"Divination" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little, were all the suppositions conceived by Don Luis verified: suppositions resting, it is true, upon just one or two clues, but yet containing an amount of intuition, of divination, that was really surprising in a man who had been present at none of the events between which he ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... often have supposed her; for Teufelsdroeckh, and Teufelsdroeckh only, would she serve or give heed to; and with him she seemed to communicate chiefly by signs; if it were not rather by some secret divination that she guessed all his wants, and supplied them. Assiduous old dame! she scoured, and sorted, and swept, in her kitchen, with the least possible violence to the ear; yet all was tight and right there: hot and black came the coffee ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... circumstances and which, in her case, was so marked, absolutely constrained her to fill. She had that supreme gift of the lofty nature, the power of personal influence. Her exquisite courtesy and graciousness of manner, her simple dignity and unaffected sincerity, her delicacy of divination and her power of tender sympathy and liberal comprehension all combined to make her the ideal companion, counsellor, and friend, as well as the celebrity of letters and ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... observed in little folks at a very early age. With some children they are not very pronounced, and the child seems like hundreds of others without any particular inclination, artistic or otherwise. It is then that the teacher's powers of divination should be brought into play. Before any real progress can be made the nature of the child must be studied carefully. In the case of other children, the individuality is very marked at an early age. As a rule, the ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... besides 5 planets. For notes upon Polynesian astronomy consult Journal of the Polynesian Society, iv, 236. Hawaiian priestly hierarchies recognize special orders whose function it is to read the signs in the clouds, in dreams, or the flight of birds, or to practice some form of divination with the entrails of animals. In Hawaii, according to Fornander, the soothsayers constitute three of the ten large orders of priests, called Oneoneihonua, Kilokilo, and Nanauli, and these are subdivided into lesser orders. Ike, knowledge, means literally "to see ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... that no importance attaches now even to the discussion of the considerations which led to the rejection of judicial astrology. None but the most ignorant, and therefore superstitious, believe at present in divination of any sort or kind whatsoever. Divination by the stars holds no higher position than palmistry, fortune-telling by cards, or the indications of the future which foolish persons find in dreams, tea-dregs, salt-spilling, and ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... effort to make the great souls of the past live again, some share of divination and conjecture must be permitted. A great life is an organic whole which cannot be rendered by the simple agglomeration of small facts. It requires a profound sentiment to embrace them all, moulding them into perfect unity. ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... Ephesians "which used curious arts brought their books together, and burned them before all men: and they counted the price of them, and found it 50,000 pieces of silver" (Acts xix, 19). Doubtless these books of idolatrous divination and alchemy, of enchantments and witchcraft, were righteously destroyed by those to whom they had been and might again be spiritually injurious; and doubtless had they escaped the fire then, not one of them would have survived to the ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... ter the fiddle,—ef ye hev enny call ter know." Mrs. Bedell replied to his unspoken thought, as if by divination. ...
— The Christmas Miracle - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... religion, and in particular of Judaism, the one that occupies a fundamental position is the revelation of God's will to man and his announcement of the future through prophetic visions. Dreams and divination had already been investigated by Aristotle and explained psychologically. The Arabs made use of this suggestion and endeavored to bring the phenomenon of prophecy under the same head. The Jewish philosophers, with the exception of Judah Halevi and Hasdai Crescas, followed ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... George's relation to Diane was not less happy than in the first days of their life together. If, on Diane's part, the spontaneity of wedded love had gradually become the adroitness of domestic tact, there was nothing to affirm it but Mrs. Eveleth's own power of divination. If George submitted with a blinder obedience than ever to each new extravagance of Diane's Parisian caprice, there was nothing to show that he lived beyond his means but Mrs. Eveleth's maternal apprehension. His income was undoubtedly ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... means a boar, and alluding to the prediction of a soothsayer in Gaul, who had told him that he would become emperor after having killed a boar (Vopiscus, in "Hist. Aug."). Diocletian, self-composed and strong-minded in other respects, was all his life an anxious believer in divination, which superstition led him probably to inflict summary punishment upon Aper with his own hands. He made his solemn entrance into Nicomedia in September, 284, which town he afterward chose ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... them, or at least to prevent their settlement, but could by no means effect it. Gookin thought that he "possibly might have such a kind of spirit upon him as was upon Balaam, who in xxiii. Numbers, 23, said 'Surely, there is no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any divination against Israel.'" His son Wannalancet carefully followed his advice, and when Philip's War broke out, he withdrew his followers to Penacook, now Concord in New Hampshire, from the scene of the war. On his return ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... held that the rod with which popular fancy invests criticism is properly the rod of divination: a hazel-switch for the discovery of buried treasure, not a birch-twig for the castigation of offenders. It has therefore been my aim in the following pages to direct attention to the best, not to forage for the worst—the small faults which acquire prominence only by isolation—of the poet with ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... balancing battalions, carnage measured by a plumb-line, war regulated watch in hand, nothing left voluntarily to accident, old classic courage and absolute correctness. On the other side we have intuition, divination, military strangeness, superhuman instinct, a flashing glance; something that gazes like the eagle and strikes like lightning, all the mysteries of a profound mind, association with destiny; the river, the plain, the forest, and the hill summoned, and, to some ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... it and advanced from a lower to a higher stage; from a timid trafficking with spirits to a service of gods who were ideal heads of human communities, and friends of individual men. It was not a mere system, as the world has been accustomed to think, of astrology and of divination of other kinds. But when Babylon and Assyria ceased to be independent powers, and became provinces of Persia, Bel bowed down and Nebo stooped, not to rise again. The world of that day had no need of them. It had already attained in more than ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... She enjoyed the words with which Enid questions the life of her richest and most powerful suitor. The mingled shrewdness, simplicity, and sweetness of this scene always filled her with a new sense of Douglass's power of divination. Indeed, she closed the play each night with a sense of being more deeply indebted to him as well as a feeling of having been near him. Once she saw a face strangely like his in the upper gallery, and the blood tingled round her heart, and she played the remainder of the act with mind ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... alteration or new appointment could be made, unless the birds had approved of it. The king, enraged at this, and, as they say, mocking at his art, said, "Come, thou diviner, tell me, whether what I have in my mind can be done or not?" When Attus, having tried the matter by divination, affirmed that it certainly could, "Well, then," said he, "I was thinking that you should cut asunder this whetstone with a razor. Take it, then, and perform what thy birds portend can be done." Thereupon they say that he immediately cut the whetstone in two. A statue of Attus, with his head veiled, ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... godlessness; devilish men, who serve nobody but the Devil, that is, the spirit which in their language they call Menetto; under which title they comprehend everything that is subtle and crafty and beyond human skill and power. They have so much witchcraft, divination, sorcery and wicked arts, that they can hardly be held in by any bands or locks. They are as thievish and treacherous as they are tall; and in cruelty they are altogether inhuman, more than ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... and tied round with a string of red wampum, its extremities being suffered to fall on either side, as nature or accident might dispose it. When they would intercede with the Great Spirit, or know his will by divination, they assumed other dresses; the skins of bears or buffaloes, or mantles curiously woven of feathers. They usually dwelt together on a sort of consecrated ground, set apart for their special accommodation, and which was as unlike the rest of the valley, as the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... son, he ordered them both to be killed; thinking thereby to escape the realization of the prediction. Servius, on the authority of Euphorion, relates the story in much the same manner; but a poet quoted by Cicero in his first book on Divination, says that it was the oracle of Zelia, a little town at the foot of Mount Ida, which gave that answer as an interpretation of the dream of Hecuba. Pausanias says it was the sibyl Herophila who interpreted the dream, while ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... took up is one of the oldest—perhaps the oldest—form of alleged human divination, and has been called "mirror-gazing," "crystal-gazing," "crystal vision," and the like. Its practice dates back certainly three thousand years, having been noted in all ages, and among nations uncivilized as well as civilized. ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... itself of a most superficial sort. Etruria must have had some literature, yet we search the history of Roman literature in vain for any traces of the influence of that literature on Rome, with the one exception of books on divination and the interpretation of lightning. We know too little of her manners and customs to be able to tell exactly how much they may have influenced Rome, and yet it is worth noting that the things which Roman writers actually refer to Etruria, ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... groups and throngs flowing on before him, has he yielded to the strange charm of some isolated figure, arresting it in its course by the magic of his gaze, and, suffering the gay crowds to pass on, he has given himself up with delight to the divination of its mystic revelations, while he continued to weave his incantations and spells only for the entranced Sibyl ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... Scriptures. The earliest dabbler of the genus, as a contemporary writer observes, is said to be Zoroaster, thought to be the king of the Bactrians, who flourished about 3,800 years ago, or A.M. 2000. He is supposed to have been well versed in the arts of divination and astrology, and was the origin of the Persian magi. "At his birth," remarks an old writer, "he laughed; and his head did so beat, that it struck back the midwife's hand—a good sign of abundance of spirits, which are the best instruments ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... one that has the form of a participle, but differs from it by rejecting the idea of time; as, "An amusing story,"—"A lying divination." ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... simul omnes, sed alias post alias natas, et ordine quasque suo emergentes." [Footnote: Harvey, Exercitationes de Generatione. Ex. 45, "Quaenam sit pulli materia et quomodo fiat in Ovo."] In these words, by the divination of genius, Harvey, in the seventeenth century, summed up the outcome of the work of all those who, with appliances he could not dream of, are continuing his ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... it may be asked—what then do dreams portend? Do they admit of any rational interpretation? This branch of the art of divination, which was called formerly by the name of "Oneiromancy," has been practiced in all ages; and there is, perhaps, not a village in Great Britain, or on the great continent of Europe, India, or America, in which some fortune-telling old woman will not be ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... Nothing could have been purer and at the same time more enthusiastic than his ideas. . . . He was always lost in his dreams, and had no sense of reality. . . ." His exquisite politeness was then described, and the ultra acuteness and nervosity which resulted in that power of divination which he possessed. For a portrait to be living, it must have some faults as well as qualities. His delineator does not forget to mention the attitude of mystery in which the Prince took refuge whenever his feelings were hurt. She speaks also of his intense susceptibility. "His wit ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... returning to the foot of the terrace, sweetly repeats her wish to adopt the little boy, when Butterfly, emerging from the inner room, comes to look for her long lost husband, whose presence she feels with the divination of love. ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... great plain. From one to the other he turned his eyes. The Manvers gnat flew the straighter course, holding to an upper current; the Manuela wavered, but tended ever to a lower plane. The wind from the mountains of Asturias freshened and blew over him. In a singular moment of divination he saw the two insects of his vision caught in the draught and whirled together again. A spiral flight upwards was begun; in ever-narrowing circles they climbed, bid fair to soar. They reached a steadier stream, they sped along together; but then, as a gust took them, they dipped ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... Tartar's divination was unerring. He wasted no effort in battling with the current or paddling around in a circle, but turned at once and swam rapidly with the stream. He spent no breath in useless vociferation. All his canine strength was ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... or through him, Thou conveyedst to me, and tracedst in my memory, what I might hereafter examine for myself. But at that time neither he, nor my dearest Nebridius, a youth singularly good and of a holy fear, who derided the whole body of divination, could persuade me to cast it aside, the authority of the authors swaying me yet more, and as yet I had found no certain proof (such as I sought) whereby it might without all doubt appear, that what had been truly foretold by those consulted was the result of haphazard, not of the ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... possible or not, and somehow by her inspiration they generally were done. In these days of agonizing stress she appeared as in herself the very embodiment of wireless telegraphy, aeronautic locomotion, with telepathy and divination thrown in—neither time nor space was of account. Puck alone could quite have reached her standard with his engirdling of the earth in forty minutes. Poor limited mortals could but do their best with the terrestrial means at their disposal. Possibly at times their make-weight steadied ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren
... being highly incensed, they little regarded it, but collected and took into their company a number of needy men and runaway slaves,—acts which looked like the first stages of rebellion. It so happened, that when Romulus was attending a sacrifice, being fond of sacred rites and divination, Numitor's herdsmen, meeting with Remus on a journey with few companions, fell upon him, and, after some fighting, took him prisoner, carried him before Numitor, and there accused him. Numitor would not punish ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... free of lines; his fair hair scarcely showing the intrusion of grey. To her he seemed perennially young; and dearer than ever—if that could be—as the years mellowed and deepened the love on which they had boldly staked everything that counted most for them both. Yet, for all her skill in divination, she could not tell precisely how he would take the things Roy had to say; nor whether Roy himself would say them in just the right way. With Nevil, so ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... oasis had restored all his physical vigor. Every nerve and muscle was flexible and strong, as if made of steel wire. His eye had never before been so clear, nor his ear so acute, and above all, that sixth sense, the power of divination almost, which came from a perfect correlation of the five senses, developed to the utmost degree, was alive in him. Nothing could stir in the brush without his knowing it, and, welcoming the pursuit, the spirit of challenge was so ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... goddess Night,—holy, pure, running her course during this the northern journey of the sun,[1] let my desire be fulfilled." Saying this, she, in a purified condition of body and soul, worshipped the goddess Night. And in the name of her chastity and truth she had recourse to divination.[2] And she asked, "Show me the place where the king of the gods is. Let truth be verified by truth." And it was thus that she addressed ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... dancers move inwards and outwards as they circle round; and this in turn yields place to the "Bondogaya" and two religious figures, the "Damali" and "Chinughi," which are said when properly performed to give men the power of divination. ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... foreboding, aboding[obs3]; bodement[obs3], abodement[obs3]; omniation|, omniousness[obs3]; auspices, forecast; omen &c. 512; horoscope, nativity; sooth[obs3], soothsaying; fortune telling, crystal gazing; divination; necromancy &c. 992. [Divination by the stars] astrology[obs3], horoscopy[obs3], judicial astrology1[obs3]. [obs3] adytum[Place of prediction]. prefiguration[obs3], prefigurement; prototype, type. [person who ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... sticks either singly or put together. Such sticks were in early times used by the northern nations for the purpose of ascertaining future events. The sticks were shaken up, and from the figures that they formed a kind of divination was derived. ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... attention with which he listened to the low, perfectly modulated voice of his host. But Mr. Emerson was accustomed to do the talking himself; this occasion proved no exception; and here his social divination or experience failed him a little. Quite promptly, I remember, he set adrift ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... a knowledge of men. He prided himself upon it, and from a certain point of view he was right. Others have the power of divination; he had the faculty of scent. It is brute-like, ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... treatise on "Divination," or the knowledge of future events, Cicero has preserved a complete account of the state-contrivances which were practised by the Roman government to instil among the people those hopes and fears by which they regulated public opinion. The pagan creed, now become obsolete and ridiculous, has ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... itself into a woman's; she was looking on the ground, and walking slowly as if searching for something that had been lost, her course being precisely that of Mr. Melbury's gig. Fitzpiers by a sort of divination jumped to the idea that the figure was Grace's; her nearer approach made the guess ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... laughing at him. The man who was in the last degree amiable was to the last degree unyielding where conscience was concerned; the soul which was so tender had no weakness in it; his lenity was the divination of a finer justice. His honesty made all men trust him when they doubted his opinions; his good sense made them doubt their own opinions, when they had as little question of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... justice to this consummate philosopher, who is not less masterly in the use of knowledge than unhappy in divination, that the transformation of the highest good into a physical power is merely incidental with him, and due to a want of faith (at that time excusable) in mechanism and evolution. Aristotle's deity is always a moral ideal ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Conjectures upon the Experience of time past; and supernaturall, divine Revelation; the same authors of the Religion of the Gentiles, partly upon pretended Experience, partly upon pretended Revelation, have added innumerable other superstitious wayes of Divination; and made men believe they should find their fortunes, sometimes in the ambiguous or senslesse answers of the priests at Delphi, Delos, Ammon, and other famous Oracles; which answers, were made ambiguous by designe, to own the ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... has attempted to delineate that group of beliefs which stood in close connection with the Roman religion, and among the subjects treated are Dreams, Nature Worship, Roman Magic, Divination, Holy Places, Victims, etc. Thus the book is, apart from its immediate subject, a contribution to ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. 10. There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, 11. Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. 12. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord: and because of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... principles of which we in our day are very naturally ignorant, since we do not ransack science for the same secrets; and thus, in the selection or preparation of the material employed, mainly consisted whatever may be referrible to natural philosophical causes in the antique science of Rhabdomancy, or divination and enchantment by wands. The staff, or wand, of which you tell me, was, you say, made of iron or steel and tipped with crystal. Possibly iron and crystal do really contain some properties not hitherto scientifically analyzed, and only, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... recipient? He was obviously possessed by the idea that numerous premonitions had been vouchsafed to him; and what chiefly moved in him a desire to visit Scotland was, not its scenery, its lakes, its mountains, or its people, but a wish to inquire into the (as he supposed) natural faculty of divination. The dream may be of Jove[19]—Homer is a sound heathen authority upon this point; but Talleyrand was no dreamer. His "presentiments" (for so he loved to call them), were, apparently, sudden intuitions, which ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... I find you sulking here. Well, Trix, I will tell you how they found you out. You and I are known to be the two smallest women in the whole neighborhood. After having found me out, through the divination of a magician, it was easy to see that the other small ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... England, and that have scarcely yet died out in Scotland. As she told of tricks she had often played, of the apple eaten facing a mirror, of the dripping sheet, of the basins of water, of the nuts burning side by side, and many other such innocent ways of divination, by which laughing, trembling English maidens sought to see the form of their future husbands, if husbands they were to have, then Faith listened breathlessly, asking short, eager questions, as if some ray of hope had entered into her gloomy heart. Lois ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... many that are appointed only to learning, yet all in childhood be instructed therein; and the more part do bestow in learning their spare hours. In the course of the stars and movings of the heavenly sphere they be expert, but for the deceitful divination thereof they ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... has familiarized itself with all the relics of an ancient period can sometimes, by the force of its sympathetic divination, restore the missing notes in the "music of humanity," and reconstruct the fragments into a whole which will really bring the remote past nearer to us, and interpret it to our duller apprehension—this form of imaginative power must ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... of divination, and so had his wife, and from this knowledge he found out that his name would be held high in the north part of the world, and honored beyond that of all kings. For this reason he was eager to begin his journey from Turkey, and he had with him very many people, young and old, men and ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... turned to go out again, when his master beckoned him to stop. The man was surprised, for generally his master was not fond of his society, except when he wanted to consult him or persuade him to exercise his pretended art of divination. The truth was, however, that at the moment Frank Muller would have been glad to consort with a dog. The events of the night had brought this terrible man, steeped in iniquity from his youth up, down to the level of a child frightened at the dark. For ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... misplaced word makes him shudder. Writing with him is an exhausting process, which probably accounts for the fact that his literary output has been small. But the same power of analysis and attention to detail have been most effective in his political activities. In these his divination has been prophetic and in his manipulation of contending elements he shows a dexterity that has baffled even the ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... sounds like divination. A tutor I will never be again; never take a pupil after Henry and yourself; not again will I sit habitually at another man's table—no more be the appendage of a family. I am now a man of thirty; I have never been free since I was a boy of ten. I have such ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... the natives and probably never by the professional shaman, who worked by incantation, often pulverizing and mixing the substances mystically used, to prevent their detection. The same mixtures were employed in divination. The author particularly mentions Mandan ceremonies, in which a white "medicine" stone, as hard as pyrites, was produced by rubbing in the hand snow or the white feathers of a bird. The blowing away of the disease, considered to be introduced by a supernatural power foreign to the ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... transformed, that we may well ask to which of the two peoples they owed their origin. The Semites finally gained the ascendency over their rivals, and the Sumerian gods from thenceforward preserved an independent existence only in connection with magic, divination, and the science of foretelling events, and also in the formulas of exorcists and physicians, to which the harshness of their names lent a greater weight. Elsewhere it was Bel and Sin, Shamash and Eamman, who were universally ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... power of working miracles; she has not been able, with the assistance of all her saints, to work one miracle since the revolution began; and as she never stood in greater need than now, we may, without the aid of divination, conclude that all her former miracles are tricks and lies. [Boulanger in his life of Paul, has collected from the ecclesiastical histories, and the writings of the fathers as they are called, several matters ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... general notions or concepts. This process of analysis and synthesis, whereby we select certain qualities in a group of mind-images, and then range together those of like quality, is the judicial action of the mind spoken of. But when we exercise swift divination upon the mind images, as does a poet or a man of genius., then we use a power higher than the judicial, and one nearer to the keen vision of ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... very little doubt that amongst the various tricks of ancient divination ventriloquism found a place; but I cannot give that direct evidence which MR. SANSOM asks for. I think it very likely that "the wizards that peep and mutter" (Isa. viii. 19.) were of this class; but ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 45, Saturday, September 7, 1850 • Various
... their Ministrations; Apparitions, Ghosts, Hobgoblins, Presentiments, Second Sight, and Supernatural Appearances; Magical Practices and Conjuration; Daemonology, Spectres, and Vampires; Popular Superstitions, Popish Credulity, Delusions, Ecstacies, Fanaticisms, and Impostures; Astrology, Divination, Revelations, and Prophecies; Necromancy, Sorcery, and Witchcraft; Infatuation, Diabolical Possession, and Enthusiasm; Proverbs, Old Sayings, and Vulgar Errors; the Household Book of Sir Ed. Coke, Original MS.; Early English Poetry, MS. temp. James I.; Grammatical Treatises printed by W. de ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... precious for a political engineer; for the forces he acts upon are never other than human passions. But how, except through divination, can these passions, which grow out of the deepest sentiments, be reached? How, save by conjecture, can forces be estimated which seem to defy all measurement? On this dark and uncertain ground, where ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... their law. Some have taken these Teraphin for images like a man, and there seems a show of reason in it from Micah, Saul's daughter putting one in David's bed to deceive her father's messenger, while he escaped. This, it is possible, alludes to some divination by the Teraphin which she used in his behalf, for Teraphin is the plural number; therefore, could not signify only one image; neither could the gods which Rachel stole from her father, Labon, be one ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... of some future epoch in the pregnant sayings of eminent philosophers and poets; as for example the intimation of the discovery of America by Seneca; or of Shakespeare by Plato; or the Reformation by Dante. Sometimes the result has been produced by the power of divination, granted in some inexplicable manner to ordinary men. Of such a kind were many of the ancient oracles, the fulfillment of which, according to Cicero, could not be denied without a perversion of history. Such was the foreshadowing of the twelve centuries of Roman dominion by the legend ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... mankind. Having thus broadly defined the literature which has to be suppressed or subjected to supervision, rules are laid down for the exercise of censure. Books, whereof the general tendency is good, but which contain passages savoring of heresy, superstition or divination, shall be reserved for the consideration of Catholic theologians appointed by the Inquisition; and this shall hold good also of prefaces, summaries, or annotations. All writings printed in Rome must be submitted ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... sympathy that was real sympathy in that it was understanding. They did nothing they thought ought to be done for us, according to their standards, but they did what they divined we waited to be done for us, while their divination was most successful. It would be impossible to enumerate the hundreds of little acts of consideration they performed during the few days of our intercourse. Let it suffice for me to say that of all hospitality and entertainment I have known, ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... spoke up as if from some cavernous depth of divination—"suddenly, long afterward, one says to one's self, ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... would not have said it.' Her mockery was not kept for her followers alone, and her voice would become harsh, and her mockery lose phantasy and humour, when she spoke of what seemed to her scientific materialism. Once I saw this antagonism, guided by some kind of telepathic divination, take a form of brutal phantasy. I brought a very able Dublin woman to see her and this woman had a brother, a physiologist whose reputation, though known to specialists alone, was European; and, ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... hours," repeated Galeotti firmly, "if there be one sparkle of true divination in those bright and mysterious intelligences, which speak, each on their courses, though without a tongue. I wish your ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... falls, like a pale prophetess, Under the swoon of holy divination: And what had all surpass'd her simple guess, She now resolves in this dark revelation; Death's very mystery,—oblivious death;— Long sleep,—deep night, and an ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... mother, chose the now historic words from the 23d verse of the 23d chapter of Numbers—"What hath God wrought!" The whole verse reads: "Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any divination, against Israel: according to this time it shall be said of Jacob and of Israel, What hath God wrought!" To Morse, with his strong religious bent and his belief that he was but a chosen vessel, every word ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... Dry Ash of Ismenus.]—Divination by burnt offerings was practised at an altar of Apollo by ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles
... you an embroidered kerchief in return, the very best in the whole market." The widow comes to pay Melania a visit, and is induced to believe, on the evidence of beans (frequently used for the purpose of divination), that her destined husband is close at hand. At this propitious moment Trofim appears. Melania makes a little speech to the young couple, ending her recommendation to get ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... at war, in all manner of fact at peace. And Ida, out of the bounty of her nature, gave the two vagabonds a place at her fireside whenever they chose to come. Perhaps, where speech was not given, a gift of divination entered into her instead, and she valued what others found useless, and held aloof from what others found good. She had powers which had ever been the admiration of Guidon Hill. Birds and animals were her friends—she called them her kinsmen. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of to their own divinity, for in those days the principal business of a deity was to wage war in behalf of his worshipers. Balaam was a Midianite, and Balak sent messengers to him "with the reward of divination in their hand," and begged that he would kindly come over and knock the Israelites off the Christmas tree with one of his smooth-bore, muzzle-loading maledictions; "for," said he, with a pious fervor that ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... steel cage, were assembled the prisoners, all of them, on this occasion, negroes; while at the head of the chamber behind the usual police-court bulwark, sat the judge—a white-haired, hook-nosed man of more than seventy, peering over the top of his eyeglasses with a look of shrewd, merciless divination. ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... fifty questions, the replies to which left me quite as much in the dark as before. He knew, he said, and hundreds of other persons in Paris knew, the singularity of the personal appearance of the sorceress, and her apparent power of divination, but neither he nor they had any knowledge of her origin. He had been introduced at her house several months before, and had asked questions affecting his family in Prussia and the chances of descent of certain property, the replies to which had astounded him. He had heard of her ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... felt her heart give a stroke of pain, for something that was almost divination of things desolate in the little fellow's short years of babyhood was granted to her ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... a story of divination and superstition characteristic of the time, a strange prophet is hired by an enemy to pronounce a curse upon the new nation. This diviner is taken possession of by the Spirit of God, and forced to utter what is clearly against his own mercenary desires. ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... to hearing words in birds' songs and running or falling water; and I once appalled a visitor by professing seriously that I could determine for him some question as to what would happen to him by divination with a bullet in an Indian moccasin. We had two servants who spoke old Irish; one was an inexhaustible mine of legends, which she related to me—she surpassed Croker; the other, less versed, still knew a great deal, and told ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... seam as a substitute for rending the fabric of a garment in token of woe. We are reminded of the prohibition from exacting interest that is imposed upon the true believer, and of the still common custom of divination by extracting a fall from the pages of Hafiz or Saadi. We may gain a good deal of information about the culinary methods of Turcomans, Persians, and Curds; the operations of the hammam or bath are disclosed to us, and we are surreptitously introduced ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... advantage of the ground, tactics, which preserve the equilibrium of battalions, carnage, executed according to rule, war regulated, watch in hand, nothing voluntarily left to chance, the ancient classic courage, absolute regularity; on the other, intuition, divination, military oddity, superhuman instinct, a flaming glance, an indescribable something which gazes like an eagle, and which strikes like the lightning, a prodigious art in disdainful impetuosity, all the mysteries of a profound soul, associated ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... might be his own daughter. His heart leaped with joy. But the joy was short-lived. No such hope in this world for Bent Wade! This coincidence, however, left him with a strange, prophetic sense in his soul of a tragedy coming to White Slides Ranch. Wade possessed some power of divination, some strange gift to pierce the veil of the future. But he could not exercise this power at will; it came involuntarily, like a messenger of trouble in the dark night. Moreover, he had never yet been able to draw ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... His philosophy of life, so largely commercial, found room for a cult or two of superstition. He had consulted Mrs. Puce's oracle time and time again. He had had recourse to his boy Jim's father, Tom Nyoka, twice before. He had got him to use for him a rude and illegal form of divination. He had been helped by it before, at least so he opined. He might be helped again. He sat looking at the sun dropping smoothly in a cloudless sky. As he watched, Jim came out to him to tell him that his father was in the kitchen. 'I'll come directly, ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... way, over which I walked every time I went into the woods) could possess any such magic power as he ascribed to it, and I was, therefore, not disposed to cumber my pocket with it. I had a positive aversion to all pretenders to "divination." It was beneath one of my intelligence to countenance such dealings with the devil, as this power implied. But, with all my learning—it was really precious little—Sandy was more than a match for me. "My book learning," ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... in this song is to an old superstition. It used to be supposed that the chance words caught from the mouths of passers-by would solve any doubt on questions to which it might otherwise be impossible to obtain an answer. This was called the yufu-ura, or "evening divination," on account of its being practised in the evening. It has been found impossible in this instance to follow the original ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... disembodied spirits of dead men who make the communications, the Bible reader is at once aware of a conflict of claims. In times when the Bible was written, there were practices among men which went under the names of "enchantment," "sorcery," "witchcraft," "necromancy," "divination," "consulting with familiar spirits," etc. These practices were all more or less related, but some of them bear an unmistakable meaning. Thus, "necromancy" is defined to mean "a pretended communication with the dead." A "familiar spirit" was "a spirit or demon supposed ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... mean? But she had had experience of her, and knew the instinctive divination that got at objects and results where reason in full-grown man would syllogize into the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... divination! often no sooner perceived than forgotten—but, when justified by the event, appearing with all the attributes of an ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... divination of the hand, is, according to the orthodox theory, the determining from certain lines upon the hand the quality of the physical and ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... potentiality of the gold was known to the Rhine-god; three of his daughters had been instructed by him, and detailed to guard the treasure. Some faculty of divination warned him of danger to it, and of the quarter from whence this danger threatened. But nixies—even when burdened by cares of state—are just nixies; those three seem to have lived to laugh before all else—to ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... the dawn of adolescence she had passed through a long period of abject superstition, largely through the influence of a servant. All the old woman's signs were very dominant in her life. She even invented methods of divination, as, "if the boards do not creak when I walk across the room I shall get through my lessons without trouble." She always preferred to see two rooks together to one and became expert in the black arts. She used to hear strange noises at night for a time, which seemed signs and portents ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... they ate with Joseph; who was therefore regarded not as a foreigner, but as one of themselves: and when he sent and brought his brethren back, and charged them with taking his cup, he said, "Know ye not that a man like me practises divination?" thus assuming the Egyptian of high rank initiated into the Mysteries, and as such conversant with the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... well as very chilly, to attempt to stray out alone at the stroke of twelve, robed merely in a nightgown, and fetch three pails of water to place by one's bedside. Gowan's north country recipe for divination was equally impracticable—to go out at midnight, and "dip your smock in a south-running spring where the lairds' lands meet," then hang it to dry before the fire. They discussed it quite seriously, however, ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... what evidence did they produce that Socrates refused to recognise the gods acknowledged by the state? Was it that he did not sacrifice? or that he dispensed with divination? On the contrary, he was often to be seen engaged in sacrifice, at home or at the common altars of the state. Nor was his dependence on divination less manifest. Indeed that saying of his, "A divinity (2) gives me a sign," was on everybody's lips. So much so that, if ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... does not go by land when he can go by water, but in this case there are both land and water to meet, for many are the streams, and they are unbridged as yet. With rhythmic lope, more beautiful than the stride of any civilized limbs, and with a sure divination of the best route, he chooses the trail which will ultimately be the highway of the vast army of pale-faces. Speed on, O solitary Indian—to vanish down the narrow trail of your treading as you are destined, in time, to vanish forever from the vision of New England!... Behind the red ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... suspected the existence of a trans-Uranian planet till Uranus itself, by hair-breadth departures from its predicted orbit, gave out the secret. No one saw the disturbing planet till the pencil of the mathematician, with almost occult divination, had pointed out its place in the heavens. The general predication of a trans-Uranian planet was made by Bessel, the great Konigsberg astronomer, in 1840; the analysis that revealed its exact location was ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... during a certain lapse of time, and then disappeared under such and such circumstances. When the Tchurtchun has obtained all the necessary information, he recites a few prayers, opens his book of divination, and finally pronounces his oracle, while the Tartars, who have come to consult him, listen to his words, kneeling, and rapt in profound devotion. Your Grand Lama, he says, is come to life again, in Thibet, at such a distance from your house; you will find him in such a family. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... to my anecdotes about our being lost through inability to riddle out our name on the part of the police, I must relate an instance where the post-office displayed remarkable powers of divination. One day I received an official notification from the post-office that there was a misdirected parcel for me from Moscow, lying in the proper office,— would I please to call for it? I called. The address on the parcel was "Madame ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... form for expressing goodness in words, is necessarily an exceptional man. And it is unreasonable and unfair in the public to expect a man to get up in the pulpit and, with no costume and no accessories, merely with a kind of shrewd holiness or divination into human nature, present goodness so that we seem to be there. It is small wonder that a man who finds he is expected to be a kind of combination of biograph, brother, spiritual detective, and angel all in one, in order to do his work successfully has days of feeling that he has ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... worshipful Laird of Ellangowan was not so preceese as he might have been in clearing his land of witches (concerning whom it is said, 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live'), nor of those who had familiar spirits, and consulted with divination, and sorcery, and lots, which is the fashion with the Egyptians, as they ca' themsells, and other unhappy bodies, in this our country. And the Laird was three years married without having a family-and he ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... abide alone— The wild Chaudiere's eternal jubilee Has such sweet divination in its tone, And utters ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... of divination were at work, and out of his seat he slipped unobserved. Through the door he flitted shadow-like and strolled along in the wake ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... principal temple is said to have been erected between 471 and 500 A.D. I have not seen any statement that the locality was sacred in pre-Buddhist times, but it was probably regarded as the haunt of deities, one of whom—perhaps some spirit of divination—was identified with the wise Manjusri. It is possible that during the various inroads of Graeco-Bactrians, Yueeh-Chih, and other Central Asian tribes into India, Manjusri was somehow imported into the pantheon of the Mahayana from China or Central Asia, and he ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... they compute the time of the death of the son nearly as we do the appearance of the Redeemer on earth. They believe in a hell as we do, and burn lamps that God may light them in the right road in the other world: Yet do they use divination after a ridiculous manner. The country of Thibet produces several fruits of the same kinds with those grown in Europe, together with rice and wheat, and has abundance of cattle; but a great part of the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... Mme. Fontaine made use of a giant toad named Astaroth, and of a black hen with bristling feathers, called Cleopatra or Bilouche. These two animals caught Gazonal's eye in 1845, when in company with De Lora and Bixiou he visited the fortune-teller's. The Southerner, however, asked only a five-franc divination, while in the same year Mme. Cibot, who came to consult her on an important matter, had to pay a hundred francs. According to Bixiou, "a third of the lorettes, a fourth of the statesmen and a half of the artists" consulted Mme. Fontaine. She was the Egeria of a minister, and also looked ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... temples used by the Chinese, a lower standard is painfully obvious and the atmosphere is different. Visitors are there in plenty, but their object is to "get luck," and the business of religion has become transformed into divination and spiritual gambling. The worshipper, on entering, goes to a counter where he buys tapers and incense-sticks, together with some implements of superstition such as rods or inscribed cards. After burning incense ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... Crotona in South Italy, where he lived, looked upon him as a man peculiarly connected with the gods; and some of them even identified him with the Hyperborean Apollo. He himself is said to have laid claim to the gifts of divination and prophecy. The religious element was clearly predominant in his character. Grote says of him, "In his prominent vocation, analogous to that of Epimenides, Orpheus, or Melampus, he appears as ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... wars—in the event of his setting eyes on the soil, and the chiefs, people, and all, would believe them; for, as may be imagined, with men unenlightened, supernatural and imaginary predictions work with more force than substantial reasons. Their implement of divination, simple as it may appear, is a cow's or antelope's horn (Uganga), which they stuff with magic powder, also called Uganga. Stuck into the ground in front of the village, it is supposed to have sufficient power to ward off the attacks ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... dread power of Our Lord in His Sacrament of the Altar, a power which the infernal legions recognize, and before which they tremble. The second part gives a short but deeply interesting account of modern spiritualism, as the form which divination, sorcery, and devil-worship has assumed in our days. It is written in a simple, agreeable style, that makes ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... in this case upon which Camille wished he could bring to bear those purely intellectual—not magical—powers of divination which he modestly told his clients were the secret of all his sagacious advice. He wished he could determine conclusively and exactly what was the mutual relation of Attalie and her lodger. Out of the minutest corner of one eye he had watched ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... catastrophe: it is not that they are loosely suited, like the Delphic oracles, to whatever may turn up, but that they, by a felicitous adaptation, sit closely into each era which the Architect of Ages has arranged. Pythonic divination may be likened to a loose bag, which would hold and involve with equal ease almost any circumstance; biblical prophecy to an exact mould, into which alone, though not all similar in perfection, its own true casts will fit: or again, in another view of the matter, accept this similitude: ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... as though a sixth sense had been implanted in Polly, enabling her to pierce straight through John's self-sufficiency or Ned's vapourings, to the real kernel of goodness that no doubt lay hid below. He himself could not get at it; but then his powers of divination were the exact opposite of Polly's. He was always struck by the weak or ridiculous side of a person, and had to dig laboriously down to the virtues. While his young wife, by a kind of genius, saw the good at a glance—and saw nothing else. And she did not stint with ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... horse,' said Mahbub, 'I say that when a colt is born to be a polo-pony, closely following the ball without teaching—when such a colt knows the game by divination—then I say it is a great wrong to break that colt to a ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... by turns incisive, brilliant, reflected, and spontaneous style, in which learning comes in to enhance and steady the flow of a lively and luxuriant imagination. To all the refinement and subtle divination common to Slavic genius, you ally the patient research and learned scruples which characterize the German explorer. You assume alternately the gait of the mole and of the eagle—and everything you do succeeds wonderfully, because amid ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... society. It seems rather a harmless display of merry pranks, which hit alike at gods and men without any particular object in view. Whatever was remarkable about birds in natural history, in mythology, in the doctrine of divination, in the fables of Aesop, or even in proverbial expressions, has been ingeniously drawn to his purpose by the poet; who even goes back to cosmogony, and shows that at first the raven-winged Night laid a wind-egg, out of which the lovely ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... Israelites from God, that "when they came into Canaan, they should not learn to do after, the abominations of the people thereof; and, particularly, that there should not be found among them any one that useth divination, or an observer of times, &c., or a consulter with familiar spirits, &c. For all, says he, "that do these things are an abomination to the Lord; and because of these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive these people out ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... and his mother went far and wide, till the mother died, and Cadmus went to Delphi—the place thought to be the centre of the earth—where Apollo had slain the serpent Python, and where he had a temple and cavern in which every question could be answered. Such places of divination were called oracles, and Cadmus was here told to cease from seeking his sister, and to follow a cow till she fell down with fatigue, and to build a city on that spot. The poor cow went till she came into Boeotia, and there fell. Cadmus meant to offer her up, and went to fetch water from a fountain ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... or any other important matter, the natives used to have recourse to divination by means of little miniature darts made of rushes or reeds, or often of the leaf of the ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... from the future especially is sought on Hallowe'en. It is a famous time for divination in love affairs. A typical eighteenth century party in western Scotland ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... little into futurity, and to view through the mirror of the imagination the further results which the experience of the past may convince us that a perseverance in the same course of restriction and disability will infallibly lead to. It requires not the gift of divination to foresee that the manufacturing system, which has already taken such deep root, and so rapidly shot up towards maturity, will still further confirm and consolidate itself with the increasing poverty of the community. For several years the importation of British manufactures, ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... mated and forming for the meditated measure; appearing the very gang of Circe;—and in their midst he now observed his son, the brutish looking, cunning, and sensual Narcisse, wine-flushed and loud, and seeming to be the mimic Comus of the crew. As with the power of divination, he at once comprehended the spectacle. He had arrived opposite the equivocal building wherein Narcisse and his companions had disappeared some hours before, and the door of which had just been suddenly flung ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... examples of the latter, while Ashurbanipal is a great example of the magic-ridden kings. Hammurabi apparently strove to put down magic. The eternal struggle between the "science" (falsely so-called) of magic and divination on the one hand and the higher claims of religious duty on the other, is the key to much that is misunderstood in the politics of the time. It would be too much to say that the priestly party were always on the side of morality, or that they ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... for autonomy. We find here pretty delicate shades of distinction, which have been misunderstood by Church writers as much as by their adversaries, for if Francis was particular not to put himself in the attitude of revolt, he would not compromise his independence, and he felt with an exquisite divination that all the privileges which the court of Rome could heap upon him were worth nothing in comparison with liberty. Alas, he was soon forced to resign himself to these gilded bonds, against which ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... investigation. The inscriptions on these bones have already furnished a list of nearly 2500 separate characters, of which not more than about 600 have been so far identified. They appear to be responses given by professional soothsayers to private individuals who came to them seeking the aid of divination in the affairs of their daily life. It is difficult to fix their date with much exactitude. The script, though less archaic than that of the earlier bronzes, is nevertheless of an exceedingly free and irregular type. Judging by the style of the inscriptions alone, one would be inclined ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... of divining the color of the hair of one's future wife or husband, which is probably very old, yet survives in many places, but with interesting modifications as to the bird which gives the signal to try the divination. In Westphalia it is at sight of the first swallow that the peasant looks to see if there be a hair under his foot. According to Gay, in England it is ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various |
