"Alchemy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sweet alms, Some reverie, some pang of a damasked sword, Some poignant moment yet unparalleled In my dream-broidered chronicles, some chord Of mystery Love's music never knelled Before;—but nought of the rough alchemy ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... great secret of social alchemy, my dear Paul, is to get the most we can out of each age of life through which we pass; to have and to hold the buds of our spring, the flowers of our summer, the fruits of our autumn. We amused ourselves once, a few good fellows and I, ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... Christian Rosenkreuz who had mastered the hidden wisdom of the East. It seems probable that this book was an elaborate hoax, but it was taken seriously at the time, and the seventeenth century saw the formation of numerous groups of "Brothers of the Rosy Cross." They dabbled in alchemy, spiritualism, and magic, and mingled modern science with superstitions handed down from ancient times. Pope probably knew nothing more of them than what he had read in ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... she said, at the same time, by some transforming alchemy of woman, presenting to the newcomer eyes that showed no ...
— The Game • Jack London
... humanizing feature, of earthly life. It is noticeable that the clergyman, the physician, and the artist are the only specific types that attracted Hawthorne; he held them all romantically, and science he conceived as alchemy. This same predisposition appears in "Rappaccini's Daughter;" she was the experiment of her father in creating a live poison-woman, a vitalized flower, the Dryad as it were of the poison-tree humanized in mortal shape; the physical object is here the flowering tree, with its heavy ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... with precious metals and priceless gems; He extends His magic wand, and the soil becomes rich with fertility; the early and the latter rains supply the needed moisture, and the sun, with its marvellous alchemy, transmutes base clay into golden grain. He gives us in infinite variety the fruits of the orchard, the vegetables of the garden and the, berries of the woods. He gives us the sturdy oak, the fruitful ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... vast against the sunset-light, the high-crested chief sailing with troops of friends to Tenedos—his second-self cries, "I tell you, nought has ever been so clear as the place, the time, the fashion of those lives." Never for him, then, had there been that alchemy of the soul which turns the inchoate drift of the world into golden ore, not then had come to him the electric awakening flash from "work of lofty art, nor woman's beauty, nor ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... if indeed anywhere in the world, except under the ground. More pathetic even than Jerry's efforts to escape from the universal doom of his race was his ignorance that even if he could, by some strange alchemy, bleach his skin and straighten his hair, there would still remain, underneath it all, only the unbleached darky,—the ass in ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... analogies beyond their legitimate application was a source of confusion in the early ages of science. Most of the superstitions of primitive religion, of astrology, and of alchemy, arose from this source. A good example is the extension of the metaphor in the words generation and corruption: words in constant use in scientific works until the nineteenth century began. Generation is the production of a substance that ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... riches Love doth inherit! Ah, the alchemy which doth change Dross of body and dregs of spirit Into sanctities rare and strange! My flesh is feeble and dry and old, My darling's beautiful hair is gray; But our elixir and precious gold Laugh at the footsteps ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... experimental science. Both the chemist and the physicist are as convinced of the existence of these atoms as they are of the objects we see and touch. The theory "is a necessity to explain the experimental facts of chemical composition." "Through metaphysics first," says Soddy, "then through alchemy and chemistry, through physical and astronomical spectroscopy, lastly through radio-activity, science has slowly groped its way to the atom." The physicists make definite statements about these hypothetical bodies all based upon ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... same way chemistry developed out of the medival study of alchemy. The first experimentation with chemicals was carried on with the hope of producing gold by some happy combination of less valuable metals. But finally, after learning more about the nature of chemical compounds, ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... alchemist is represented by his descendant as a Puritan impregnated with the secret doctrine of Robert Fludd. In 1639 Vaughan returned to England, but was immediately attracted to Denmark by the discovery of a golden horn adorned with mysterious figures, which he and his colleagues in alchemy supposed to typify the search for the philosophical stone. At the age of twenty-eight, Vaughan made further progress in the Rosicrucian Fraternity, being advanced to the grade of Adeptus Minor by Amos Komenski, in ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... Strange folk who trod the bleak New England shores, Tithingmen, Sachems, Witches, Sagamores, Puritans, Soldiers, Scholars, Quaker maids, Royalists splendid in their rich brocades! To-day the past has opened wide her door, Scenes long since gone return to us once more, Touched with the alchemy of history's gold. First, ancient Salem, as it was, behold In the grim days when "Witchcraft!" was the cry, When folk declared that they saw witches fly On devil's broomsticks straight across the moon, While the wind piped by night a witch's tune; ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... troublesome error, a pernicious foppery? physic, but intricate rules and prescriptions? philology, but vain criticisms? logic, needless sophisms? metaphysics themselves, but intricate subtleties, and fruitless abstractions? alchemy, but a bundle of errors? to what end are such great tomes? why do we spend so many years in their studies? Much better to know nothing at all, as those barbarous Indians are wholly ignorant, than as some of us, to be so sore vexed about unprofitable toys: stultus labor est ineptiarum, to ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... the reach of the lead. Gilbert suggests as an improvement of the treatment that a thin lamina of gold be substituted for the lead, "because mercury thirsts after gold as animals do after water, as it is held in the books on alchemy" (in libris allzinimicis). This fact, too, he tells us can be easily demonstrated externally by placing upon a plate a portion of gold, and near, but not in contact with it, a little quicksilver, when the silver, he says, will at once "leap" upon the gold. Avicenna suggests that the ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... rolled-up flags of silk, He saw the fruits unfold, And all our expectations in one wild-flower-written dream, Confusion and death sweetness, and a thicket of crab-thorns, Heart of a hundred midnights, heart of the merciful morns. Heaven's