"Occult" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have protected your honor solely by the exertion of a power entirely occult. Hereafter the wheels of your conjugal machinery must be set going in sight of every one. In this case, if you would prevent a crime you must strike a blow. You have begun by negotiating, you must end by mounting ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... was no longer talking at random, but slowly, with his eyes on the collar he held in his hand, like a scholar in his closet, perusing the occult pages of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... and through you, the same Infinite Power that creates and governs all things in the universe, the same Infinite Power that governs the endless systems of worlds in space. Send out your thought,—thought is a force, and it has occult power of unknown proportions when rightly used and wisely directed,—send out your thought that the right situation or the right work will come to you at the right time, in the right way, and that you will recognize it when it comes. Hold to this thought, never ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... had a "nutritive soul," or principle, which enabled it to assimilate food. If one asked why heavy bodies fall, or why flame and smoke ascend, the answer would be because everything tends to go to its natural place, implying, thereby, that there was some occult power or tendency in bodies to behave in certain definite ways. Those were the days of the time-honoured legends about Nature "abhorring a vacuum," tolerating no "breaks," and the wonders of her "curative force". These phrases about ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... at length the growing volume dominated the whole room and mastered the manifestation of all that opposed it. For just as he understood the spiritual alchemy that can transmute evil forces by raising them into higher channels, so he knew from long study the occult use of sound, and its direct effect upon the plastic region wherein the powers of spiritual evil work their fell purposes. Harmony was restored first of all to his own soul, and thence to the room ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... sorry I took your candy," piped Eddy, in a loud, declamatory voice which was not the tone of humble repentance. The boy, as he spoke, eyed the man with defiance. It was as if he blamed him, for some occult reason, for having his own property stolen. The child's face became, under the forced humiliation of the apology, revolutionary, anarchistic, rebellious. He might have been the representative, the walking delegate, of some small cult of rebels against the established order of regard for the property-rights ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of this work is not the enunciation of any special philosophy or doctrine, but rather is to give to the students a statement of the Truth that will serve to reconcile the many bits of occult knowledge that they may have acquired, but which are apparently opposed to each other and which often serve to discourage and disgust the beginner in the study. Our intent is not to erect a new Temple of Knowledge, but rather to place in the hands of the student a Master-Key with ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates
... that the movements directed by these men soon came to be infused with more serious and spiritual influences. The Lollardy of Wycliffe and his fellows in the fourteenth century had been severely repressed and driven into "occult conventicles," but had not been extinguished; the Bible in English, many times retouched after Wycliffe's days, and perfected by the refugees at Geneva from the Marian persecutions, had become a common household book; ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... animal or mineral kingdom, but a collection of the most salutary native and exotic herbs that are produced in the vegetable empire of nature. These have not been collected by the fanatic devotees of occult qualities, but by the scientific researches and personal experience of a character that is equally and justly admired for his philosophical, medical, and botanical knowledge. The discoverer, Dr. Solander, of this tea, inquired into the virtues of each native and exotic herb ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith
... 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
... so-called learned folks, we alone are brought into contact with tangible facts in the way that you are. You know well enough that it is one thing to write a history of chairs in general, or to address a poem to a throne, or to speculate about the occult powers of the chair of St. Peter; and quite another thing to make with your own hands a veritable chair, that will stand fair and square, and afford a safe and satisfactory resting-place to a frame of sensitiveness ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... metaphysic of morals, completely isolated, not mixed with any anthropology, theology, physics, or hyperphysics, and still less with occult qualities (which we might call hypophysical), is not only an indispensable substratum of all sound theoretical knowledge of duties, but is at the same time a desideratum of the highest importance to the actual fulfilment ...
— Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals • Immanuel Kant
... was first published at Antwerp in 4to. 1530; a book, upon the rarity of which bibliographers delight to expatiate. His "OCCULT PHILOSOPHY"—according to Bayle, in 1531 (at least, the Elector of Cologne had seen several printed leaves of it in this year), but according to Vogt and Bauer, in 1533.—There is no question about the edition of 1533; of which Vogt tells us, "An ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... occult to mortal eyes, Dorm on the herb with none to supervise, Carp the suave berries from the crescent vine, And bibe the flow ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... that well-known Lenten hymn that puts a succession of searching enquiries, of a personal character, to a typical Christian. A missionary lecture on West Africa had supplied some useful hints as to the treatment of witches, and Christian's name, and the occult powers with which she was credited, had indicated her as heroine ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... though he still is he has grown more and more preoccupied with art. There was a time when a love of the occult threatened his art, but from that the theatre has saved him, if it has taken him from the writing lyrics, in which his powers are at their highest. To old Irish legend, Mr. Yeats has, however, been ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... beginning of a period of growth, a gradual process, which is to be lifelong. Taking his conception of personal religion from the sermons he has heard and the appeals that have been made to him, he has a tendency to regard conversion as an experience complete and final, an occult mysterious transformation, effected in a moment and concluded. Disappointment is inevitable, and when non-Christian influences are Strong, there is a probability of his drifting into indifference. Dr. Clark was aware of this fact, as other pastors were, by sad experience, and ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... You must know, Madam, that about 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 his Power to grant me. I then begg'd ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... new biographical details (including the proper spelling of the name) were given in M. Edmond Bire's Honore de Balzac (1897). The Balzac ignore of A. Cabanes (1899) is chiefly remarkable for its investigations of Balzac's fancy for occult studies, and the first part (Balzac imprimeur) of MM. Hanotaux and Vicaire's La Jeunesse de Balzac (1903) mentioned above, for its dealing with the printing business and the intimacy with Madame de Berny. Two most important studies of Balzac ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... Customs. The Sacred Lock of Hair. Reincarnation and the Converse of Spirits. Occult and Psychic Powers. The Gift ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... obtain upon occult phenomena, Wallace found that there was such a mass of testimony by men of the highest character and ability in every department of human learning that he thought it would be useful to bring this together in a connected sketch of the whole subject. ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... prayers, as in the olden time, But deep his reverence for that mighty force. That occult working of the great all Source, Which makes the present era so sublime. Religion now means something high and broad, And man stood never half ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the peculiar 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 ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... 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 disembodied spirit—kill ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... followed until the girls' occult knowledge reached the limit. Then they danced in the Gym to music furnished by Mrs. Vincent, who ended the prancing by sending in a huge "fate cake," a big basket of nuts, a jug of sweet cider and some of ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... with care and prudence they might last ten days longer. "That is," said Mr. Oakhurst, sotto voce to the Innocent, "if you're willing to board us. If you ain't—and perhaps you'd better not—you can wait till Uncle Billy gets back with provisions." For some occult reason, Mr. Oakhurst could not bring himself to disclose Uncle Billy's rascality, and so offered the hypothesis that he had wandered from the camp and had accidentally stampeded the animals. He dropped a warning to the Duchess and Mother Shipton, who of ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... because the turnspit in 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 removal of ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... Russia was engaged in a great popular struggle to overcome incompetence, corruption, and sabotage in the bureaucracy. For this work the civilian agencies were not thanked by the government. Instead, they were oppressed and hindered. Against them was directed the hate of the dark forces of the "occult government" and at the same time the fierce opposition and scorn of men who called themselves Socialists and ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... 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 ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... 