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More "Occult" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pretended religious purpose. The next, as coming on our list, though not so in time, was addressed again to the Senate concerning official reports made by the public soothsayers as interpreters of occult signs, as to whether certain portents had been sent by the gods to show that Cicero ought not to have back his house. Before this was made he had defended Sextius, who as Tribune had been peculiarly serviceable in assisting his return. This was before a bench of judges; ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... 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, ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... 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 ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... 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 his consideration was so great, that he was elected ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... 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 me, and I to them. The waving of the boughs in the storm is new to me and old. It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... admirable finger-post which points every way and always right. It is good for us now and then to converse with a world like Mr. White's, where Man is the least important of animals. But one who, like me, has always lived in the country and always on the same spot, is drawn to his book by other occult sympathies. Do we not share his indignation at that stupid Martin who had graduated his thermometer no lower than 4o above zero of Fahrenheit, so that in the coldest weather ever known the mercury basely absconded into the bulb, and left us to see the victory slip through our fingers, just as they ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... favourite night resort of the Kerman young men in search of romantic adventure, and a most convenient rendezvous for flirtations; but whether the extraordinary qualities of prolificness are really due to the occult power of the magic stone or to the less mystic charms of nights spent away from home, the reader is no doubt better able to discriminate than I. Judging by the long strings of ladies of all ages to be seen going on the pilgrimage, ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... follow from self-evident premisses, and would affirm nothing which he did not clearly and distinctly perceive, and who had so often taken to task the scholastics for wishing to explain obscurities through occult qualities, could maintain a hypothesis, beside which occult qualities are commonplace. What does he understand, I ask, by the union of the mind and the body? What clear and distinct conception has he ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... 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 ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... was 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 ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... bed-clothes, did her terror diminish, or her lips become more obedient to the feeling within; so that Thomas knew not what to think, except it was that she had seen a ghost—not an unnatural supposition at a time when occult causes and spiritual appearances were as undoubted as the phenomena of the electric telegraph are in our day. But he was not destined to be left many minutes more in ignorance of the cause of Mrs. Mary Dodds's terror, for, upon listening, he heard some one come into the kitchen, and bolt the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... age had to stand the fire of criticisms almost too puerile to be noticed. It is gravely pointed out that men are of different heights and weights, that they vary in muscular power and mental cultivation—as if either Rousseau or Jefferson was likely to have failed to notice this occult fact! Similarly the doctrine of the contractual basis of society is met by a demand for the production of a signed, sealed, and delivered contract, or at least for evidence that such a contract was ever made. But Rousseau says—with a good sense and modesty which ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... it came to be called the "Perdu." On this point he would get little information from the folk of the neighborhood, who knew not French. But if he were to translate the term for their better information, they would show themselves impressed by a sense of its occult appropriateness. ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... and has begun the adaptation of the new photography to brain study. The relation of the new rays to thought rays is being eagerly discussed in what may be called the non-exact circles and journals; and all that numerous group of inquirers into the occult, the believers in clairvoyance, spiritualism, telepathy, and kindred orders of alleged phenomena, are confident of finding in the new force long-sought facts in proof of their claims. Professor Neusser in Vienna has photographed gallstones in the liver of one patient (the stone showing snow-white ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... 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
... 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 ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... not sure what sweet occult telepathy might have passed between us, Curtis. . . . Somehow I believe that all is not yet ended. . . . . Pass the pork! . . . I like to think that somehow, ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... 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 things, quite natural and inevitable as it seems, ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... had spoken to Don oppressed her more and more. That Paul had grasped the Absolute Key she could not doubt, but it seemed to Flamby that he had given life to something which had lain dormant, occult, for untold ages, that he had created a thing which already had outgrown his control. In art, literature and music disciples proclaimed themselves. One of France's foremost composers produced a symphony, Dawn, directly inspired by the gospel of Paul Mario; in ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... wife requested me to build her a new kitchen. The house erected by us, when we first came to live upon the vineyard, contained a very conveniently arranged kitchen; but for some occult reason my wife wanted a kitchen in the back yard, apart from the dwelling-house, after the usual Southern fashion. Of course I had ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... swore it was all perjured and paid for) indicated that but one quarter of the sheep found on the Rancho Palomar belonged to Loustalot, the remainder being owned by his foreman and employees. To Farrel, therefore, these sheep were awarded, and in some occult manner Don Nicolas Sandoval selected them from the flock; then, acting under instructions from Farrel, he sold the sheep back to Loustalot at something like a dollar a head under the market value and leased to the amazed ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... rain-drenched air and fields. It is such a vital yet soothing spectacle. We sympathize with the earth. We know how good a bath is, and the unspeakable deliciousness of water to a parched tongue. The office of the sunshine is slow, subtle, occult, unsuspected; but when the clouds do their work, the benefaction is so palpable and copious, so direct and wholesale, that all creatures take note of it, and for the most part rejoice in it. It is a completion, a consummation, a paying of a debt with a royal hand; the measure is heaped ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... yellow man 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 ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... born, So we two glided down the hall and stair, Arm clasping arm, into the parlor, where Sat Vivian, bathed in sunset's gorgeous light. He rose to greet us. Oh! his form was grand; And he possessed that power, strange, occult, Called magnetism, lacking better word, Which moves the world, achieving great result Where genius fails completely. Touch his hand, It thrilled through all your being—meet his eye, And you were moved, yet knew not how, or why. ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... bewildering sweet words, I caught sight of something in her belt, the corner of a little note thrust sidewise into it; but I did not need that indication to tell me that Tullia's fantastic conduct was referable to occult causes. Woman, in my opinion, is the most logical of created beings, the child alone excepted. In both we behold a sublime phenomenon, the unvarying triumph of one dominant, all-excluding thought. The child's ...
— A Prince of Bohemia • Honore de Balzac
... the bottom of the business: this it was which had delivered me into the hands of Zikali, Opener-of-Roads, who, as now I am sure, was merely making use of me for his private occult purposes. He desired to consult the distant Oracle, if such a person existed, as to great schemes of his own, and therefore, to attain his end, made use of my secret longings which I had been so foolish as to reveal to ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... that came out into the streets—and the streets were soon full of people, as a pomegranate is full of seeds—was positive that something had happened of importance, or no less positive that something of importance was going to happen, or that something of importance was actually happening. In some occult manner it had leaked out that a number of the youths of Florence were absent from their dwellings. It gradually became known that all those that were thus absent were members of the same party, and that party the one which was held in no great affection by Messer Simone, ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the Sultan; Mr. Syers, formerly a private in the 10th Regiment, now superintendent of the Selangor police force; and thirty policemen, who go up to form the Sultan's escort to-morrow. Precautions, for some occult reason, seem to be considered indispensable here, and have been increased since the murder of Mr. Lloyd at the Dindings. The yacht has a complete permanent roof of painted canvas, and under this is an armament of boarding ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... thrive the more in consequence of persecution, can excite no surprise in any one at all skilled in the history of human nature; but this is altogether inadequate to account for that preternatural eagerness with which men seek after this wonderful plant. In fact, there appears to be some occult charm connected with it—some invisible spirit, which, be it angel, or be it devil, has never yet been, and perhaps never will be, satisfactorily explained. To those who have never revelled in this habit, and consequently can neither comprehend ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... microscope, though its magnifying power is enormously greater than that of any microscope ever made or ever likely to be made. The hypothetical molecule and atom postulated by science are therefore visible realities to the occult student, though the latter recognizes them as much more complex in their nature than the scientific man has yet discovered them to be. Here again is a vast field of study of absorbing interest to which a whole volume ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... returned to work after their week's holiday in a rather gloomy mood. By some occult process of reasoning Lord PARMOOR has convinced himself that the distress in Central Europe is largely the fault of the Peace Conference. He was supported by Lord BRYCE, who declared that the "Big Four" approached the business of Treaty-making in a German rather than an ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... of that narrative was to fire the imagination of another Italian and lead him by steering to the west to seek a short cut to the Eldorado. [Page 133] How strange the occult connection of sublunary things! The Mongol Kublai must be invoked to account for the discovery of America! The same story kindled the fancy of Coleridge, in the following exquisite fragment, which he says came to him in ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... 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 of horses, and she invested her money scientifically, ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... Apollo did not use Marsyas more inhumanly than his scourging pen this mystical race, and his personalities made them feel more sore. However, a Norwich knight, the very Quixote of astrology, arrayed in the enchanted armour of his occult authors, encountered this pagan in a most stately carousal. He came forth with "A Defence of Judiciall Astrologye, in answer to a treatise lately published by Mr. John Chamber. By Sir Christopher Heydon, Knight; ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... been brought from New Zealand for some occult reason, and had behaved himself very badly ever since he landed. Young banana trees were his especial fancy, cotton plants he devoured wholesale, and it was generally asserted that he was also addicted to kicking chickens. My three predecessors on the station had each repudiated the ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... 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 subjects ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... 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 prevail ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... of heredity must be occult and complex. The offspring of a rebellious and disobedient child, is certainly entitled to no filial instincts; and some day the strain will tell, and you will overwhelm your mother with ingratitude, black as that ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... the second Mrs Lawrence (still designated as the "Baroness" by her stepdaughter and by old acquaintances) to whom Preston owed the constant reminder of his dependence upon the purse of his father-in- law. In those subtle, occult ways known only to a jealous and designing nature, the Baroness found it possible to make Preston's life a torture, without revealing her weapons of warfare to her husband; indeed, without allowing him to even smell the powder, ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the table a long, eruptive roar. Nor was that all. For a moment he would assume the moralist, the theologian, or,—leaving both revelation and the pandects,—become the philosopher, pacing the universe for occult truth; or the metaphysician, tracking the region of the supersensuous; and, over every theme, flying on mocking mental pinions, seeming an intellectual satan, passing through the region of vain questionings and ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... "But I see you arrived at the opportune moment,—when Tisdale was talking. There's something occult about the personality of that man. And she, Mrs. Weatherbee, ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... 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 to ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 future ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... illumination, that the entire charge of the lighting of the house was left in his hands,—even to that of its stores of wax and tallow and oil; and great was the pleasure he derived, not only from the trust reposed in him, but from other more occult sources connected with the duties ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... no hurry to reply. He was busy taking in a variety of pleasant impressions. Notwithstanding the severely cut riding habit and the hard little hat, he decided that he had never looked into a more attractively feminine face. For some occult reason, unconnected, he was sure, with the use of any skin food or face cream, this young woman who had the reputation of living out of doors, winter and summer, had a complexion which, notwithstanding its faint shade of tan, ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... following essay, DR. F. HARTMANN, an enlightened author of the Theosophical and Occult school, presents the mystic or Oriental view of man, in an interesting manner, deducing therefrom a philosophy of the healing art. My readers will no doubt be interested in his exposition, and, as the ancient doctrine differs materially from the results of experimental investigation, I take ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... Godwin thus mentions as some mysterious and occult cause and which he does not attempt to investigate, will be found to be the grinding law of necessity, misery, and the ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... believer in mesmerism, animal magnetism, and similar doctrines, but the coincidence of his story with that of the African sorcerer is none the less remarkable. It is a coincidence which must almost certainly be 'undesigned.' Mr. Welton's wife was what modern occult philosophers call a 'Sensitive.' In 1851, he wished her to try an experiment with the rod in a garden, and sent a maid-servant to bring 'a certain stick that stood behind the parlour door. In great terror she brought it to ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... 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
... the mountain grotto, devoted himself to the study of the occult principles of the 'Old Philosopher' until the material elements of his mortal frame were gradually evaporated or sublimated, and without having passed through the change which men call death, he became an immortal spirit returning ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... this picture is, it is furthermore permeated by a significance that is not occult. It bears witness to the possible strength of a passion that is so spiritual as to be without taint of sense; and to a confident belief in an immortality wherein the utmost limits of a blessedness not of this world may be compassed. Such are in this ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... morning, the Earl would waken, innocent of any knowledge of his visitor. He would assume his talismans had simply lost their powers due to some occult reason, as many others had ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... had been able to follow, Mrs. Veda Blair's story had dealt mostly with a Professor and Madame Rapport and something she called the "Red Lodge" of the "Temple of the Occult." ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... of finance heretofore has been the cult of silence, some of its rites have been almost those of an occult science. ...
— High Finance • Otto H. Kahn
... attitude towards him as will enable them to receive the li. In the family, he is the father; in the state, he is the king. In very truth, this is the Doctrine of the Golden Age, and proof of the profound occult wisdom of Confucius: even the (comparatively) little of it that was ever made practical lifted China to the grand height she has held. It is hinted at in the Bhagavad-Gita:—"whatsoever is practised by the most excellent men"; again, it is the Aryan doctrine ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... is Costanza, not Portia, Minerva, or Penelope. That she is a servant in an inn, I cannot deny; but what can I do, if, as it seems, the occult force of destiny, and the deliberate choice of reason, both impel me to adore her? Look you, friend, I cannot find words to tell you how love exalts and glorifies in my eyes this humble scullery-maid, as you call her, so that, though seeing her low condition, ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... girls are keen beyond words to express in their intuitive knowledge of human nature and the differentiation between man nature and woman nature. They are capable of using the outward and apparent motives of humanity for an effect, and secretly of plying the subtlest and most occult. ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... which is plane, and discuss the "sphere" which is mysterious. Can it possibly be that it is because these amiable gentlewomen are always going round? Or is it because they cannot help reasoning in a circle? Or is there some occult relation between spheres and hoops? Or has the wedding-ring something to do with it? It should be understood, that these are questions addressed solely to male mathematicians; for Mr. P. is unlike John Graham, and doesn't ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... and to place it in a distinct class. The 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
... some of that occult rot, I don't doubt," groaned Roger. "Charley, stay till the fellows come. ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... 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 thrilled ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... him. Under various pretenses I am questioned about what I have suffered in the past, and what plans of life I have formed for the future. Among other subjects of personal interest to me, the subject of supernatural appearances is introduced. I am asked if I believe in occult spiritual sympathies, and in ghostly apparitions of dead or distant persons. I am dexterously led into hinting that my views on this difficult and debatable question are in some degree influenced by experiences of my own. ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... occult to mortal eyes, Dorm on the herb with none to supervise, Carp the suave berries from the crescent vine, And bibe the flow from ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... 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 ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... committee drew up the following conjoint report, according to which only one of two things was possible—either the horse could think and calculate independently, or else he was under telepathic, perhaps occult, influence: ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... when thought 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 Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... same with Bonaparty—Nappoleon, you know. And 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
... Celsus[10] wrote of this sect that they admit that evident causes are necessary, but deprecate inquiry into them because Nature is incomprehensible. This is proved because the philosophers and physicians who have spent so much labour in trying to search out these occult causes cannot agree amongst themselves. If reasoning could make physicians, the philosophers should be most successful practitioners, as they have such abundance of words. If the causes of diseases were ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... patients. Such was the avowed profession of Luckie Gourlay, which, as may well be supposed, was looked upon with a suspicious eye, not only by her neighbours, but even by the clergy of the district. In private, however, she traded more deeply in the occult sciences; for, notwithstanding the dreadful punishments inflicted upon the supposed crime of witchcraft, there wanted not those who, steeled by want and bitterness of spirit, were willing to adopt the hateful ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... Dutch fashion, and its very disorder was in keeping with the general eccentricity of his person. His broad brow showed certain protuberances which Gall identifies with poetic genius. His clear and full blue eyes had the brusque vivacity which may be noticed in searchers for occult causes. The nose, probably perfect in early life, was now elongated, and the nostrils seemed to have gradually opened wider from an involuntary tension of the olfactory muscles. The cheek-bones were very prominent, ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... was one of the humors of the camp—a practical manifestation of the facetious spirit that had found literary expression in the topsy-turvy obituary notice from the pen of Hurdy-Gurdy's great humorist. Perhaps it had some occult personal signification impenetrable to understandings uninstructed in local traditions. A more charitable hypothesis is that it was owing to a misadventure on the part of Mr. Barney Bree, who, making the interment unassisted (either by choice for the conservation of his golden secret, or through ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... winter, when the weather conditions were perfectly adjusted to meet certain occult exactions he had come to require, Yancy could be induced to go into the woods and there labor with his ax. But as he pointed out to Hannibal, a poor man's capital was his health, and he being a poor man it behooved him to have a jealous care ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... stomach. He wanted her to show them to M. Chapelain, a practitioner of medical magnetism, in order to consult him regarding a malady which he suspected that he had, and ask him where it was located and what treatment he should follow. Balzac was a believer in occult sciences, and once before, during the epidemic of cholera in 1832, he wrote to M. Chapelain, asking if he could not discover the origin of the scourge and find remedies capable of stopping it. It was not only magnetism that interested him, but clairvoyance as well, fortune tellers and readers ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... in pursuance of his stern duties, reveals to the scorn of future ages some of the occult practices which discredit the march of light in ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of these proceedings, in all probability, were but the artful contrivance of an ambitious priest; and yet, connected as they were with a female whose well-known predilection for the occult sciences, and herself no mean adept therein, they assumed in those ages of credulity and superstition more the character of miraculous events than as happening in the common course and established order of nature. The alarm of the king, too, evidently at the appearance of the figure, caused ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... as 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 ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... and quite the cleverest man at his 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 ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... color of living flame beneath a green mantle.[23] And my spirit that now for so long a time had not been broken down, trembling with amazement at her presence, without having more knowledge by the eyes, through occult virtue that proceeded from her, felt the great ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... jumble it all up, and it makes no difference: it always comes out the way it was before. It was a marvelous 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
... again refer you to the prize-fighter. But if you will pardon me, I think you have put the cart before the horse; for once having granted that personal power, happiness must ensue, and your health as a necessity follow. First cultivate this occult force, and we need submit to no physical laws; for inasmuch as the higher controls the lower, we are masters ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... 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 in French, are those of M. A. Le ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... of Mediaeval Thought," and the two essays on Alchemy, have appeared in The Journal of the Alchemical Society. In others I have utilised material I have contributed to The Occult Review, to the editor of which journal my thanks are due for permission so to do. I have also to express my gratitude to the Rev. A. H. COLLINS, and others to be referred to in due course, for permission here to reproduce illustrations of ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... 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: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... to deliverance from error and uncertainty. But the dawn of reformation must ever be gradual, and the acquisitions even of those calculated to advance it must therefore frequently appear desultory and imperfect. The author of the Novum Organum believed in charms and occult sympathy; and Dryden in the chimeras of judicial astrology, and probably in the jargon of alchemy. When these subjects occur in his poetry, he dwells on them with a pleasure which shows the command they maintained ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... conception witchcraft and its demonstrations centered in the claim of power to produce certain effects, "things beyond the course of nature," from supernatural causes, and under this general term all its occult manifestations were classified with magic and sorcery, until the time came when the Devil was identified and acknowledged both in church and state as the originator and sponsor of the mystery, sin and crime—the sole father of the Satanic compacts with men and women, and the law both canonical ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... 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 a half-hidden ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... them with that smile of bantering approbation, supposed to keep down inordinate vanity, which for some occult reason one always reserves for the members of one's own family. He was quite conscious that Susy was looking very pretty in this new and mature frock, and that as she stood beside his wife, far ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... among the multitude of beliefs left in Egypt by degenerate traditions, there were found some which hinted, more or less clearly, at occult truths, and which might have perpetuated or generalised this practice. It was supposed, according to Servius, that the transmigrations[112] began only when the magnetic bond between the soul and its remains had been broken by the complete disintegration of the ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... 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
... reflection that the occasion for such a revelation no longer existed, and I had no desire needlessly to persecute a man whose iniquities could, at all events, harm no one but himself. And still, knowing from experience his talent for occult diplomacy, I took the precaution (without even remotely implicating Miss Hildegard) to put Mr. Pfeifer on his guard. One evening, as we were sitting alone in his library enjoying a confidential smoke, I related to him, merely as part of the secret history of ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... that very unequal company I have before mentioned met; the former of these is apparently impracticable. Let Socrates, for instance, institute a discourse on the nature of the soul, or Plato reason on the native beauty of virtue, and Aristotle on his occult qualities—What must become of our dancing-masters? Would they not stare at one another with surprise, and, most probably, at our philosophers with contempt? Would they have any pleasure in such society? or would they not rather wish themselves in a dancing-school, or a green-room ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... have the regular prophetic gift; practically every one of them foresaw the assassination of McKinley. Most of them, however, are gifted in curing diseases. The typical letter reads as follows: "There is a young man living here who seems to be endowed with a wonderful occult power by the use of which he is able to diagnose almost any human ailment. He goes into a trance, and while in this condition the name of the subject is given him, and then without any further questions ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... magic circles, saw visions of people in a glass, possessed numerous charms and incantations, and, above all, kept a wonderful magic book. She attempted to find lost money, to tell the future, and to cure disease; indeed, she had a varied repertoire of occult performances. ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... do. I think she has shown herself a model of forgiveness and devotion. Nevertheless the turn of events under the new treatment has been so strange that almost it makes one believe that there might be something occult about it—or wrong with ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... Wesleyan missionaries in the Sandwich Islands. Then she had to find her glasses, and considerable delay was incurred by putting them on upside down. All this while the Rector sat glaring at her as if in some occult way she were responsible for the disaster ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... candidate for Parliament is not, in their eyes, a servant whom they may appoint to give voice to their own wishes; he is a "gentleman" who, probably from motives of self-interest, comes to them as a sort of quack doctor, with occult remedies, which they may have if they will vote for him, and which might possibly do them good. Hence they hardly look upon the Government as an instrument at all under the control of people like themselves; they view ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... in occult and masonic circles, certain ideas were common to all the more important "Mysteries," thus forming a continuous tradition handed down through succeeding groups of Initiates of different ages and countries. Amongst these ideas is said to have been the conception ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... the society nobody could fathom. She sat, during the meetings, bolt upright, with folded arms, as if she were in school, her bright, beady eyes fixed unblinkingly upon Mrs. Arnold, whom she seemed to regard as a species of priestess in charge of occult mysteries. ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... yourself,' said the mountebank, putting into his hand a sort of credential in Italian, signed by Renato di Milano, the Queen's perfumer, testifying to the skill of his compatriot Ercole Stizzito both in perfumery, cosmetics, and in the secrets of occult sciences. ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of this unique volume declares himself "boldly, but without vanity, or false modesty" an esoterist, that is to say, one who is an adept at the interpretation of the occult and secret doctrines. This book, an exposition of the secret doctrine, is not, therefore, as its title might suggest, a scientific treatise upon the Voudo cult as it has existed and as it still exists in Haiti. It is rather an interpretation ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... Reverendo Clarissimoque 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, this is the first publication bearing the name of Hartlib. ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... ought to have anticipated actually came to pass. England first discovered the occult negotiations of d'Aubigny at Versailles, and, unwilling that the Princess des Ursins should bestow anything upon France, she changed her tone, and became almost a defaulter to her. A Valentian gentleman, Clemente Generoso, ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... the occult inspiration of this law, the great masters have enriched the world with miracles of art. Aided by this law the course followed in this work, ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... 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 Don Vincente Ribiera, a man of culture and of unblemished character, invested with ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... without reference to them. And there's no measuring the poisoned influence of that notion of future reward on the mind of Christian Europe, in the early ages. Half the monastic system rose out of that, acting on the occult pride and ambition of good people (as the other half of it came of their follies and misfortunes). There is always a considerable quantity of pride, to begin with, in what is called 'giving one's self to God.' As if one had ever belonged ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... a Catalogue of Curious Books; containing numerous Works on the Occult Sciences, America, Asia, Books of Prints, curious Quarto Tracts, English Black Letter, Early Printed Works, Proverbs, Facetiae, &c. &c. May be had on application, or by forwarding Two ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 63, January 11, 1851 • Various
... flickered over Jim like summer lightning, inspiring in the young man so strong a feeling of repulsion that it almost amounted to nausea. There was something horribly magnetic in the look, and Jim felt that this man possessed some strange occult power which was lacking in ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... off their three bottles, at need, with as steady a gait as any of their forefathers. It is not so very long since the three-bottle heroes sank finally under the table. It may be (at least, I should be glad if it were true) that there was an occult sympathy between our temperance-reform, now somewhat in abeyance, and the almost simultaneous disappearance of hard-drinking among the respectable classes in England. I remember a middle-aged gentleman telling me (in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Silence spake A Manuscript of Henry James's make; "They sneer at me for being so occult: But Kipling's found such Stuff is going ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Cayenne • Gelett Burgess
... "Ah, theirs is pristine oratory—occult eloquence," the scribe said earnestly, "and she is mistress of the art. She told the history of Israel and catalogued its wrongs in a manner that lacked only measure and music to make it a song. But, Kenkenes, she did not move us ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... 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 their ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... lost no time in exercising the privilege of making proposals of marriage. If the figures that reached me from an occult source are correct, the following represents the state ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... onward still— On to the ridgy rocks that seaward ran, And out along their furrows and jagged backs, To the last lonely point where the green mass Arose and sank, heaved slow and forceful. There She shuddered and recoiled. Thus, for a time, Sport-slave of power occult, she came and went, Betwixt the shore and sea alternating, Drawn ever to the greedy lapping lip, Then, terror-stung, driven backward: there it lay, The heartless, cruel, miserable deep, Ambushed in horror, ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... employed in that conspiracy were a subtle, so to say, occult propaganda to seduce a simple people to false convictions, to induce the creation of gigantic armaments, a secret service employing at a vast cost journalism, emissaries, and agencies, to gain partisans and allies outside South ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... an Indian tried to kill him, for the reason that he had tried to get him to give up a certain concubinage. But God having freed him from those dangers, allowed him to perish in another through His occult judgments. It was a fact that that father when attending to the fulfilment of his obligation gave motive that certain of the Zimarron Indians whom he was endeavoring to establish soundly in the Catholic faith gave him certain death-dealing powders in his food, which although they did not ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... reputation of the Sheffield Scientific at home and abroad. Singling out only one of its many merits, we can point to it with pride as the first institution to solve effectually the knotty problem of discipline. The means of its success are anything but occult. It has made its pupils feel from the moment of entrance that they were young men, and must act as such. It has refused to encumber itself with expensive and useless dormitories, and the faculty has in the main ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... friend whose hobby (besides reading fantasy) was the occult, who volunteered to entertain me with automatic writing and the ouija-board. Now, I share Lovecraft's scepticism towards the supernatural, regarding it as at best a means of amusement. When the question arose ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... say the commentators, the love of God for the congregation of Israel; it relates the history of the Jews from the Exodus to the Messiah; it is a consolation to afflicted Israel; it is an occult history; it represents the union of the divine soul with the earthly body, or of the material with the active intellect; it is the conversation of Solomon and Wisdom; it describes the love of Christ ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... 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
... private 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 at the beginning that this large, stout personage, who invariably spoke in a ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... 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 of their dynamic conceptions. Moral power ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... from the knob of the electroscope, some form of energy, apparently radio-active in character, issued from her fingers, and gradually discharged the electroscope. This is the "radiation" or "emanation" issuing from the body, which has been studied extensively by students of the occult. Dr. Imoda concluded—as the result of his experiments—that "the radiations of radium, the cathode radiations of the Crookes' tube, and mediumistic radiations are fundamentally ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... a most good-natured man, but of melancholy temperament, pottering, and timid, with a bent for everything mysterious and occult.... A half-whispered ah! was his habitual exclamation; he even died with this exclamation on his lips, two years after his removal ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... quackery, vulgar or genteel, might be referred to conceit; had he turned state's evidence against the accredited deceptions of his own profession, and gone over entirely to the enthusiasts who think that medicine is not an experimental science, but a series of hap-hazard hits at the occult laws of disease, he might be accused of conceit; but we think the charge is ridiculously false as directed against a man who boldly puts his professional and literary fame at risk in order to advance the cause of reason, learning, and common sense. Nobody ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... is quite possible that Mrs. Sutgrove's conjecture is correct, and that even at that early age Mannering had learnt something about hypnotism from his native instructor, for I am very certain that of these semi-occult sciences, the East has much more precise knowledge than is realized by the ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... custody of the Connecticut Historical Society, was dictated by Miss Annie G. Ellsworth, and the words of it were "What hath God wrought?" The telegraph was at first regarded with superstitious dread in some sections of the country. In a Southern State a drought was attributed to its occult influences, and the people, infatuated with the idea, levelled the wires to the ground. And so common was it for the Indians to knock off the insulators with their rifles in order to gratify their curiosity in regard to the "singing cord," that it was at first extremely difficult to keep the lines ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... something in the nature of an occult police force, which operates to divert human suspicions, and to supply explanations that are good enough for whatever, somewhat in the nature of minds, human beings have—or that, if there be occult mischief makers and occult ravagers, they may be of a world also of other beings that are ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper
... enchantments I foresaw your coming, and by them I knew you when you entered here. I did but play this little jest with hope to surprise you into some display of your art, as not doubting you would blast the guards with occult fires, consuming them to ashes on the spot, a marvel much beyond mine own ability, yet one which I have long been childishly curious ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... plainly has no slightest material interest in the nationality or the place of residence of those who conduct this traffic; though all the facts go to say that in some puzzle-headed way the common man commonly persuades himself that it does make some occult sort of difference to him; so that he is commonly willing to pay something substantial toward subsidising businessmen of his own nationality, in the way of a protective tariff and ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... 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 course knew the facts ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... In Padua beyond the sea," and who is famous in the annals of Massachusetts, where he was at one time a resident, as the first man who dared petition the General Court for liberty of conscience. The full title of the book is Three Books of Occult Philosophy, by Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Knight, Doctor of both Laws, Counsellor to Caesar's Sacred Majesty and ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... sometimes we feel in our hearts that we sound but cockney voices as guides amid the ancient temples, the cyclopean crypts sanctified by the mysteries. To be intelligible we replace the opalescent shining by the terms of the scientist, and we prate of occult physiology in the same breath with the Most High. Yet when the soul has the divine vision it knows not it has a body. Let it remember, and the breath of glory kindles it no more; it is once again a captive. After all it does not make the mysteries clearer ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... "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 ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... 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, ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... noumena must be regarded as absolute. "But now, what do we mean by this affirmation of absolute reality independent of the conditions of the process of knowing? Do we mean to ... affirm, in language savouring strongly of scholasticism, that beneath the phenomena which we call subjective there is an occult substratum Mind, and beneath the phenomena which we call objective there is an occult substratum Matter? Our conclusion cannot be stated in any such form.... Our conclusion is simply this, that no theory of phenomena, external or internal, ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... conveyed no real information. They were such answers as a woman might herself suggest to a person who was slow in making a reply. One of them was, "You will know everything perfectly when the right time comes." Mr. H. said, "My wife never could have imagined all this; there must have been some occult communication between her and Mrs. Thaxter. Neither do I think she ever heard before of John Laighton." Mrs. Thaxter evidently was satisfied that she had received messages from her father, who had been dead about two years; and ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... of remorse for coming so far short of her ideal of him. He knew how resolutely she refused to see his worst side, and he reflected with philosophy half bitter and half contemptuous, that no woman ever lived who could wholly outgrow the feeling that to believe or to disbelieve a thing must in some occult way affect its truth. At least she had fulfilled all the unspoken promises, so much more important than vows put into words could be, with which she had married him. A remorseful feeling came over his mind, and instantly followed the instinctive self-excuse that ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... day.... The strategy one must sometimes employ in traveling through a hostile country is based upon the principle of deception.... It was the work of Maria too, who had evidently been reading up on certain occult works of the Eastern magicians and brought them into play at a moment when we were surrounded by a band of marauders in the company of my 'Hindu' friend.... To explain: There is a certain kind of little animal held sacred among ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... 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 fictitious body ...
— On Limitations To The Use Of Some Anthropologic Data - (1881 N 01 / 1879-1880 (pages 73-86)) • J. W. Powell
... be read without difficulty by any Cherokee educated in his own language, the shamans take good care that their sacred writings shall not fall into the hands of the laity or of their rivals in occult practices, and in performing the ceremonies the words used are uttered in such a low tone of voice as to be unintelligible even to the one for whose benefit the formula is repeated. Such being the case, it is in order to explain how the ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... to him in his lonely vigils and told him many unknown facts about his career on earth, and incidentally revealed to him the whereabouts of the now-familiar fresco of Dante on the wall of the Bargello Chapel, where it had been hidden for ages beneath a coat of whitewash. In these occult researches, Kirkup, of course, had need of a medium, and he found among the Florentine peasants a young girl, radiantly beautiful, who possessed an extraordinary susceptibility to spiritual influences. Through her means he conversed with the renowned dead ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... the Chatterton family; and throughout the brief life of the poet it was held by his uncle, Richard Phillips. The poet's father, Thomas Chatterton, was a musical genius, somewhat of a poet, a numismatist, and a dabbler in occult arts. He was one of the sub-chanters of Bristol cathedral, and master of the Pyle Street free school, near Redcliffe church. But whatever hereditary tendencies may have been transmitted from the father, the sole training of the boy necessarily devolved on his mother, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... the other's as completely as would have been the case if he were invested with a power to charm in some occult way. Moreover, every trace of his amiable, confiding smile was gone. His gaze was hard and cold and gleaming. His face was drawn into grim lines. When he spoke he talked smoothly, rapidly, and with an ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... whispering Swiss, the livelong day; and even waited without the Grates, when turned out; and had dismissed their valets to Paris, as with purpose of endless waiting? They have a magnetic vellum, these two; whereon the Virgin, wonderfully clothing herself in Mesmerean Cagliostric Occult-Philosophy, has inspired them to jot down instructions and predictions for a much-straitened King. To whom, by Higher Order, they will this day present it; and save the Monarchy and World. Unaccountable pair of visual-objects! Ye should be men, and of the Eighteenth Century; but your magnetic ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... former. As, however, it was immediately ascertained that the Regent had expressed some suspicions of this interview, and declared the reconciliation which had taken place to be too sudden not to involve some occult purpose, M. de Soissons deemed it expedient to silence her fears by inviting Concini ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... too much for the courage of the twins. Even the charms of the gingerbread and their new plaid dresses could scarcely compensate for the terrors of that occult something concerning whose mysteries the minister would be ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... have red marks on the face or any part of the body. The causes producing naevi materni have probably been the origin of such marks, rather than the idea entertained by the Chinese that the father, having performed an action by some occult mode, influences the child yet unborn. A case is said to have occurred in which ill effects were obviated, or rather obliterated, by the red papers being torn down, after the birth of the infant, and soaked in water, when as the red disappeared from the paper, so the child's face assumed ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... 'Porta:' a native of Naples, famous for skill in the occult sciences. He wrote a book on Physiognomy, seeking to trace in the human face resemblances to animals, and to infer similar ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... tell us just how the talk drifted to hypnotism and the occult, nor when the current started that way. But one of the reporters who happened to be driven off the street by the rain one night found Henry and David in the office with a homemade planchette doing queer things. They made it tell words in the middle of pages of newspapers that neither ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... We are to believe that while the pure blood of English gentlemen in Virginia has produced not only the gentlemanly vices of pride, treachery, and falsehood in the leaders, but the ignoble faults of crime and debasement in the 'poor trash'—that some occult influence of climate has advanced an entire community at the North far above the position of its progenitors—that while the gentle Cavalier has been overcome by the seductive charms of luxury and repose, the ignoble Puritan ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... little station they were kept waiting in a pouring rain for something to happen, they knew not what. The R. T. O., a young Imperial officer, blase with his ten months of war in England, had some occult reason for delaying their departure. So, while the night grew every moment wetter and darker, the men sat on their kit-bags or found such shelter as they could in the tiny station, or in the lee of the "goods trains" blocking the ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... 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 subjects ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... opinions were once conversing. The one scoffed at innate ideas, instinctive principles, and occult causes: the other was a believer in natural gifts, and an active fabricator of suppositions. Suggest but the slightest hint and he would erect a hypothesis which no argument, at least none that he would listen to, could overthrow. So convinced was ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... who to-day sat with cardinals and saluted crowned heads, and to morrow lurked in dens of profligacy and crime; a book of confessions penned without reticence and without penitence; a record of forty years of "occult" charlatanism; a collection of tales of successful imposture, of 'bonnes fortunes', of marvellous escapes, of transcendent audacity, told with the humour of Smollett and the delicate wit of Voltaire. Who is there interested in men and letters, and in the life of the past, ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova • David Widger
... the room she sat there with her eyes turned away, as if there had been a spell upon her which forbade her to raise them. Miss Olive Chancellor, it may be confided to the reader, to whom in the course of our history I shall be under the necessity of imparting much occult information, was subject to fits of tragic shyness, during which she was unable to meet even her own eyes in the mirror. One of these fits had suddenly seized her now, without any obvious cause, though, indeed, Mrs. Luna had made it worse by becoming instantly so personal. There was nothing in ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... when the weather conditions were perfectly adjusted to meet certain occult exactions he had come to require, Yancy could be induced to go into the woods and there labor with his ax. But as he pointed out to Hannibal, a poor man's capital was his health, and he being a poor man it behooved him to have a jealous care of himself. He made use of the dull days of mingled ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... unsuspicious of these suspicions, a change had come. Whether it was that for the time he heard less of the best sheep-dog in the North, or for some more occult reason, certain it is that he became his old self. His tongue wagged as gayly and bitterly as ever, and hardly a night passed but he infuriated Tammas almost to blows with his innuendoes ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... "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 ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... they not have their little troubles, whims, and maladies studied and cared for? The disease which gives a title to this short notice is perhaps one of the most mysterious and vexatious to which our nature is liable; both its cause and cure are equally occult, and its modus operandi is scarcely intelligible. A contemporary thus playfully alludes to the subject in terms more funny than precise:—'What is neuralgia? A nervous spasm, the cause of which has, however, not been satisfactorily and conclusively ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... over; and George Hyde was not a poor lover. He had naturally the ardent confidence and daring which delight women, and he had not passed several seasons in the highest London society without learning all those sweet, occult ways of making known admiration, which the presence of others renders both ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... Rat had followed a fresh trail and found stale bones. Despite his youth, the desert had put something of its own grim haunting mystery into this man who loved it; to him had it been given to understand much that to the layman savored of the occult; at birth, God had been very good to him, in that He had ordained that during all his life the Desert Rat should be engaged in learning how to die, and meet the issue unafraid. For the Desert Rat was a philosopher, and even at this ghastly spectacle his sense ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... to present, by being tall and large, a wide front to the tempest, they should also be comparatively solid and strong to resist it; but with this simple mechanical requirement there seems to have mingled a principle of a more occult character. The Gymnogens or conifers were the highest vegetable existences of the period,—its true trees; and all the tree-like fern allies were strengthened to meet the necessities of their increased size, on, if I may so speak, a coniferous principle. Tissue resembling that of their ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... to finish. Curious because, in various forms, this was the third time he had seen her stand with hands outstretched, calling to him. He did not believe in dreams. He had neither patience for presentiments nor faith in anything that bordered on the occult. ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... the ground: the magician recited what he recited from his book of magic, the bull at once arose, and he replaced on it what had fallen to the earth." The great lords themselves deigned to become initiated into the occult sciences, and were invested with these formidable powers. A prince who practised magic would enjoy amongst us nowadays but small esteem: in Egypt sorcery was not considered incompatible with royalty, and the magicians of Pharaoh often took Pharaoh ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... most import us to know. We have his recorded convictions on those questions which knock for answer at every heart,—on life and death, on love, on wealth and poverty, on the prizes of life and the ways whereby we come at them; on the characters of men, and the influences, occult and open, which affect their fortunes; and on those mysterious and demoniacal powers which defy our science and which yet interweave their malice and their gift in our brightest hours. Who ever read the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... bestow 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 royalty ignored but ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... stately current swinging to the sea! He would sit by it for hours and dream. He would venture out on it in a surreptitiously borrowed boat when he was barely strong enough to lift an oar out of the water. He learned to know all its moods and phases. He felt its kinship. In some occult way he may have known it as his prototype—that resistless tide of life with its ever-changing sweep, its shifting shores, its depths, its shadows, its gorgeous sunset hues, its solemn and ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... 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 like old times," ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... complaisance as he had shown in joining Giannotto with her in marriage. Madam Beritola, by reason of the words she had heard from Currado, began to consider Giannotto and some remembrance of the boyish lineaments of her son's countenance being by occult virtue awakened in her, without awaiting farther explanation, she ran, open-armed, to cast herself upon his neck, nor did overabounding emotion and maternal joy suffer her to say a word; nay, they so locked up all her senses that she fell into ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... having reveled on her ravishing mouth, and having, by a strong effort of intelligence, mastered the meaning of the very occult proposition which issued therefrom, namely, that the lady would "stay to dine, and name her wishes after;" and, moreover, having seen—"It closed"—he shortly afterwards saw it opened, for the purpose of eating his hawk, which, as the reader knows, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... the new photography to brain study. The relation of the new rays to thought rays is being eagerly discussed in what may be called the non-exact circles and journals; and all that numerous group of inquirers into the occult, the believers in clairvoyance, spiritualism, telepathy, and kindred orders of alleged phenomena, are confident of finding in the new force long-sought facts in proof of their claims. Professor ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... And my fireside is lone and still; When to the blaze that crackles near, I turn a tired and pensive ear, And Nature conquering bids me sigh For love's soft accents whispering nigh; O teach me, on that heavenly road, That leads to Truth's occult abode, To wrap my soul in dreams sublime, Till earth and care no more be mine. Let bless'd Philosophy impart Her soothing measures to my heart; And while with Plato's ravish'd ears I list the music of the spheres, Or on the mystic symbols pore, That ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... the other hand Septimius had for a long while held little intercourse with men; none whatever with men who could comprehend him; the doctor, too, seemed to bring the discourse singularly in apposition with what his host was continually thinking about, for he conversed on occult matters, on people who had had the art of living long, and had only died at last by accident, on the powers and qualities of common herbs, which he believed to be so great, that all around our feet—growing in the wild forest, afar ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... number; or, it is most probable that the most probable thing will happen. In the middle of the nineteenth century, when attention was first called to the solidarity and internal correlations of groups, especially if they were large and genetic, it was believed that occult and far-reaching laws had been discovered. That opinion has long been abandoned. If there are four dice in a box, each having from one to six dots on its faces, the chance of throwing four sixes is just the same as that of throwing four ones. The ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... people and 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, and I have satisfied myself ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... more modern type. Reform was foiled, as Burke put it, 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 ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... name of the Magi, what were these spells of theirs, so potent and occult? On all hands it was agreed, that they derived their greatest virtue from the fumes of certain compounds, whose ingredients—horrible to tell—were mostly obtained from the human heart; and that by variously mixing these ingredients, ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... ARE NOT IN POSSESSION OF A CLASSICAL STYLE FOR THE EXECUTION OF THESE WORKS." ... "Does Germany possess a school at which the proper execution of Mozart's music is taught? Or do our orchestras and their conductors manage to play Mozart in accordance with some occult knowledge of their own? If so, whence do they derive such knowledge? Who taught it them? Take the simplest examples, Mozart's instrumental pieces (by no means his most important works, for these belong to the operatic stage), two things are at once apparent: the melodies must be beautifully SUNG; ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... trees. Not much more than its parapet appears behind the foliage. By those offices, on fine evenings, I find one of our ancients, Captain Tom Bowline. Why he favours the road there I do not know. It would be a reasonable reason, but occult. The electric trams and motor buses annoy him. And not one of the young stokers and deck-hands just ashore and paid off, or else waiting at a likely corner for news of a ship, could possibly know the skipper and his ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... but some have surmised that the man who first thus entitled this sort of Ottoman whale, must have read the memoirs of Vidocq, and informed himself what sort of a country-schoolmaster that famous Frenchman was in his younger days, and what was the nature of those occult lessons he inculcated into some of his pupils. The same secludedness and isolation to which the schoolmaster whale betakes himself in his advancing years, is true of all aged Sperm Whales. Almost universally, a lone ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... wrote his "Essays" on that easy principle. The logic of them is the logic of mere chance association in thought. But, with Montaigne,—whatever is true of Emerson,—the association at least is not occult; and it is such as pleases the reader, not less than it pleased the writer. So this Gascon gentleman of the olden time never tires us, and never loses us out of his hand. We go with him cheerfully ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... In this he pleased Mr. Cinch, who was by no means all a man of beef and brawn. Mr. Cinch had read a considerable quantity of poetry and was a subscriber to a scientific periodical. He had a decided tendency toward occult speculation, and had reached that point in his orthodoxy where he believed there were a good many more things that we don't know than that ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... laugh. She would tell Cutty. The real drums of jeopardy weren't emeralds but the roll of warning that prescience taps upon the spine, the occult sense of impending danger. That was why the Elevated went tumpitum-tump! tumpitum-tump! She would tell ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... 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 his consideration was so great, that he was elected Emperor of Germany; but his claims were ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... her growing anxiety communicated itself in some occult way to the other members of her household, even to Loll, to whom she gave daily lessons in reading, writing and arithmetic. The little fellow was at this time moved to write and illustrate a book on some discarded letter-heads of a defunct life insurance company. Ellen breathed a prayer ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... saw visions of people in a glass, possessed numerous charms and incantations, and, above all, kept a wonderful magic book. She attempted to find lost money, to tell the future, and to cure disease; indeed, she had a varied repertoire of occult performances. ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... 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 ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... trip was decided upon, and the building of the Snark began. We named her the Snark because we could not think of any other name- -this information is given for the benefit of those who otherwise might think there is something occult in the name. ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... reply that it 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 ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... finishing my toilette, M. de Valenglard came in. As soon as we were alone, the officer, who was a man of honour and of much sense, in spite of his belief in astrology and the occult sciences, said that he thought me looking rather melancholy, and that if my sadness had any connection with the fair Roman, he warned me to think no more of her, unless I had resolved to ask her hand in marriage. I replied that ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... recovered, excepting such as had been afflicted with twitches and aches, which, however, assumed the less alarming aspects of rheumatism, ciatics, and lumbagos; and the good people of New England, abandoning the study of the occult sciences, turned their attention to the more profitable hocus pocus of trade, and soon became expert in the legerdemain art of turning a penny. Still, however, a tinge of the old leaven is discernible, even unto this day, in their characters; witches ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... course of early man in his efforts to bring plants into medicinal use. That some of the indigenous plants had therapeutic properties was often an accidental discovery, leading in the next place to experiment and observation. Cornelius Agrippa, in his book on occult philosophy, states that mankind has learned the use of many remedies from animals. It has even been suggested that the use of the enema was discovered by observing a long-beaked bird drawing up water into its beak, and injecting the water into the ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... by torchlight. The conversation at table was lively. The prince could not forbear relating his adventure of the key, which excited general astonishment. A warm dispute on the subject presently took place. Most of the company positively maintained that the pretended occult sciences were nothing better than juggling tricks. The French abbe, who had drank rather too much wine, challenged the whole tribe of ghosts, the English lord uttered blasphemies, and the musician made a cross to exorcise the devil. Some ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... poet," said a priest, who had long laboured under the suspicion of occult practices, "was a fool to Virgil the enchanter. The wise woman evidently demands one competent to put the devil into a hole—an operation which I have striven to perform ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... uncontaminated nature! In such sunlight as this it seems insanity to sit in a book-walled room and grow bloodless with dreaming over insoluble problems. And yet a friend of mine told me that these towns, and especially California towns, were filled with seers and prophets. The occult flourishes in the high, dry atmosphere, those of the faith say. Don't you permit Clarke to destroy your love of nature, Miss Lambert; you belong to the sane and sunny world, and he has no right to bring his gloomy conceptions home to you. You are too ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... the peasant. Of this mystery, Giacomo Leopardi was the echo in the solitude of his thought and his pain. His skepticism announced the dissolution of this theologico-metaphysical world, and inaugurated the reign of the arid True, of the Real. His songs are the most profound and occult voices of that laborious transition called the nineteenth century. That which has importance is not the brilliant exterior of that century of progress, and it is not without irony that he speaks of the progressive destinies of mankind. That which has importance is the exploration ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... consul laughingly, "you know that we Americans speak with a decided dialect of our own, and attach the same occult meaning to it. Yet, upon my word, I think that Lord Beverdale—or shall I say Lord Algernon?—would not only understand that American word 'guess' as you mean it, but would perfectly sympathize ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... from his and they were silent. Presently the boy, as if acted upon by some occult influence of the girl, said ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... the lines of the deeper scientific mysteries of the occult and invisible of Nature-forces I have found the cause and cure of deafness and head noises, and I have been enabled by this same mysterious knowledge and power to give to many unfortunate and suffering persons perfect hearing again; and I say to ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... 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 ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... leader whom she was plotting to destroy. Attracted by the scene she wandered out to breathe at her ease beneath the sky; and though her steps conducted her at a venture, she was surely led to the Promenade of the town by one of those occult impulses of the soul which lead us to follow hope irrationally. Thoughts conceived under the dominion of that spell are often realized; but we then attribute their pre-vision to a power we call presentiment,—an inexplicable power, but a real one,—which our passions find accommodating, ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... that we cannot understand the real Paracelsus without reference to the occult sciences so largely cultivated in his day, as also to the mental atmosphere which produced them; and he quotes in illustration a passage from the writings of that Bishop of Spanheim who was the instructor of Paracelsus, and who appears as such in the poem. ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... forward into the love-scene itself—the scene in which the miracle of love is solemnized and celebrated. I thought that of all miracles, the miracle which had occurred that night, and was even then occurring, might be counted among the most wondrous. What occult forces, what secret influences of soul on soul, what courage on his part, what sublime immodesty and unworldliness on mine had brought it about! In what dreadful disaster would it not end! ... I cared not in that marvellous hectic ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... gloomy Period! quite buried in perplexed, unintelligible, peripatetic Philosophy, and disfigured with romantic Legends, and Gothic Jingle! But, at the Doctor's Appearance, Entities, Quiddities, Sympathies, Antipathies, occult Qualities, substantial Forms, metaphysical Degrees, Categories, and all this unideal wordy Stuff, vanished; and were succeeded by a clear, concise Method of Reasoning, and sound, useful, and experimental Philosophy. Greek, Hebrew, ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... essay, DR. F. HARTMANN, an enlightened author of the Theosophical and Occult school, presents the mystic or Oriental view of man, in an interesting manner, deducing therefrom a philosophy of the healing art. My readers will no doubt be interested in his exposition, and, as the ancient doctrine differs materially from the results ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... to the point of brilliance in the application of mathematics to such practical matters as finance and real life, had never academically been anything but a hopeless dunce, while Helen, who had penetrated so far into the upper occult that the mind shuddered to follow, was notoriously incapable of making her personal accounts balance within fifty per cent. It was an understood situation that always ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... 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 task ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... green wood; the cat's eyes gleamed like olivines, but of course Pearl knew from the way he rubbed his head against her shoulder as she sat on the lounge beside him, and from the way he blinked at her—he knew, having no doubt in some occult cat-way, listened in on the phone! There was no mistaking his swaggering air of importance—he was in on it! and gave much credit to himself for ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... by the wonderful happenings recorded in history. He loved to read of those mighty events which had been foretold, and often brooded upon these subjects. His early convictions upon occult matters led him to read all books tending' to strengthen ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... he went to chapel, and oddly enough, Mr. Maydig, who took a certain interest in occult matters, preached about "things that are not lawful." Mr. Fotheringay was not a regular chapelgoer, but the system of assertive scepticism, to which I have already alluded, was now very much shaken. The tenor of the sermon threw an entirely new light on these novel gifts, and he suddenly ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... him the monumental solution of the problem 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 ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... goods as well as money to his customers. He provided young spendthrifts with snuff-boxes and pins and jewels and pictures and cigars, and of a very doubtful quality those cigars and jewels and pictures were. Their display at a police-office, the discovery of his occult profession, and the exposure of the major's property, which he had appropriated, indeed, rather than stolen—would not have added to the reputation of Mr. Morgan. He looked a piteous ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... independent, that its essential existence is 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
... back. Can you wait till then, or shall I cook you something now?" Upon my thanking her and saying I would wait, she relapsed into silence, but still keeping her eyes on me. I was growing nervous under this phlegmatic inspection, and idly investing it with some occult and sinister significance, when she ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... one of those laws of occult force, the power of which we feel while we are totally ignorant of its rules, we fix upon the noonday as the time for some of our chief ...
— Breakfasts and Teas - Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions • Paul Pierce
... I conclude as follows: If there is a form of Christianity now in the world which is accused of gross superstition, of borrowing its rites and customs from the heathen, and of ascribing to forms and ceremonies an occult virtue; a religion which is considered to burden and enslave the mind by its requisitions, to address itself to the weak-minded and ignorant, to be supported by sophistry and imposture, and to contradict reason and exalt mere ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... his chair and paced the floor, one hand clasped to his forehead, his small grey eyes carrying a dream-look as though he were seeking an occult enlightenment; then he sat down wearily, and spoke as if interpreting something that had ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... done admirably. For, depend upon it, she, too, had her trepidations, her white nights, her occult battles over Hugh Van Orden. Also, she was a pretty girl—if you care for brunettes—and accomplished. She was versed in I forget how many foreign languages, both Continental and dead, and could discourse sensibly in any one of them. She was perfectly reasonable, ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... presumed, had some occult means of discovering from inside who was drawing near her fateful quarters, or else she had the simpler methods more usually employed by mortals, of looking to see. At all events, as Stamfordham came towards ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... with medicines and instruments. The books formed a queer collection. There were medical works, philosophical works, histories, novels, most of them French, and other volumes of a sort that I imagine are generally kept under lock and key; also some that had to do with occult matters. There was even a Bible. I opened it thoughtlessly, half in idle curiosity, to see whether it was ever used, only to replace it in haste. For at the very page that my eye fell on, I remember it was one of my favourite chapters in Isaiah, was a stamp in violet ink marked H. ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... perhaps scarcely necessary to say that I use the term Mystic, as applied to the larger portion of this volume, in its technical sense to signify my own initiation into some of the more occult phases of metropolitan existence. It is only to the Spiritualistic, or concluding portion of my work, that the word applies in its ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... for me to say whether or not I made a promise to Gordon Orme, or to say whether or not things mediaeval or occult belong with us to-day. Neither do I expect many to believe the strange truth about Gordon Orme. I only say it is hard to deny those about ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... excepting Rosendo, had any adequate appreciation of the girl's real nature. To the stagnant wits of Simiti she was one of them, but with singular characteristics which caused the more superstitious and less intelligent to look upon her as an uncanny creature, possessed of occult powers. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... The amount of occult symbolism in this section is enormous, and the key of it is the name of the letter I, which is IVD, Yod. This is a trinity of letters, and their numerical value is I 10, V 6, D 4, total 20, equivalent to double I; but for reasons given in ...
— Hebrew Literature
... Bettina Vanderpoel had lived vividly, and in the midst of a self-created atmosphere of action from her first hour. It was not possible for her to be one of the horde of mere spectators. Wheresoever she moved there was some occult stirring of the mental, and even physical, air. Her pulses beat too strongly, her blood ran too fast to allow of inaction of mind or body. When, in passing through the village, she had seen the broken windows and the hanging ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and shaking his fingers he washed his whole hand in the river along which the boat was quietly gliding in midstream, not moved by any occult intelligence or invisible enchanter, but simply by the current, just ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... green railings, and dark casements, and wasteful finery of shops, and feeble coxcombry of club-houses, it is well; promote the building of more like them. But if they never taught you any thing, and never made you happier as you passed beneath them, do not think they have any mysterious goodness of occult sublimity. Have done with the wretched affectation, the futile barbarism, of pretending to enjoy; for, as surely as you know that the meadow grass, meshed with fairy rings, is better than the wood pavement cut into hexagons; and as surely as you know the fresh winds and sunshine ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... about this was that there were but very few in whose hands the experiment would work, and hence the water discoverer was a person of some repute. I never myself witnessed the performance, but it was of common occurrence. [Footnote: The reader will remember the occult operations of Dousterswivel in the seventeenth chapter of Scott's Antiquary. "In truth, the German was now got to a little copse- thicket at some distance from the ruins, where he affected busily to search for such a wand as should suit the purpose of his ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... 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, Charles ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... population is resolved into what might be termed, in the parlance of the place, a committee of the whole on "calling." This etiquette rules the wives of important functionaries with a rod of iron. By some occult method of reasoning they have reached the conclusion that their husbands' popularity, and consequent lease of power, depend upon their own faithful performance of what is considered to be social duty, and they devote themselves to it with a zeal worthy of a better cause. On certain days of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... 'Thus far, and no farther!' To oppose this force or make any personal effort to rebel against it, is no part of my faith,—therefore at such moments I had always yielded instantly and obediently as I yielded now. I was not allowed to fathom the occult source of my happiness, but the happiness remained,—and when I retired to rest it was with more than ordinary gratitude that I said my usual brief prayer:—For the day that is past, I thank Thee, O God my Father! For the night that has come, I thank Thee! ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... No Master may leave our humanity while that which He started as a human school is still existing upon earth. Some have passed away, and would no longer be spoken of as Masters—the name given to Them in the occult world is different—but Those who have passed away have passed away because Their religions are dead: the Masters of ancient Egypt, of ancient Chaldea, have gone from this earth into the mighty company of Those who no ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... reason, Mr. Samuel had decided to accept her claim; and that for some reason equally occult he meant to give the clergyman no choice but to ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the pencil seem to write of itself in answer to expressed (or meditated) questions. At a wealthy mansion in South Kensington, for instance, I saw two charming young Italian ladies, sisters, covering rapidly sheet after sheet with the abstrusest essays on occult subjects, given to them to write upon inspirationally; and the chief wonder was (as a learned friend by me well observed) where the knowledge came from, so seemingly infused into two unscientific young girls. Afterwards the said learned friend ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... could do no less than ask Senator Ratcliffe to take her in to dinner, which he did without delay. Either this, or the champagne, or some occult influence, had an extraordinary effect upon him. He appeared ten years younger than usual; his face was illuminated; his eyes glowed; he seemed bent on proving his kinship to the immortal Webster by rivalling his convivial ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... and the two essays on Alchemy, have appeared in The Journal of the Alchemical Society. In others I have utilised material I have contributed to The Occult Review, to the editor of which journal my thanks are due for permission so to do. I have also to express my gratitude to the Rev. A. H. COLLINS, and others to be referred to in due course, for permission here to reproduce illustrations of which they are the copyright holders. I have ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... he continued to utter these words, until 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 and all ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... having searched for him, they returned, ashamed and bereft of all perception, as in a dream. And then, O thou conqueror of hostile cities, the Muni Tarkshya, addressed them, saying, "Ye princes, can this be the Brahmana of your killing? This Brahmana, endowed with occult gifts from spiritual exercises, is, indeed, my son!" Seeing that Rishi, O lord of the earth, they were struck with bewilderment. And they said, "What a marvel! How hath the dead come to life again? Is it the power of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... consolation by vague quotation was to Sister Hiler, there was an occult sympathy in the tone in which this was offered that lifted her for an instant out of her narrower self. She raised her eyes to his. The personal abstraction of the devotee had no place in the deep dark eyes that were lifted from the cradle to hers with a sad, discriminating, ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... 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 without much reflection that anything of the ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... counties. I was afraid she would soon begin to call the roll of their names from memory, so I rescued her and took her home. I suppose we must have an air of intelligence which successfully masks our colossal ignorance of occult facts and defunct dates, because they rely on us to inform them off-hand concerning everything social, political, historical, sacred and profane, spirituous and spiritual, from the protoplasm of the cliff-dwellers ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... then he was to examine No. 2, and to give certain instructions as to its further use. Balzac asked his mother to touch the flannels only with paper, so as not to interfere with their effluvia. This belief of his in magnetism of an occult kind was an inheritance. His mother, it has already been said, was a mystic. Her books of this doctrine comprised more than a hundred volumes of Saint-Martin, Swedenborg, Madame Guyon, Jacob Boehm, ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... 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 ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... the green border on the flag. He was the head of a great House of Straits Arabs, but as loyal a subject of the complex British Empire as you could find east of the Suez Canal. World politics did not trouble him at all, but he had a great occult power amongst his ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... the opera refined and extended the illusion that she had been transported out of the world by some occult agency. The wonderful creature that had taken her up out of her abandoned misery before the sordid shop-shutter appeared now in a fairy costume glittering with jewels. And the gnomes, the monsters and goblins appearing about her were all fabulous ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... made in this little book come from my own memories of early school life; and my own experience since of the methods used in Occult training has shown me how much happier boys' lives might be made than they usually are. I have myself experienced both the right way of teaching and the wrong way, and therefore I want to help others ...
— Education as Service • J. Krishnamurti
... 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 ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... two didactic poets, both writing on alchymy, the chemistry of that day, and neither displaying a spark of genius. These are John Norton and George Ripley, both renowned for learning and knowledge of their beloved occult sciences. Their poems, that by Norton, entitled 'The Ordinal,' and that by Ripley, entitled 'The Compound of Alchemie,' are dry and rugged treatises, done into indifferent verse. One rather fine fancy occurs ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... domain of the Sunday magazine editor covers all that may be rare and curious or novel in the arts and sciences, in music and verse, in religion and the occult, on the stage and in sport. Achievements and controversies are ever culminating in these diverse fields, and the men and women actors therein make admirable subjects for his pages. Provided the editor has at his disposal skilled writers who have the fine arts ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... the scene. He was not only troubled, he was seriously embarrassed. The hint thrown out by his little brother about the Koshare had struck him; for it led to the inference that the child had knowledge of secret arts and occult practices of which even he, Okoya, although on the verge of manhood, had never received any intimation. Far more yet than this knowledge, which Shyuote might have obtained through mere accident, the hint at unpleasant relations between Okoya and ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... been written, and perhaps justly, of Lincoln's presentiments. It is not exceptional, it is common in all rural communities to multiply and magnify signs. The commonest occurrences are invested with an occult meaning. Seeing the new moon over the right shoulder or over the left shoulder, the howling of a dog at night, the chance assemblage of thirteen persons, the spilling of salt,—these and a thousand other things are taken to be signs of ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... true of all. A sense of uneasiness pervaded a portion of the advance line. Possibly there had been too much noise in the woods in front, possibly that occult sense, which tells us of the proximity of another, warned them of the near approach of a hostile army. Some of the officers noticed that the woods beyond the pickets seemed to be full of Rebel cavalry. General Prentiss was infected with this uneasiness, and at daylight on Sunday ...
— "Shiloh" as Seen by a Private Soldier - With Some Personal Reminiscences • Warren Olney
... could only keep secrets, I might turn out something.' said Mrs. Coningsby. 'I am the depositary of so much that is occult-joys, sorrows, plots, and scrapes; but I always tell Harry, and he always betrays me. Well, you must guess ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... might not be ordained by the inscrutable wisdom of Divine Providence that the Indians should perish before the advance of the Spaniards. If this were true, then his life had been wasted in a vain conflict with the occult forces that govern the destiny ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... may be obliged to admit, in strict confidence between himself and his mirror, that he is not at all handsome, nevertheless he is certain that he has some occult influence over that strange, mystifying, and ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... of people, as a pomegranate is full of seeds—was positive that something had happened of importance, or no less positive that something of importance was going to happen, or that something of importance was actually happening. In some occult manner it had leaked out that a number of the youths of Florence were absent from their dwellings. It gradually became known that all those that were thus absent were members of the same party, and that party ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... said the vicar, "the world in which we live is full of mystery, full of shadows. We cannot understand the occult forces that everywhere exist, we cannot read the mystic writing which is everywhere appearing on the lives of men. Before I went to college I was a firm believer in many things which I have since discredited. Once ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... 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,
... much more amused by some gipsies, who were anxious to show their skill in the occult science. Upon the morning after our arrival, Miss E., who was always the first upon the alert, accepted the escort of a gentleman, who conducted her to a neighbouring shop; while making some purchases, a gipsy came and seated herself opposite, and by way of showing her skill, remarked that ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... objects which affect us in the same way. This I will show in the next Prop. I am aware that certain authors, who were the first to introduce these terms "sympathy" and "antipathy," wished to signify thereby some occult qualities in things; nevertheless I think we may be permitted to use the same terms to ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... to haf you aggompany me to my rooms," said the professor, "vere I shouldt esdeem it a brifiliche to bresent you to my daughter, and show you some dests in occult phenomena. As the shief ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... carry off their three bottles, at need, with as steady a gait as any of their forefathers. It is not so very long since the three-bottle heroes sank finally under the table. It may be (at least, I should be glad if it were true) that there was an occult sympathy between our temperance-reform, now somewhat in abeyance, and the almost simultaneous disappearance of hard-drinking among the respectable classes in England. I remember a middle-aged gentleman telling me (in illustration of the very slight importance ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... final submergence of the Western Empire under the barbarians, and the universal ruin which marked the close of the fifth century. This was the temporal side of affairs. On the spiritual, we have the silent occult growth of the early Church, the conversion of Constantine, the tremendous conflict of hostile sects, the heresy of Arius, the final triumph of Athanasius, the spread of monasticism, the extinction of paganism. Antiquity has ended, ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... all this morning." And one minister of religion moved quite sharply in his chair when I told him (as he understood it) that I had to run upstairs and do what was wrong, but should be down again in a minute. Exactly of what occult vice they silently accused me I cannot conjecture, but I know of what I accuse myself; and that is, of having written a very shapeless and inadequate book, and one quite unworthy to be dedicated to you. As far as literature goes, this book is what ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... 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 ...
— James B. Eads • Louis How
... purpose and my ken, An ancient bard of simple mind. You, Sweet, his Mistress, Wife, and Muse, Were you for mortal woman meant? Your praises give a hundred clues To mythological intent! And, severing thus the truth from trope, In you the Commentators see Outlines occult of abstract scope, A future for philosophy! Your arm's on mine! these are the meads In which we pass our living days; There Avon runs, now hid with reeds, Now brightly brimming pebbly bays; Those are our children's songs that come With bells ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... Early Romances. Early Music. Spanish Romances. Italian Romances. Dantesque Literature. Cromwell Literature. Civil War and Commonwealth tracts. Editions of the Imitatio Christi. Editions of the Pilgrim's Progress. Occult Literature. Folk-lore. Tobacco. Educational books. Caricatures in book form. ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... regarded as in some occult manner, which as yet has baffled detection, influencing the perfection of sporidia[P] In Rhytisma, found on the leaves of maple and willow, black pitchy spots at first appear, which contain within them a golden pulp, in ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... requested me to build her a new kitchen. The house erected by us, when we first came to live upon the vineyard, contained a very conveniently arranged kitchen; but for some occult reason my wife wanted a kitchen in the back yard, apart from the dwelling-house, after the usual Southern fashion. Of course I ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... species of witchcraft.[83] Five puppets had been provided: three, representing enemies (the queen being one of the number), had their arms hanging down; the other two, representing persons whose favor was desired, had them raised aloft. With certain cabalistic words and occult rites the puppets were next secretly hidden beneath an altar whereon the mass was celebrated, and the mysterious "sacrifice" was believed to complete the efficacy of the charm. It was no new superstition ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... honorific term mikag['e], applied to divinities and emperors, which signifies "august aspect," "sacred presence," etc.... No literal rendering can suggest the effect, in the fifth line, of the latter reading. Kag['e] signifies "shadow," "aspect," and "power"—especially occult power; the honorific prefix mi, attached to names and attributes of divinities, may ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... several 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 ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... 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, ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... joining Giannotto with her in marriage. Madam Beritola, by reason of the words she had heard from Currado, began to consider Giannotto and some remembrance of the boyish lineaments of her son's countenance being by occult virtue awakened in her, without awaiting farther explanation, she ran, open-armed, to cast herself upon his neck, nor did overabounding emotion and maternal joy suffer her to say a word; nay, they ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... quickness and the perseverance he always had when he wished a thing very much, he made himself a complete master of this occult science before he left school, two or three years later: it took me seven years—beginning when I was four! It does equally well for French or English, and it played an important part in Barty's career. ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... outrage. "I am but an instrument. I can only follow the dictates of my instinct. I cannot get away from the traditions of the tribe to which I belong. For two years now I have been a wanderer on the face of the earth; I have been in many strange cities and seen many strange things; with the occult science that I inherited from my ancestors, the Aztecs, I have earned my daily bread. I am what some call a medium, some call a conjurer, some call a charlatan and a quack. It is all the same what they call me, so long ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... 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 his consideration was ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... because there the worship of the sun had its chief centre and its most sacred shrines. It was the seat of the most ancient university in the world, to which youthful students came from all parts of the world, to learn the occult wisdom which the priests of On alone could teach. Thales, Solon, Eudoxus, Pythagoras, and Plato, all studied there, perhaps Moses too. It was also the birthplace of the sacred literature of Egypt, where were written on papyrus ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... Street).—The truth is, Mr. Johnson has some occult disorder that I cannot understand; Jebb and Bromfield fancy it is water between the heart and pericardium—I do not think it is that, but I do not know what it is. He apprehends no danger himself, and he knows more of the matter ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... 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 • Frederick Marryat
... 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 ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... the belly the plaster of bread, the stomach cerate, or bread dipped in hot wine; or take oil of mastich, quinces, mint, wormwood, each half an ounce; of nutmegs by expression, half a drachm; chemical oil of mint, three drops. Coral hath an occult property to prevent vomiting, and is therefore hung about ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... folk who had suffered from their incantations gradually recovered, excepting such as had been afflicted with twitches and aches, which, however, assumed the less alarming aspects of rheumatism, ciatics, and lumbagos; and the good people of New England, abandoning the study of the occult sciences, turned their attention to the more profitable hocus pocus of trade, and soon became expert in the legerdemain art of turning a penny. Still, however, a tinge of the old leaven is discernible, even unto this day, in their characters; witches occasionally start up among ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... "For whose sake resurrection is given to the body. He is the Father of all Light-Sparks," The Propator and Autopator would seem to represent different aspects of this claim. "Gnosis" was not the possession of a body of secret Doctrine in the sense of having a number of formal propositions containing occult information, but a vital knowledge of the processes of "Regeneration" ...
— The Gnosis of the Light • F. Lamplugh
... RARE BOOKS. Just published, a small Catalogue of old Books: will be forwarded on receipt of a postage stamp; or various Catalogues containing numerous Works on the Occult Sciences, Facetiae, &c. may be had on application, or by forwarding six postage stamps, to ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 6. Saturday, December 8, 1849 • Various
... He knew how resolutely she refused to see his worst side, and he reflected with philosophy half bitter and half contemptuous, that no woman ever lived who could wholly outgrow the feeling that to believe or to disbelieve a thing must in some occult way affect its truth. At least she had fulfilled all the unspoken promises, so much more important than vows put into words could be, with which she had married him. A remorseful feeling came over his mind, and ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... it can be placed on a table with a stand under it, and a back screen of black velvet or dark material. The latter materially assists by cutting off side lights and reflections. Steady gazing in complete silence is absolutely necessary, for unlike other occult phenomena, the distraction the attention of primary (ordinary) consciousness is a great disadvantage. Success depends chiefly upon idiosyncrasy or faculty in the gazers, for "Seers" are very often men and women of imperfect education, in fact they seem "born rather ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... begun life with a single-minded devotion to the science of experimental chemistry, very surprising in a young and handsome man with a brilliant future before him. A profound knowledge of the occult sciences has persuaded the Baron that it is possible to solve the famous problem called the "Philosopher's Stone." His own pecuniary resources have long since been exhausted by his costly experiments. His sister has next supplied him with the small fortune at her disposal: reserving only the ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... the stage could carry off their three bottles, at need, with as steady a gait as any of their forefathers. It is not so very long since the three-bottle heroes sank finally under the table. It may be (at least, I should be glad if it were true) that there was an occult sympathy between our temperance-reform, now somewhat in abeyance, and the almost simultaneous disappearance of hard-drinking among the respectable classes in England. I remember a middle-aged gentleman telling me (in illustration of the very slight importance attached to breaches of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... she ought to have anticipated actually came to pass. England first discovered the occult negotiations of d'Aubigny at Versailles, and, unwilling that the Princess des Ursins should bestow anything upon France, she changed her tone, and became almost a defaulter to her. A Valentian gentleman, Clemente Generoso, says Duclos, still copying textually from Fitz-Maurice, blamed Lord ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... the tower is a well, completely covered over. This, it is said, was done by a former dean, on the supposition that the well, or the water, in some occult fashion, affected the music in ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. King Eley
... 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 of their ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... there was 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 ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... make the pencil seem to write of itself in answer to expressed (or meditated) questions. At a wealthy mansion in South Kensington, for instance, I saw two charming young Italian ladies, sisters, covering rapidly sheet after sheet with the abstrusest essays on occult subjects, given to them to write upon inspirationally; and the chief wonder was (as a learned friend by me well observed) where the knowledge came from, so seemingly infused into two unscientific young girls. Afterwards the said learned friend tried Planchette with me, and we were considerably ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... was sauntering, mournful and dejected, through the bazar, I espied a learned man who cried out, 'If any one has lost his money by theft or otherwise, my knowledge of the occult sciences enables me to recover the same, but on condition that I receive one fourth of the amount.' When I heard this seasonable proclamation, I immediately approached the man of science, and stated to him my sad condition ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... proposes to give us an accurate picture of life, must carefully eschew any concatenation of events which might seem exceptional. His aim is not to tell a story to amuse us, or to appeal to our feelings, but to compel us to reflect, and to understand the occult and deeper meaning of events. By dint of seeing and meditating he has come to regard the world, facts, men, and things in a way peculiar to himself, which is the outcome of the sum total of his studious observation. It is this ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... occupation of ambitious men who played an occult but important part in all those national risings, religious disturbances, and also in the organized piratical movements on a large scale which, during the first half of the last century, affected the fate of more than one native dynasty and, for a few years at least, seriously endangered ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... weather conditions were perfectly adjusted to meet certain occult exactions he had come to require, Yancy could be induced to go into the woods and there labor with his ax. But as he pointed out to Hannibal, a poor man's capital was his health, and he being a poor man it ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... 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 ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... endeavor to evade the occult meaning of the words, however. In the wearily dreamy manner which, when first he had seen her, had aroused Soames' respectful interest, she raised her thin hand to her hair, slowly pressing it back from her brow, and directed her big eyes ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... of Madame Virubova, the favorite lady-in-waiting of the czarina. With the credulity of a superstitious woman of her class, the czarina was a patroness of many occult cults and had a firm belief in the influence of invisible spirits. Rasputin was presented to her by the lady-in-waiting as an occult healer and a person of great mystic powers. Immediately he was asked to show his powers on the young czarevitch, Alexis, heir to the throne, who ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... into medicinal use. That some of the indigenous plants had therapeutic properties was often an accidental discovery, leading in the next place to experiment and observation. Cornelius Agrippa, in his book on occult philosophy, states that mankind has learned the use of many remedies from animals. It has even been suggested that the use of the enema was discovered by observing a long-beaked bird drawing up water into its beak, and injecting ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... doing no less. Bettina Vanderpoel had lived vividly, and in the midst of a self-created atmosphere of action from her first hour. It was not possible for her to be one of the horde of mere spectators. Wheresoever she moved there was some occult stirring of the mental, and even physical, air. Her pulses beat too strongly, her blood ran too fast to allow of inaction of mind or body. When, in passing through the village, she had seen the broken windows and the hanging palings of the ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... neighbouring department of the Eure, or at least into the great and busy arrondissement of Bernay, which gave the Monarchist candidate in September 1889 the tremendous majority of 5,550 votes in a total poll of 12,772. Possibly, too, there may be some occult relation between this remarkable result and the presence in this arrondissement of one of the most distinguished of living Frenchmen, and one of the most outspoken champions of the Constitutional Monarchy. An able man with a mind of his own, and ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... of the owner's study Lucretia stood forth triumphant; neither the Chestnut nor anything else in the race could beat her. And Jockey McKay—Porter raised his eyes involuntarily, seeking for some occult refutation of the implied dishonesty of the boy he had trusted. He found himself gazing straight into the small shifty eyes of Lucretia's midget rider, and such a hungry, wolfish look of mingled cunning and cupidity was there that Porter almost shuddered. ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... with pancakes. The pancake bell is still rung in many places, and for some occult reason it is the season for some wild football games in the streets and lanes of several towns and villages. At St. Ives on the Monday there is a grand hurling match, which resembles a Rugby football contest without the kicking of the ball, which is about the size of a cricket-ball, ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... only half an hour past daylight, and the dewdrops were still glistening on the grass and shining on the tree-tops. It seemed as if some occult influences were at work, and that the men were conscious of the fact that the atmosphere was laden with tragedy, for instead of laughter and merry ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... "Leo Grammont, the greatest lion-tamer who ever lived, once told me that a man in love with a woman could not control lions; that when a man falls in love he loses that intangible, mysterious quality—call it mesmerism or whatever you like—the occult force that dominates beasts. And he said that the lions knew it, that they perceived it sometimes even before the man himself was aware that ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... 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 ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... The occult quality in the air did not depart with the coming of night, though the winds no longer alternated, the warm blasts ceasing to blow, while the cold came steadily and with increasing fierceness. Yet it was warm and close in the cave, and the ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... said, in astonishment. "Sara Lloyd, I mean, but I was dreaming, Sara dear. What is it?" and she sat up not a little disturbed, for Sara's name alone sufficed to arouse the latent fear of the "hysbis" or occult, always ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... of one of those laws of occult force, the power of which we feel while we are totally ignorant of its rules, we fix upon the noonday as the time for some of ...
— Breakfasts and Teas - Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions • Paul Pierce
... an Aristotle was not ashamed to be beholden to them for scientific data. They were good observers of astronomical phenomena, careful recorders of such observations, and mathematicians of no small repute. Unfortunately, they mixed with their really scientific studies those occult pursuits which, in ages and countries where the limits of true science are not known, are always apt to seduce students from the right path, having attractions against which few men are proof, so long as it is believed that they ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... themselves as double; 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 ignorant of our ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... the second effect of thought, the creation of a definite form. All students of the occult are acquainted with the idea of the elemental essence, that strange half-intelligent life which surrounds us in all directions, vivifying the matter of the mental and astral planes. This matter thus animated ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... 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 left ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... religious aspect of the kingship, the temporal power being committed to one man and the spiritual to another. Meanwhile the magicians, who may be repressed but cannot be extirpated by the predominance of religion, still addict themselves to their old occult arts in preference to the newer ritual of sacrifice and prayer; and in time the more sagacious of their number perceive the fallacy of magic and hit upon a more effectual mode of manipulating the forces of nature for the good of man; ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... money like pigs in mud. Till it scem'd to have entered into his blood By some occult projection: And his cheeks instead of a healthy hue, As yellow as any guinea grew, Making the common phrase seem true, About a ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... neglected, to mislead the authorities, for witchcraft and the practice of magic arts were under the penalty of death. But the fittings of the roofless centre-chamber in which she was wont to perform her incantations and divinations argued no small outlay. On the walls were hangings with occult figures; the pillars were painted with weird and grewsome pictures; crucibles and cauldrons of various sizes were simmering over braziers on little altars; on the shelves and tables stood cups, phials, and vases, a wheel on which a wryneck hopped up and down, wax images ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... in the latter half of the thirteenth century; was a student of the "occult sciences," and also skilled in theology and medicine. He is referred to by Walter Scott as the "wondrous ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... mikag['e], applied to divinities and emperors, which signifies "august aspect," "sacred presence," etc.... No literal rendering can suggest the effect, in the fifth line, of the latter reading. Kag['e] signifies "shadow," "aspect," and "power"—especially occult power; the honorific prefix mi, attached to names and attributes of divinities, ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... to chapel, and oddly enough, Mr. Maydig, who took a certain interest in occult matters, preached about "things that are not lawful." Mr. Fotheringay was not a regular chapel goer, but the system of assertive scepticism, to which I have already alluded, was now very much shaken. The tenor of the sermon threw an entirely new light on these novel gifts, and he suddenly ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... 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 a half-hidden symbolism therein—gold ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... 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 ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... for some reason to keep me alive, one wishing me to do so and so, and the other to do the opposite; that I was not a boy like other boys, but a creature separate, special, marked for—something. Already I had notions, touches of mood, passing instincts, as occult and primitive, I verily believe, as those of the first man that stepped; so that such Biblical expressions as 'The Lord spake to So-and-so, saying' have hardly ever suggested any question in my mind as to how the Voice was heard: I did not find it so very difficult to comprehend that originally ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... "facts" is, 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, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... art stirs the sense. Probably the Greek myth of Orpheus and his lute was not a myth after all; perhaps Orpheus had mastered the occult knowledge of this great power. Surely it would be worth some learned scientist's while to investigate from a psychological point of view how it is, and why it is, that certain chords cause certain emotions, and give base or ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... us this 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 should at once be removed to ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... not search for any occult meaning in the lines, nor did they convey anything special to her; but they remained with her for the rest of the day, haunting her, in among her other thoughts, and forcing themselves upon her attention with the irritating persistency ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... concerned him was the occult tie between him and Miss Roots. Up to the day fixed for his departure he was drawn by an irresistible fascination to Miss Roots. His manner to her became marked by an extreme gentleness and sympathy. Of course ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... influence. The Mordva, for instance, are infinitely less conservative than the Tchuvash. This I have often noticed, and my impression has been confirmed by men who have had more opportunities of observation. For the present we must attribute this to some occult ethnological peculiarity, but future investigations may some day supply a more satisfactory explanation. Already I have obtained some facts which appear to throw light on the subject. The Tchuvash have certain customs ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... storing immense quantities of our home manufactures. This they must have done upon some abstruse but utterly false calculation of augmented demand from abroad, making no allowance for change of season, foreign fluctuation, or any other of the occult causes which influence the markets of the world. The result, as is well known, was most disastrous. Trade on a sudden grew slack. The capitalists, in alarm, threw open the whole of their accumulated stock at greatly depreciated prices. There was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... some occult reason (which I have entirely forgotten) I trusted fervently that a Hungarian or Polish name might be given after the satisfactory "Yes" had been spelt out, but, alas! nothing of the ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... 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 of their precepts. For the pure conception of duty, unmixed ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... 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
... of the new photography to brain study. The relation of the new rays to thought rays is being eagerly discussed in what may be called the non-exact circles and journals; and all that numerous group of inquirers into the occult, the believers in clairvoyance, spiritualism, telepathy, and kindred orders of alleged phenomena, are confident of finding in the new force long-sought facts in proof of their claims. Professor Neusser in Vienna has photographed gallstones in the liver of one patient (the stone showing snow-white ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... doubts and reproaches, or the infant's gums, or the working of his own conscience,—he felt that a man with a teething baby has no right to cultivate the occult. For quite a long period, a whole fortnight, indeed, Morris steadily refrained from any attempt to fulfil his dangerous ambition to "pierce the curtain of thick night." Only he read and re-read Stella's diary—that secret, ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... were once conversing. The one scoffed at innate ideas, instinctive principles, and occult causes: the other was a believer in natural gifts, and an active fabricator of suppositions. Suggest but the slightest hint and he would erect a hypothesis which no argument, at least none that he would listen to, could overthrow. So convinced was he of the force of intuitive powers, and natural ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... 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 of Mr. Jaggers, ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... love-scene itself—the scene in which the miracle of love is solemnized and celebrated. I thought that of all miracles, the miracle which had occurred that night, and was even then occurring, might be counted among the most wondrous. What occult forces, what secret influences of soul on soul, what courage on his part, what sublime immodesty and unworldliness on mine had brought it about! In what dreadful disaster would it not end! ... I cared not in that marvellous hectic hour how ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... my jungle beach to attract and hold attention was not only direct and sensory,—through sight and sound and scent,—but often indirect, seemingly by occult means. Time after time, on an impulse, I followed some casual line of thought and action, and found myself at last on or near the beach, on a lead that eventually would take me to the ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... the present day, is the object of these pages. Not a few books have been written against Spiritualism; but most of them endeavor to account for it on the ground of human jugglery and imposture, or on natural principles, the discovery of a new and heretofore occult force in nature, etc., from which great things may be expected in the future. But rarely has any one discussed it from the standpoint of prophecy, and the testimony of the Scriptures, the only point of view, as we believe, from which its true origin, nature, ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... The truth is that an incredulous Western world puts no faith in Mahatmas. To it a Mahatma is a kind of spiritual Mrs. Harris, giving an address in Thibet at which no letters are delivered. Either, it says, there is no such person, or he is a fraudulent scamp with no greater occult powers—well, than ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... automobilist entered the room. He was tall and wore evening dress of perfect cut and accurate taste. A Vandyke beard of glossy, golden brown, rather long and wavy hair, smoothly parted, and large, magnetic, orientally occult eyes gave him a most impressive and striking appearance. If you can conceive a Russian Grand Duke in a Rajah's throne-room advancing to greet a visiting Emperor, you will gather something of the majesty of his manner. But Thomas ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... softly spoken words, and John walked forward, but he could not forget how singularly the empty loom had appealed to him on that last morning he had walked through the mill with Greenwood. There are strange coincidences and links in events of which we know nothing at all—occult, untraceable altogether, material, yet having distinct influences not over matter but over some one ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... those abstract entities which it is the first business of the positive philosophy to discard. He speaks of man, of his organization, of his thought, but not, scientifically, of his mind. This entity, this occult cause, belongs to the metaphysic stage of theorizing. "There is no place," he cries, "for this illusory psychology, the last transformation of theology!"—though, by the way, so far as a belief in this abstract entity of mind is concerned, the metaphysic condition of our ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... of the head, and somehow or another the elephant understands what a jab in a particular place means and obeys cheerfully like the great, good-natured beast that he is. I have never been able to understand the system. Elephant driving is an occult science. ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... man 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 a chronicle. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... you to teach you to frame, and strengthen you to obey, just laws of trade, there is no hope left for you. No political constitution can ennoble knaves; no privileges can assist them; no possessions enrich them. Their gains are occult curses; comfortless loss their truest blessing; failure and pain Nature's only mercy to them. Look to it, therefore, first that you get some wholesome honesty for the foundation of all things. Without the resolution in your hearts to do good work, so long as your right hands have motion ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... 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 peculiar to the writing-masters of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... prevent it, and now is the time for you to apply to yourself your magnetic maxims. Esperance is one of those creatures who are only born once in a hundred years or so; some come as preservers, like Joan of Arc; others serve as instruments of vengeance of some occult power" (Sardou was an ardent believer in the occult). "Your child is a force of nature, and nothing can prevent her destiny. The fact that you have seen her brilliant development in spite of the grey environment of her first sixteen years, should convince ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... as we rode on, feeling for some occult reason very angry with the Man of Wrath. "And her wretched husband doesn't care a rap, and will probably beat her to-night if his supper isn't right. What nonsense it is to talk about the equality of the sexes when the women ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... the commentators, the love of God for the congregation of Israel; it relates the history of the Jews from the Exodus to the Messiah; it is a consolation to afflicted Israel; it is an occult history; it represents the union of the divine soul with the earthly body, or of the material with the active intellect; it is the conversation of Solomon and Wisdom; it describes the love of Christ to his Church; it is ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... finding certain beliefs prevalent among the people, it imbibed them, and thus gained by accretion until its bulk, both of beliefs and of disciples, was in the inverse ratio of its purity. Even to-day, the occult theosophy of "Isis Unveiled," and of the school of writers such as Blavatsky, Olcott, etc., seems to be a perfectly logical product of the Northern Buddhisms, and may be called one of them; yet it is simply a repetition of what took place centuries ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... was aware of it now as if it were a voice shouting outside a house, shouting passionate verities in a hot sunlight, a voice that cries while people talk insincerely in a darkened room and pretend not to hear. Its shouting now did in some occult manner convey a protest that Mr. Manning would on no account do, though he was tall and dark and handsome and kind, and thirty-five and adequately prosperous, and all that a husband should be. But there was, it insisted, no mobility in his face, no movement, nothing about him ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... signified he mounted his horse, and, at the head of his guards, met the excited crowd and ordered them to quit the precincts of the palace, or he would put them out by force. The abashed priest [182] thereupon withdrew with his companions, but from that day the occult power of the friars was put in motion to bring about the recall of General Blanco. In the meantime Rizal had been detained in the Spanish cruiser Castilla lying in the bay. Thence he was transferred to the mail-steamer Isla de Panay bound to Barcelona. He carried with him ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... in the gloaming by a window, her hands clasped over her head, a smile parting her lips, her eyes haunting in the witchery of their expression. By some occult power her glance fell unconsciously on him; and he beheld, with mingled amazement and speculation, a rosy hue overspread her face and throat; her hands went swiftly to her face as if she would hide something it might reveal, and she passed quickly ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... life and his name which is truly surprising; often some remote but very real correlation is revealed. Our globe is round; everything is linked to everything else. Some day perhaps we shall revert to the occult sciences. ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... was greatly interested in the performances of the spiritualists, trance mediums, and other persons pretending to supernatural powers. How far he believed in this occult science can now only be conjectured, but he was not a man to be easily played upon. He thought at least that there was more in it than was dreamed of by philosophers. When the Longfellow party was at Florence in April, 1869, Prince George of Hanover, ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... application of the occult, or hidden principles and forces of the Universe, or, in its more ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... 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
... head and fixed upon Parsifal her prayerful wet eyes. Either from his recent contemplation of the flowery lea, or some occult association of her personality with the past, the flowers of Klingsor's garden come into his mind. "I saw them wither who had smiled on me. May they not also be hungering for redemption now?... Your ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... parents, but were a band of robust, active youngsters unburdened with brains, excepting Ptolemy of soup plate fame. Not that he betrayed any tendencies toward a learned line, but he was possessed of an occult, uncanny, wizard-like wisdom that was disconcerting. His contemplative eyes seemed to search my soul and ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... easy to test a man on the Indian frontier, and Winn had had his eye on Lionel Drummond for two years. He was a cool-headed, reliable boy, and in some occult and wholly unexpressed way Winn was conscious that he was strongly drawn to him. Winn offered him the job, and even consented, when he was on leave, to visit the Drummonds and talk the matter over with the boy's parents. It was then that he discovered ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... that I noticed any particular manifestation. I was entirely too much taken up by the smell to observe the occult. Say, what's eating you, anyway, Court? Such foolishness isn't like you. You ought to cut it out. You know a thing like this can get on your nerves if you let it, just like anything else, and make you a monomaniac. You ought to ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... the force of death, against which there is no Panacea otherwise produced in Gardens. Moreover, the most wise GOD doth not reveal his Gifts of Solomon promiscuously to all Mortals. They indeed seem strange to them, when they behold a Creature, from the occult Magnetick potency incited in it self, deduced into art by its own like; as for Example: In Iron is a Magnetick, ingenited, potential virtue from the Magnet: a Magnetick virtue in Gold from Mercury: a Magnetick virtue in Silver from Venus, or Copper: and ...
— The Golden Calf, Which the World Adores, and Desires • John Frederick Helvetius
... embrace all classes and creeds to the forgetfulness of past wrongs, animosities and deep divisions. It seemed to have got into their minds that the appearance of the Irish Reform Association covered some occult plot between Lord Dunraven, Mr Wyndham, Sir Antony MacDonnell and Mr O'Brien. Mr Davitt declared that "No party or leader can consent to accept the Dunraven substitute without betraying a national trust." Others of lesser note denounced ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... his people. They are to maintain such an attitude towards him as will enable them to receive the li. In the family, he is the father; in the state, he is the king. In very truth, this is the Doctrine of the Golden Age, and proof of the profound occult wisdom of Confucius: even the (comparatively) little of it that was ever made practical lifted China to the grand height she has held. It is hinted at in the Bhagavad-Gita:—"whatsoever is practised by the most excellent men"; again, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... 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
... intangible vapours condensed into solids; from colourless liquids gaudy precipitates were suddenly called into existence; flames were disengaged without any adequate cause; explosions took place spontaneously. So much that was unexpected and unaccountable justified the title of "the occult science," "the black art." From being isolated marvels unconnected with one another, these facts had been united. The Chaldee notions of a soul of the world, and of indwelling spirits, had furnished ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... 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, ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... over the heads 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 ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... the question sprang at him, making his eyes, as he felt, half-start from his head, as they had done, at the top of the house, before the sign of the other door. If he had left that one open, hadn't he left this one closed, and wasn't he now in most immediate presence of some inconceivable occult activity? It was as sharp, the question, as a knife in his side, but the answer hung fire still and seemed to lose itself in the vague darkness to which the thin admitted dawn, glimmering archwise over the whole outer door, made a semicircular margin, a cold ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... sir," was the immediate reply. "Phrenology was my earliest love. Since then I have studied in the East; I have spent many years in a monastery in China. I have gratified in every way my natural love of the occult. I represent today those people of advanced thought who have traveled, even in spirit, for ever such a little distance across the line which divides the Seen from the Unseen, the ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... care whether the region they propose to search has been scientifically tested and thought to contain gold. They adhere to the miner's adage, "Gold is where you find it"; and they seem to have some occult power of divination for they have uncovered fabulous fortunes in regions which, like Cripple Creek, had been declared "barren of gold." Yet, as the old settlers say, "Prospectors never get anything out of their finds." Having struck it rich, they take to the trail again, to search ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... is true, free from his entanglement, in itself an enormous relief, but the freedom was of a conditional nature. Belle had threatened trouble in the most decisive tones should he attempt to carry out his secret purpose of marrying Ida, which she had not been slow to divine. For some occult reason, at least to him it seemed occult, the idea of this alliance was peculiarly distasteful to her, though no doubt the true explanation was that she believed, and not inaccurately, that in order to bring it about he was bent upon deserting ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... Bonaparty—Nappoleon, you know. And 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
... 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 ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... desert, does the beginner pass the excruciating interval of his apprenticeship? We have all heard people learning the piano, the fiddle, and the cornet; but the young of the penny whistler (like that of the salmon) is occult from observation; he is never heard until proficient; and providence (perhaps alarmed by the works of Mr Mallock) defends human hearing from his first attempts upon the ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... pursuance of his stern duties, reveals to the scorn of future ages some of the occult practices which discredit the march of light in the ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... the course he should take in order to make good a robbery and punish the offender. I say that you are led, in that case, to your conclusion by exactly the same train of reasoning as that which a man of science pursues when he is endeavouring to discover the origin and laws of the most occult phenomena. The process is, and always must be, the same; and precisely the same mode of reasoning was employed by Newton and Laplace in their endeavours to discover and define the causes of the movements of the heavenly bodies, as you, with your own common sense, ...
— The Method By Which The Causes Of The Present And Past Conditions Of Organic Nature Are To Be Discovered.—The Origination Of Living Beings • Thomas H. Huxley
... would be clear that some man had pocketed a shilling)—and as contrary to all Natural History as that twenty-seven tailors should make either more men or fewer than the cube root of that number. What is the occult law of the Constable press, which compels it into these three-headed births, might be difficult to explain: Mr. Kant himself[2] with all his subtlety could never make up his mind why no man thinks of presenting a lady with a service of 23 cups and saucers, ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... for the man's rare gift of silence had won him a certain reputation for deep, occult knowledge which I could not wholly ignore. "It will bring me the sight of ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... category blocks "sites providing information on or promoting illegal or questionable access to or use of communications equipment and/or software." SmartFilter offers the following categories: Anonymizers/Translators; Art & Culture; Chat; Criminal Skills; Cults/Occult; Dating; Drugs; Entertainment; Extreme/Obscene/Violence; Gambling; Games; General News; Hate Speech; Humor; Investing; Job Search; Lifestyle; Mature; MP3 Sites; Nudity; On-line Sales; Personal Pages; Politics, Opinion & Religion; Portal ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
... those that will pertinaciously hold the contrary opinion, let them be accounted abusers, predestinators, impostors, and seducers of the people. It is very true that there are found in some gallant and stately books, worthy of high estimation, certain occult and hid properties; in the number of which are reckoned Whippot, Orlando Furioso, Robert the Devil, Fierabras, William without Fear, Huon of Bordeaux, Monteville, and Matabrune: but they are not comparable to that which we speak of, and the world hath well known by infallible ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... caravan;" and now, through some crack-brained theory of contagion, the caravan was to be barred out. We never really believed that the town-fathers had taken their highhanded measure on account of scarlet fever. We saw in it some occult political significance, and referred ominously to the butter we carried there on Saturdays, and to the possibility that, if they cast us off, a separation might affect them far more seriously than it would us. But to our loud-voiced delight, the caravan, finding ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... 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 of ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... voice was drowned in a piercing scream, as Estrella came to herself and understood. Always the rawhide had possessed for her an occult fascination and repulsion. She had never been able to touch it without a shudder, and yet she had always been drawn to experiment with it. The terror of her doom had now added to it for her all the vague and premonitory terrors which ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... a native of Naples, famous for skill in the occult sciences. He wrote a book on Physiognomy, seeking to trace in the human face resemblances to animals, and to ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... blandum meditata laborem Basia lasciv Cypria Diva manu. Ambrosiae succos occult temperat arte, Fragransque infuso nectare tingit opus. Sufficit et partem mellis, quod subdolus olim Non impune favis surripuisset Amor. Decussos violae foliis admiscet odores Et spolia aestivis plurima rapta rosis. Addit et illecebras et mille et mille lepores, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... 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 own, so it is the great misfortune of enthusiasm to be soon blinded ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... limitations of this story, I can assure my readers that it is largely based on truth. Many of the incidents, including the dual personality phenomena, were suggested by actual happenings known to me. The doctor who accomplishes cures by occult methods is a friend of mine, who lives and practises in New York City. Seraphine, the medium, is also a real person. The episode that is explained by waves of terror passing from one apartment to another and separately affecting three unsuspecting ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... imports and exports. The common man plainly has no slightest material interest in the nationality or the place of residence of those who conduct this traffic; though all the facts go to say that in some puzzle-headed way the common man commonly persuades himself that it does make some occult sort of difference to him; so that he is commonly willing to pay something substantial toward subsidising businessmen of his own nationality, in the way of a protective ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... are not 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 thrown back on our own ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Beauregard, with his handful of regular troops and a contingent of boys and old men, could accomplish what General Johnston, with a well equipped army of veterans, failed in, was simply a blind faith in the occult influence of Providence. ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... 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 it as an infallible guide in traveling across the mighty plains of ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... clearness whatever is too remote to be discovered by the rest of mankind, but are totally blind to all that lies immediately before them. They discover in every passage some secret meaning, some remote allusion, some artful allegory, or some occult imitation, which no other reader ever suspected; but they have no perception of the cogency of arguments, the force of pathetick sentiments, the various colours of diction, or the flowery embellishments of fancy; of all that engages the attention of others ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... neighbour. Examining the cosmogonies of the 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
... that, to produce effect at the moment, there is hardly any crime so dark or desperate of which, in the excitement of thus acting upon the imaginations of others, he would not have hinted that he had been guilty; and it has sometimes occurred to me that the occult cause of his lady's separation from him, round which herself and her legal adviser have thrown such formidable mystery, may have been nothing more, after all, than some imposture of this kind, some dimly hinted confession of undefined horrors, which, though intended ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... of priests of Celtic day, Ancient Druids, holding sway By smattering of Occult law And man's eternal sense of awe. Stonehenge They used Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain Reputed Prehistoric Fane; Note each megalithic boulder; No Monument in ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... of life, must carefully eschew any concatenation of events which might seem exceptional. His aim is not to tell a story to amuse us, or to appeal to our feelings, but to compel us to reflect, and to understand the occult and deeper meaning of events. By dint of seeing and meditating he has come to regard the world, facts, men, and things in a way peculiar to himself, which is the outcome of the sum total of his studious observation. It is this personal ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... of his stern duties, reveals to the scorn of future ages some of the occult practices which discredit the march of ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... transported far from that world of which my newly born desires were furiously besieging the entrance. Nevertheless I answered 'Yes' when I wished to say 'No,' though all within me protested against the violence done to my soul by my tongue. Some occult power seemed to force the words from my throat against my will. Thus it is, perhaps, that so many young girls walk to the altar firmly resolved to refuse in a startling manner the husband imposed upon them, and that yet not one ever fulfils her intention. Thus it is, doubtless, ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... It was Sunday and the whole ship was curiously quiet. But as I lay in my little shelter I was presently disturbed by Pondicherry (that was what he was called by everyone), who came where I was to fetch away a plate full of some occult mystery which he had secreted there. He nodded to me brightly, and then for the first time it occurred to me that if he came from his nameplace he might know a little French. I knew remarkably little ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... M. d'Aiglemont was modest. Instinctively he felt that his wife, young though she was, was his superior; and out of this involuntary respect there grew an occult power which the Marquise was obliged to wield in spite of all her efforts to shake off the burden. She became her husband's adviser, the director of his actions and his fortunes. It was an unnatural position; she ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... of peace, so must the true 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 ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... consequences. I argue from this fact that the gang numbers persons of respectability—outward, of course, and merely outward, as the robbery proves. But I argue, second, that we must have been observed at Franchard itself by some occult observer, and dogged throughout the day with a skill and patience that I venture to qualify as consummate. No ordinary man, no occasional criminal, would have shown himself capable of this combination. We have in our neighbourhood, it is far from improbable, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... concealed their indifference in religious matters than they did their diversity of political opinions, royalist doubtless, but of divers grades; that no one was more tolerant than the King; finally, that if an occult power, the existence of which I do not deny, but the force of which has been exaggerated, acted on the mind of the King, it had not its seat in ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... must take its place among things to be investigated, the evidence is too convincing to be pooh-poohed. Science and philosophy are now boldly entering the dim regions of the occult in search of its laws; on the battlefield Tommy Atkins is already there thinking over weird things and he comes to conclusions, finding the lights by which ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... followed the course of the spark along the thread, but in this case, no! I sprang unexpectedly, without warning, without even having suspected that I was so carefully sapped. Nor was it a clap of thunder, unless I admit that a clap of thunder can, be occult and silent, strange and gentle. And this again would be untrue, for sudden disorder of the soul almost always follows a misfortune or a crime, an act of ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... indicate, unless it be that kind and degree of pride in human skill, which seems scarce compatible with reverential dependence upon the power above? Try to rid my mind of it as I may, yet still these chemical practitioners with their tinctures, and fumes, and braziers, and occult incantations, seem to me like Pharaoh's vain sorcerers, trying to beat down the will of heaven. Day and night, in all charity, I intercede for them, that heaven may not, in its own language, be provoked to anger with their inventions; may not take vengeance of their inventions. A thousand ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... by this affirmation of absolute reality independent of the conditions of the process of knowing? Do we mean to ... affirm, in language savouring strongly of scholasticism, that beneath the phenomena which we call subjective there is an occult substratum Mind, and beneath the phenomena which we call objective there is an occult substratum Matter? Our conclusion cannot be stated in any such form.... Our conclusion is simply this, that no theory of phenomena, ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... helpful chiefly to the better state when we can act without reference to them. And there's no measuring the poisoned influence of that notion of future reward on the mind of Christian Europe, in the early ages. Half the monastic system rose out of that, acting on the occult pride and ambition of good people (as the other half of it came of their follies and misfortunes). There is always a considerable quantity of pride, to begin with, in what is called "giving one's self to God." As if one had ever ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... mystic philosophy, amongst whom we must reckon many of the medical practitioners, endeavoured to explain the phenomenon, by referring to the secret power of sympathy, which even Bacon did not venture to dispute. To this occult agency was imputed the cure of wounds, effected by applying salves and powders, not to the wound itself, but to the sword or dagger, by which it had been inflicted; a course of treatment, which, wonderful as it may at first ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... other, and then giving it up, what shall we do? shall we say the foreigner beats him by his blood, or by the force and power of his tendons? or can we, without reproaching our own reason and understanding, impute that to be the effect of occult and hidden causes in the one of these instances and not in the other? both of which are demonstrated with certainty, and reduced to facts by the knowledge of anatomy ...
— A Dissertation on Horses • William Osmer
... Personality Chastity Zorastrianism on the Septenary Constitution of Man Brahmanism on the Sevenfold Principle in Man The Septenary Principle in Esotericism Personal and Impersonal God Prakriti and Parusha Morality and Pantheism Occult Study Some Inquiries Suggested by Mr. Sinnett's "Esoteric Buddhism" Sakya Muni's Place in History Inscriptions Discovered by General A. Cunningham Discrimination of Spirit and Not-Spirit Was Writing Known ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... the superstitious awe with which it was regarded by the early explorers of the South Seas. To them, as well as to those who listened in rapt wonder to their tales, the "Coal-sack'' seemed to possess some occult connection with the mystic "Cross.'' In the eyes of the sailors it was not a vacancy so much as a sable reality in the sky, and as, shuddering, they stared at it, they piously crossed themselves. It was another of the magical wonders of the unknown ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... 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 their ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... appointment. Such petty intrigues die in the upper sphere of great self-interests. If a few words in favor of Baudoyer were obtained by the importunity of the curate of Saint-Paul's and the Abbe Gaudron, they would have been withdrawn immediately at a suggestion from the minister. The occult power of the Congregation of Jesus (admissible certainly as confronting the bold society of the "Doctrine," entitled "Help yourself and heaven will help you,") was formidable only through the imaginary force conferred on ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates
... years. He then returned to Madaura; but soon growing discontented determined to indulge his restless craving for travel and acquiring knowledge. He therefore set out for Egypt, the nurse of all occult wisdom, and the centre of attraction for all curious spirits. On his way he fell ill and was detained at Oea, where he met a rich widow named Pudentilla, whom in course of time he married. Her two sons had not been averse to the match, indeed Apuleius says they ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... How dulce 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 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... are necessary for the purpose of exhibiting distinctly some phases in the life of this dangerous and implacable woman who, by her affiliation with the Order of Jesuits, had acquired an occult and formidable power. For there is something even more menacing than a Jesuit: it is a Jesuits; and, when one has seen certain circles, it becomes evident that there exist, unhappily, many of those affiliated, who, more or less, uniformly dress (for the lay members of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... alone, in the centre of the ballroom—with outstretched arms revolving in an occult, weird, dreamy, mystic, druidical, cabalistic circle. They now for the first time perceived the meaning of those strange wands which appeared to be attached to the many folds of her diaphanous skirts and involved her in a fleecy, ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... to the blaze that crackles near, I turn a tired and pensive ear, And Nature conquering bids me sigh For love's soft accents whispering nigh; O teach me, on that heavenly road, That leads to Truth's occult abode, To wrap my soul in dreams sublime, Till earth and care no more be mine. Let bless'd Philosophy impart Her soothing measures to my heart; And while with Plato's ravish'd ears I list the music of the spheres, Or on the mystic symbols pore, That hide ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... wounds must not be omitted. A doctor is, with them, a person of importance and esteem, but his province seems rather to charm away occult diseases than to act the surgeon's part, which, as a subordinate science, is exercised indiscriminately. Their excellent habit of body*, the effect of drinking water only, speedily heals wounds without ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... droll to see how this "meek and gentle" fellow met blackbird impudence. If one of the sable gentry came down too near a dove, the latter gave a little hop and rustled his feathers, but did not move one step away. For some occult reason the blackbird seemed to respect this mild protest, and did ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... the most exalted positions and the most esoteric degrees being a remarkable feature of this great secret society (413. 33). Indeed, Aztec tradition, like that of Honduras, speaks of an ancient sorceress, mother of the occult sciences, and some of the legends of the Nagualists trace much of their art to a mighty enchantress of ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... that there is magic in a mirror, a weird atmosphere imprisoned, between the metal and the glass, borrowing the occult powers of the gulf of space, and returning to us our own wraith and apparition at any hour of the day or night when we smite it with a ray of light,—reaching with its searching power into the dark places where we have hidden ourselves, and seizing and projecting them in open sight? ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... compensation of evils in an equitable administration. In the present instance there can be no compensation, for the acts of injustice are committed against different classes. It is the trading classes which enjoy the means, from the occult nature of their gains, of evading by fallacious returns the income tax. The honest and honourable pay it to the last farthing: it is the dishonest who escape. The persons upon whom the levying the income tax in its present form operates with the most cruel severity are the professional ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... The 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
... prescribed by Newton; it bears every mark of a veil woven by philosophical conceit, to hide the ignorance of philosophers even from themselves. They borrow the threads of its texture from the anthropomorphism of the vulgar. Words have been used by sophists for the same purposes, from the occult qualities of the peripatetics to the effluvium of Boyle and the crinities or nebulae of Herschel. God is represented as infinite, eternal, incomprehensible; He is contained under every predicate in non that the logic of ignorance could fabricate. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... floor, divided in two by an entresol, were the living rooms and office of Monsieur Ernest de la Briere, an occult and powerful personage who must be described in a few words, for he well deserves the parenthesis. This young man held, during the whole time that this particular administration lasted, the position of private ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... Nature and set at defiance her most secret and subtle laws. Such, however, is the natural outcropping of an ignorant teaching and vulgar prejudice that feeds and clothes the charlatan and ascribes to savage and uncultured races an occult familiarity with pathological, physiological, and remedial effect unattainable by the most advanced sciences; and whereby the Negro, Malay, Hindoo, South Sea Islander, and red man are granted an innate ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... Lawrence (still designated as the "Baroness" by her stepdaughter and by old acquaintances) to whom Preston owed the constant reminder of his dependence upon the purse of his father-in- law. In those subtle, occult ways known only to a jealous and designing nature, the Baroness found it possible to make Preston's life a torture, without revealing her weapons of warfare to her husband; indeed, without allowing him to even smell the powder, ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... feature. Even those who never in the racing of horses felt any concern could not help but take in the outcome of this one a curious interest. The audacity of the prophecy, the very absurdity of it, presupposing, as it did, occult power, was in itself amusing. And when the curtain rose on the Suburban it was evident that to thousands what the Man Who Could Not Lose had foretold was a serious ...
— The Man Who Could Not Lose • Richard Harding Davis
... 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 part in the development ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... this inquiry. But she had promised to go. Moreover, there was a horrid fascination at times in becoming instrumental in throwing such possible light on her own character as would reveal her to be something greater in the occult world than ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... no slightest material interest in the nationality or the place of residence of those who conduct this traffic; though all the facts go to say that in some puzzle-headed way the common man commonly persuades himself that it does make some occult sort of difference to him; so that he is commonly willing to pay something substantial toward subsidising businessmen of his own nationality, in the way of a ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... its mysteries, with its uncertain spellings and capital-icings such as belong to even the Eighteenth Century's early part, with its quaint phrases and sly observations (all the time sticking strictly close to business), it has a literary character, as well as me occult, ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... said Sir Lucien coolly, "we are men of the world—and we do not look for consistency in womenfolk. Mrs. Irvin has decided to consult a palmist or a hypnotist or some such occult authority before dining with you this evening. Doubtless she seeks to learn if the play to which you propose to take her is an ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... 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 Don Vincente Ribiera, a man of culture and of unblemished character, invested ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... Milbanke that was) is, I believe, in London with her father. A Mrs. C. (now a kind of housekeeper and spy of Lady N.'s) who, in her better days, was a washerwoman, is supposed to be—by the learned—very much the occult cause ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... melioration of the tyranny of the medicine-man seems to have been found in rivalry amongst members of the craft itself. Oppressed beyond endurance by one practitioner, allegiance would be transferred to some new claimant of occult powers, and the breaking of the monopoly of magic would be followed by a temporary lightening of the burdens. Some of the most lurid of Alaskan legends deal with the thaumaturgic contests of rival medicine-men, and one judges that sleight of hand and even ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... 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 ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... one evening when his watch was done sauntered Con. His professional curiosity had been stirred by these occult bartenders at whose bar none drank, and who daily drew upon Kenealy's store of liquors to follow their ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... other productions of their profound parents, but were a band of robust, active youngsters unburdened with brains, excepting Ptolemy of soup plate fame. Not that he betrayed any tendencies toward a learned line, but he was possessed of an occult, uncanny, wizard-like wisdom that was disconcerting. His contemplative eyes seemed to search my soul and read ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... sisters; none so fair. He whom I wed receives my sceptre rare. Wisdom occult my mother will impart. Granting his slightest wish, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... imagination alone is in good condition, but the intellect is defective, we have statesmen, lawgivers, magicians, dreamers of true dreams and occult artists. These men are so confused sometimes by visions and reveries that they think they have the gift ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... now?" Upon my thanking her and saying I would wait, she relapsed into silence, but still keeping her eyes on me. I was growing nervous under this phlegmatic inspection, and idly investing it with some occult and sinister significance, when she broke ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... and looked at her in dumb wonder, as if she were some uncanny creature, possessed of occult powers. Then the significance of her words trickled through the portals ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... its occult abode In all things scatter'd from great Beauty's hand; And evermore the deepest words of God Are yet the easiest ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... flower, and fish, 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
... adherent of the occult, vowed that he had been visited by some eternal being of the spirit ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... this mystery, Giacomo Leopardi was the echo in the solitude of his thought and his pain. His skepticism announced the dissolution of this theologico-metaphysical world, and inaugurated the reign of the arid True, of the Real. His songs are the most profound and occult voices of that laborious transition called the nineteenth century. That which has importance is not the brilliant exterior of that century of progress, and it is not without irony that he speaks of the progressive destinies of mankind. That which ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... victor's return, the countess said, she came to advise her, in consideration of what had passed in the chapel before the regent's departure, not to submit herself to the observation of so many eyes. Not suspecting the occult devices which worked in her stepmother's heart, Helen meekly acquiesced, with the reply, "I shall obey." But she inwardly thought, "I, who know the heroism of his soul, need not pageants nor acclamations of the multitude to tell me what he is. He is already too bring for my senses to support, ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... protect them from the force or perfidy of General Bonaparte; without consulting any thing but her own correct judgment, and well-intentioned heart, she contrived to procure, from some being of a superior order, sylph, fairy, magician, or other person skilled in the occult sciences, as many in Naples, as well as elsewhere, positively profess themselves to be, a small association of talismanic characters, fraught with such magical and potential influence, in favour of the possessor, that the slightest glance of this mystic ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... he said. "And now people doubt astrology, which was revered in antiquity. Also in the Middle Ages, when it was almost sacred. For instance, messieurs, look at the portal of Notre Dame. The three doors which archeologists—not initiated into the symbolism of Christianity and the occult—designate by the names of the door of Judgment, the door of the Virgin, and the door of Saint Marcel or Saint Anne, really represent Mysticism, Astrology, and Alchemy, the three great sciences of the Middle Ages. Today you find people ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... 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
... take him completely by surprise. He looked as if he suspected me of some occult medical design on Miss Verinder! "Might I presume to ask," he said, "what my young lady and the medicine-chest have got to do with ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... arose. He was patient in all disputes, yielding in small matters, but he was as the granite rocks of the mountain above him when many matches were at stake. With solemnity he invoked the name of Hoy-lee, the mysterious person who had fixed immutably the tapus of pokaree. He made an occult sign with his thumb against his nose, and that settled it. If any one persisted in challenging this tiki he added his other thumb to the little finger of his first symbol, and said, "Got-am-to-hellee!" As a last recourse, ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... itself, it pierces in upon its own essence, and is resolved into its pervading original; becoming a thing constituent of the all embracing deific; whereby we mortals become part and parcel of the gods; our souls to them as thoughts; and we privy to all things occult, ineffable, and sublime? Then, Yoomy, is thy song nothing worth. Alla Mollolla saith, 'That is no true, vital breath, which leaves no moisture behind.' I mistrust thee, minstrel! that thou hast not yet been impregnated by the arcane mysteries; that thou dost not sufficiently ponder ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... picked his way to his lodgings on the north of the park, he was thinking about Laurie Baxter. That this boy possessed in an unusual degree what he would have called "occult powers" was very evident to him. That these powers involved a certain risk was evident too. He proposed, therefore, to take all reasonable precautions. All the catastrophes he had witnessed in ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... conception of the character and costume of his subject. A writer might, with the same sinister, short-sighted shrewdness, be accused of Heathenism for talking of Flora and Ceres in a poem on the Seasons! What are produced as the exclusive badges and occult proofs of Catholic bigotry, are nothing but the adventitious ornaments and external symbols, the gross and sensible language, in a word, the poetry of Christianity in general. What indeed shews the frivolousness of the whole inference is that Deckar, who is asserted ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... life with a single-minded devotion to the science of experimental chemistry, very surprising in a young and handsome man with a brilliant future before him. A profound knowledge of the occult sciences has persuaded the Baron that it is possible to solve the famous problem called the "Philosopher's Stone." His own pecuniary resources have long since been exhausted by his costly experiments. His sister ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... I had been able to follow, Mrs. Veda Blair's story had dealt mostly with a Professor and Madame Rapport and something she called the "Red Lodge" of the "Temple of the Occult." ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... 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 one of his own if he so pleases. I may mention that Dr. ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... and elephants and camels and fakirs and palm trees. Oh, Jonesville yarn! you never expected to be knit amid seens like this. I can knit and admire scenery first rate, and my blue and white yarn seemed to connect me with Jonesville in some occult way, and then I knew Josiah would need his socks before we ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... the date. He helped me enormously, and I miss him.... Well, the truest charity should be anything but formal, I think, and I saw at a glance that your case was exceptional, and that you also were Occult——" ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... a certain extent salutary; he was conscious of being involved in an affair not altogether reputable, and for many years afterwards he clung bravely to the commonplace, and rejected all occasions of occult investigation. Indeed, on some homeopathic principle, he for some time attended the seances of distinguished mediums, hoping that the clumsy tricks of these gentlemen would make him altogether disgusted with mysticism of every kind, but the remedy, though caustic, was not efficacious. ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... 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 ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... contracts of marriage, and the regularity with which they construct their nests, have in all ages excited the admiration of naturalists; and have always been attributed to the power of instinct, which, like the occult qualities of the antient philosophers, prevented all further enquiry. We shall consider them ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... the multitude of beliefs left in Egypt by degenerate traditions, there were found some which hinted, more or less clearly, at occult truths, and which might have perpetuated or generalised this practice. It was supposed, according to Servius, that the transmigrations[112] began only when the magnetic bond between the soul and its remains had been broken by the complete disintegration ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... the courage of the twins. Even the charms of the gingerbread and their new plaid dresses could scarcely compensate for the terrors of that occult something concerning whose mysteries the minister would ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... and emperors, which signifies "august aspect," "sacred presence," etc.... No literal rendering can suggest the effect, in the fifth line, of the latter reading. Kag['e] signifies "shadow," "aspect," and "power"—especially occult power; the honorific prefix mi, attached to names and attributes of ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... his tongue raised itself to 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 ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... that for some occult reason (which I have entirely forgotten) I trusted fervently that a Hungarian or Polish name might be given after the satisfactory "Yes" had been spelt out, but, alas! nothing ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... looked us over, as if, by same sort of occult intuition of woman, she were reading our souls. Then, instinctively almost, she turned to Kennedy. Kennedy seemed to recognize her need. Norton and I retired, ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... inhabitants of Ireland and Egypt had originally migrated from Atlantis, carrying its language, and ways and customs with them? Moreover, since the Atlanteans were so deeply versed in magic and everything appertaining to the occult, this migration would account for the mysticism that has always been so closely associated with Egypt and Ireland, and for the psychic faculty so strongly observable in the inhabitants of these ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... 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 chemistry and alchemy, were the studies of both Raleigh ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... acquaintance of Madame Virubova, the favorite lady-in-waiting of the czarina. With the credulity of a superstitious woman of her class, the czarina was a patroness of many occult cults and had a firm belief in the influence of invisible spirits. Rasputin was presented to her by the lady-in-waiting as an occult healer and a person of great mystic powers. Immediately he was asked to show his powers on the young czarevitch, Alexis, heir to ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... is, 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 ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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, called ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... other regions, and through which the female population is resolved into what might be termed, in the parlance of the place, a committee of the whole on "calling." This etiquette rules the wives of important functionaries with a rod of iron. By some occult method of reasoning they have reached the conclusion that their husbands' popularity, and consequent lease of power, depend upon their own faithful performance of what is considered to be social duty, and they devote themselves to it with a zeal worthy of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... The interior of the shrine was inlaid with metal work. There were various figures, Buddha being in the centre, and framed "portraits" of Mahatmas Koothoomi and Moria. Each portrait was about seven inches high, and if drawn, as I understood, by astral art, it may be hoped the process will remain occult. Koothoomi, who somewhat resembled an old London portrait I have of Rammohun Roy, holds a small barrel-shaped praying-machine ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... accomplice to secure an "elixir of life" which his own failing strength demands. His mysterious mesmeric or hypnotic influence over Mrs. Fenwick had in former days been marked; and on the basis of this undeniable fact, he has endeavored to show that his own welfare and Mrs. Fenwick's are, in some occult fashion, knit together, and that only by aiding him in some extraordinary experiment can the physician snatch his beloved Lilian from ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... three definite aims: (1) To establish a brotherhood over the world irrespective of race, creed, caste, or sex; (2) to encourage the study of comparative philosophy, religion, and science; and (3) to investigate the occult secrets of nature and the latent possibilities of man. The principal books in exposition of it are, "The Secret Doctrine," "Isis Unveiled," "The Key to Theosophy," by Mme. Blavatsky; "Esoteric Buddhism," "The Occult World," &c., by Sinnett; "The Ancient ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... rather remarkably handsome, when you 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 ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... she uttered those bewildering sweet words, I caught sight of something in her belt, the corner of a little note thrust sidewise into it; but I did not need that indication to tell me that Tullia's fantastic conduct was referable to occult causes. Woman, in my opinion, is the most logical of created beings, the child alone excepted. In both we behold a sublime phenomenon, the unvarying triumph of one dominant, all-excluding thought. ...
— A Prince of Bohemia • Honore de Balzac
... jealous fury which told Irving Francis the story he had been too dull to suspect. The truth, when it came home, smote him like a blow; his hatred for the author, which had been momentarily forgotten—momentarily lost in his admiration of the artist—rose up anew, and he recognized this occult spell which had held him breathless as the thrall of a vital reality, not, after all, the result of inspired acting. Instantly he saw past the make-believe, into the real, and what he saw caused him to utter ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... station they were kept waiting in a pouring rain for something to happen, they knew not what. The R. T. O., a young Imperial officer, blase with his ten months of war in England, had some occult reason for delaying their departure. So, while the night grew every moment wetter and darker, the men sat on their kit-bags or found such shelter as they could in the tiny station, or in the lee of the "goods trains" blocking ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... Incurred the desperate displeasure Of his serene and raging highness: Whether he twitched his most revered And sacred beard, Or had intruded on the shyness Of the seraglio, or let fly An epigram at royalty, None knows: his sin was an occult one, But records tell us that the Sultan, Meaning to terrify he knave, Exclaimed, "'Tis time to stop that breath: Thy doom is sealed, presumptuous slave! Thou stand'st condemned to certain death: Silence, base rebel! no replying! But such is my indulgence ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... all, the light emitted by the 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
... in no hurry to reply. He was busy taking in a variety of pleasant impressions. Notwithstanding the severely cut riding habit and the hard little hat, he decided that he had never looked into a more attractively feminine face. For some occult reason, unconnected, he was sure, with the use of any skin food or face cream, this young woman who had the reputation of living out of doors, winter and summer, had a complexion which, notwithstanding its faint shade of tan, would have passed ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... laws apply to music. No art has a greater and more insinuating influence. The very songs with which the mother sings the baby to sleep have an occult influence which is later revealed and made plain. Such songs, then, should be simple. They may be nothing but improvisations, the mother's mind and heart making music, but they should not be melodramatic songs of the music-hall ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... by some occult magnetic property in this wand that you have exercised so demoniac an influence over a creature so pure as ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... though of a Roman family related to the imperial house of the Theodosiuses. From his childhood he served God in continual watching, fasting, and prayer, in imitation of St. John the Baptist; and for the relief of the necessitous he gave away immense occult alms. The time which was not employed in these charities, he spent in holy retirement and prayer. In the reign of the emperor Marcian, Anatolius the archbishop, offering violence to the saint's humility, ordained him priest. In this new state the saint saw himself ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... This allusion was too occult for Mrs. Graham. She smiled the smile of assent without apprehension, and asked if Flint had been at Bar Harbor this summer. He should have been; it was so pleasant. The young man felt a wild desire to set forth the rival charms of Nepaug, and urge her to ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... him the practice of magic lore. She drew magic circles, saw visions of people in a glass, possessed numerous charms and incantations, and, above all, kept a wonderful magic book. She attempted to find lost money, to tell the future, and to cure disease; indeed, she had a varied repertoire of occult performances. ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... 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 wish her to be ordinary, ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... see in Ireland a miraculous and divine history, a life and destiny invisible, lying hid within her visible life. Like that throbbing presence of the night which whispers along the hills, this diviner whisper, this more miraculous and occult power, lurks in our apparent life. From the very gray of her morning, the children of Ireland were preoccupied with the invisible world; it was so in the darkest hours of our oppression and desolation; driven from this world, we took refuge in that; it was not ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... was a well-read man. His Sermons are as full of classical and patristic allusions and pat sayings from the most occult literatures as ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... stage could carry off their three bottles, at need, with as steady a gait as any of their forefathers. It is not so very long since the three-bottle heroes sank finally under the table. It may be (at least, I should be glad if it were true) that there was an occult sympathy between our temperance-reform, now somewhat in abeyance, and the almost simultaneous disappearance of hard-drinking among the respectable classes in England. I remember a middle-aged gentleman ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... opera refined and extended the illusion that she had been transported out of the world by some occult agency. The wonderful creature that had taken her up out of her abandoned misery before the sordid shop-shutter appeared now in a fairy costume glittering with jewels. And the gnomes, the monsters and goblins appearing about her were all fabulous creatures, as the girl herself seemed ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... sightless, like somnambulists. Only mechanically they kept the trail, and why they did so they could not have told. No coherent thoughts passed through their brains. But always the trees, frost-rimed, drifted past like phantoms; always the occult influences of the North loomed large on their horizon like mirages, dwindled in the actuality, but threatened again in the bigness of mystery when they had passed. The North was near, threatening, driving ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... Scotland recalls the fact that an unusual number of eclipses happen to have been visible in that country, and the occult bent natural to the Scottish character has traditionalised a few of them in such terms as the "Black Hour" (an eclipse of 1433), "Black Saturday" (the eclipse of 1598 which has been alluded to above), and "Mirk Monday" (1652). The track of the last-named ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... is too remote to be discovered by the rest of mankind, but are totally blind to all that lies immediately before them. They discover in every passage some secret meaning, some remote allusion, some artful allegory, or some occult imitation, which no other reader ever suspected; but they have no perception of the cogency of arguments, the force of pathetick sentiments, the various colours of diction, or the flowery embellishments of fancy; of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... attendants concerning the stranger. No one could give him any information, excepting that he had been for some time past a casual frequenter of the library; that his reading lay chiefly among works treating of the occult sciences, and that he was particularly curious in his inquiries after Arabian manuscripts. They added, that he never held communication with any one, excepting to ask for particular works; that, after a fit of studious application, he would disappear for several days, ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... the halo of a Moses focusing the hopes of all the peoples of Europe. His reputation for probity, public spirit, and lofty aspirations had won for him the good-will and the anticipatory blessings of war-weary nations. He, too, was a mystic, believed firmly in occult influences, so firmly indeed that he accepted the fitful guidance of an ecstatic lady whose intuition was supposed to transcend the sagacity of professional statesmen. And yet the Holy Alliance was the supreme outcome of his endeavors, as the League of Nations was that of Mr. Wilson's. ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... along their furrows and jagged backs, To the last lonely point where the green mass Arose and sank, heaved slow and forceful. There She shuddered and recoiled. Thus, for a time, Sport-slave of power occult, she came and went, Betwixt the shore and sea alternating, Drawn ever to the greedy lapping lip, Then, terror-stung, driven backward: there it lay, The heartless, cruel, miserable deep, Ambushed in horror, with its glittering ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... keen scent for evil motives underlying simple actions. Thus when she perceived the intimacy which had newly arisen between the Fraeulein and Miss Palliser, she told herself that there must be some occult reason for the fact. Why did those two always walk together? What hidden charm had ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... decided upon, and the building of the Snark began. We named her the Snark because we could not think of any other name- -this information is given for the benefit of those who otherwise might think there is something occult in ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... the practice of magic arts were under the penalty of death. But the fittings of the roofless centre-chamber in which she was wont to perform her incantations and divinations argued no small outlay. On the walls were hangings with occult figures; the pillars were painted with weird and grewsome pictures; crucibles and cauldrons of various sizes were simmering over braziers on little altars; on the shelves and tables stood cups, phials, and vases, a wheel on which a wryneck hopped up and down, wax ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... say, for at that moment Scott joined the group. "Did you speak to me?" he asked of the Colonel, dropping his hand, as if with accidental familiarity, on that gentleman's shoulder. The Colonel, recognizing some occult quality in the touch, and some unknown quantity in the glance of his questioner, contented himself by replying, "No, sir," with dignity. A few rods away, York's conduct was as characteristic and peculiar. "You had a mighty fine chance; why didn't you plump him?" said Jack Hamlin, ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... v. 92. Heliotrope.] The occult properties of this stone are described by Solinus, c. xl, and by Boccaccio, in his humorous tale of Calandrino. Decam. G. ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... enough wind to keep the canvas doing its work in silence. It was Sunday and the whole ship was curiously quiet. But as I lay in my little shelter I was presently disturbed by Pondicherry (that was what he was called by everyone), who came where I was to fetch away a plate full of some occult mystery which he had secreted there. He nodded to me brightly, and then for the first time it occurred to me that if he came from his nameplace he might know a little French. I knew remarkably little myself; I could read it with difficulty. ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... to the very moment when it penetrated our subterraneous laboratories to enlighten our PREPARERS, to establish principles, to create methods and to unveil causes which had remained occult. ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... primate and hierophant," the admission of the female sex to the most exalted positions and the most esoteric degrees being a remarkable feature of this great secret society (413. 33). Indeed, Aztec tradition, like that of Honduras, speaks of an ancient sorceress, mother of the occult sciences, and some of the legends of the Nagualists trace much of their art to a mighty enchantress ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... in it. For an Arab owned her, and a Syed at that. Hence the green border on the flag. He was the head of a great House of Straits Arabs, but as loyal a subject of the complex British Empire as you could find east of the Suez Canal. World politics did not trouble him at all, but he had a great occult power amongst his ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... a man with his beard worn like a collar and with an Italian accent mounted a stone post at the door of a liquor-seller in the Marche Lenoir, and read aloud a singular document, which seemed to emanate from an occult power. Groups formed around him, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... street chaff, but there was cheerful spirit in it, and cheerful spirit has some occult effect upon morbidity. Antony Dart did not smile, but he felt a faint stirring of curiosity, which was, after all, not a bad thing for a man who had not felt ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... which 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 me, and I to them. The waving of the boughs in the storm, is new to me and old. It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. Its effect is like that of a higher thought or a better emotion ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... difficult, even after the most painstaking study of its explanations, to record the phenomenon without astonishment—a perusal of the sonnets of William Lisle Bowles. Deferring, however, for the present any research into the occult operation of this converting agency, it will be enough to note Coleridge's own assurance of its perfect efficacy. He was completely cured for the time of his metaphysical malady, and "well were it for me perhaps," he exclaims, "had I never relapsed into the same mental disease; if I had continued ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... which might happen to anybody and distinguished by their pleasant atmosphere have been Miss COLE's speciality in the past; this time she has, without abating a jot of her pleasantness, added a touch of the occult in the shape of an old black-letter volume which infects everyone who gets possession of it with a mildly insane determination to keep it. An honourable man steals it and a nice woman smacks her baby for holding it, so you can see how really baleful its influence must have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... the middle of the road is characteristic of the genuine tramp. There must be some occult reason for this peculiarity, since in a general way, it is far easier going on the margin. Perhaps it is because he commands a better view of either side, with a regard to the possible onslaught of dogs. There is something about a man with a pack on his back that infuriates the average dog, ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... appointed a committee of Public Safety, with General Grant at its head. There had been a great popular movement to have that gentleman put in supreme command of the army, but the authorities at Washington, for some occult reason, known only to themselves, had offered him a major-general's commission, which he promptly declined. Then he deliberately went to the nearest recruiting-station and tried to enlist as a private; ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... polished, though without increasing its usual brightness. All this was a species of domestic premonition concerning the result of the elections which were about to take place over the whole surface of France. Often things are as spiritually intelligent as men,—an argument in favor of the occult sciences. ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... now Comtesse de Rudolstadt, continues her European tour. She reaches Berlin, and we find her at the Court of Frederick II. We now have Voltaire, La Mettrie, the Sans-Souci suppers, Cagliostro, Saint-Germain and the occult sciences. Frederick II sends Consuelo to prison. There appears to be no reason for this, unless it be that in order to escape she must first have been imprisoned. Some mysterious rescuers take a great interest in Consuelo, and transport her to a strange dwelling, where she ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... listeners, I have little doubt that, to produce effect at the moment, there is hardly any crime so dark or desperate of which, in the excitement of thus acting upon the imaginations of others, he would not have hinted that he had been guilty; and it has sometimes occurred to me that the occult cause of his lady's separation from him, round which herself and her legal adviser have thrown such formidable mystery, may have been nothing more, after all, than some imposture of this kind, some dimly hinted confession of undefined horrors, which, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... second species of divination, which is without express invocation of the demons, belongs that which is practiced by observing certain things done seriously by men in the research of the occult, whether by drawing lots, which is called "geomancy"; or by observing the shapes resulting from molten lead poured into water; or by observing which of several sheets of paper, with or without writing upon them, a person may happen to draw; or by holding out several unequal ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... a lady of much wit, but of no occult pretensions, and wholly ignorant of the Oglethorpes, looked over Westbrook Place, then vacant, with the idea of renting it. On entering it she said, 'I have a feeling that very interesting things have happened ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... not known the child and the girl as he had would have noted all this; but he saw and realized the transformation with a pang—something had gone; the innocence and wonder of the child, and in their place had grown up something to him incomprehensible and occult. ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... laboratory; eating at his dreadful table; snatching an hour's rest occasionally on the floor—he had completed a series of experiments, with results on which he could absolutely rely. He had advanced by one step nearer towards solving that occult problem in brain disease, which had thus far baffled the investigations of medical men throughout the civilised world. If his present rate of progress continued, the lapse of another month might add his name to the names that ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... given by shipwrights to those lines, or occult ribbands, by which the cant-timbers are ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... man, beetle man!" She leaned forward, her eyes deep- lit pools of mirth and mockery and some more occult feeling that he could not interpret. "Would it scare you quite out of your poor, queer wits if I were to HUG you? Don't call for help. I'm not really going to ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the art of making gold, by almost the unanimous consent of the adepts." Dr. Webster says, "The orthography of this word has undergone changes through a mere ignorance of its origin, than which nothing can be more obvious. It is the Arabic kimia, the occult art or science, from kamai, to conceal. This was originally the art or science now called alchemy; the art of converting baser metals into gold." Webster says the correct ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 211, November 12, 1853 • Various
... in astonishment. "Sara Lloyd, I mean, but I was dreaming, Sara dear. What is it?" and she sat up not a little disturbed, for Sara's name alone sufficed to arouse the latent fear of the "hysbis" or occult, always lurking in ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... 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 ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... Cooper at one time amused himself in the study of the so-called occult sciences. Having advocated with apparent enthusiasm a belief in animal magnetism and clairvoyance, he caused public meetings to be held in the old Court House in Cooperstown, where, evening after evening, the ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... to the contagious character of pebrine; some stoutly affirmed it, others as stoutly denied it. But on one point all were agreed. I They believed in the existence of a deleterious medium, rendered epidemic by some occult and mysterious influence, to which was attributed the cause of the disease.' Those acquainted with our medical literature will not fail to observe an instructive analogy here. We have on the one side accomplished writers ascribing ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... aroused my curiosity, for I perceived that 'Ngaga was referring to those strange occult powers with which the witch doctors are credited by the white men who have been thrown into most intimate contact with the natives. I had heard many extraordinary and apparently well-authenticated stories told respecting the alleged power of the nyangas to visualise distant happenings, ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... curiosities from all parts of the world; studies occult and natural sciences; and is at last beatified by electrical glories at a meeting of hermetical philosophers. This poem is elucidated by notes, which point the allusions to the works or ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... has begun life with a single-minded devotion to the science of experimental chemistry, very surprising in a young and handsome man with a brilliant future before him. A profound knowledge of the occult sciences has persuaded the Baron that it is possible to solve the famous problem called the "Philosopher's Stone." His own pecuniary resources have long since been exhausted by his costly experiments. His sister has ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... will happen. In the middle of the nineteenth century, when attention was first called to the solidarity and internal correlations of groups, especially if they were large and genetic, it was believed that occult and far-reaching laws had been discovered. That opinion has long been abandoned. If there are four dice in a box, each having from one to six dots on its faces, the chance of throwing four sixes is just the same as ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... blond, solemn, silent Englishman; Hardenberg, the American, dry of humour, 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
... 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
... so sudden was the assault that my wife, her mother, forgot her, and we have always hitherto supposed, that, my house being burned that same day, she perished in the flames." Catching his words, and seeing that he was advanced in years, the girl inclined to believe him, and impelled by some occult instinct, suffered his embraces, and melting, mingled her tears with his. Bernabuccio forthwith sent for her mother and her sisters and other kinswomen and her brothers, and having shewn her to them all, and told the story, after they had done her great cheer ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... 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 ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... demanded loftily if she ever would have dared to announce to him, her old master, so candidly what she thought of him, as she had done an hour ago, if she had not inhaled the contents of the phial. And Frau Vorkel had to admit that she had been forced by some occult power to utter those disrespectful speeches. She looked with awed wonder, first at her master, then at the little bottle, and suddenly broke out with: "My! My What will be left for the judges to do when everyone can be forced to speak out boldly and disclose ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... has heard 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
... devote themselves to Biblical history, old manuscripts, to the new version, and to the latest theories as to the occult meaning ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... me to build her a new kitchen. The house erected by us, when we first came to live upon the vineyard, contained a very conveniently arranged kitchen; but for some occult reason my wife wanted a kitchen in the back yard, apart from the dwelling-house, after the usual Southern fashion. Of course I had ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... detachment from the tribulations of home. It had made her, fortunately, very pretty—still prettier than usual: it sometimes happened that at moments when Grace was most angry she had a faint sweet smile which might have been drawn from some source of occult consolation. It was perhaps in some degree connected with Peter Sherringham's visit, as to which the girl had not been superstitiously silent. When Grace asked her if she had secret information and if it pointed ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... at the bottom of the business: this it was which had delivered me into the hands of Zikali, Opener-of-Roads, who, as now I am sure, was merely making use of me for his private occult purposes. He desired to consult the distant Oracle, if such a person existed, as to great schemes of his own, and therefore, to attain his end, made use of my secret longings which I had been so foolish as to reveal to him, quite careless of what happened to me in the process. [A bit narrow ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... very strange," Geoffrey said to himself, as he walked away. "I could have sworn that I felt her presence just for one second. It must have been nonsense. This is what comes of occult influences, and that kind of thing. The occult is ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... to talk over the rot with that little white thing down at the Brier Bush," Raymond declared one night to that self of his that stood off on inspection; "what's the harm? She's got the occult bug, and I'm keen about it just now. No one will be the worse for me having the talk—she's all right and that veil of hers leaves us a lot freer to speak out than face to face would." And then Raymond switched on the lights and read certain books that held ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... aristocratic in the country, it was, I think, a matter of pride that no member of it had ever been in trade nor politics, nor suffered any kind of distinction. Mohun was a trifle sentimental, and had in him a singular element of superstition, which led him to the study of all manner of occult subjects, although his sane mental health safeguarded him against fantastic and perilous faiths. He made daring incursions into the realm of the unreal without renouncing his residence in the partly surveyed and charted region of what we ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... or sign; here an occult sign or mark in astrology, another evidence of Dryden's leaning toward that so-called science, for Chaucer makes no such ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... not express what she felt: they rather gave the idea of storing up impressions to be re-acted upon by some interior power. She had a delicate complexion, a great deal of soft, black hair compactly dressed, and a neat figure. Her disposition was dreamy and self-willed; occult studies fascinated her, and she was passionately fond of moonlight. She was simply dressed in a white muslin frock, with a black ribbon around her slim waist; but the ribbon was clasped by a buckle of heavily chased gold, and her fingers ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... abstracted from its effects upon the hearer, may be more rigorously and philosophically considered as a kind of "discordia concors;" a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike. Of wit, thus defined, they have more than enough. The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... be any seriously to question 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; and those exiles themselves, returning from the various centers of fervid ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... 18[60].... I send you a notice of an occultation; the last sentence and the last figures are mine. You and I can never occult, for have we not always helped one another to shine? Do you have Worcester's Dictionary? I read it continually. Did you feast on 'The Marble Faun'? I have a charming letter from Una Hawthorne, herself a poet by nature, all about 'papa's book.' ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... Chasseurs, and commanded by Colonel Lutzow. In Prussia the still vivid memory of the late queen exercised a great influence over the new direction given to its institutions, in which she occupied the place of an occult divinity. During her lifetime she gave to Baron Nostitz a silver chain, which as her gift became the decoration, or we might rather say the rallying signal, of a new society, to which was given the name of the Conederation of Louise. And lastly, M. Lang declared himself the chief ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... whose conversation was a jargon fitting only for lunatics, had proved that they could read my mind with the ease of a telegraph operator taking a message off a wire. That they, further, possessed marvellous, if not miraculous powers, over occult natural forces could hardly be doubted. The net in which I had voluntarily entangled myself was closing around me. An irresistible impulse to fly—to desert Natalie and save myself—came over me. I put this aside presently. It was both unworthy ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... Parliament is not, in their eyes, a servant whom they may appoint to give voice to their own wishes; he is a "gentleman" who, probably from motives of self-interest, comes to them as a sort of quack doctor, with occult remedies, which they may have if they will vote for him, and which might possibly do them good. Hence they hardly look upon the Government as an instrument at all under the control of people like themselves; they view it, rather, as a sort of benevolent tyranny, whose constitution is no concern ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... 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 ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... sense seem to light upon truths which reason feels after without finding. It appears as though a priori reasoning, human nature being the subject, is like a skilful piece of mechanism, carefully and scientifically put together, but which some perverse and occult trifle will not permit to act. This is eminently true of many questions regarding education, and precisely the state of the argument concerning the position and duties of women. The facts of moral and intellectual equality being established, it seems somewhat irrational to condemn women to ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... 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, and with the weather threatening, he openly poured upon ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... Gowdy—no, Miss Hallowell," he said to the office boy. And then he looked sharply at the pert young face for possible signs of secret cynical amusement. He saw none such, but was not convinced. He knew too well how by a sort of occult process the servants, all the subordinates, round a person like himself discover the most intimate secrets, almost get the news before ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... the lives of several—established a salon; but I might have guessed that there was a method in his madness, a law in his success. He hadn't hit it off by a mere fluke. There was an art in it all, and how was the art so hidden? Who indeed if it came to that was the occult artist? Launching this inquiry the other day I had already got hold of the tail of my reply. I was helped by the very wonder of some of the conditions that came back to me—those that used to seem as natural as sunshine in ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... his recorded convictions on those questions which knock for answer at every heart,—on life and death, on love, on wealth and poverty, on the prizes of life and the ways whereby we come at them; on the characters of men, and the influences, occult and open, which affect their fortunes; and on those mysterious and demoniacal powers which defy our science and which yet interweave their malice and their gift in our brightest hours. Who ever read the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... page of Greek; he tried a theme occult,— A message and an errand,—every time the same result! Then Cyrus knew that somehow his machine had missed its aim; For though the works ran smoothly it was always just ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... are due to an occult influence which weighs on the mind of William II, an influence which, while it points the way to action, blinds him to its consequences. The ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... little laugh. She would tell Cutty. The real drums of jeopardy weren't emeralds but the roll of warning that prescience taps upon the spine, the occult sense of impending danger. That was why the Elevated went tumpitum-tump! tumpitum-tump! She would tell Cutty. The ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... surmised that the man who first thus entitled this sort of Ottoman whale, must have read the memoirs of Vidocq, and informed himself what sort of a country-schoolmaster that famous Frenchman was in his younger days, and what was the nature of those occult lessons he inculcated into some of his pupils. The same secludedness and isolation to which the schoolmaster whale betakes himself in his advancing years, is true of all aged Sperm Whales. Almost universally, a lone whale —as a solitary Leviathan ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... closely watched, a number of people arrested, the library of an Anarchist group confiscated, and all meetings made impossible. It goes without saying that, as on various previous occasions, I must needs be held responsible for the act. Evidently the American police credit me with occult powers. I did not know Averbuch; in fact, had never before heard his name, and the only way I could have possibly "conspired" with him was in my astral body. But, then, the police are not concerned with logic or justice. What ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... of occult wisdom—had long since foretold this year as the first of the epoch of regeneration, and ever since the shrill ram's horn had heralded its birth, the souls of Sabbatai Zevi's disciples had been tense for the great moment. Surely it was to announce himself at last that ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... How Smithy, a low Chicago tough, whose only knowledge of a horse had been gained by observation, could so quickly become a trusted member of this desperate gang of cattle-thieves he could not conceive. Was there some occult power about the man—some almost hypnotic influence that passed his crossed eyes and ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... and common, to endeavour its suppression by capital denunciations. Thus one generation of malefactors is commonly cut off, and their successors are frighted into new expedients; the art of thievery is augmented with greater variety of fraud, and subtilized to higher degrees of dexterity, and more occult methods of conveyance. The law then renews the pursuit in the heat of anger, and overtakes the offender again with death. By this practice capital inflictions are multiplied, and crimes, very different in their degrees of enormity, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... garden. A sharp moon was fighting with the flying 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 ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... all of them observed that the water of the jar had 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 ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... rich gold mine in Mexico is known by the picturesque and mysterious name of The Four Fingers. It originally belonged to an Aztec tribe, and its location is known to one surviving descendant—a man possessing wonderful occult power. Should any person unlawfully discover its whereabouts, four of his fingers are mysteriously removed, and one by one returned to him. The appearance of the final fourth betokens his swift and ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... is to so manipulate the laws of nature as to prevent the Emperor outliving the Empress Dowager, and not allow the world to know that you have been trifling with occult forces. He must die a natural death, a death which is above suspicion. He must not die one day after the Empress Dowager as that would create talk. And he ought to die some time before her. The death fuse is one which often ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... beyond Nature, and incapable of scientific verification in the modern sense, and the fabled manifestations of the same. He loses no opportunity of trying to peer behind the curtain, and of seeking—honestly enough—to formulate those various pseudo-sciences, politely called occult, which have now fallen into ridicule and disrepute with all except the charlatan and the dupe, who are always with us. Where he occupies in the De Subtilitate one page in considering those things which lie outside Nature—demons, ghosts, incantations, succubi, ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... might soon have carried him off, if he had not been shot?" There was evidently one jury man who didn't want to waste life, and was willing to stake a general average, as the jury always does in a civil case, deciding not according to the evidence but reaching the verdict by some occult mental process. ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... we cannot understand the real Paracelsus without reference to the occult sciences so largely cultivated in his day, as also to the mental atmosphere which produced them; and he quotes in illustration a passage from the writings of that Bishop of Spanheim who was the instructor of Paracelsus, and who appears as such ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... glass, but a curio of rare and occult value. In it I read the future, the past, and ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... of him, lost in thought, large eyes sober, lips serious that were fashioned for laughter, round little chin firm with some occult resolution. It was not hard to fancy her nerves keyed to a high pitch of courage and determination, nor easy to guess for what reason. Watching always, keenly sensitive to the beauty of each salient line betrayed by the flying lights, Kirkwood's ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... usually that she ought to be slinking in disgrace. She never felt quite sure, in herself, whether she were wrong, or whether the others were wrong. She had not done her lessons: well, she did not see any reason why she should do her lessons, if she did not want to. Was there some occult reason why she should? Were these people, schoolmistresses, representatives of some mystic Right, some Higher Good? They seemed to think so themselves. But she could not for her life see why a woman should ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... For some occult reason the word "cheese" always excites Parliamentary merriment. Mr. GEORGE ROBERTS'S announcement that the Board of Trade had made arrangements by which a quantity of this commodity would be available for public use next week was greeted with the customary laughter. Upon Army requirements, he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... a broad macadamized road, and here were more autos, and more dust, and more racing. Now and then they crossed a trolley or a railroad track, and here was always a warning sign; but Oliver must have had some occult way of knowing that the track was clear, for he never seemed to slow up. Now and then they came to villages, and did reduce speed; but from the pace at which they went through, the villagers could ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... 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 ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... pharmacopoeia, great treasures and rarities among the commoner herbs. There were some strange and pungent odors that roused a dim sense and remembrance of something in the forgotten past. Some of these might once have belonged to sacred and mystic rites, and have had some occult knowledge handed with them down the centuries; but now they pertained only to humble compounds brewed at intervals with molasses or vinegar or spirits in a small caldron on Mrs. Todd's kitchen stove. They were dispensed to suffering neighbors, who usually ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... he writes thus: "Whoever secretly steals another man's goods, if he afterwards discovers his sins by declaration to the priest, his heart being changed, he will cure his wound, giving what he has to the poor." This for occult theft, for which no canonical penance was prescribed. He inculcates the authority of priests of binding and loosing before God, (Serm. do Castig. 746, 747,) and calls St. Peter "prince of the apostolic choir," (Serm. 2, de Sancto ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... electricity. Mr. Bond ushered his visitors inside, closed the door, pressed a button, and immediately they shot aloft, landing ultimately in a kiosk in Count Sutri's garden at the top of the cliff. Feeling as if a magician had used occult means to transport them back to safety, the girls gazed round highly delighted to find themselves out of the cove. Their host, to whom they hastily confided some details of how they had penetrated into his premises, fetched a ladder, and by its aid ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... spread in sequence for perusal. She smiled to herself in 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 oft-widowed ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... other art stirs the sense. Probably the Greek myth of Orpheus and his lute was not a myth after all; perhaps Orpheus had mastered the occult knowledge of this great power. Surely it would be worth some learned scientist's while to investigate from a psychological point of view how it is, and why it is, that certain chords cause certain emotions, and give base or ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... to the loftiest flights of imagination, or to the discovery of means by which the institutions of men in society might be rendered more beneficial and faultless, at that time wasted the midnight oil in endeavouring to trace the occult qualities and virtues of things, to render invisible spirits subject to their command, and to effect those wonders, of which they deemed themselves to have a dim conception, but which more rational views of nature have taught ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... by many writers that the negros had some occult means of diffusing important news among the mass of their people, probably by relays of swift runners who traveled at night, going twenty-five or thirty miles and back before morning. Very astonishing stories are told of things communicated in this way across the ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... could tell us just how the talk drifted to hypnotism and the occult, nor when the current started that way. But one of the reporters who happened to be driven off the street by the rain one night found Henry and David in the office with a homemade planchette doing queer things. They made it tell words in ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
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