occult" literature, and the many editions which have since been published, as well as the thousands of letters which continue to come to the author, are speaking testimonies to the fact that people are finding in this teaching a satisfaction they have long sought ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... "greatest number" is only its last form)—for that purpose a new type of philosopher and commander will some time or other be needed, at the very idea of which everything that has existed in the way of occult, terrible, and benevolent beings might look pale and dwarfed. The image of such leaders hovers before OUR eyes:—is it lawful for me to say it aloud, ye free spirits? The conditions which one would partly have to create and partly utilize for their genesis; the presumptive ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... to, when Leila's whistle called them,—a wild troop, never allowed beyond the porch or in the house. For some occult reason Mrs. Ann disliked dogs and liked cats, which roamed the house at will and were at deadly feud with the stable canines. No rough weather ever disturbed Leila's out-of-door habits, but when for two days a lazy rain fell and froze on the snow, John declared that ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... always be money. A foot is always twelve inches, but when is a dollar a dollar? If ton weights changed in the coal yard, and peck measures changed in the grocery, and yard sticks were to-day 42 inches and to-morrow 33 inches (by some occult process called "exchange") the people would mighty soon remedy that. When a dollar is not always a dollar, when the 100-cent dollar becomes the 65-cent dollar, and then the 50-cent dollar, and then the 47-cent dollar, as the good old American gold and silver dollars did, what is ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... poetry, and the occult, and Tagore and the Russian novelists, and the Russian music," Harriet said, "he lectures about them and he has been extremely successful! He wears pongee coats and red ties, and has his hair long, and—well, you never saw women act so about ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... hunger. For this Maghrabi was an African of Afrikiyah proper, born in the Inner Sunset-land, and from his earliest age upwards he had been addicted to witchcraft and had studied and practiced every manner of occult science, for which unholy lore the city of Africa[FN97] is notorious. And he ceased not to read and hear lectures until he had become a past-master in all such knowledge. And of the abounding skill in spells and conjurations which he had acquired ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... is terribly and comprehensively sudden: the rudimentary processes of reasoning, by analogy and syllogism, so slow and so laborious, turn to divination. We have an occult vision, immediate and complete, into the obscure manner of life, and crowd an infinity of discovery into a very few seconds. It was so with Philip Rainham now. Lightmark had scarcely closed the door, against which he now stood in a black silence, with the air of a man turned ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... carry charms about their persons to preserve them from accidents; one of which was shown to us, printed (at Batavia or Samarang in Java) in Dutch, Portuguese, and French. It purported that the writer was acquainted with the occult sciences, and that whoever possessed one of the papers impressed with his mark (which was the figure of a hand with the thumb and fingers extended) was invulnerable and free from all kinds of harm. It desired the people to be very cautious of taking any such printed ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... long measure. The hero wanders about France, and has all sorts of adventures, the recounting of which is not without touches of Rabelais, of the Moyen de Parvenir, perhaps of the rising fancies about the occult, which generated Rosicrucianism and "astral spirits" and the rest of it—a whole farrago, in short, of matters decent and indecent, congruous seldom and incongruous often. It is not like Sterne, because it is dull, and at the same time quasi-romantic; while "sensibility" had not ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... profession that I ever had the privilege to meet. He might have made a large fortune in England, but he got into some trouble and had to leave the country. It was much the same in India. Bentwood had a positive genius for the occult and underground. After a time very few white people cared to associate with him and he became the companion of the dervishes and the mullahs and all that class, whose secrets he learned. I believe he is the only European who ever went through the process of being buried alive. That secret was never ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... we particularly discussed. Van Maarden was the greatest scholar in the Mystic, the Occult, the Spiritualistic that I have ever met. He claimed to be able to go out of the body at will and see what any friend was up to at any time, in any out-of-the-way place in ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... In present circumstances these occult narratives were full of serious meaning for me, and my thoughts were far more with the two seniors above than with the two exacting female juniors below. However, the time passed, and presently Tempest's "Come along, youngster," apprised me that the hour of release ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... demanding explanation I was incompetent to give. I studied the obscurer sides of consciousness, dreams, hallucinations, illusions, insanity. Into the darkness shot a ray of light—A.P. Sinnett's "Occult World," with its wonderfully suggestive letters, expounding not the supernatural but a nature under law, wider than I had dared to conceive. I added Spiritualism to my studies, experimenting privately, finding the phenomena indubitable, but the spiritualistic explanation of them incredible. The ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... door—which could be reached by five shallow steps—grew two small yew trees, smartly clipped and trimmed into cones of dull green. These yews possessed some magical significance, which Professor Braddock would occasionally explain to chance visitors interested in occult matters; for, amongst other things Egyptian, the archaeologist searched into the magic of the Sons of Khem, and insisted that there was more truth than superstition in ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... arranged by him—and "spoken their pieces," he arose, and, fixing his eyes on her, began Othello's defense before the Duke and Council. Here, as on the previous occasion, she felt herself personally alluded to in his account of his wooing. Desdemona, for some occult reason, vicariously appeared for her in the unwarrantable picture of his passion, and to this was added the absurd consciousness which she could not put aside that the audience, following with enthusiasm ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... can consecrate some follies, they are of very ancient date. They were classed, among the Hebrews, among the cabalistic sciences; they pretended to discover occult qualities in proper names; it was an oriental practice; and was caught by the Greeks. Plato had strange notions of the influence of Anagrams when drawn out of persons' names; and the later Platonists are full of the mysteries of the anagrammatic virtues of names. The chimerical ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... lay stretched out, a tall, slender figure with a clear-cut patrician face, very pale and still but with every sign of suffering stoically repressed. He was conscious as I stood for a moment at his side. It was not a time to speak even a word, but I hoped he might feel through some occult influence that a Harvard brother was there at hand, full of sympathy for him. He afterwards recovered in part, and, with unconquerable will, though he was only a fragment of a man, went in again and was still again stricken. He survived it ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... us is made up from papers published in "The Athenaeum," with additions by the author. Soon after opening it we come to names with which we are familiar, the first of these, that of Cornelius Agrippa, being connected with the occult and mystic doctrines dealt with by many of De Morgan's correspondents. But the name most likely to arrest us is that of Giordano Bruno, the same philosopher, heretic, and martyr whose statue has recently been erected in Rome, to the great horror of the Pope ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... many highly meritorious leaders through the mysteries of occult literature—as, for instance, those who, like Placcius, Mylius, Barbiere, and Melzi, have devoted themselves to the discovery and publication of the authorship of anonymous works. Their function is, on the whole, a rather cruel one, and suggests that those ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... of it now. It is that wilderness into which I stumbled. It overlooks the terrain in Alsace where for fifty years the Hun has been busy day and night with his sinister, occult operations. Its entrance, if there be any save by the way of avalanches—the way I entered—must be guarded by the Huns; its only exit into Hunland. That is Les Errues. That is the region which masks the Great Secret ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... respective and characteristic manners, the Oneidas eating like gentlemen and talking together in their low and musical voices; the Wyandotte gobbling and stuffing his cheeks like a chipmunk. The Stockbridge Mole, noiseless and mum as the occult and furry animal which gave to him his name, nibbled sparingly all alone by himself, and read in his ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... luggers and sloops, which were hired out upon excellent terms; he could make large and profitable contracts with New Orleans fish-dealers; and he was vaguely suspected of possessing more occult resources. There were some confused stories current about his having once been a daring smuggler, and having only been reformed by the pleadings of his wife Carmen,—a little brown woman who had followed him from Barcelona to share his ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... men, each pushing to the front; nor is there safety in remaining in retirement, since such are accused of biding their time and of occult designs. Though the population of these cities all counted together is not equal to the population that once dwelt in a single second-rate city of the ancients, yet how much greater are ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... Griffith's blood; she was turned jealous; and moreover it had given him a fascinating power over her, and she could tell blindfold when he was in the room. Which last fact, indeed, she once proved by actual experiment. But all this I leave to such as study the occult sciences in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... against the Bucarest settlement of August 1913. Salonica still remained the secret Austrian objective, and Serbia the main obstacle to the realisation of this dream. Not for the first time, the interests of Vienna and Constantinople coincided, and the occult interests which link Budapest with Salonica played ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... and the composers they love, ye shall know the texture of men's souls. Old Jolyon could not bear a strong cigar or Wagner's music. He loved Beethoven and Mozart, Handel and Gluck, and Schumann, and, for some occult reason, the operas of Meyerbeer; but of late years he had been seduced by Chopin, just as in painting he had succumbed to Botticelli. In yielding to these tastes he had been conscious of divergence from the standard of the Golden ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... would like to hold the magic wand giving that command over laughter and tears which is declared to be the highest achievement of imaginative literature. Only, to be a great magician one must surrender oneself to occult and irresponsible powers, either outside or within one's breast. We have all heard of simple men selling their souls for love or power to some grotesque devil. The most ordinary intelligence can perceive ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... even aspired to closer relations with royalty, and built a magnificent country home, which was large enough to accommodate a visiting court. He even persuaded the king to visit the Mortlake factory, that the royal presence might enhance the value of art in the occult way known only to ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... This had not occurred to her before. But love is not to be turned from its object by trifles. She was all that we have more than once described her to be; but she was not a meta-physician or a philosopher, capable of comprehending and explaining occult mysteries. Enough for her if she loved Miles and Miles loved her, and then, even if he did not deserve her love, she would remain true—secretly but unalterably true—to him as the needle is ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... liberality on the part of the officials (all paid for), and both Raleigh and Percy had each a garden to cultivate and walk in, and a still-room or laboratory in which to study and perform their ' magic.' Hariot was the master of both in these occult sciences. The ' furnace ' and the ' still' were at first Raleigh's chief amusement and study. Assaying and transfusing metals, distilling simples and compounds, concocting medicines, and testing antidotes, with exercises in ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... not the telephone was to be used by the office boys to 'phone telegrams through to the post office. It was a custom just founded by Strangman and it saved a certain amount of time, but Chester—a thin, over-worked, intellectual-ridden gentleman, was driven nearly mad by occult ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... not content. It is certain that there are in man two occult powers engaged in a death-struggle: the one, clear-sighted and cold, is concerned with reality, calculation, weight, and judges the past; the other is athirst for the future and eager for the unknown. When passion sways man, reason ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... see them in various phases of their lives I say to myself, as St. Francis Xavier said of them more than three hundred years ago, "This nation is the delight of my soul." The critic, the hypercritic, is everywhere. He suspects everybody and everything. He can find occult motives and psychological reasons for everything. I confess I am a trifle tired of the critic, especially the psychological critic, in reference to Japan. I view the people there as they are to-day, ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... none to explore Your winding labyrinths occult, None to delve your ore Of strange virtue, or do Your magical business, you Were there, never old nor new, Veined in the world and alive:— Before the Planets, Seven; Before these ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... He was educated at Rugby, and served nearly ten years, beginning in 1900, as a government official in Africa and India. While in India, he wandered all over the sub-continent on horseback, and even into Tibet. Eastern occult lore first attracted, then fascinated, his active and unorthodox mind. Mundy absorbed all he could learn of the ...
— Materials Toward A Bibliography Of The Works Of Talbot Mundy • Bradford M. Day, Editor
... they also say that souls, not so much by determination of their own will as through a certain order, by which they become inclined towards matter, decline as rebels from divinity; wherefore, not by free intention, but by a certain occult consequence, they fall. And this is the inclination that they have to generation, as towards a minor good. Minor, I say, in so far as it appertains to that particular nature; not in so far as it appertains to the universal nature, where nothing ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno |