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 carried firearms ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... after repeating the curious experiments of Mr. Dutrochet day after day, and scrupulously following his directions, we have, in the presence of our results, that were exactly identical with his, almost been tempted to believe ourself to be the victim of some occult power, or at least of some optical illusion, the true cause of which remained a mystery to us. Finally, after many fruitless attempts to find a key to the enigma that engaged our attention, the light finally ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... that kingdom, was near thirty feet high. After much debate, they concluded unanimously, that I was only relplum scalcath, which is interpreted literally lusus naturae; a determination exactly agreeable to the modern philosophy of Europe, whose professors, disdaining the old evasion of occult causes, whereby the followers of Aristotle endeavoured in vain to disguise their ignorance, have invented this wonderful solution of all difficulties, to the unspeakable advancement of ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... gadding existence had come to an abrupt end. Nowadays she spent almost all her time at Crome, cultivating a rather ill-defined malady. For consolation she dallied with New Thought and the Occult. Her passion for racing still possessed her, and Henry, who was a kind-hearted fellow at bottom, allowed her forty pounds a month betting money. Most of Priscilla's days were spent in casting the horoscopes ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... although men in stature, set out to hunt a house; and were successful in finding one that suited their notions. Very soon it was furnished in Oriental style, and an inner room was fitted up with various occult instruments, calculated to inspire the minds of the vulgar with a wholesome dread. It was agreed that Barrington should make very little change in his wardrobe, and merely dye his hair and whiskers, and add a richer brown to his complexion, to give ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... The occult properties of this stone are described by Solinus, c. xl, and by Boccaccio, in his humorous tale of Calandrino. Decam. G. viii. ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... arms have upheld the State; they have successfully resisted the open assaults of the invader, and frustrated the occult machinations of the traitors in our midst. We have great generals, but what were they without great men to obey them? Generals have fallen, and divisions and brigades have fought on without them. Regiments have lost their field officers and continued the fight, and ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... Wise (1221-1284), united the crowns of Leon and Castile, and attracted to his court many of the philosophers and learned men of the East. He was a poet closely connected with the Provencal troubadours of his time, and so skilled in astronomy and the occult sciences that his fame spread throughout Europe. He had more political, philosophical, and elegant learning than any man of his age, and made further advances in some of the exact sciences. At one period ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... the bird, the brute, Of every kind occult or known (Each exquisitely form'd to suit Its humble lot, and that alone), Through ocean, earth, and air fulfil Unconsciously ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... a means of moral culture, I do not wish to make an overstatement, nor to claim for such study any occult or exclusive power. It is not for us to say, so much nature in the schools, so much virtue in the scholars. The character of the teacher is a factor which must always be counted in. But the best teacher is the one that comes nearest to nature, the one who is most effective in developing ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... it on the papacy, in readiness for the coming decisive task which their genius foresaw in the approaching social upheavals. And thus there might perhaps be some truth in what Don Vigilio, with a shiver of mystery, related about their occult sovereignty, a seizin, as it were, of the government of the Church, a ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... as it were, turned on all the power in a supreme effort to reach them. What if he had failed again? Such was the misgiving that beset him, after the service, as he got out of his surplice, communicated by some occult telepathy . . . . Mr. Parr was awaiting him, and summoning his courage, hope battling against intuition, he opened the door into the now empty church and made his way toward the porch, where the sound of voices warned him that several ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... thousands every year. The visitors to the great shrine at Kizuki of Izumo number about 250,000 annually. "The more prosperous the season, the larger the number of pilgrims. It rarely falls below two hundred thousand." In his "Occult Japan," Mr. Lowell has given us an interesting account of the "pilgrim clubs," The largest known to him numbered about twelve thousand men, but he thinks they average from one hundred to about five hundred persons each. The number of yearly visitors ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... met up frequent with that form of horned toad? Thar's nothin' you can lodge ag'inst 'em, nothin' at which a vig'lance committee can rope an' fasten; they're honest, well meanin', even gen'rous; an' yet thar they be, upholstered by nacher in some occult way with about the same chance of bein' pop'lar as a wet dog. Speakin' for myse'f, I feels sorry for these yere onforchoonate mavericks, condemned as they be at birth to go pirootin' from the cradle to the grave, meetin' everywhar about the ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... recently, on "Paracelsus," "White and Black Magic," and "Among the Rosicrucians," which I have had no time to examine. A valuable essay from Dr. Hartmann is on file for publication in the JOURNAL, in which he compares the doctrines of the occult philosophy with those presented in the JOURNAL ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... taken in the 'laicisation' of the schools has been already revealed in the famous 'Article 7' of M. Ferry. M. Ferry is the true, though more or less occult, head of the present Administration in France. 'M. Ferry,' said a caustic French Radical to me in Paris, 'ought to be the mask of M. Carnot. Nature gave him a Carnival nose for that purpose. Everything is topsy-turvy now in France, and so M. Carnot is the mask of M. ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... states in which we have always known it, the solid, the liquid, and the gaseous, we must add a fourth, the ethereal—the state of matter which Sir Oliver Lodge thinks borders on, or is identical with, what we call the spiritual, and which affords the key to all the occult ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... is the name of the hero of the book—poor Pip, I think he is to be pitied. Certainly he lays himself open to the charge of snobbishness, and is unduly ashamed of his connections. But then circumstances were decidedly against him. Through some occult means he is removed from his natural sphere, from the care of his "rampageous" sister and of her husband, the good, kind, honest Joe, and taken up to London, and brought up as a gentleman, and started in chambers in Barnard's Inn. All this is done through the instrumentality ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... the ordinary conditions of suburban improvement often account for the decay of such trees without occult causes? Sewers carry away the water that used to moisten the roots, and being at some depth, they not only take the surface water of a storm before it has had time to penetrate, but drain the lower stratum completely. Then, gas-pipes frequently leak, so much ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... with some religious community, first that she might have scope for her calling—that of a midwife, which in London would probably be straightened towards that of mere monthly nurse—and next that thereby she might have good chances for the finding of certain weeds of occult power that spring mostly in walled gardens, and are rare on the roadside—poisonous things mostly, ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... strange thing, but the man seems to have some odd kind of gift. Whether it be that "second sight" which we Scotch people are so prone to believe in, or some other occult form of knowledge, I know not, but nothing of a disastrous tendency ever occurs in this place but the men with whom he lives are able to quote after the event some saying of his which certainly appears to have foretold ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... gone. Thereupon they met together and began to enquire as to who might have done it. Then Yuvanaswa truthfully admitted that it was his act. Then the revered son of Bhrigu spoke unto him, saying. "It was not proper. This water had an occult virtue infused into it, and had been placed there with the object that a son might be born to thee. Having performed severe austerities, I infused the virtue of my religious acts in this water, that a son might be born to thee. O saintly king of mighty valour and ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... mighty. Who knew—who was sure—that there was any name given to them behind which there was no angry force to be appeased, no intercessory pity to be won? Were not gems medicinal, though they only pressed the finger? Were not all things charged with occult virtues? Lucretius might be right—he was an ancient, and a great poet; Luigi Pulci, too, who was suspected of not believing anything from the roof upward (dal tetto in su), had very much the air of being right ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... to any one of a 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 ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... moment when they were supposed to whisper. There were reputed, however, to be other and easier means of gleaning knowledge from them. Ingred, who had been priming herself with local lore, confided details of the occult ceremonial to Quenrede. ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... and is seen to be subject to laws outside of itself, and to be varying, inconstant, and changeable, which attributes cannot be conceived of as belonging to the Absolute. Mind as we know it, as well as Matter and Energy, is held by the highest occult teachers to be but an appearance and a relativity of something far more fundamental and enduring, and we are compelled to fall back upon that old term which wise men have used in order to describe that ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... fairest pretences of justice and the public good; and while Constantine designed to ruin the foundations, he seemed to reform the abuses, of the ancient religion. After the example of the wisest of his predecessors, he condemned, under the most rigorous penalties, the occult and impious arts of divination; which excited the vain hopes, and sometimes the criminal attempts, of those who were discontented with their present condition. An ignominious silence was imposed on the oracles, which had been publicly ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... 