"Magian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... astray. And I, therefore, again and again impress upon thee, it is from thine own self, thine own character, thine own habits, that all evil, save that of death, will come. Wear, then, I implore thee, wear in thy memory, as a jewel, the first great maxim of alchymist and magian:—'Search thyself—correct thyself—subdue thyself:' it is only through the lamp of crystal that the ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Smerdis to be put to death. He completed the conquests of his father by adding Egypt to his empire. In a fit of remorse for the murder of his brother he committed suicide, and the empire was usurped by a Magian impostor, called Gaumata, who claimed to be the second son of Cyrus. His reign, however, was short, he being slain by Darius the son of Hystaspes, belonging to another branch of the royal family. Darius was a great general and statesman, who reorganized the empire ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... speedy death. Meanwhile the false Smerdis held the sovereignty. He was suspected by Otanes, a noble whose daughter Phaedyme was married to him. At great personal risk she discovered that the King was without ears, a manifest proof that he was a Magian. Otane thens joined with six other conspirators to put the usurper down. Darius, son of Hystaspes, warned them that their numbers were too large for secrecy, advising immediate action. The two pretenders had meanwhile ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... a crimson sphere, and spiring upward through rays of saffron and orange into a point of white radiance. Tiny and infinitely remote, yet perfect in every part, it pulsated in the enormous vault as if the three jewels in the Magian's breast had mingled and been transformed into a living heart ...
— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke
... they haggled for dignity and honour. And there were wise and learned men from among all peoples; they made speeches, and talked in the public places in praise of their native prophets and gods. The Hindoo praised his Brahma, the Magian shouted about sacred fire, the Semite spoke zealously for his Jehovah, the Egyptian sang the praises of his Osiris, the Greek extolled his Zeus, the Roman called on his Jupiter, and the German spoke in hoarse tones of his Wotan. Magicians and astrologers were among them, and they boasted of ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... learned of the schools Who measure heavenly things by rules, The sceptic, doubter, the logician, Who in all sacred things precision, Would mark the limit, fix the scope, "Art thou the Christ for whom we hope? Art thou a magian, or in thee Has the divine eye power to see?" He answered low to those who came, "Not this, nor this, nor this I claim. More than the yearning of the heart I have no wisdom to impart. I am the voice that cries in him Whose heart is dead, whose eyes ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... that place and divide [their booty], came thither [that night], as of their wont; and they were ten in number and had with them wealth galore, which they were carrying. When they drew near the sepulchre, they heard a noise of blows within it and the captain said, 'This is a Magian whom the angels[FN43] are tormenting.' So they entered [the burial-ground] and when they came over against El Merouzi, he feared lest they should be the officers of the watch come upon him, wherefore he [arose and] fled and ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... and also of Anquetil's historical dissertations. Then, in a series of dissertations of his own, he vindicated the authenticity of the Zend books. Anquetil had already tried to show, in a memoir on Plutarch, that the data of the "Avesta" fully agree with the account of the Magian religion given in the treatise on "Isis and Osiris." Kleuker enlarged the circle of comparison to the whole ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... the illustrious warrior, the opener of the roads of the countries, the subjugator of the rebellious ...[1] he who has overrun the whole Magian world. ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... me, O auspicious King, that when Amjad and As'ad heard this story from Bahram the Magian who had become a Moslem, they marvelled with extreme marvel and thus passed that night; and when the next morning dawned, they mounted and riding to the palace, sought an audience of the King who granted it and received them with high honour. Now as they were sitting together ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... and the latter afterwards lost in the forest. The Kashmiri and Gesta versions correspond exactly in representing the shipman as seizing the lady because her husband could not pay the passage-money: in the Arabian she is entrapped in the ship, owned by a Magian, on the pretext that there is on board a woman in labour; in Sir Isumbras she is forcibly "bought" by the Soudan. She is locked up in a chest by the Magian; sent to rule his country by the Soudan; respectfully treated ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... need not go beyond the testimonies of English antiquaries, from Bede to Camden, that these schools were regarded as the first in Europe. Ireland was equally remarkable for piety. In the Pagan times it was regarded as a sanctuary of the Magian or Druid creed. From the fifth century it became equally illustrious in Christendom. Without going into the disputed question of whether the Irish church was or was not independent of Rome, it is certain that Italy did not send out more apostles from the fifth to the ninth centuries ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... Egyptian OSIRIS, and PHANES, God and Principle of Light; from which, broken by the Sacred Bull of the Japanese, the world emerged; and which the Greeks placed at the feet of BACCHUS TAURI-CORNUS; the Magian Egg of ORMUZD, from which came the Amshaspands and Devs; was divided into two halves, and equally apportioned between the Good and Evil Constellations and Angels. Those of Spring, as for example Aries ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... to their imaginings. When the Magian has done beating his copper drum—(how its mysterious murmur still haunts the echoes of memory!)—when Queen Lab has finished her tremendous conjurations, wonder gives place to laughter, the apotheosis of the flesh to the spirit of comedy. The enchanter ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... throne. Cambyses had slain his brother Bardes, whom Herodotus calls Smerdis. A Magian, Gaumata by name, resembling Bardes in appearance, impersonated the murdered prince. A revolution ensued and, owing to the death of Cambyses by his own hand, Pseudo-Smerdis ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... way to eternity, Of kingdoms that fall, which are dreams not things, And the Kingdom built by the King of kings. Of Him he spake who reigns from the Cross; Of the death which is life, and the life which is loss; How all things were made by the Infant Lord, And the small hand the Magian kings adored. His voice sounded on like a throbbing flood That swells all night from some far-off wood, And when it ended—that wondrous strain ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... turned into their heads and they fell to eating greedily, against their wont. When I saw this, I was confounded and concerned for them, nor was I less anxious about myself, for fear of the naked folk. So I watched them narrowly, and it was not long before I discovered them to be a tribe of Magian cannibals whose King was a Ghul.[FN42] All who came to their country or whoso they caught in their valleys or on their roads they brought to this King and fed them upon that food and anointed them with that oil, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... the Magian, tis not so; I draw my wine for one and all, A cup for this, a score for that, een as ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... wisdom the latter had acquired from the Chaldeans, had nevertheless firmly maintained his independence of thought. He was not an Israelite, nor would he ever wish to become one; but he was not an idolater nor a Magian, nor a follower of Gomata, the half-Indian Brahmin, who had endeavoured to pass himself off as ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... become the wife of a Persian monarch? but what was the law to Cambyses? In his eyes the law was embodied in his own person, and in his opinion three months would be amply sufficient to initiate Nitetis in the Magian mysteries, after which process she ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Theopompus were more or less familiar with Zoroastrian tenets,[5] and allusions to the prophet of ancient Iran are not infrequent in classic writers. But their information concerning him is very scanty and inaccurate. To them Zoroaster is simply the great Magian, more renowned for his magic art than for his religious system. Of the national Iranian legends, glimpses of which we catch in the Avesta (esp. Yt. 19), and which must have existed long before ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... the edification of such as heard. Some of these sayings fell upon my ear, and who was I, to hear them and not speak? Ye may know that this false prophet has made it his aim to bring into one the Magian and Christian superstitions, so that by such incongruous and deadly mixture he might feed the disciples of those two widely sundered religions, retaining, as he foolishly hoped, enough of the faith of each to satisfy all who should ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... first parents fell asleep. The shining face of Moses on the heights of Mount Sinai was the natural result of electricity; the vision of Zachariah was effected by the smoke of the chandeliers in the temple; the Magian kings, with their offerings of myrrh, of gold, and of incense, were three wandering merchants, who brought some glittering tinsel to the Child of Bethlehem; the star which went before them a servant bearing a flambeau; the angels in the ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... divinities; But to the few construct of harmonies, A sudden sun, uplighting the serene High heaven of love; and, through the cloudy screen That 'twixt our souls and truth all wretched lies, Dawning at length, hadst been a love and fear, Worshipped on high from Magian's mountain-crest, And all night long symbolled by lamp-flames clear, Thy sign, a star upon thy people's breast— Where that strange arbitrary token lies Which once did scare the sun in ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... sons, or daughters, or companions, to the supreme God. In the rude idolatry of the Arabs, the crime is manifest and audacious: the Sabians are poorly excused by the preeminence of the first planet, or intelligence, in their celestial hierarchy; and in the Magian system the conflict of the two principles betrays the imperfection of the conqueror. The Christians of the seventh century had insensibly relapsed into a semblance of Paganism: their public and private vows were addressed to the relics and images that disgraced the temples ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... Godhead's voice; And, disenhallowed in its eldest cell The Human Heart—lies mute the Oracle, Save where the low and mystic whispers thrill Some listening spirit more divinely still. There, in the chambers of the inmost heart, There, must the Sage explore the Magian's art; There, seek the long-lost Nature's steps to track, Till, found once more, she gives him Wisdom back! Hast thou—(O Blest, if so, whate'er betide!)— Still kept the Guardian Angel by thy side? Can thy Heart's ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... particular to prove it. It is moreover declared in his pyramidical silence. And this reminds me that had the great Sperm Whale been known to the young Orient World, he would have been deified by their child-magian thoughts. They deified the crocodile of the Nile, because the crocodile is tongueless; and the Sperm Whale has no tongue, or at least it is so exceedingly small, as to be incapable of protrusion. If hereafter any highly cultured, poetical nation shall ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... of wine thy prayer-mat, if thus the aged Magian bid, For from the traveller from the Pathway[1] no stage nor usage can ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... spoken a speech? No, his great genius is declared in his doing nothing particular to prove it. It is moreover declared in his pyramidical silence. And this reminds me that had the great Sperm Whale been known to the young Orient World, he would have been deified by their child-magian thoughts. they deified the crocodile of the nile, because the crocodile is tongueless; and the Sperm Whale has no tongue, or as least it is so exceedingly small, as to be incapable of protrusion. If hereafter any highly cultured, poetical nation shall lure back ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... locality of this "Arbor Sol" we see was in Khorasan, and possibly its fame may have been transferred to a representative of another species. The plane, as well as the cypress, was one of the distinctive trees of the Magian Paradise. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... founded by Mani (who declared himself to be the Paraclete) which held a blend of Magian, Buddhist, and Christian principles ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the proud Otanes, one of the seven was he Who laid the Magian traitor low, and set their country free; And he bade him man a gallant fleet, and sail without delay, To the pleasant isle of Samos, in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... riddles and reserves.— The dream's untuned. Ah! vanished chords thereof! Ah! keen divisions of the jangled nerves That strung so long the gracious lutes of love!— Hurry to sell old magian Lamps for new, Though beauty's moonlike domes dissolve and pass: If all things change, ye would be changing too, Crazed hearts that know not your desire, alas! Still, through these wintry treasons that forswear The lovely bitter bondage of our ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... sky. They worshipped fire likewise as the sign of the light-giving and consuming Godhead; and this notion is not entirely gone yet, so that there are many Parsees, or fireworshippers, still in the East. Their priests were called Magi, and their faith was therefore termed Magian. Though it went astray in adoring these created things, yet it did not teach wickedness, as did the religions of the sons of Ham; and the Persians were a brave, upright race, who loved hardy, simple ways, and said the chief things their sons ought to learn were, to ride, to draw the bow, and ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... buried in 845, when the Emperor Wu-Tsung issued an edict, still extant, against the vast multiplication of Buddhist convents, and ordering their destruction. A clause in the edict also orders the foreign bonzes of Ta-T'sin and Mubupa (Christian and Mobed or Magian?) to return ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... system, that the study of it tended to much the same formation of character with the experiences of the world.—Apt disciple! Why wrinkle the brow, and waste the oil both of life and the lamp, only to turn out a head kept cool by the under ice of the heart? What your illustrious magian has taught you, any poor, old, broken-down, heart-shrunken dandy might have lisped. Pray, leave me, and with you take the last dregs of your inhuman philosophy. And here, take this shilling, and at the first wood-landing buy ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... after these successes, what was passed off as the true cross was restored again to Jerusalem—the charm was broken. The Magian fire had burnt the sepulchre of Christ, and the churches of Constantine and Helena; the costly gifts of the piety of three centuries were gone into the possession of the Persian and the Jew. Never again was it possible that ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... to be Christian. I have seen piety and purity only in the images of Fra Angelico, although they are very pretty. The rest, those figures of Virgins and angels, are voluptuous, caressing, and at times perversely ingenuous. What is there religious in those young Magian kings, handsome as women; in that Saint Sebastian, brilliant with youth, who seems merely ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... Kala, and still less the town of the first epoch. That was called by some Iskander Kala, in honor of Alexander the Macedonian, and by others Ghiaour Kala, attributing its foundation to Zoroaster, the founder of the Magian religion, a thousand years before Christ. So I should advise you to put your regrets in the ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... priests of Osiris and Isis, And Apis! that mystical lore, Like a nightmare, conceived in a crisis Of fever, is studied no more; Dead Magian! yon star-troop that spangles The arch of yon firmament vast Looks calm, like a host of white angels, On dry dust ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... shame with Gellius hatefully wedded, One to be taught gross rites Persic, a Magian he. Weds with a mother a son, so needs should a Magian issue, Save in her evil creed Persia determineth ill. Then shall a son, so born, chant down high favour of heaven, 5 Melting lapt in flame ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... secret doctrines of the Magi. The Iranians themselves averred that he had given the world twenty-one volumes—the twenty-one Nasks of the Avesta,* which the Supreme Deity had created from the twenty-one words of the Magian profession of faith, the Ahuna Vairya. King Vishtaspa is said to have caused two authentic copies of the Avesta—which contained in all ten or twelve hundred chapters**—to be made, one of which was consigned to the archives of the empire, the other laid up in ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... A Magian in Ecbatana told me a strange story. 'The Prince,' said he, 'hates the details of camps; leaving the preparation to others, he has gone to Greece to spy out the land he is to ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... blessing, and that in his seed should all the nations of the earth be blessed." Sceptic! has not this prophecy been fulfilled? Is not the name of Abraham a theme of blessing to the Jew—the Christian—the Magian—and the Musselman? Is not his name pronounced with reverence throughout the four continents of the Globe. Has not the earth been blessed in his seed? Is there a nation or people upon it, who have any rational ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English |