boughs bent down with their alchemy, Perfumed airs, and thoughts of wonder. And the dew on the grass and his own cold tears Were one in brooding mystery, Though death's loud thunder came upon him, Though death's loud thunder struck him down— The boughs and the proud thoughts swept through the thunder, Till he saw our wide nation, ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... philosophy was a strange offshoot from Alchemy, and made up in equal proportions of Pagan Platonism, Christian Quietism, and Jewish Mysticism. See Bulwer's 'Zanoni.' Pope has blended some of its elements with old legendary stories about guardian ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... swell who flourished in the twelve hundreds, and who was by trade rake, philosopher, quack, fanatic, organizer, and martyr. He hailed from Mallorca—or Majorca, as you English persist in calling it—and he wrote books on Apologetic Theology, Dogmatic Divinity, and Practical Alchemy. Also he penned this diary, which has evidently been kept pretty snug so far, and thanks to its general dreary tone, no one has read the memorandum on page ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... a simultaneous and tumultuous rush for the entrance. They congested the doorway, pushing for precedence—resolving themselves at length into a line and moving up step by step. By some subtle spiritual or physical alchemy observation had been transmuted into action—the sightseers had become participants in the spectacle—the audience ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... she walks there are resurrections because life begets life. No science, no mathematics, no history, no language, can be dull or dry when touched by her art, but all become vital because she is vital. By the subtle alchemy of her artistic teaching all the subjects of her school are transmuted into the pure ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... did commit? Mercy for these! Who bear on back and breast the scathing brand Of scarlet degradation, who are clothed In ignominious livery, whose bowed necks Are broken with the yoke. Change these to men! That were a noble witchcraft simply wrought, God's alchemy transforming clods to gold. If there be one among them strong and wise, Whose lips anoint breathe poetry and love, Whose brain and heart served ever Christian need— And there are many such—for his dear sake, Lest ye chance murder ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... ends of these tracts there are upwards of a hundred English tracts, nearly all of the period, and most of them translations. Alchemy looks up since the chemists have found perfectly different substances composed of the same elements and proportions. It is true the chemists cannot yet transmute; but they may in time: they poke about most assiduously. It seems, then, that the conviction ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... circumstances, came the pressing need of service for his father's sake. It was a call upon his deepest strength, and he responded bravely. While the future might be doubtful, he had no doubt of himself; and this very state of mind, this self-confidence, by a generous alchemy, gave him added resolution. Nor did he fail to be vaguely aware of it, and to grasp dimly at the truth that confidence breeds ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... let us say a few words of the THEATRUM CHEMICUM BRITANNICUM, as it was the anterior publication. It contains a collection of ancient English poetical pieces relating to Alchemy, or the "Hermetique Mysteries;" and was published in a neat quarto volume, in 1652; accompanied with a rich sprinkling of plates "cut in brass," and copious annotations, at the end, by Ashmole himself. Of these plates, some are precious to ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... these fifty men and women one true and sublime poet,—the dying "Grammarian," who applies the alchemy of a lofty imagination to the dry business of ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... the paper out of Conway's hand, and ran his eye down the column to see whether his words had been similarly transmuted by the editorial alchemy. They were printed, however, as they had been spoken, but interspersed with comments. The editor had contented himself with stamping his own device upon the coin; he had not tried to change its metal. Drake tossed the paper ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... mullioned windows on to his sunny curls—she could hear the baby laughter and the cry of triumph which meant the arrival into the safe refuge of his mother's arms. There was no detail of the occurrence that faithful heart could not recall. Time had no power to dull the recollection which love's alchemy kept clear and bright. Was he not still her boy—her lamb—for all her fourscore years and all the sorrow they had both known between that day and this? And the old walls which had rung to the sound of Francis' baby ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... Et ecce plus quam Salomon hic! You have here in your presence an incomparable treasure, that is, my lord Pantagruel, whose great renown hath brought me hither, out of the very heart of England, to confer with him about the insoluble problems, both in magic, alchemy, the cabal, geomancy, astrology, and philosophy, which I had in my mind. But at present I am angry even with fame itself, which I think was envious to him, for that it did not declare the thousandth part of the worth that indeed is in him. You have seen ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... Discovery, failure, and death were possibilities of the hazardous game he was playing, and he was unafraid, because he had only his life to lose, a life that was not much more than a hopeless derelict at most. Now it was different. Mary Josephine had come like some rare and wonderful alchemy to transmute for him all leaden things into gold. In a few minutes she had upset the world. She had literally torn aside for him the hopeless chaos in which he saw himself struggling, flooding him with the warm radiance of a great love and a still greater desire. On ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... flame, to stand erect In natural honour, not to bend the knee In profitless prostrations whose effect Is by itself condemned, what alchemy Can teach me this? what herb Medea brewed Will bring the unexultant ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... beneficence. Men distinguished in literature and the sciences derived instruction from his discourse, and his talent was conspicuous even in the art of vocal music. His praises were celebrated in kasadas of the greatest beauty. Bakr Ibn An-Nattah said of him: O thou who pursuest the study of alchemy, the great alchemy consists in praising the son of Isa. Was there but one dirhem in the world, thou wouldst obtain ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... alias "Jeremy," house-servant of Lovewit. During the absence of his master, Face leagues with Subtle (the alchemist) and Dol Common to turn a penny by alchemy, fortune-telling, and magic. Subtle (a beggar who knew something about alchemy) was discovered by Face near Pye Corner. Assuming the philosopher's garb and wand, he called himself "doctor;" Face, arrogating the title of "captain," touted for dupes; while Dol Common ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... encouraging them to continue poisoning themselves and their descendants by over-indulgence in alcoholic drink?[1216] Surely "the defective natures of citizens will show themselves in the bad acting of whatever social structure they are arranged into. There is no political alchemy by which you can get golden conduct out of ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... and golden globe, Feathered carrot, burrowing deep, Steadfast wait in charmed sleep; Treasure-houses wherein lie, Locked by angels' alchemy, Milk and hair, and blood, and bone, Children of the barren stone; Children of the flaming Air, With his blue eye keen and bare, Spirit-peopled smiling down On frozen field and toiling town— Toiling ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... a moonlight night, sweeter the faint sigh of the breeze, and the light upon the silent stream, when hope, renewed after years of sorrow and sadness, flatters once again the aims and objects of youth, gilding the landscape of life with wondrous alchemy, shedding rays of happy sunshine on the vague, mysterious yearnings of the soul of man towards the hidden destinies ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... schismatical Russia, or in the Mahometan populations, or in the Catholic Church. If ever there was a subject of thought, which had earned by prescription to be received among the studies of a University, and which could not be rejected except on the score of convicted imposture, as astrology or alchemy; if there be a science anywhere, which at least could claim not to be ignored, but to be entertained, and either distinctly accepted or distinctly reprobated, or rather, which cannot be passed over in a scheme of universal instruction, without involving a positive denial of its truth, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... of Leibniz's ideas is anyhow unmistakable. If metaphysical thinking is nonsensical, its empire over the human imagination must still be confessed; if it is as chimerical a science as alchemy, it is no less fertile in by-products of importance. And if we are to consider Leibniz historically, we cannot do better than take up his Theodicy, for two reasons. It was the only one of his main philosophical works to be published in his lifetime, so that it was a principal means ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... your feet." Wherever she went, as if a celestial magnet passed, all faces drifted towards her with admiring love and pleasure. By her lofty integrity and her matchless sweetness and skill, as by a rare alchemy, she transmuted her fugitive lovers into permanent friends. Her talents were as attractive as her features: little by little her conversation made the listener forget even her loveliness. Saint-Beuve says, "As her beauty slowly ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... beyond his desk and salary as a lawyer's clerk, would have never cared to piece together and supplement the scattered scraps of his education, would have rested on his oars when he had once shot into the waters of ordinary journalism. With Dickens it was not so. The alchemy of a fine nature had transmuted his disadvantages into gold. To him the lessons of such a childhood and boyhood as he had had, were energy, self-reliance, a determination to overcome all obstacles, to fight the battles of life, in all ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... were! Set any one to talk about himself, instead of about other people, and you will have a seam of the precious mental metal opened up to you at once; only ore, most likely, that needs much smelting and refining; or it may be, not gold at all, but a metal which your mental alchemy may turn into gold. The one thing I learned was, that they and I were one, that our hearts were the same. How often I exclaimed inwardly, as some new trait came to light, in the words, though without the generalizing scorn, of Shakspere's Timon—"More man!" Sometimes I was ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... maid; The land reflected in the flood; Body with shadow still pursued. For nature beats in perfect tune And rounds with rhyme her every rune; Whether she work in land or sea Or hide underground her alchemy. Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, Or dip thy paddle in the lake, But it carves the bow of beauty there, And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake. Not unrelated, unaffied, But to each thought and thing allied, Is perfect nature's every part, ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... wickedness that ever was woman to the destruction of man; ending her terrible life in an absorbing passion for art and literature which attracted to itself all that was most delicate and refined at the end of the seventeenth century; dabbling in alchemy, composing verses forgotten long ago, discoursing upon art with Bernini, dictating the laws of verse to the poet Guidi, collecting together a vast library of rare books and a great gallery of great pictures, and of engravings and medals and beautiful things of every sort—the only ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... discovering prime matter, the 'Philosopher's stone,' and elixirs of life, bred in the popular superstition a mysterious awe and attached to almost all scientific investigation the epithet 'black,' or diabolic, as opposed to the 'white art' of holding communion with good spirits. Alchemy and astrology (words meaning merely what we call chemistry and astronomy) became words of hellish import, and he who practised these arts was in league with Satan. Thus were regarded such men as Lully, Roger Bacon, the Abbot Tritheim, and (perhaps best known ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... Force, and Product,—are they not an echo, lingering along the ages, of some confused knowledge of the Absolute? Stahl, Becker, Paracelsus, Agrippa, all the great Searchers into occult causes took the Great Triad for their watchword,—in other words, the Ternary. Ignorant men who despise alchemy, that transcendent chemistry, are not aware that our work is only carrying onward the passionate researches of those great men. Had I found the Absolute, the Unconditioned, I meant to have grappled with Motion. ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... Review" speaks no less warmly: "We can hardly give too much appreciation to that subtile alchemy of the brain which has enabled him to produce out of dull, crabbed, and often illegible state papers, the vivid, graphic, and sparkling narrative which he has ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... talking spiritedly with Her Majesty about Roger Bacon. "Before my time, of course," the Queen was saying, "but I'm sure he was a most interesting man. Now when dear old Marlowe wrote his 'Faust,' he and I had several long discussions about such matters. Alchemy—" ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... alleys, silvered by the moon, and redolent of flowers that had been made magical by the alchemy of night, surrounded them. They came to a spot where a circular wall of foliage, rising behind stone benches, hemmed in a fountain, above which a marble antique warrior was lifting in his arms a marble girl, who struggled against that seizure ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... jest that she had said to Smythe, "He shall tell me!" But in the night, by some strange alchemy, that jest had been transmuted into a purpose of which she was still doubtful, if not afraid. And yet to go forward seemed less difficult than to go back. For she had let the days of Seth's recovery and convalescence slip by without telling Claire of her experience in the Forbidden Pasture and ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... d'Arc, he became Marechal of France and distinguished himself by many deeds of valour. But after dissipating his immense fortune, largely on Church ceremonies carried out with the wildest extravagance, he was led to study alchemy, partly by curiosity and partly as a means for restoring his shattered fortunes. Hearing that Germany and Italy were the countries where alchemy flourished, he enlisted Italians in his service and was gradually drawn into ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... had cast nativities for us maidens, and many a time amused us with his magic arts, we had no knowledge of him but that, after his parents' death, he had ceased to ply the apothecary's trade, and had given himself up to the study of Alchemy. If folks spoke truth he had already discovered the philosopher's stone, or was nigh to doing so: but notwithstanding that many learned men, and among them the Magister had assured me, that such a thing was by no means beyond the skill of man, Lorenz Abenberger for ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Christ, Christian, Christmas, Christendom, antichrist. CHRO'MA, color—chromatic, chrome, chromic, chromotype, achromatic. CHRU'SOS, gold—chrysalis, chrysolite. CHU'LOS, the milky juice formed by digestion—chyle, chylifaction. CHU'MOS, juice—chyme, chemist, chemistry, alchemy, alchemist. ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... 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 and the Earl. But soon the policy of the Court changed. The prisoners had less liberty and saw less of each other, and so the stills were pulled down, and the gardens given up. Raleigh was more closely watched, and entrapped. Then there was fencing and defencing, ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... the picture in an instant. There was no mistaking the glow of the limbs, the midsummer languor of the smile, the magical atmosphere in which the gold of sunlight, of autumn leaves, of amber grapes, seemed fused by some lost alchemy of the brush. As he gazed, the scene changed, and he saw himself in a darkened room with cabalistic hangings. He saw Heiligenstern's tall figure, towering in supernatural light, the Duke leaning eagerly forward, the Duchess with set lips and troubled eyes, the little prince bent wonderingly above ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... the country to the other. But does romance disappear from the farm with machinery and scientific agriculture? There are farmers who follow Luther Burbank's experiments with plants, with all the fascination which used to attach to alchemy and astrology. The farmer has no longer Indians to fight or a wilderness to subdue, but the soils of his farm are analyzed at his state university by men who live in the daily atmosphere of the romance of science, ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... was born, and in that same year Galileo, the Italian astronomer, died. Meanwhile the Thirty Years War had destroyed the prosperity of central Europe and there was a sudden but very general interest in "alchemy," the strange pseudo-science of the middle-ages by which people hoped to turn base metals into gold. This proved to be impossible but the alchemists in their laboratories stumbled upon many new ideas and greatly ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... commixture of common elements, shall we despair that transformations yet more glorious may be wrought in human souls now thwarted and blackened by the malice of the devil, when they are subjected to the far diviner and far more stupendous alchemy of ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry, London and New York, 1899. A popular account of the development of the phlogiston theory from alchemy, giving explanations of the curious beliefs and methods of working of the alchemists. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... came before Hugh as an almost impossible sweet and rapturous memory, clutching with a poignant passion at his heart. What was the secret of the fragrant days that had departed and could never return? Was it well to recall them? And what too was the secret of that strange and beautiful alchemy of the mind, that forgot all the troubles and cares of the old life, and even touched the few harsh incidents that it did retain with a wistful beauty, as though they had had some desirable element in them? Would it not be better, more tranquillising ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... crust arrives at the muscle and acts, arrives at the brain and thinks. We can not see the manipulating hand which throws back and forth the shuttle which weaves Bunyan's destinies, nor can we trace the subtle alchemy which transforms this prison crust into the finest allegory in the world, the Pilgrim's Progress. But we do know that, unless we supply food when the stomach begs and clamors, brain and muscle can not continue ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... forgiven. Did she sit in torment while her husband turned his somersaults, or was she now too so perverse that she thought it a fine thing to be striking at the expense of one's honour? It would have taken a wondrous alchemy—working backwards, as it were—to produce this latter result. Besides these two alternatives (that she suffered tortures in silence and that she was so much in love that her husband's humiliating idiosyncrasy seemed to her only an added richness—a proof ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... love) and to my mother (that is, to my earliest acquaintance with personal love) I had been ready, in my impatience, to credit an injustice. Unknown to me, thus, there had been need of guidance, of assistance. Beauty, having cleared the way, had worked upon me its amazing alchemy. ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... not broken off, and they continued to meet. Penautier was considered such a lucky fellow that it was generally expected he would somehow or other get some day the post he coveted so highly. People who had no faith in the mysteries of alchemy declared that Sainte-Croix and Penautier ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the sea, Old chemist, rapt in alchemy, Distilling silence, — lo, That which our father-age had died to know — [61] The menstruum that dissolves all matter — thou Hast found it: for this silence, filling now The globed clarity of receiving space, This solves us all: man, matter, ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... fatal), that in all cases, e.g. of heat or cold, the forma, or set of conditions, is one thing. A similar notion, viz. that each property of gold, as of other things, has its one forma, produced the belief in Alchemy. ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... longer it still continued to elude wise statesmen and thoughtful economists; how, at last, some impatient spirit, breaking through the untimely delay, sternly asked them what else they proposed to do. By what alchemy would they create gold and silver? By what magic would they fill the coffers which their non-exportation resolutions had kept empty, or bring in the supplies which their non-importation resolutions had cut off? What arguments of their devising would ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... necessary to raise MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS to her somewhat insecure pinnacle of devotion; by the alchemy of a machine centuries have been shortened to days and nights in the meteoric career of Miss PICKFORD. Yet merit has joined fortune in high cabal. Handicapped by a somewhat uneuphonious patronymic, MARY PICKFORD has established her rule without recourse to any of the disputable methods ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 30th, 1920 • Various
... had begun to wither, held by tendrils that were strained until they could hold no more, the purple chalices swung lazily in the golden light, slowly filling with the garnered sweetness that every moment brought. Night and day the alchemy went on—dust and sun and dreaming, dust and moon and dreaming, while the Weaver waited, dreaming too, until ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... strange alchemy of her mind, three things stood out clear. They stood out like the three facts ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... haunt of the Muses, the sensual city was a hermitage of philosophy as well. These things collectively represented a great literary feast, of which not all the courses have descended to us, though, as is not impossible, a lost dish or two, transmuted, by the alchemy of faith, from dross into gold, the Gospels may ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... and the Beginnings of Chemistry, London and New York, 1899. A popular account of the development of the phlogiston theory from alchemy, giving explanations of the curious beliefs and methods of working of the alchemists. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... toward Vega. Only the roots and the crane-flies remained. A thousand hours had apparently made no difference to them. The roots might have been the granite near by, fashioned by primeval earth-flame, and the flies but vibrating atoms within the granite, made visible by some alchemy of elements in this weird Rim of ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... heavily into debt. King Charles himself was in great trouble, and he had no money with which to pay his painter's pension. The artist had lived so extravagantly that he did not know at last which way to turn, so in desperation he thought to try alchemy and maybe to learn the secret of making gold. He wasted much time at this, as cleverer men have done, but at last he became too ill for that or for his own proper work, and badly off though Charles was himself, he offered his court physician a large sum if he could cure his court painter. ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... crucible. He was from beyond the sea—a Doctor Cacaphodel, who had wilted and dried himself into a mummy by continually stooping over charcoal-furnaces and inhaling unwholesome fumes during his researches in chemistry and alchemy. It was told of him—whether truly or not—that at the commencement of his studies he had drained his body of all its richest blood and wasted it, with other inestimable ingredients, in an unsuccessful experiment, and had never ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... face was curiously intent—as of some midnight worker in research who sees a bright near glimpse of the gold his alchemy has so long sought to materialize ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... For this spiritual alchemy he had learned. He understood that force ultimately is everywhere one and the same; it is the motive behind that makes it good or evil; and his motive was entirely unselfish. He knew—provided he was not first robbed of self-control—how vicariously to ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... skill of the poet in this case have merited resemblance to that of the refiner of gold, what name less than alchemy can characterize his achievement in the rest of this scene? From the first ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... himself wholly to study and meditation, declining all offers to enter the service of the State. He preferred to take up his abode in the mountains of Western China, where he persevered in the study of alchemy and in cultivating the virtues of purity and mental abstraction. From the hands of Lao Tzu he received supernaturally a mystic treatise, by following the instructions in which he was successful in his search for the ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... exposing himself to the risk of detection. Having at last got into trouble with the authorities he fled from Sicily, and visited in succession Greece, Egypt, Arabia, Persia, Rhodes—where he took lessons in alchemy and the cognate sciences from the Greek Althotas—and Malta. There he presented himself to the grand master of the Maltese order as Count Cagliostro, and curried favour with him as a fellow alchemist, for the grand ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... and quickened with the life and energy of the nineteenth century, is a very different pursuit from the Archaeology of our forefathers, and has as little relation to their antiquarianism as modern Chemistry and modern Astronomy have to their former prototypes—Alchemy and Astrology. In proof of this, I may confidently appeal to the good work which Archaeology has done, and the great advances which it has struck out in different directions within the last fifty years. Within this brief period it has made discoveries, perhaps in themselves of ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... rites sacerdotal were o'er, In the depths of his cell with its stone-covered floor, Resigning to thought his chimerical brain, Once formed the contrivance we now shall explain; But whether by magic's or alchemy's powers We know not; indeed, 'tis no ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... second offence, and expulsion for a third. At the College de Verdale, at Toulouse, expulsion was the penalty for a list of crimes which includes theft, entering the college by stealth, breaking into the cellar, bringing in a meretrix, witch-craft, alchemy, invoking demons or sacrificing to them, forgery, and ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait
... events in the long life of Izaak Walton have been carefully investigated by Sir Harris Nicolas. All that can be extricated from documents by the alchemy of research has been selected, and I am unaware of any important acquisitions since Sir Harris Nicolas's second edition of 1860. Izaak was of an old family of Staffordshire yeomen, probably descendants of George Walton of Yoxhall, who died in 1571. Izaak's ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang
... their legend is a legend made by and for sorrowful, wistful, anxious people; while the most important artistic monuments of that legend sufficiently prove that the Romantic spirit was really at work in the minds of Greek artists, extracting by a kind of subtle alchemy, a beauty, not without the elements of tranquillity, of dignity and order, out of a matter, at first sight ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... not the place to enter into a full examination of the meaning and value of alchemy in its original legitimate sense (which must not be confused with activities that later on paraded under the same name). Only this we will say - that genuine alchemy owes its origin to an impulse which, ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... Religions, all the Mysteries, Hermeticism and Alchemy, conceals its secrets from all except the Adepts and Sages, or the Elect, and uses false explanations and misinterpretations of its symbols to mislead those who deserve only to be misled; to conceal the Truth, which it calls ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... he sits high in all the people's hearts; And that which would appear offence in us, His countenance, like richest alchemy, Will change to virtue and ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... of such things here," said the Doctor. "In my youth, when I studied in the North, experiments of that nature exercised a powerful sway over my mind. I dabbled in alchemy; I tried and indeed considered that I succeeded in raising spirits and visions; but two things are necessary for such a study: youth, and the mists of the Northern country. Here the generous sun kills such phantasies. There are ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... would meditate, and he became more than ever convinced that man could, if he pleased, become lord of his own sensations. This, surely, was the true meaning concealed under the beautiful symbolism of alchemy. Some years before he had read many of the wonderful alchemical books of the later Middle Ages, and had suspected that something other than the turning of lead into gold was intended. This impression was deepened when he looked into Lumen de Lumine by Vaughan, the brother of the Silurist, ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... the man upon a black horse! These are thy gods, O London! Ain't you mightily moped on the banks of the Cam? Had you not better come and set up here? You can't think what a difference. All the streets and pavements are pure gold, I warrant you. At least I know an alchemy that turns her mud into that metal,—a mind that loves to ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... knew that the language of snow and ice was not the language of palm and flower. He knew also that there had been no miracle in language. He knew it was impossible that the story of the Tower of Babel should be true. That everything in the whole world had been natural. He was the enemy of alchemy, not only in language, but in science. One passage from him is enough to show his philosophy in this regard. He says: "To transmute iron into gold two things are necessary. First, the annihilation of the iron; second, the creation of gold." Voltaire was ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the writings of historians, metaphysicians and theologians. But during this time man lived, as the historian Symonds says, "enveloped in a cowl." The study of nature was not only ignored but barred, save only as it ministered in the forms of alchemy and astrology to the one cardinal medieval virtue—- credulity. Still the period saw many great characters and events fraught with the greatest importance to the advancement of ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... No; the disease is beyond his practice; and, although this passage has in it a deeper meaning than the one attributed to it here, it well illustrates the position of the medical man in such cases. Most doctors of the time were mere empirics; dabbled more or less in alchemy; and, in the treatment of mental disease, were little better than children. They had for co-practitioners all who, by their credit with the populace for superior wisdom, found themselves in a position to engage in a profitable employment. ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... morning have I seen Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye, Kissing with golden face the meadows green, Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy. ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... is the resident, man, a creature compact of wonders that, after centuries of custom, is still wonderful to himself. He inhabits a body which he is continually outliving, discarding and renewing. Food and sleep, by an unknown alchemy, restore his spirits and the freshness of his countenance. Hair grows on him like grass; his eyes, his brain, his sinews, thirst for action; he joys to see and touch and hear, to partake the sun and wind, to sit down and intently ponder on his astonishing ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... test carefully his data and his credentials. But, assuming he is right, there will always be found some compensating reaction in another sphere of intellectual activity which is in process of development; and through which, by some divine alchemy, providence, or nature, call it what you will, a new manifestation will be made to the world. The arts which we suppose to have perished, of which, indeed, we write affecting epitaphs, are merely hibernating; the ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... of political import be intrusted to Van Baerle, who not only was, but also boasted of being, an entire stranger to the science of government, which, in his opinion, was more occult than alchemy itself? ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... Daddy bravely, as the moment's tension passed, 'my original idea was simply to treat Bourcelles as an epitome, a miniature, so to speak, of the big world, while showing how Nature sweetened and kept it pure as by a kind of alchemy. But that idea has grown. I have the feeling now that the Bourcelles we know is a mere shadowy projection cast by a more real Bourcelles behind. It is only the dream village we know in our waking life. The ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... into the pure ether, or a plunge in the Cimmerian dark? When, in opposition to every possible criterion, a man claims that there is but 'one ultimate form of matter out of which successively the more complex forms of matter are built up,' is this the advance march of chemistry, or the retrograde to alchemy? When a writer, in a style however lucid and taking, firmly assumes that there is no essential difference in objects alike in material elements, but separated by that mighty and mysterious thing, life, ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... childhood the Prince had learned strange tales of the ambition, the genius, and the career of his grandsire; and secretly, perhaps influenced by ancestral example, in earlier youth he himself had followed alchemy, not only through her legitimate course, but her antiquated and erratic windings. I have, indeed, been shown in Naples a little volume blazoned with the arms of the Visconti, and ascribed to the nobleman I refer to, ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the dress of a clerk, who was to have met Tomaso on the morrow, waited for him in vain. On the second day he started in search of his old friend, and weary and mud-bespattered, came at last to Temple Assheton. On the road he fell in with Swart the drover, who told him of the reported alchemy. "Gold would be common as fodder if any man could make it," Swart growled, "and when a man's wise beyond others in the art of healing, 'tis wicked folly to ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... foolish pursuits, have chilled the fervour of imagination, scattered into fragments many a noble design, and paralysed the finest genius. The distractions of GUIDO'S studies from his passion for gaming, and of PARMEGIANO'S for alchemy, have been traced in their works, which are often hurried over and unequal. It is curious to observe, that CUMBERLAND attributes the excellence of his comedy, The West Indian, to the peculiarly happy situation in which he found himself at the time of its composition, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... to say, that the course of procedure against witches is erroneous and fantastical: asserting, moreover, that those witches were compelled by the severity of torture to confess acts that they had never done; that innocent blood was shed by a cruel judicature; and that by a new alchemy gold and silver were extracted from human blood. 3. Thereby, and by the like assertions, partly diffused by private oral communications among the vulgar, partly by various letters addressed to both branches of the magistracy, imputing to superiors and judges the exercise of tyranny ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... "Nowadays alchemy and necromancy awaken nothing but curiosity. How then can one who thinks and reasons admit that an art can be cultivated and sustained by theories extravagant, fantastic, enigmatic, explained and condensed in abstruse phrases and sentences, which not only ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... into a speculation concerning the nature and origin of those agreeable emotions which are so generally produced by the sight of objects that suggest the ideas of decay and desolation. It is happy for us, that, by the alchemy of poetry, we are able to turn some of our misfortunes into sources of melancholy pleasure, after the poignancy of grief has been assuaged by time. Nature has beneficently provided, also, that many an object, which is capable of communicating no direct pleasure to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... considering how much ground of this kind was acquired in the ten centuries which preceded the Renaissance, that we are at all able to estimate the expansive force which was then generated. Science, rescued from the hands of astrology, geomancy, alchemy, began her real life with the Renaissance. Since then, as far as to the present moment, she has never ceased to grow. Progressive and durable, science may be called the first-born of the spirit of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... tragedies of infancy, as when the child's hands were unlinked for ever from his mother's neck, or his lips for ever from his sister's kisses, these remain lurking below all, and these lurk to the last. Alchemy there is none of passion or disease that can scorch away these immortal impresses. And the dream which closed the preceding section, together with the succeeding dreams of this, (which may be viewed as in the nature of choruses winding up the overture contained in Part I.,) are but illustrations ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... twenty years after the death of Peter Woulfe, who was thought to be the last of the true believers in alchemy, Sir Richard Phillips visited an alchemist at Lilley, near Hitchin, named Kellerman, who was believed by some of his neighbours to have discovered the philosopher's stone, and the universal solvent! His room was a realization of Tenier's "Alchemist." ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... beyond all controversy are abundant. Colonial history, thanks to colonial freedom, is almost wholly free from the distorting influence of political passion. South African history alone will need revision in the light of recent events. When, under the alchemy of free national institutions, Ireland has undergone the same transformation as South Africa, her unhappy history will be chronicled afresh with a juster sense of perspective and a juster apportionment of responsibility for the calamities which have befallen her. And yet, ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... The Garden of Cyrus, and although he may well have been in search of something like the later Unity of Type, he uses his amassed details of scientific knowledge most effectively in support of nonscientific propositions. Thus, he uses the facts of embryonic development, alchemy, and insect metamorphosis as a part of his argument for the ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... condition in which Providence has placed him. "And this rule," says he, "ordain I in all the churches." Yet—would any man believe it possible?—the very quintessence of abolitionism itself has been extracted from this passage of his writings! Let us consider for a moment the wonderful alchemy by which ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... possessed merely of the Polish language, and of what talents the gods had given him, which were considerable. And now, in the mean while, Johann, who at one time promised well in practical life, had taken to Alchemy; and was busy with crucibles and speculations, to a degree that seemed questionable. Father Friedrich, therefore, had to interfere, and deal with this "Johann the Alchemist" (JOHANNES ALCHEMISTA, so the Books still name him); who loyally renounced the Electorship, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... God glorifies God, as showing the most wonderful working of His power in making such a man out of such material, by an alchemy that can convert base metal into fine gold; as showing the most wonderful condescension of His love in taking to His heart man, into whose flesh the rotting leprosy of sin ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... that be worth the loss of all that we hold most sweet? We pay a price for our qualities; the thistle cannot become the vine, or the oak the rose, by admiration or desire. But we need not doubt of the divine alchemy that gives good gifts to others, and denies them to ourselves. And thus I can gratefully own that there are indeed these high mysteries of friendship, and I can be glad to discern them afar off, as the dweller on the high moorland, in ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... miners go ever westward for the precious gold, to Colorado and Nevada and California, to Sitka and the Copper River, to Anvil City and the Nome beach and across the straits to Siberia. Never a clear night falls but they see the alchemy at work and the precious element going down in dust and nuggets and wide lodes behind the peaks and into the canons ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... together, O mysterious tome, whose Arab name breathes a strange mustiness of occult lore and claims kindred with the sciences of almagest and alchemy. What will you show me? Let us turn the leaves at random. Before fixing one's eyes on a definite point in the landscape, it is well to take a summary view of the whole. Page follows swiftly upon page, telling me nothing. A chapter catches my attention in ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... liquid to be able to crystallize gems. And then, having obtained gold and gems, the third thing they desired was "a vital elixir" to prolong their lives indefinitely to enjoy the gold and gems they had manufactured. These were the modest aims of alchemy. Well now—although you may say such notions sound very foolish—let me tell you that great practical discoveries had their origin in the very out-of-the-way researches of the alchemists. Depend upon this, that an object of lofty pursuit, though that object be ...
— The Story of a Tinder-box • Charles Meymott Tidy
... ALCHEMY, the early analysis of substances which has in modern times developed into chemistry, and which aimed chiefly at the discovery of the philosopher's stone, of a universal solvent, and of the elixir of life; it has been defined to be "an ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... but it was not what he spoke. It was his personality that spoke more eloquently than any word he could utter. It was an alchemy of soul occultly subtile and profoundly deep—a mysterious emanation of the spirit, seductive, sweetly humble, and terribly imperious. It was illumination in the dark crypts of their souls, a compulsion of purity and gentleness vastly greater than that ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... modesty, are bosom friends of sentimentality. While sentiment is the noblest thing in the world, sentimentality is its counterfeit, its caricature; there is something theatrical, operatic, painted-and-powdered about it; it differs from sentiment as astrology differs from astronomy, alchemy from chemistry, the sham from the real, hypocrisy from sincerity, artificial posing from natural grace, genuine affection ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... more commonly use another name for this peculiar liquid—namely, "alcohol," and its origin is not less singular. The Dutch physician, Van Helmont, lived in the latter part of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century—in the transition period between alchemy and chemistry—and was rather more alchemist than chemist. Appended to his "Opera Omnia," published in 1707, there is a very needful "Clavis ad obscuriorum sensum referandum," in which the ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... spring-freshet to be a Niagara; but my feelings have swelled with no transient overflow. I gave my utmost love and devotion to a man I thought worthy. He treated me with neglect, and at last falsified his word in offering his hand to another, I do not hate him. I have none of that alchemy which changes despised love to gall. But I could never forgive him, nor trust him again. And if he, who seemed always so frank, so earnest, so tender, so single in his aims,—if he could not be trusted, I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... least amount of extravagance produce the utmost admiration and envy, it is desirable to be improvident as publicly as possible; the means for such expenditure being gleaned from retrenchments in the home department. Thus, by a system of domestic alchemy, the education of the children is resolved into a vehicle; a couple of maids are amalgamated into a man in livery; while to a single drudge, superintended and aided by the mistress and elder girls, is confided the economy of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... primordial form exists; And cunning Alchemists could recreate The rose, with all its members, From its own ashes—but without the bloom, Without the least perfume. Ah me! what wonder-working, occult science Can from the ashes of our hearts Once more the rose of youth restore? What craft of alchemy can bid defiance To time, and change; and for a single hour, ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... rather the sorcerer or the magician, possessed of curious secrets and a hidden knowledge, living in a world of which he alone possessed the key. What his philosophy seems to have been most like is that of Paracelsus or Cardan; and much of the spirit of the older alchemy still hangs about it, with its confidence in short cuts and odd byways to knowledge. To him philosophy was to be something giving strange swiftness and double sight, divining the sources of springs beneath the earth or of expression beneath the human countenance, clairvoyant ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... pockets; also, to arrest 70 All gipsies, and ill-clothed and sallow people. Prisoners we'll have at least, if not the culprit; And for the Baron's gold—if 'tis not found, At least he shall have the full satisfaction Of melting twice its substance in the raising The ghost of this rouleau. Here's alchemy For your Lord's losses! ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... eternal and white silence, such as broods among the everlasting snows, and saw an eagle winging for the sun. He was in a city, and away from him, diverging like the spokes of a wheel, ran thronging streets, and to his sense came the beat, beat, beat of the city's heart. He saw the golden alchemy of a chosen race; saw greed transmitted to progress; saw that which had enslaved men, work at last to their liberation; heard the roar of mighty mills, and on the streets all the peoples of earth walking with common purpose, in fealty and understanding. And then, from the swelling of this concourse ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... through the streets of Pompeii, looking into the interior of stately mansions, reading the satirical scribblings on the walls. And the essayist's habit of not only giving you his thoughts, but telling you how he came by them, is interesting, because it shows you by what alchemy the ruder world becomes transmuted into the finer. We like to know the lineage of ideas, just as we like to know the lineage of great earls and swift race-horses. We like to know that the discovery of the law of gravitation was born of the fall ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... no blind believer in alchemy, clung to his one idea closer than Auburn Risque. He had shut all themes, affections, interests, from his mind. He neither loved nor hated any living being. He was penurious in his expenditures—never in his wagers. He would stake upon anything in ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... and enraptured by a wealth of new expressions and new turns of speech in their mother tongue. But all these belonged to Behmen, or were fashioned on the model of his symbolical language. As it is, with all his astrology, and all his alchemy, and all his barbarities of form and expression, I for one will always take sides with the author of The Serious Call, and The Spirit of Prayer, and The Spirit of Love, and The Way to Divine Knowledge, in the disputed matter ...
— Jacob Behmen - an appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... It has not only, in common with all ideas which inspire and guide mankind, a high historical importance, entirely independent of its error or truth—for the influence of both is equally powerful—but there are also contained in it, as in alchemy, grand thoughts of antiquity, of which modern natural philosophy is so little ashamed that she claims them as her property. Foremost among these is the idea of general life which diffuses itself throughout the whole universe, expressed by the greatest Greek sages, and transmitted to the Middle ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... words "sacred" and "secret" possessing the same meaning during the mysteries. All knowledge was anciently concealed in the mysteries; letters, numbers, astrology (until the sixteenth century identical with astronomy), alchemy, the parent of chemistry, these, and all other sciences were hidden from the common people. Even to all initiates the most important part of the mysteries was ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton |