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 ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... Priests and women are often classed together, but not because the priests are regarded as effeminately "helpless"; rather because both are recognized as ministers of sacred mysteries, both belong to the spiritual sphere, and have commerce with the occult holiness of things. Also be it remarked that this "protection" is chiefly needed against the brutality and bestiality of man's own heart, which woman and religion alike rather hold in subjection by their mysterious influence than have to ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... astrology and divination, and their sister black arts, had, with much address, endeavoured to recommend himself to his sovereign, by a character pre-established in his own castle, for a successful cultivation of the occult sciences. He had long withdrawn himself from the eyes of the world, and even of his own tenants, and shut himself up in his castle, with a due assortment of death's heads, charts, owls, globes, bones, astrolobes, and vellum chronicles, with a view to the perfection of his hidden knowledge; ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... you ever use the word soul in the silly way they do! You have a soul, of course,—an immortal soul. But they don't mean that. By soul, they mean a puffball of hifalutin ideas, of nonsense about the occult and psychic, and all that balderdash. Oh, Patty, my little girl, don't let those idiot people carry away your common sense and your plain everyday sanity! ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... shrewd, resourceful, who bargained like a Vermonter and sailed a schooner like a Gloucester cod-fisher; and in their company, as ever inseparable from the other two, came the little colonial, nicknamed, for occult reasons, "Ally Bazan," a small, wiry man, excitable, vociferous, who was without fear, without guile and ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... 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
... thinking now of the so-called "realm of the occult," nor of those extraordinary occurrences which startle and perplex the world from time to time, nor of those complicated and subtle problems of crime which are set to puzzle us. I am thinking of much more human and familiar ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... very well acted; and I hope the occult little smile that played about the Duchessa's lips was a smile ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... precisely those which are of value to every individual citizen, and which are taught day by day everywhere—to the lads in school and college and to the men in their occupations of life. Such qualities a community fit to govern itself must abundantly possess. There is nothing occult in the science of government. The administration in behalf of the people of the organization which they have ordered is nothing foreign to their own knowledge. They have ceased to consider themselves unfit for self-rule: they no longer think of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... viro Domino Johanne Amoso Comenio" ("The Gate of Wisdom Opened; or the Seminary of all Christian Knowledge: being a New, Compendious, and Solid Method of Learning, more briefly, more truly, and better than hitherto, all Sciences and Arts, and whatever there is, manifest or occult, that it is given to the genius of man to penetrate, his craft to imitate, or his tongue to speak: The author that Reverend and most distinguished man, Mr. John Amos Comenius"). So far as I have been able to trace, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... makes no difference: it always comes out the way it was before. It was a marvellous mind that produced it. As a mental tour de force it is without a mate, it defies alike the simple, the concrete, and the occult.' ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... facts, and with a pseudo-philosophic theory about spiritual communion with human beings. My wife, who is an enthusiastic student of electro-biology, is disposed to believe that Weatherley's mind, overweighted by the knowledge of his forgery, was in some occult manner, and unconsciously to himself, constrained to act upon my own senses. I prefer, however, simply to narrate the facts. I may or may not have my own theory about those facts. The reader is at perfect liberty to form ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... touch with another order of existence than that with which people are normally in contact. And apart from these specially favoured persons, the wide vogue of the belief in good and evil portents, in lucky and unlucky days, the attraction of the "occult" in fiction and in fact, all serve as evidence that belief in the supernatural is still a force with which one has ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... continuous and 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
... hell, which 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
... positive, nothing is certain, no truth is so satisfactorily demonstrated that some wiseacre cannot be found to disprove it, . . hence it happens my friend..." and his face assumed its wonted careless expression ... "that we men whose common-sense is offended by priestly hypocrisy and occult necromantic jugglery,—we, who perhaps in our innermost heart of hearts ardently desire to believe in a supreme Divinity and the grandly progressive Sublime Intention of the Universe, but who, discovering naught but ignoble Cant and Imposture everywhere, are incontinently ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... ritual, regalia, goat, Blankets for tossing, chairs of little ease And all the modern inconveniences; These, saner, frown upon unmeaning rites And go to church for rational delights. So all are suited, shallow and profound, The prophets prosper and the world goes round. For me—unread in the occult, I'm fain To damn all mysteries alike as vain, Spurn the obscure and base my faith upon The Revelations of the ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... mournful amusement. For she scarcely questioned the probability that her friend would in due course become disillusioned of a very ordinary individual—he certainly sounded a little like an adventurer—who for some occult reason had been idealised by this great-souled, wayward and utterly foolish creature. How many shattered idols had not Lady Bridget picked up from beneath their over-turned pedestals and consigned to Memory's dust-bin! On how many pyres had not that ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... rule of Nicholas, there were, many years after the St. Petersburg insurrection of 1825, still some faint traces of Secret Societies, in which the spirit of Pestel and Murawieff was continued. One of these occult Leagues was that of Petrascheski, detected in 1849, whose members were sentenced to forced labour and to banishment to Siberia. A nearer approach to the plebeian element than was observable in the Conspiracies ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... prefer." We were about to rise, wash, and depart, but an impediment is offered by the artist. "Non l'ho raffinato ancora, Signor, bisogna raffinarlo un poco!" and before we could arrive at the occult meaning of raffinare, his fingers were exploring very technically and very disagreeably the whole surface over which his razor had travelled, and a number of supplementary scrapings were only stopped by an impatient basta of the victim. Still he was unwilling ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... 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 ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... which they dared not venture. The baas himself was there. He had driven her into the cooking-hut a little earlier and compelled her to prepare a hot meal under his stern supervision. But even the baas could not have forced her to enter the bungalow. For by some occult means Mary Ann knew that Death was waiting there, and the wrath of the gods was so recent that she had not courage ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... influence residing in the sun; and even those philosophers who had been accustomed to the rigor of true scientific research, and who possessed sufficient mathematical skill for the examination of the Newtonian doctrines, viewed them at first as reviving the occult qualities of the ancient physics, and resisted their introduction with a pertinacity which it ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... greatest engineering feat ever accomplished. The problem of making the quantity of water needed run up into the smallest pass "through a narrow, artificially contracted channel, located immediately between two great natural outlets,"—this problem being complicated by many "occult conditions,"—has been called, by no mean engineer, perhaps the most difficult problem ever dealt with successfully. "There is no instance, indeed, in the world where such a vast volume of water is placed under such absolute and ...
— James B. Eads • Louis How
... prevails in many oriental lands. It is worthy of note that we have no record of these men from the east offering gifts to Herod in his palace; they did, however, impart of their treasure to the lowly Infant, in whom they recognized the King they had come to seek. The tendency to ascribe occult significance to even trifling details mentioned in scripture, and particularly as regards the life of Christ, has led to many fanciful suggestions concerning the gold and frankincense and myrrh specified in this incident. Some have supposed ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... they continued to look at each other without speaking, after the manner of old friends possessed of occult means of communication; and as the result of this inward colloquy Mr. Langhope at length said: "Well, what do you ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... through his thick curls. But he was still mute; he was still ruefully chewing the cud of the epithet green. What occult horrid meaning did the word convey to ears polite? Why should he ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... having pointed him out as a personage of consideration, he is treated with high distinction by Charicles, who confides to him the history of Chariclea, as far as he is himself acquainted with it, and entreats him to dispose her, by those occult sciences in which the Egyptian priests were supposed to be versed, to listen to the suit of his nephew Alcamenes, whom he had destined for her husband. Calasiris promises compliance; but the scene is now changed by the arrival of a magnificent deputation from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... British Constitution occurred to somebody, perhaps to Halifax. This artless statement might not be approved by rigid lawyers as a faithful and felicitous indication of the manner of that mysterious growth of ages, from occult beginnings, that was never profaned by the invading wit of man 97; but it is less grotesque than it appears. Lord Halifax was the most original writer of political tracts in the pamphleteering crowd between Harrington and Bolingbroke; and in the Exclusion struggle he produced ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... and left me also standing and looking upward at a faint wreath of cloud, tinged in rosiness, which floated almost in the zenith. I was then about eleven years old, precocious for my years and gifted with a sympathy for occult and difficult subjects that became only intensified through the peculiar concentrated companionship I had from day to day, and month to ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... diplomacy, in social life, is expressed by the phrase, "Live openly!" From every quarter, in regard to every manner of human activity, has come the cry, "Let in the light!" By a physical correspondence not the result of coincidence, but of the operation of an occult law, we have, in a very real sense, let in the light. In buildings of the latest type devoted to large uses, there has been a general abandonment of that "cellular system" of many partitions which produced the pepper-box exterior, in favour of great rooms serving diverse functions lit by vast ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... and Joseph Smith were men of phenomenal capacity, who actually invented a religion and created a community by the apparent establishment of supernatural and occult powers. The phrenologists, the venders of patent medicine, the Christian Scientists, the single-taxers, and all who proclaim panaceas and nostrums make the same majestic and pontifical appeal to human nature. It is this mystical power, this religious element, which floats them, sells ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... when she read this. Josie was a girl of her own age, but she was the daughter of one of the most celebrated secret service men in the employ of the United States government, and John O'Gorman had trained Josie from babyhood in all the occult details of his artful profession. It was his ambition that some day this daughter would become a famous female detective, but he refused to allow her to assume professional duties until she had become thoroughly qualified to excel. He did not ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... amazement of all on board, the compass was seen to "vary": an important scientific discovery—viz., that the magnetic needle does not always point to the pole-star. Some writers have imagined that the compass was for the first time utilized for a long journey by Columbus, but the occult power of the magnetic needle or "lodestone" had been known for ages before the fifteenth century. The ancient Persians and other "wise men of the East" used the lodestone as a talisman. Both the Mongolian and Caucasian races used ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... without pedantry. The four which I have examined are each a curious subject for study, and indicate, collectively and compared, a train of thought which I believe that few have suspected in Scott, notwithstanding his well-known great love for the curious and occult in literature. That he perfectly understood that absurd and vain character, the so-called 'infidel,' whose philosophy is limited to abusing Christianity, and whose real object is to be odd and peculiar, and astonish humble individuals with his wickedness, is most ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... scaring Mrs. 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
... shown the one occupied by King Edward I on his march against Scotland in the year 1296, when the Scottish regalia was captured, and the celebrated Crowning-Stone was brought to England and placed in Westminster Abbey, where it has ever since remained—a stone having an occult relation to the history of the British and American peoples of the highest interest to both, but as there is already an extensive literature on this subject I will not ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... 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 ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... invitation; the others fell to in their 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 Algonquin Testament ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... losing streak a little longer, our hopes for the pennant were gone. I had begun to despair of the Rube. For some occult reason he scarcely spoke to me. Nan flirted worse than ever. It seemed to me she flaunted her conquest of Henderson in poor ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... hair done up into what her mother called a "shin-on"—a fashion much affected when she was a young woman—and wearing a silk dress with flounces innumerable of the terra-cotta hue beloved, for some occult reason, of her kind, entered the room with an air of stately magnificence. The young visitor was very respectful to Juliana, and spoke in particularly genteel tones when addressing her. But his eyes wandered perpetually towards the door, and an acute observer ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... things are completed in it, its age is accomplished; and the last and general fever may as naturally destroy it before six thousand, as me before forty. There is therefore some other hand that twines the thread of life than that of nature: we are not only ignorant in antipathies and occult qualities; our ends are as obscure as our begin- nings; the line of our days is drawn by night, and the various effects therein by a pencil that is invisible; wherein, though we confess our ignorance, I am sure we do not err if we say, it is ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... manoeuvers and to the solution of tactical problems. Her defeats and humiliations have come when she has neglected this work. And there's nothing mysterious about the way Prussia or Napoleon or anybody else has solved their military problems. No occult forces are involved, any more than there is in building a canal or hunting tigers. The real general is, in a sense, a postgraduate hunter, or an ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... a moment; then with an imperative gesture he dismissed the astrologer, who entered the tower and climbed the winding stairs to the room where he pursued his occult studies. The king walked restlessly up and down, indifferent to the roses, ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... seldom safe. Who, for instance, could have deduced, from certain subtly interlaced conditions of food, atmosphere, association, and what not, the development of those silky honours which grace the upper lip of the Australienne? No doubt there are certain occult laws which govern these things; but we have n't even mastered the laws themselves, and how are we going to forecast their operation? Here was an example: Vivian was a type Englishman, of his particular sub-species; his wife was ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... become impossible 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
... of this man, the promoter of the Manchurian Syndicate, and, if report spoke truly, the possessor of an influence over the young Czar which could be attributed only to some occult art. ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... him writing to Sandy, communicating "some receipts," and asking for pills that had been ordered. Thus we have arrived at the early influences which drew the young Catholic squire towards the art of healing and the occult sciences. The latter he dabbled in all his life. In the former his ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... companion led her for ever into herself; she was continually summoned to pour forth the treasures of her mind and soul; and, toiling in the same sort of egoisme in which her life heretofore had been consumed, she was necessarily diverted from all doubts or apprehensions of the occult purposes of him who had thus beguiled her over the long frequented paths. As the great secret of success with the mere worldling, is to pry into the secret of his neighbor while carefully concealing his ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... made greater advances in the tone developing technic of their instrument than the violin teachers. One reason is, that as a class they are more intellectual. And then, too, violin teaching is regarded too often as a mystic art, an occult science, and one into which only those specially gifted may hope to be initiated. This, it seems to me, is a fallacy. Just as a gift for mathematics is a special talent not given to all, so a natural technical talent ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... scientific truth has always had its hidden 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 Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... lodging whither Boots, one night, seeing him on the street by chance, had shamelessly tracked him—with no excuse for the intrusion save his affection for this man and his secret doubts of the man's ability to take care of himself and his occult affairs. ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... have come, it is contended, all in good time, and this present year, 1880, would have found us pretty much where we are. To argue after this fashion is simply to beg the whole question at issue. It is true that there is no occult power in a mere name. Ship-money, doubtless, was a doomed impost, even if there had been no particular individual called John Hampden. The practical despotism of the Stuart dynasty would doubtless have come to an end long before the present day, even if Oliver Cromwell ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... Miss Keller, is a delicate one. This much is certain, she cannot have any sense that other people may not have, and the existence of a special sense is not evident to her or to any one who knows her. Miss Keller is distinctly not a singular proof of occult and mysterious theories, and any attempt to explain her in that way fails to reckon with her normality. She is no more mysterious and complex than any other person. All that she is, all that she has done, can be explained directly, except such things in every human ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... and queries of Sir Lukin put him to the test of his right to the remark; for it sounded of occult acquaintance with interesting subterranean facts; and there was a communication, in brief syllables and the dot language, crudely masculine. Immensely surprised, Sir Lukin exclaimed: 'Of course! when fellows ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... circle, as well as by the designs round it, increased to a steady glow, casting their radiance upwards with the weirdest possible effect upon his features. Slowly, by the power of his voice, behind which lay undoubtedly a genuine knowledge of the occult manipulation of sound, this man dominated the forces that had escaped from their proper sphere, until at length the room was reduced to ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... said Levi, the more irritably because he could not think of any solution to the mystery. "You don't believe in occult powers and all that sort of thing. This is the neighborhood of the Commercial Road; time, nineteenth century. The thing's got on your nerves. Keep your eyes open, and stay indoors; they can't hurt you here. ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... of Nettesheim (1487-1535) by his writings increased the prevailing fascination for occult knowledge and pushed this particular line of speculation into an acute stage. He was a man of large learning and of heroic temper, and, possessed as he was of undoubted gifts, in a different period and in a different environment he would, no doubt, have played a notable ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones |
