"Magician" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... its close, when Kashkine came from Petersburg, at Ivan's earnest request, to make one of the party invited, by Frau Cosima, to spend a week at the home of Wagner in Bayreuth. It was with a little reluctance that Gregoriev entered this sanctum of the great magician's world. None who knew intimately Ivan's work and that of the creator of the music-drama, could easily comprehend the lack of sympathy between these two men whose music was of so much the same type. Perhaps the similarity ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... consciousness. Nobody thinks 'the cognitions of which I was conscious in my dream are unreal'; what men actually think is 'the cognitions are real, but the things are not real.' In the same way the illusive state of consciousness which the magician produces in the minds of other men by means of mantras, drugs, &c., is true, and hence the cause of love and fear; for such states of consciousness also are not sublated. The cognition which, owing ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... and large; Or, when sea-linkt clouds, garbed in rain, And behemoths sink to briny home, A star that shines from foreign zones Guide carvels old and Satan's barge O'er blue profounds of the deep, And gladden souls of men; yet, stunned, Tho' trembling, to a roaring mouth, A horn'd magician locked in death, On whom two hectic harlots peep, Sinks in abyssal depths unsummed, Whilst him he fought hastes to the South,— A ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... very great magician. He has known how to render labor pleasant and attractive. As for the pleasure, over and above good wages, he accords to us a portion of his profits according to our deserts; whence you may judge of the eagerness with which we go to work. And that is not all: he has caused large, handsome buildings ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... coming thence, one who was fabled to have gathered together more knowledge, both of this world and of that other hidden one which was to them just as real, than any mortal man alive. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that Cardan should have been regarded rather as a magician than as a doctor, and in the Scotichronicon[146] it is recorded that the Primate was cured of a lingering asthma by the incantations of an astrologer named Cardan, from Milan. Cardan in his narrative ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... Prostrate on the ground lay the feigned Rosario, as if waiting in silence the decision of his Judge. Astonishment on the one part, apprehension on the other, for some minutes chained them in the same attitudes, as had they been touched by the Rod of some Magician. At length recovering from his confusion, the Monk quitted the Grotto, and sped with precipitation towards the Abbey. His action did not escape the Suppliant. She sprang from the ground; She hastened to follow him, overtook him, threw herself in his passage, and embraced his knees. Ambrosio ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... went to the magician Upon the morrow morn. "Mighty," was his petition, "Look not on me in scorn; But one last gaze elision, ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... flanked on either side by close brushwood. About a hundred yards from where they stood, three men were engaged in violent feud. The scene, at such a moment, and in such a place, seemed produced by the wave of a magician's wand. The Cavalier rubbed his eyes, as if to be assured of its reality; while Robin stood aghast, bewildered, and uncertain how to act:—the moon was shining in all its brightness, so that they could see as clearly ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... be so fortunate as to find Shakespeare alive in his grave, we shall of course raise him, and invite him to cooperate in the business of photographing his own shining face. But we are not so sanguine as to expect that miracle, though almost as great wonders have been done by the power of this magician. But where is the "triple curse" with which, according to this authority, "that gravestone is weighted"? Quite another view of the inscription is given ...
— Shakespeare's Bones • C. M. Ingleby
... contingency. Joseph was so accustomed to obey that a sober second thought led him to repent of his creditable hesitation; within a week, and before leaving Venice, he had despatched a confidential messenger to secure Alexander's formal compliance with his transfer to Spain. He was under the spell of the magician, for it was probably Napoleon who prompted his thoughts. After that of Charles the Great, the empire of Charles V had been the most splendid in Europe, and Joseph perhaps dreamed that if not first he might be second, eclipsed ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... or two people for him; he is going home very soon." She looked round the hall through which they were passing. "I can't imagine myself ever really living here. It looks as if it had all been created by the wand of some magician for a princess in a fairytale. What a contrast to our hut ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... established, and retaining such as are proved to your satisfaction. You will be struck at once with the novel and interesting character of some of them. Prince Caradoc was changed into a wolf. An Irish magician who opposed the saint was swallowed by the earth as far as his ears, and then, on repentance, was instantly cast forth and set free. An Irish pagan, dead and long buried, talked freely with the saint from out his turf-covered grave, and charitably ...
— Saint Patrick - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... resurrection, this wonderful restoration of Castle O'Shanaghgan has occurred during your absence. You will come back to a sort of fairyland; but it is one of your uncle's stipulations that you do not come back at present; and, of course, for such a fairy godfather, such a magician, no promise is too great to give. So I have told him, dear Nora, that you will live with your kind and noble Aunt Grace, and with your charming cousin Linda, and your cousin Molly—about whom I do not hear so ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... the romance of trade, and casts contempt upon all its sober realities. It renders the stock-jobber a magician, and the exchange a region of enchantment. It elevates the merchant into a kind of Knight-errant, or rather a commercial Quixote. The slow but sure gains of snug percentage become despicable in his eyes: no "operation" ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... were but the foibles of genius, for, notwithstanding all his fast life and many vices, Fox was hardly surpassed as a scholar, an orator, and a linguist; and, as a politician, Pitt himself—a life-long rival—frankly admitted that 'Fox was a magician, who laid a spell upon his hearers as long as the words issued from ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... had beheld many strange things, but never before had a horse been his host, and he was so startled that, hungry though he was, he hardly touched the food which the horse heaped on his plate, expecting every moment that a magician might appear or the ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... side eye to one author in particular, with whose works I am very well acquainted, though I cannot read them, and who has spent many vigils in this cause, sitting beside his ailing puppets and (like a magician) wearying his art to restore them to youth and beauty. There are others who ride too high for these misfortunes. Who doubts the loveliness of Rosalind? Arden itself was not more lovely. Who ever questioned the perennial charm of Rose Jocelyn, Lucy Desborough, or Clara Middleton? ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... astonishment was increased. At the table were his brother and his master, Ambrose with a black book in hand, Lucas Hansen with some papers, and on the ground was seated a venerable, white-bearded old man, something between Stephen's notions of an apostle and of a magician, though the latter idea predominated at sight of a long parchment scroll covered with characters such as belonged to no alphabet that he had ever dreamt of. What were they doing to his brother? He was absolutely in an enchanter's den. Was it a pixie at the door, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... silent hour Nature had drawn him into her wide embrace, lulling him with a mother's gentleness; and now, in the moment of waking, it seemed that again the same beneficent agency was dispensing love and favor, for he opened his eyes upon a changed world. A magician's wand had been waved over the city during his hours of sleep; the mist and oppression of the night had disappeared with the darkness. Paris was under the ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... young lady. The hanging Tower at Pisa is, we believe, some thirty feet or so off the perpendicular, and there is one at Caerphilly about seventeen; but these are nothing to the castles in the air we have seen built by the touch of a female magician; nor is it an unusual thing with artists of the fair sex to order their plumed chivalry to gallop down precipices considerably steeper than a house, on animals apparently produced between the tiger and the bonassus. ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... and isolation, Sutter, as if with a magician's wand, brought forth wealth and evolved for himself a veritable little kingdom. Near the close of the year 1839, eight white men joined his colony, and in 1840 his numbers were increased by five others. About this time the Mokelumne Indians became ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... if, any of these things having been done, they should appear undesirable to Mr. Pulitzer, Dunningham could undo them with the same magician-like ease as had marked their achievement. A wave of Mr. Pulitzer's hand was translated into action by Dunningham, and the whole of his arrangements disappeared as completely as if they had never existed. The slate was wiped clean, ready in an instant ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... to play! Instead of loitering away one's evenings at the club, to doff one's magnificence and lose oneself in the great nightly multitude of the great city, wandering hither and thither, watching and listening, and, with one's cheque-book for a wand, play the magician of human destinies—bringing unhoped-for justice to the oppressed, succour as out of heaven to the outcast, and swift retribution, as of sudden lightning, to the oppressor. To play Providence in some tragic crisis ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... not make an Indian Exile quite forgetful of home-delights. Parted friends may still share the light of love as severed clouds are equally kindled by the same sun. No number of miles or days can change or separate faithful spirits or annihilate early associations. That strange magician, Fancy, who supplies so many corporeal deficiencies and overcomes so many physical obstructions, and mocks at space and time, enables us to pass in the twinkling of an eye over the dreary waste of waters that separates ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... it through the window. "Who is the magician? Name him! I will have him thrown into the carceres. We'll see whether the charms he sells so cheap are any good! Or is he a ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... had a mortal enemy named Fioravante, whom he could not bear to see so much as painted on a wall. He, when he heard of this proclamation, being a cunning magician, called a parcel of that evil brood to him, and commanded them forthwith to make his head and teeth of gold. So they did as he desired, and when he saw himself with a head and teeth of pure gold he walked past under the window of the ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... surprised that you have sent for me to appear before a man. That seeming ape is a young prince, son of a powerful sultan, and has been metamorphosed into an ape by enchantment. When I was just out of the nursery, an old lady who waited on me was a most expert magician, and taught me seventy rules of magic. By this science I know all enchanted persons at first sight: I know who they are, and by whom they have been enchanted; therefore do not be surprised if I should ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... so appeased; they desired the Baron's destruction if only from hatred of his popularity, and they lost no opportunity of casting discredit upon him, or of endeavouring to alienate the affections of the people by representing him as a magician, a thing clearly proved by his machines and engines, which must have been designed by some supernatural assistance. But the chief, as the most immediate and pressing danger, was the debt to Francis the notary, which might at any moment ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... same evening rested at Wytham House, belonging to the Earl of Abingdon. There was hardly time to realise that the memories of Alice Lee, the old knight Sir Henry, and the faithful dog Bevis, rivalled successfully the grisly story of Queen Eleanor and Fair Rosamond. Nay, the magician was still dogging the travellers' steps; for had he not made the little town of Abingdon his own by choosing it for the meeting-place of Mike Lambourne and Tressillian, and rebuilding in its neighbourhood the ruins of Cumnor Hall, on which the dews fell softly? ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... greater island—the Continent of America. 'The tale,' says M. Martin, 'rests upon the authority of the Egyptian priests; and the Egyptian priests took a pleasure in deceiving the Greeks.' He never appears to suspect that there is a greater deceiver or magician than the Egyptian priests, that is to say, Plato himself, from the dominion of whose genius the critic and natural philosopher of modern times are not wholly emancipated. Although worthless in respect of any result which can be attained by them, discussions ...
— Critias • Plato
... spectators, and, though for the most part they moved but little while their joy fire was at its height, the conflagration caused a sheer devil's dance of impish light and shadow to race over every face and form in the assemblage. The fantastic magician of the fire threw humps on to straight backs, flattened good round breasts, wrote wrinkles on smooth faces, turned eyes and lips into shining gems, made white teeth yellow, cast a grotesque spell of the unreal on young shapes, of the ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... the arch-magician launched upon the Baal Shem a herd of wild boars, spitting flames; and these at last passed beyond the first circle. Then the pupils saw a change come over the Baal Shem's face, and they began ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... spokes of radiant light were darting aloft from behind the island and touching into gold a few small, scattered flakes of fleecy cloud that floated high over our mastheads. Then, all in a moment, the small, faintly- gleaming bit of land ahead became transformed, as it might be with a magician's wand, into a block of deepest, richest purple, bristling with rays of burning gold, a throbbing rim of molten gold swept into view from behind it, and in an instant it vanished amid a blinding blaze of sunlight that flashed across the ocean toward us, transfiguring its erstwhile surface ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... him a magician, Tycho Brahe, Who lived on that strange island in the Sound, Nine miles from Elsinore. His legend reached The Mermaid Inn the year that Shakespeare died. Fynes Moryson had brought his travellers' tales Of Wheen, the heart-shaped ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... was this financial oratory rolled forth that the dullest intellect could follow with pleasure the complicated scheme; and for five hours the House of commons sat as if it were under the sway of a magician's wand. When Mr. Gladstone resumed his seat, it was felt that the career of the coalition ministry was assured by the genius that was discovered in its Chancellor ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... blood is fired as it used to be in youth. Andante con moto in the Voluntaries, and the thing about the trees at night (No. XXIV. I think) are up to date my favourites. I did not guess you were so great a magician; these are new tunes, this is an undertone of the true Apollo; these are not verse, they are poetry—inventions, creations, in language. I thank you for the joy you have given me, and remain your old ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Democratic politicians known as the "Albany regency," which ruled N.Y. politics for more than a generation, and was largely responsible for the introduction of the "Spoils System" into state and national affairs. Van Buren's proficiency in this variety of politics earned him the nickname of "Little Magician." In 1821 he was elected to the U.S. Senate, and in 1828 governor of N.Y., and in the following year was made secretary of state by President Jackson, who used his influence to obtain the nomination of Van Buren for president in ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... Calos, on whose domains they had suffered wreck, a chief mighty in stature and in power. In one of his villages was a pit, six feet deep and as wide as a hogshead, filled with treasure gathered from Spanish wrecks on adjacent reefs and keys. The monarch was a priest, too, and a magician, with power over the elements. Each year he withdrew from the public gaze to hold converse in secret with supernal or infernal powers; and each year he sacrificed to his gods one of the Spaniards whom the fortune of the sea had cast upon his shores. The name of the tribe is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... young man chanced to come to the spot at the moment she was receiving her morning's attentions from her mother. He was struck with her beauty and immediately went home and told his feelings to his uncle, who was a great chief and a powerful magician. The uncle told him to go to the mother's lodge, sit down in a modest manner, and, without saying a word, think what he wanted, and he would be understood and answered. He did so; but the mother's answer ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... of Egypt in the history of what is commonly called the Thundering legion, so far as this, that the rain which relieved the Emperor's army in the field, and which the Church ascribed to the prayers of the Christian soldiers, is by Dio Cassius attributed to an Egyptian magician, who obtained it by invoking Mercury and other spirits. This war had been the occasion of one of the first recognitions which the State had conceded to the oriental rites, though statesmen and emperors, as private men, had long taken part in them. The emperor Marcus had been urged by his fears ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... from the heart of the great tiger-lily which nods its turbaned head so stately within the mosquito-net cage standing upon the little table, my poor lines would gather a certain beauty from the rainbow-tinted quill with which I might trace them. But as there is nobody magician enough to go out and shoot a fairy or a brownie and bind it by sign and spell to do my bidding, and as I have strong doubts whether my coarse fingers would be able to manage the delicate pen of a humming-bird even ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... denied the Divine, and thus all things of the church and of heaven, affiliate with their like in this second state, and call everyone a god who excels in craftiness, worshiping him even with Divine honors. I have seen such in an assembly adoring a magician, debating about nature, and behaving like fools, as if they were beasts under a human form, while among them there were some who in the world had been in stations of dignity, and some who had been ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... rejoined the first speaker, "I'm all of a tremble! And to think that many times I have got this magician Urbain to ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... yarn the old woman was struck dumb; but when at length she found her voice she asked the girl what magician had helped her to do what no one had done before. But she got no answer, for the maiden was afraid of bringing trouble ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... studies. He published a number of works, with such titles as "Anthroposophia Theomagica, or a Discourse of the Nature of Man, and his State after Death, grounded on his Creator's Proto-chemistry;" "Magia Adamica, with a full discovery of the true Coelum terrae, or the Magician's Heavenly Chaos and the first matter ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... is not yet noon, hunger rages in us. The pancakes, the syrup, the toast and the other incidents of breakfast have disappeared the way the rabbit vanishes when the magician waves his hand. The horrid Polyphemus did not so crave his food. And as yet there is no comforting sniff from the kitchen. Scrubbing and other secular matters engage the farmer's wife. There is as yet not a faintest gurgle in ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... no answer, for she was busy, but the Scarecrow Bear replied: "Yes; she's something of the sort, and a bird of a magician." ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... would lead one to suppose that Falk could be regarded in the light of a black magician; it is therefore surprising to find Dr. Adler observing that a horrible account of a Jewish Cabalist in The Gentleman's Magazine for September 1762 "obviously refers to Dr. Falk, though his name is not mentioned."[484] This man is described ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... here and there a street lamp gleamed, and here and there a ray of light filtered through the shuttered window of some silent house, and to suddenly remember that inside all these dark walls the tragedies of life were going on, and that, if a sudden wave of a magician's wand were to wipe away the walls, how horrified, or ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... sodomite, an atheist, (so convict by Anytus) iracundus et ebrius, dicax, &c. a pot-companion, by [207]Plato's own confession, a sturdy drinker; and that of all others he was most sottish, a very madman in his actions and opinions. Pythagoras was part philosopher, part magician, or part witch. If you desire to hear more of Apollonius, a great wise man, sometime paralleled by Julian the apostate to Christ, I refer you to that learned tract of Eusebius against Hierocles, and for them all to Lucian's Piscator, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... he pronounced at last, "is the greatest master in criminology the world has ever known. He is a magician, a scientist, the Pierpont Morgan of ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and in a burst of excitement he disclaimed the guilt implied in Pierce's words. "So! You plead innocence! You imply that I robbed myself, eh? Well, how did I place the gold yonder? I ask you? Am I a magician?" He waved his arms wildly, then in a tone of malevolence he cried: "This is not the first time you have been accused of theft. I have heard that story about ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... drink of the streams of royal bounty there is none more miserable than the sovereign's favorite, for he who is great and mighty in the eyes of others comes to her but as the humble suppliant! It is true that by the talisman of his greatness he can realize every wish of my heart as readily as the magician calls forth the fairy palace from the depths of the earth! He can place the luxuries of both Indies upon my table, turn the barren wilderness to a paradise, can bid the broad rivers of his land play in triumphal ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... person, this Son of God, a magician, a conjuror, a witch, or one that did, when he was in the world, what he did, by the power and spirit of the devil (Matt 9:34; 12:24,25,&c.; Mark 3:22-30). Now he that has this opinion of this Jesus, cannot be willing to cast himself at his feet for life, or to come to him as the only way to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... soft and yet brilliant light of the restaurant was in itself a sufficient reminder that the overstrain had not been incurred for nothing. Electricity is the true "white magic" of the future; and here, with his pallid face and silver hair, sat the master magician—one of the great light-givers of the world. A light-giver, I think, in more than a merely material sense. The moral influence of the electric lamp, its effect upon the hygiene of the soul, has not yet been duly ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... all the wonders which the amateurs of mystery in our age record as facts, a material living agency is always required. On the Continent you will find still magicians who assert that they can raise spirits. Assume for the moment that they assert truly, still the living material form of the magician is present; and he is the material agency by which, from some constitutional peculiarities, certain strange phenomena are represented ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... if even a child might be able to guide the largest ship through these perilous passes; and yet, a distinguished officer of the French Navy, Lieutenant Mage, who had explored the Niger, had been lost in these waters, with all his companions, and his vessel, the "Magician." ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... 'Tis light come, and light go; and the Store of Gold Pieces that glitter so bravely when you sweep them off the green cloth seems, in a couple of days afterwards, to have turned to dry leaves, like the Magician's in the Fairy Tale. Excepting Major Panton, who built the Street and the Square which bear his name out of One Night's Profit at the Pharoah table, can you tell me of one habitual Gambler who has been able to realise anything substantial out of his Winnings? No, no; a Hand at Cards is all ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... the chiefs of the faubourgs and the committees of the Free-masons and workmen, in the Rue Lepelletier, issuing his last instructions for the morrow. Messieurs, that man is a magician! His zeal in the good cause puts the boldest of us all to the blush. By most indefatigable energy and indomitable perseverance, he has brought about a systematic, almost scientific organization and fraternity, through various modes ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... exclude, And but with blushes suffereth in her train? Corruption vaunted her bewitching spoils, O'er court, o'er senate, spread in pomp her toils, And call'd herself the state's directing soul: Till Curio, like a good magician, tried With Eloquence and Reason at his side, By strength of holier spells the enchantress ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... good-by to the summit, for it held me as by a magician's spell, I hastened down the steep incline of the cog-wheel road, past Windy Point, and turning to the right, descended across the green slope below the boulder region to the open, sunlit valley which I had visited on the previous afternoon. It was an idyllic place, a veritable paradise ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... Deirdre, Allan and Arden started to return to Alba. Word came to the king that the company he was in pursuit of were gone. The king then sent for Duanan Gacha Druid, the best magician he had, and he spoke to him as follows:—"Much wealth have I expended on you, Duanan Gacha Druid, to give schooling and learning and magic mystery to you, if these people get away from me today without care, without consideration or regard for me, without chance of ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... while the words of a reply were upon his lips, something happened which turned the sound into a scream of horror. Montague stood with his hand still pointing, his whole body turned to stone. Instantaneously, as if by the act of a magician, the man upon the ladder had disappeared; and instead there was a hazy mist about the shaft, and the ladder ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... Secretary, or the solemn asseverations of the pecuniary Rose? Believe me, Abraham, it is not under such ministers as these that the dexterity of honest Englishmen will ever equal the dexterity of French knaves; it is not in their presence that the serpent of Moses will ever swallow up the serpents of the magician. ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... now turn to our subject and attempt to trace to its first sources this strange and suggestive legend of Faust, the great Magician. ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... Pilate, stands Herod, lazy and voluptuous. He, too, finds nothing of evil in Jesus, whom he supposes to be a clever magician. "Cause that this hall may become dark," he says, "or that this roll of paper, which is thy sentence of death, shall become a serpent." He receives Christ in good-natured expectancy, which changes to disgust when he answers him not a word. Herod pronounces him "dumb as a fish," and, after clothing ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... open it, what a host of friends do troop forth! Cavaliers, princesses, courtiers, damoiselles, monks, nuns, equerries, pages, maidens—humanity of every class and condition, and all instinct with the color of the master magician, Boccaccio! ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... that in London one-third of the water is wasted—begins to lessen; and both water and expense are saved. If you will only think, you will see one reason why. If a woman leaves a high-pressure tap running, she will flood her place and her neighbour's too. She will be like the magician's servant, who called up the demon to draw water for him; and so he did: but when he had begun he would not stop, and if the magician had not come home, man and house would have ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... 1. of the Republic. The dix Aout was over, the King a prisoner in the Temple. Lafayette, in his attempt to imitate his "master," Washington, had succeeded no better than the magician's apprentice, who knew how to raise the demon, but not how to manage him when he appeared. He had gone down before the revolution, and was now le traitre Lafayette, a refugee in Austria. Dumouriez commanded on the north-eastern ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... one of the most curious creatures in all Oz. It was made by a famous magician named Dr. Pipt before Ozma had forbidden her subjects to work magic. Dr. Pipt had made the Glass Cat to catch mice, but the Cat refused to catch mice and was ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... the reader turn to the Life of Apollonius of Tyana by Philostratus. He will there see that the Magician of Cappadocia on his arrival in Babylon was told that Bardanes had been reigning two years and as many months; Apollonius stopped in the palace of the king twenty months; then he started on a tour to India; he travelled about the Asiatic Peninsula for a considerable time; ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... for a while at playing Cinderella, soon wearied of the hearthside role, and welcomed the Fairy Godmother in the shape of any magician powerful enough to turn the shrunken pumpkin back again into the golden coach. The mere fact of growing richer at a time when most people's investments are shrinking, is calculated to attract envious attention; and according to Wall Street rumours, Welly Bry and Rosedale had found ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... scion of a hundred kings; Who guards his life and loves to lend His saving succour to a friend: Whose bow no hand but his can strain,— Thy lord, thy Rama is not slain. Obedient to his master's will, A great magician, trained in ill, With deftest art surpassing thought That marvellous illusion wrought. Let rising hope thy grief dispel: Look up and smile, for all is well, And gentle Lakshmi, Fortune's Queen, Regards thee with a ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... cases were opened, and three boats produced. Then the Magician, who went about his work in perfect silence, with a knowing smile on his lips, opened several longish boxes, which Leo had guessed to be filled with fishing-rods or spare rifles, but which, it turned out, contained ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... spiritual essence of him, a kind of soul to be carefully concealed. By pronouncing a name you bring the thing itself into being. When Elohim would create Day "he called out to the Light 'Day,' and to the Darkness he called out 'Night'"; the great magician pronounced the magic Names and the Things came into being. "In the beginning was the Word" is literally true, and this reflects the fact that our CONCEPTUAL world comes into being by the mental process of naming. (For ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... at that time in Falls City, Neb., a place of a few thousand population. For two winters I had traveled some as a magician, so when the medium came to town, and began to perform his miracles, certain members of the community suggested having me witness one of his seances, thinking I would be able to discover whether his tests were genuine, or whether they were performed by the aid of trickery. Accordingly, ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... I thought so, and that's why I am here. I saw you on Wall Street to-day, and read your difficulty at once in your eyes, and I resolved to help you. I am a magician, and one or two little things have happened of late to make me wish to prestidigitate in public. I knew you were after a show of some kind, and I've come to ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... poor Seignior Cassani (as we learn from the Persons represented) a Christian Conjuror (Mago Christiano). I must confess I am very much puzzled to find how an Amazon should be versed in the Black Art, or how a [good] Christian [for such is the part of the magician] ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... advice, and prescribe remedial measures, which shall have untold efficacy, in dispelling mutual mistrust, restoring mutual confidence, and bringing about a lasting re-union. He will interpose, like some potent magician, to transform a discordant, recriminating, utterly unlovely couple, into a pair of harmless, peaceable, love-consumed doves. There rises before my mind a case for illustration. A couple lived on the ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... told of the great chief of the Cossacks, the celebrated Platoff. Pursued by the King of Naples, he was beating a retreat, when a ball reached one of the officers beside him, on which event the headman was so much irritated against his magician that he had him flogged in presence of all his hordes, reproaching him most bitterly because he had not turned away the balls by his witchcraft. This was plain evidence of the fact that he had more faith in his art than the sorcerer ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Memoirs of Napoleon • David Widger
... prevented me from understanding that I was an orphan. Delicate and small as I was for so long, she was taller and stronger and better than I! And at this moment, which shows me the past again in one glance, I remember that she beautified the affairs of my childhood like an old magician; and my head goes lower as I think of her untiring admiration for me. How she did love me! And she must love me still, confusedly, if some glimmering light yet lasts in the depths of her. What will become ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... the influence of Ormond led to an alliance between that Earl and Sir James, afterwards seventh Earl of Desmond. Sir James was son of Gerald, fourth Earl (distinguished as "the Rhymer," or Magician), by the lady Eleanor Butler, daughter of the second Earl of Ormond. He stood, therefore, in the relation of cousin to the cotemporary head of the Butler family. When his nephew Thomas openly violated the Statute ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... had her follies. There was Simon the Magician, founder of gnosticism, father of every heresy, Messiah to the Jews, Jupiter to the Gentiles—an impudent self-made god, who pretended to float in the air, and called his mistress Minerva—a deification, parenthetically, which was accepted by Nicholas, ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... incredible jugglery with his collection of curios and made his enlightened contemporaries believe that he possessed a diamond weighing six thousand four hundred carats, which the Emperor of China had pawned with him, would, in former times, if he had not been duly burned as a magician, have become the head of a school. In the eighteenth century he merely remained a mysterious eccentric type whose gaudy collection was gazed upon with astonishment by all travelers, half charlatan, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... he always punished those who came to his den without making him presents. But the rabbit relied upon Chatter Chuk's promise that the tyrant of the forest would never know they had been near him. Juggerjook was considered a great magician, to be sure, yet Chatter Chuk was not afraid of him. So why should Fuzzy ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... woman whom he loved, or, quite as probably, the deadly scowl of his bitterest enemy would throw a blight over his life. They quoted, moreover, this startling explanation of the whole affair: that the magician who exhibited the Veiled Lady—and who, by the bye, was the handsomest man in the whole world—had bartered his own soul for seven years' possession of a familiar fiend, and that the last year of the contract ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... may be drawn from the adventures of Philautus in London, who, deeply smitten with the charms of a young English lady, consults a sorcerer in order to obtain a philtre that will inspire love. Here was an excellent opportunity, which the magician does not fail to seize, of talking about serpents and toads. But, after a long enumeration of the bones, stones, and livers of animals that cause love, the alchemist, urged by Philautus, ends by confessing that the best sorcery of all to gain the loving regard ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... the various exercises pertaining to admission to court circles, and in a proper state of Jingo distrust of the wicked Czar and his minions—which in the Colonies is now one of the marks of gentility—when the magician, Lord Beaconsfield, determined to apply the match to it by sending out a real princess. In spite of his contempt for the "flat-nosed Franks," however, he can hardly have been prepared for the response which he elicited. He cannot have designed to make monarchy and royalty seem ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... "Whoever attains to the knowledge of astrology for any other explanation than the three aforementioned, then verily he has attained to a branch of magic. An astrologer is a magician, and a magician is a necromancer, and a necromancer ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... is indicated by what we hear about the camera, in which he showed landscapes by day and the revolutions of the stars by night, so lively drawn that the spectators were affected with amazement. The semi-scientific impulse to extend man's mastery over nature, the magician's desire to penetrate secrets, which so powerfully influenced the development of Lionardo's genius, seems to have overcome the purely aesthetic instincts of Alberti, so that he became in the end neither a great artist like ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... Yet who stops to call Washington a romantic city? When the White House, just visible from those tree-tops, shall have ceased, as it soon must do, to be the home of the chief magistrate, what future magician shall summon down those cheerless stairways the ghostly procession of dead Presidents, as our first literary necromancer marshaled the shades of royal governors across the threshold of the Province House? We turn from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... regarded as local deities, among whose functions that of bestowing rain was regarded as specially important. In the lowest systems the rain-giver may be a sacred stone, dipped in a stream,[582] or a royal or priestly magician who is held responsible and is punished if the expected result is not attained.[583] In such cases the procedure is ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... were to Dennis such as only come once in a lifetime, and not in every lifetime either. A true, pure love was growing up within his heart—growing as the little child develops in strength and pleasurable life, and yet unconsciously to itself. It seemed as if some strong magician's wand had touched the world or him. Everything was transfigured, and no wonderland was more full of interest than that in which he existed. His life was a waking dream, in which nothing was distinct or definite, ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... magician," he said to me. "A theatrical entertainer. I deal in tricks—how to fool an audience—" His keen, amused gaze was on Ob Hahn. "This gentleman from Venus and I have too much in ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... stopped, the two boys flung themselves at the window, and the porter outside, like a magician who kept a rabbit in a bag, suddenly shouted "Salton!" After that there were mixed impressions. He stood alone on the dark, windy platform whilst dark figures passed and repassed him. Then a tall, thin Somebody said "Are you Westcott?" and Peter said "Yes," and ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... the captive, who seems to have been either a Huron slave or an Iroquois magician, "your enemies are spread up and down! Sleep not! They have heard your noise! They wait for you! They are sure of their prey! Believe me—keep together! Spend not your powder in vain to frighten your enemies by noise! See that the stones of your arrows be not bent! ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... character to admit of the formation of currents in its substance: it must, in other words, be a conductor of electricity. The higher the conducting power the more copious were the currents. He now passes from his little brass globe to the globe of the earth. He plays like a magician with the earth's magnetism. He sees the invisible lines along which its magnetic action is exerted, and sweeping his wand across these lines evokes this new power. Placing a simple loop of wire round a magnetic needle ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... hand-rail was covered. From the hall opened faultlessly executed rooms, each correctly adhering to the "period" that had been selected. The library was possibly more furnished than the rest of the house; but even here the touch of a magician's wand might have produced the bookcases of Circassian walnut ready filled with evenly matched, leather bound, finely tooled volumes. It would have been a relief to see a few shabby, old-calf folios, a few more common and every-day, in ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... channels the waters have chafed, ground, abraded, eroded for centuries which man cannot number. Like the Afreets of the Arabian Nights, they have been mighty slaves, subject to a far mightier master. That potent magician whose lair is in the centre of the earth, and whom men have vaguely styled the attraction of gravitation, has summoned them incessantly toward himself. In their struggle to render him obedience, they have accomplished results which make all the works of ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... unaccompanied as it was by any explanation, redoubled the curiosity of the people, and the belief gained ground that it was not merely one or two nuns who were possessed of devils, but the whole sisterhood. It was not very long before the name of the magician who had worked this wonder began to be mentioned quite openly: Satan, it was said, had drawn Urbain Grandier into his power, through his pride. Urbain had entered into a pact with the Evil Spirit by which he had ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... punishment; freedom from the bad consequences which usually result from an act; as, the magician could eat ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... we find the seat of an ancient civilization which was in its power many centuries before Christ. The changes that have passed over the earth are far more wonderful than any ascribed to the wand of the magician. Nations have come and gone, and the land of the Pharaohs has become an inheritance for strangers; new sciences have enriched human life, and the fair structure has arisen on the ruins of the past. Many centuries, with their burden of human hopes and fears, have sped ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... heroines with whose adventures, for want of better reading, her memory had become stocked. The fairy wand, with which in her solitude she had delighted to raise visions of enchantment, became now the rod of a magician, the bond slave of evil genii, serving only to invoke spectres at which the exorcist trembled. She felt herself the object of suspicion, of scorn, of dislike at least, if not of hatred, to her own family; and it seemed to her ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... overtake their herds, and the trio at the homestead was fully employed. The cripples were brought up, brands were copied, and the commissary stores assorted and arranged. Before leaving, the men had stretched the sunshade, and the wounded magician sat in state ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... was Aglootook. He was the medicine-man of the tribe—a sort of magician; a sharp, clever, unscrupulous, presumptuous, and rather fine looking-fellow, who held the people in some degree of subjection through their superstitious fears, though there were some of the men among them who would not give in to his authority. As Eskimos ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... "Eight o'clock!" cried the magician, with a glance at his watch and an ear towards the open window. "The postman's knock from door to door down every street in town—house to house from one end of your British Islands to the other! A certain letter is without doubt being delivered at this very moment—eh, ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... replied Miss Dandridge. "When you've swum the Hellespont like Leander, or picked a glove out of the lion's den like the French knight, or battered down a haunted castle like Rinaldo, or taken the ring from a murderer's hand like Onofrio, or set free the Magician's daughter like Julio—perhaps—perhaps—" ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... the early Babylonian tablets with catalogues of eclipses on all days of the month, and in all quarters of the sky. The great majority of the eclipses could never happen, but they could be, none-the-less, made use of by a court magician. If an eclipse of the sun took place on the 29th day and in the south, he could always point out how exceedingly unpleasant things might have been for the king and the country if he, the magician, had not by his diligence, prevented its happening, ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... ancient and famous Campo de Montiel;'" which in fact he was actually traversing. "Happy the age, happy the time," he continued, "in which shall be made known my deeds of fame, worthy to be moulded in brass, carved in marble, limned in pictures, for a memorial for ever. And thou, O sage magician, whoever thou art, to whom it shall fall to be the chronicler of this wondrous history, forget not, I entreat thee, my good Rocinante, the constant companion of my ways and wanderings." Presently he broke out again, as if he were love-stricken in earnest, "O Princess Dulcinea, lady ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... that Nature herself has planned and mapped out into wide fields, with gentle declivities and slopes, fit for the reception of the modest channel that shall convey the living water over the great pasture lands; and now we want the magician to come, and, with the wand of human skill, bring the interior waters to the surface, ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... enchanter's wand we wave: No stroke of ours recalls his magic vision; The incantation that its power gave Sleeps with the dead magician. ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... present, visible beauty, the powerful charm of the Scotch ballad poetry, which now began to seize upon my imagination, and the inexhaustible enchantment of the associations thrown by the great modern magician over every spot made memorable by his mention, combined to affect my mind and feelings at this most susceptible period of my life, and made Edinburgh dear and delightful to me above all other places I ever ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... than his Irish name for fear of gaugers), has the science of unpacking the stubbornest heart, but then he supplies the potheen-makers with grain from his own fields. Besides, he is descended from a noted Gaelic magician who raised the "dhoul" in Great Eliza's century, and he has a kind of prescriptive right to hear tell of all kind of other-world creatures. They are almost relations of his, if all people say concerning the parentage ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... he kissed the dragon, which instantly became a most beautiful princess; for she had lain enchanted as a dragon, by a wicked magician, till somebody should be bold enough to ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang
... down. When he reached the bottom, he found three handsome rooms and an old woman, who said to him: "What are you doing here?" "I am trying to find my way out; tell me how to do it." The old woman answered: "There are here three princesses in the power of the magician; take care." "Never mind, tell me what to do; I am not afraid." "Knock at that door." He did so and a princess appeared: "What has brought you here?" "I have come to liberate you; tell me what I have to do." "Take this apple and pass through that door; my sister is there, who can give you ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... gets impenetrable; a dreary little cairn of stones appears. The landlord adds one to the heap, first walking all round the cairn as if he were about to perform an incantation, then dropping the stone on to the top of the heap with the gesture of a magician adding an ingredient to a cauldron in full bubble. Goodchild sits down by the cairn as if it was his study-table at home; Idle, drenched and panting, stands up with his back to the wind, ascertains distinctly that this is the top at last, looks round with all ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... soon disenchanted of your Philosopher's Stone! You must know, Sarah, that when I last left Glyndon, he was bent upon turning alchemist and magician." ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... stock speculations and great financial operations, of theatres, of operas, of new novels, even of ritualistic observances in the churches, than of the details of government in peaceful times, or the fireworks of the great magician who had by arts and management dethroned a greater and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... in bright fairy land The mighty magician was living— That newness of life to worn heart and weak hand, Soft winds and pure waters were giving; That back to the region of heather and pine Would he come unimpaired by ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... Magician Thought, informed of Love, Hath fixed her on the air— Oh, Love and I laughed down the fates And clasped ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... suddenly took on an air of Arabian nights. At this rate she could buy back the family castle. Her struggling brothers—how they would bless their magician sister—Mick should have a London practice, Miles a partnership ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... local peasants and the inhabitants of the poverty-stricken towns in the Lucanian hills seem to have been aware of the presence of the gigantic temples standing in lonely majesty by the shore and as the superstitious nature of these ignorant people attributed these structures to the work of a magician—perhaps to the great wizard Vergil himself—they were shunned both by night and by day as the haunt of malignant spirits. Poor fisher-folk and buffalo-drivers, who had of necessity to pass near the ruined fanes, were wont to slink ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... scared and stopped his song, and each time I awoke with a start and found no ship and saw that he was only scared by the dawn. Those indescribable dawns upon the Yann came up like flames in some land over the hills where a magician burns by secret means enormous amethysts in a copper pot. I used to watch them in wonder while no bird sang—till all of a sudden the sun came over a hill and every bird but one began to sing, and the tolulu-bird slept fast, till out ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... ze Terrible will answer ze question, and show he onderstan' ze Ingleesh," the magician announced, at the same time swinging the spool out of ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... the entrance of the vault, knelt down before it, and placing his hands on the first of the steps by which it was descended, listened, breathless and attentive, to the sounds that rose from the abyss—listened, rapt and unmoving, a formidable and unearthly figure—like a magician waiting for a voice from the oracles of Hell—like a spirit of Night looking down into the mid-caverns of the earth, and watching the mysteries of subterranean creation, the giant pulses of Action and Heat, which are the life-springs ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... this one out of the fire, I won't be a general; I'll be a magician," he said. "Pickering'll be a magician, I mean; he's the boy who'll save our bacon, if it's saveable." He looked somberly across the flame-reflecting water. "Let's not kid ourselves; we're just kicking and biting at the guards on the way up ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... a magician, or whisperer, from ru, to murmur, and in olden times runes, or mystical secrets, were carved exclusively on the Mountain Ash tree in ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... tuning their instruments, a middle-sized, handsome man stept forward with long strides, with a violin in one hand and bow in the other, and began waving the latter up and down, like a magician summoning his spirits. As if he had waved the sound out of his bow, the tones leaped forth from the instruments, and, guided by his eye and hand, fell into a merry measure. The accuracy with which every instrument performed its part ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... upon as to the "annus Domini," or "tempora vitae," because of the turbulent and destructive reigns that had intervened—evil times for literary effort, and yet making material for literature and history, and producing that wonderful magician, the printing-press, and paper, by means of which the former things might be disseminated, and Chaucer brought nearer to ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... and each bears with it hopes that have been outlived, whether fulfilled or disappointed. One by one the lights that we kindle in our hall flicker out, and death quenches the last of them. But there is one light that burns on clear through the article of death, like the lamp in the magician's tomb. 'The righteous hath hope in his death.' We can each settle for ourselves whether we shall carry that radiant angel with her white wings into the great darkness, or shall sadly part with her before we part with life. To the earthly soul that last earthly hour is a black ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... times out of ten, to my repugnance and my preference; and the high lights, the vividly realized portions emerging from that vagueness, represent what I like. Hamlet or Portia or Viola and Olivia, exist for me under the evocation of the magician Shakespeare, but formed of recollections, impressions of places, people, and other poets, floating coloured atomies, which have a brooding charm, as being mine; why should they be scared off, replaced, by detailed real personalities who, even if ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... understand his words, but their tone was sufficient command; besides there was Yussufs pistol, which acted like a magician's wand in ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... one there?" No one answered. The rooms never came to an end. All was deserted, silent, splendid, sinister. It realized the fables of enchanted castles. Hidden pipes of hot air maintained a summer temperature in the building. It was as if some magician had caught up the month of June and imprisoned it in a labyrinth. There were pleasant odours now and then, and he crossed currents of perfume, as though passing by invisible flowers. It was warm. Carpets everywhere. One might have ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... could; but his roundabout had only one sleeve to it, somehow, and he had to button the lower buttons of his trousers to keep it on. He got his bundle and stole down to the front door without seeming to touch his feet to anything, and when he got out on the front steps he saw the circus magician coming along. By that time the music had stopped and Pony could not see any procession. The magician had on a tall, peaked hat, like a witch. He took up the whole street, he was so wide in the black glazed gown that hung from his arms when he stretched them out, for he seemed ...
— The Flight of Pony Baker - A Boy's Town Story • W. D. Howells
... know what they all are," she murmured, and he felt as if he had invented them out of thin air, like an Eastern magician. ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... confidence and pride, but with faltering looks, and with cheeks covered with blushes. Great, indeed, was the change which had come over that once proud spirit—change surprising to all, but as natural as any other of the thousand changes which are produced in the progress of moments by the arch-magician, Love. Heretofore, her song had disdained the ordinary topics of the youthful ballad-monger. She had uttered her apostrophes to the eagle, soaring through the black, billowy masses of the coming thunder-storm; to the lonely but lofty rock, lonely in its loftiness, which no foot travelled but ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... specimens of their creator's gift for varying not only a simple dance form, but also in juggling with a simple melodic idea so masterfully that the hearer forgets he is hearing a three-part composition on a keyboard. Chopin was a magician. The first of the Mazurkas in C-sharp minor bears the early Op. 6, No. 2. By no means representative, it is nevertheless interesting and characteristic. That brief introduction with its pedal bass sounds the rhythmic ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... ingulfing centuries; souls of blood—thirsty men, duly forced into the shape of fleas, lent their hideousness to his night; and the Evil One himself did not disdain to sit for his portrait to this undismayed magician. That these are actual portraits of concrete object? is not to be affirmed. That they are portraits of what Blake saw is as little to be denied. We are assured that his whole manner was that of a man copying, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... bloody fights, of the building and besieging of fortresses, of the terrible swordthrusts exchanged by Roland and Renaud, who was at last about to free the Holy Land, without mentioning the tales of Maugis the Magician and his marvellous enchantments, and the Princess Clarisse, the King of Aquitaine's sister, who was more lovely than sunlight. Her imagination fired by such stories as these, Bernadette often found it difficult to get to ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... to the surrounding foliage, until the effect of the excitement had passed away. I looked upon the waters a second time, and then my thoughts were directed into a very different channel. I wished myself a magician, that I might transport the falls to Italy, and pour their whole volume of waters into the crater of Mount Vesuvius; witness the terrible conflict between the contending elements, and create the largest steam-boiler that ever entered into ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat) |
