"Mystic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the world with the thought that there are heroisms all round him, and with the desire all alive in his heart to follow any which may come within sight of him, that he breaks away as I did from the life he knows, and ventures forth into the wonderful mystic twilight land where lie the great adventures and the great rewards. Behold me, then, at the office of the Daily Gazette, on the staff of which I was a most insignificant unit, with the settled determination that very night, if possible, to find ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... burning city Sets now the red sun's dome. See, mystic firebrands sparkle There on each store and home. See how the golden gateway Burns with the day to be— Torch-bearing fiends of portent Loom o'er ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... by Cosmo de' Medici, in furtherance of his desire to resuscitate the knowledge of Plato among his fellow-citizens. Florence indeed, as M. Renan has pointed out, had always had an affinity for the mystic and dreamy philosophy of Plato, while the colder and more practical philosophy of Aristotle had flourished in Padua, and other cities of the north; and the Florentines, though they knew perhaps very little about him, had had ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... Mystic Regions Where souls of artists are fitted for birth Gathered together their lovely legions And fashioned a woman to shine on earth. They bathed her in splendour, They made her tender, They gave her a nature both sweet and wild; They gave her emotions like storm-stirred oceans, And they gave her ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... we hold as dear, No hand can tarnish and no might destroy, And from each hallowed altar ruddy, clear, Still burns the mystic lamp, for God is there! The cross-crowned towers tell that all is not dead, E'en though more splendid times ...
— Chimes of Mission Bells • Maria Antonia Field
... suggest her type and physiognomy in the famous pictures just now mentioned, and yet to plunge the duchess into a kind of Fontaine de Jouvence, realising in the divine freshness of youth and beauty beings who nevertheless appear to have with her some kind of mystic and unsolved connection? If this was what he really intended—and the results attained may lead us without temerity to assume as much—no subtler or more exquisite form of flattery could be conceived. It is curious to note that at the same time he signally failed with the portrait of her mother, ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... got into the habit of going to church, and came under the influence of this delicate, upright and dictatorial abbe. A mystic, he appealed to her in his enthusiasm and zeal. He set in vibration in her soul the chord of religious poetry that all women possess. His unyielding austerity, his disgust for ordinary human interests, ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... rotting, he sat down and started carving his name on a smooth deal board which looked as if nobody wanted it. The pair worked on in silence, broken only by an occasional hard breath as the toil grew exciting. Chapple's tongue was out and performing mystic evolutions as he carved the letters. He ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... not know it, it was so slyly done; but nothing could tempt her to a like act again. Not that she is sorry for the deed—ah! no. This little talisman will ever be most precious unto her. But the brow seemed so hallowed now; there was a mystic light upon it, as though a beam from Heaven were shining directly there, and a superstitious awe crept over the heart of the young maiden as she remembered the cold dews that her hand had felt as she stroked back ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... readers may be apt to suppose, from all English experience, that the word exorcise means properly banishment to the shades. Not so. Citation from the shades, or sometimes the torturing coercion of mystic adjurations, is more truly the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... to do with this war? asks the practical man, who is the greatest mystic of all, contemptuously. Well, they have everything to do with it. For if we had understood some peace theories a little better a generation or two ago, if we had not allowed passion and error and prejudice instead ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... while he sought her; and sometimes this view of things became so definite that it shaped into a murmur on her lips. "Waiting. Just waiting." And she might add, "For him!" Then, being twenty-two, she was apt to conclude the mystic interview by laughing at herself, though not without ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... youths of Wrexby and Fenhurst had no chance against her secret Prince Florizels. Them she endowed with no pastoral qualities; on the contrary, she conceived that such pure young gentlemen were only to be seen, and perhaps met, in the great and mystic City of London. Naturally, the girls dreamed of London. To educate themselves, they copied out whole pages of a book called the 'Field of Mars,' which was next to the family Bible in size among the volumes ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... now have been well, but for the fact that it was not. In following her deliverer, Simprella observed that his golden collar was inscribed with the mystic words—HANDS OFF! She tried hard to obey the injunction; she did her level best; she—but why amplify? Simprella was ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... Mystic Rose, pp. 273 et seq., Crawley brings into association with this function of great festivals the custom, found in some parts of the world, of exchanging wives at these times. "It has nothing whatever to do with the marriage system, except as breaking it for a season, women of forbidden ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... purgatorial fire guarded by the four ape-faced genii, was made the companion of Osiris for a period of three thousand years; after which it returned from Amenti, re-entered its former body, and lived once more a human life upon the earth. The process was repeated till a mystic number of years had gone by, when, finally, the blessed attained the crowning joy of union with God, being absorbed into the Divine Essence, from which they had emanated, and thus attaining the true end and full perfection of ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... find Food for the fever of his mind. 140 Eager he read whatever tells Of magic, cabala, and spells, And every dark pursuit allied To curious and presumptuous pride; Till with fired brain and nerves o'erstrung, 145 And heart with mystic horrors wrung, Desperate he sought Benharrow's den, And hid him ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... it seems during the lapse of centuries to have grown up from its stony heart, as the human breast grows from the broad back of the Centaur. A single banner streams above its lofty turret, the only banner of the Cross now raised on earth; the symbol of God's mystic love alone floats high enough to pierce into the unclouded blue of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... divineness of Nature as she appears, which, in our eyes, is Mr. Tennyson's differentia, is really the natural accompaniment of a quality at first sight its very opposite, and for which he is often blamed by a prosaic world; namely, his subjective and transcendental mysticism. It is the mystic, after all, who will describe Nature most simply, because he sees most in her; because he is most ready to believe that she will reveal to others the same message which she has revealed to him. Men like Behmen, Novalis, and Fourier, who can soar into the inner cloud-world of man's spirit, even ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... curious of these was a necklace composed of amulets, or charms, which, it will be observed, are all attributes of Isis and her attendant, Anubis, or of her husband Osiris, here considered as Bacchus. The mystic articles kept in the Isiac coffer were, says Eusebius, a ball, dice, (turbo) wheel, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... sadly. His handsome mouth, with its blond mustache, was almost like that of a youth. His blue eyes were dreamy for an instant, then little by little he began to confide to me his thought, his recollections and all that was mystic and poetic ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... gain your magic aid, the love-sick swain, With hasty footsteps threads the dusky lane; The passing traveller lingers, half in sport, And half in awe beside your savage court, While the weird hags explore his palm to spell What varied fates these mystic lines foretell. ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... day in San Pasqual. Harley P. lay in state in the long gambling hall of the Silver Dollar which, for so many years, he had ruled by the mystic power of his terrible eyes. Dan Pennycook had made all of the funeral arrangements, and when the crowd had passed slowly around the casket, viewing Harley P.'s placid face for the last time, a strange young man, clad in the garb of a prospector, ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... turned to gaze upon his book, Boscan,[55] or Garcilasso;[56]—by the wind Even as the page is rustled while we look, So by the poesy of his own mind Over the mystic leaf his soul was shook, As if 't were one whereon magicians bind Their spells, and give them to the passing gale, According to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... In the Pequot War of 1637 the grim settlers resolved to be rid of that tribe once for all, and the narratives of Captain Edward Johnson and Captain John Mason, who led in the storming and slaughter at the Indians' Mystic Fort, are as piously relentless as anything in the Old Testament. Cromwell at Drogheda, not long after, had soldiers no more merciless than these exterminating Puritans, who wished to plough their fields henceforth in peace. A generation later the ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... Gray" and the "Mystic and Somber Dolores" and the "Belle Dame sans Merci"; for a month was keen on naught else. The world became pale and interesting, and he tried hard to look at Princeton through the satiated eyes of ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... early spring. In the curious formal pattern of their petals I see a symbol of the Oxford manner—something archaic, rigid, severe. The Oxford Don may well be a reversion to some earlier type, learned, mystic, and romantic as those priests of whom Herodotus has given us so vivid a picture. The worship of Apis, as Mr. Frazer or Mr. Lang would tell us, becomes then merely the hieroglyph for a social standard, a manner of life. This, I think, will explain the name Oxford on the Isis—the ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... might do for such a ragamuffin as he had been, but they needed no garment but their own righteousness-the forms of their church. The mark, or certificate of the new birth, was an object of scorn to them. Probably they pitied him as a harmless mystic, weak in mind and illiterate. Alas! how soon was their laughter turned into mourning. Fear and calamity overwhelmed them. They trusted in themselves, and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the war there was, we were told, in England and France a revival of "religion," and indeed many of the books then written gave evidence of having been composed in exalted, mystic moods. I remember one in particular, called "En Campagne," by a young French officer. And then, somehow, the note of mystic exaltation died away, to be succeeded by a period of realism. Read "Le Feu," which is most typical, which has sold in numberless editions. Here is a picture of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... countess was breathing the inspiration of her smile. Enigmatic as was the latter, it was as simple as an infant's compared to the occult character of her glance. A wealth of complexities lay enfolded in the deep eyes, rimmed with their mystic darkened circlet—that circle in which the Parisienne frames her experience, and through which she pleads ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... went to his own room. He had the letter in his hand; and he knew the handwriting: but there was no wind of the night that could bring him the mystic message she had ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... she is indeed cold not to have guessed before this the intensity of his love for her. However much she may have given her affection to another, it still seems to him inexpressibly hard that she can have no pity for his suffering. He gazes at her intently. Do the mystic moonbeams deceive him, or are there tears in her great dark eyes? His heart beats quickly. Once again he remembers her emotion of the past evening. He hears again her passionate sobs. Is she unhappy? Are there thorns in her path that are difficult ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... unmixed with awe, for on his broad brow was printed the seal of much knowledge—such knowledge as it is not granted to the son of man to know. He was clad in a long white robe, crossed and chequered with mystic devices in the Arabic character, while a high scarlet tiara marked with the square and circle enhanced his venerable appearance. 'My son,' he said, turning his piercing and yet dreamy gaze upon Sir Overbeck, 'all things lead to nothing, ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sharp edge of infinity, he sang a Dionysian hymn to life against the melancholy products of German learning and against those Nihilistic snares which he thought lurked in Christian doctrine. There he worked out the mystic idea of "Eternal Recurrence" and his song of Zarathustra with ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... of the forests holy? When the wind swept over the Pines, did not the mystic murmurs, sacred as the prayers of the Priest, say to you: 'Nowhere there will you find your God!' The spaces are filled with the giant skeletons torn from the dim woods; they are chained and clamped with iron and fed with steam; the eagles soar ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... glimpse of the beauty and sincerity of his soul; but I did not know him well enough to discover the secrets of his mind. Those who had the happiness of being his intimate friends seem always to represent him as a mystic who shut himself away from the spirit of his time. I hope at some future date one of his friends will publish some of the conversations that he had with him, of which I have heard. But this man who had so strong a faith was also very independent. In his religion ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... Shridharani believes that the Hindese were willing to accept Satyagraha first because, unarmed under British law, no other means were available to them, and then because they were predisposed to the method because of the Hindu philosophy of non-violence and the mystic belief that truth will triumph eventually since it is a force ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... away. I think I should have found some out, who would have fed me with milk and chestnuts, have sung me a Latian ditty, and mourned the woeful changes which have taken place, since their sacred groves were felled, and Faunus ceased to be oracular. Who can tell but they would have given me some mystic skin to sleep on, that I might have looked ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... His perfect holiness, He is Love. This is the God by whom the sinner who has faith is restored and justified. From this conception as a starting-point, Luther acquired fresh strength and energy for advancing in the fight, whilst the pious mystic remained passively and quietly behind. From this also he learned to realise Christian liberty and moral duty in regard to daily life and its vocations, whilst the mystics remained shut off altogether from the world. The intimate connection ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... picture of Emma Morland and Edward Grey, so natural and so modern, with the trousers treated in quite the proper spirit; the chaste Sir Galahad, slaking his thirst with holy water, amid all the mystic surroundings; and the delightfully incomprehensible pictures to the Palace of Art, that gave one a weird sense of comfort, like the word 'Mesopotamia,' without one's ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... lies between the other two. On the one side is the notion that there is a mystic bond between wrong and punishment; on the other, that the infliction of pain is only a means to an end. Hegel, one of the great expounders of the former view, puts it, in his quasi mathematical form, that, wrong being ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... inextinguishable will Stand on the steeps of night with lifted hand, Filling the yawning wells of monstrous space With mixing thought—drinking up single life As in a cup? and from the rending folds Of glimmering purpose, the gloom do all thy navied stars Slide through the gloom with mystic melody, Like wishes on a brow? Oh, is my soul, Hung like a dew-drop in thy grassy ways, Drawn up again into the rack of change, Even through the lustre which created it? O mighty one, thou wilt not smite me through With scorching wrath, because my ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... witch beckoned to the scarecrow, throwing so much magnetic potency into her gesture, that it seemed as if it must inevitably be obeyed, like the mystic call of the loadstone, when ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... Those mystic words, believed to give magic speed to the one who utters them, came in the well known tones of Ootah. A joyous cry ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... Hildebrand," in the words of Stephen, "was holding a council in the second week of Lent, 1076, beneath the sculptured roof of the Vatican, arrayed in the rich and mystic vestments of pontifical dominion, and the papal choir were chanting those immortal anthems which had come down from blessed saints and martyrs, when the messenger of the Emperor presented himself before the assembled ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... lusty green: Our summer hearts make summer's fullness where No leaf or bud or blossom may be seen: For nature's life in love's deep life doth lie, Love,—whose forgetfulness is beauty's death, Whose mystic key these cells of Thou and I Into the infinite freedom openeth, And makes the body's dark and narrow grate The wide-flung ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... JAMES, English poet, born in Nottingham; author of "Festus," a work that on its appearance in 1839 was received with enthusiasm, passed through 11 editions in England and 30 in America, was succeeded by "The Angel World," "The Mystic," "The Universal Hymn," and "The Age"; he has been rated by some extravagantly high; ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... where frenzy held its rule, Where sickness breathed its spell of pain; By famed Bethesda's mystic pool; And by the darkened gate of Nain. He soothed the mourner's troubled breast, He raised the contrite, sinner's head, And on the loved ones' lowly rest, The light of better ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... Rosicrucian Lodge at Bungay, Suffolk, to spy the proceedings of the Society, of which her husband was a member, and being frightened by the sudden whirring and striking eleven of the clock (just as the Deputy-Grand-Master was bringing in the mystic gridiron for the reception of a neophyte), rushed out into the midst of the lodge assembled; and was elected, by a desperate unanimity, Deputy-Grand-Mistress for life. Though that admirable and courageous female never subsequently breathed a word with regard to the ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... judge and pleasant man, the late Lord FitzGerald, who was fond of talking of this trial, saying to me that Buzfuz lost a good point here, as he might have dwelt on the mystic meaning of tomato which is the "love apple," that here was the "secret correspondence," the real ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... in the evening and pore over its mystic signs. Indeed, I fear you do not know what a zodiac is, or what the meaning of "Cancer the Crab" and "Gemini the Twins" may be. It is more than likely you will reply, "Oh, yes; if the Crab had a Cancer, he would cry Gemini to the Twins"—and in that light and flippant way you will try to hide your ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... rose The song of Bacchic women: all the band Of shaggy Satyrs howled with mystic voice, Preluding to the Phrygian minstrelsy Of nightly orgies. Earth around them laughed; The rocks reechoed; shouts of revelling joy Shrilled from the Naiads, and the river nymphs Sent echoes from their whirlpool-circled tides, Flowing in silence; and beneath the rocks ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and food, and with little air to breathe, our Claus was, indeed, in a pitiful plight. But he spoke the mystic words of the Fairies, which always command their friendly aid, and they came to his rescue and transported him to the Laughing Valley in the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus • L. Frank Baum
... but we will keep our eyes open and be watchful. Do so also, Herzberg, and if you discover any thing, tell me; and if Wilhelmine Enke needs assistance against the infamous Rosicrucians, and with her aid this mystic rabble can be suppressed, inform me, and I am ready to send her succor. Ah! Herzberg, is it not a melancholy fact that one must fight his way through so much wickedness to obtain so little that is good? My whole life has passed in toil and trouble; I have grown old ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... and there, by dint of applying scriptural texts to contemporary events, had earned the title of a prophet. Like Samuel Brothers, he prophesied marvellous things of Lady Hester's future, which she, rendered credulous by her solitary life in a mystic land, where her own power and importance were the chief facts in her mental horizon, came at ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... which man bears to nature as a whole; but in his sweeping condemnations he not only rejected Galenic therapeutics and Galenic anatomy, but condemned dissections of any kind. He laid the cause of all diseases at the door of the three mystic elements—salt, sulphur, and mercury. In health he supposed these to be mingled in the body so as to be indistinguishable; a slight separation of them produced disease; and death he supposed to ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... divine healing, with the efficacy of images and other sacred objects, and especially in connexion with Orphic and other Mysteries. And, while for the most part Greek philosophy was rather imaginative than mystic, still we encounter the genuine mystic element in such Greek sages as Empedocles and Pythagoras, both of whom assumed the priestly character and seem to have laid claim to supernatural powers. Empedocles indeed, ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... by our late captive and two of his companions. After a tedious walk, we arrived at an open plain, on which the grass was trodden down in every direction, in some places worn quite away by the feet of the natives—for this was the great "bora ground" of the coast tribes, where the mystic ceremonies mentioned in a former chapter took place. Traversing the sacred plain, our thoughts busy in conjecturing the weird scenes that the posts had witnessed, we came to a little creek whose clear stream babbled cheerfully among the rocks, and soon saw a giant fig-tree, which our guides indicated ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... the early Greeks refer to the miracle of the morning. Aurora mirrors to us in a mystic way the significance of this hour to the Greeks. Athene was born by the stroke of the hammer of Hephaestus on the forehead of Zeus, and thus the stroke of fire upon the sky became the symbol or myth of all civilization. Even Daphne, pursued by Apollo, and turned into a tree, is doubtless the ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... me, until I was on my knees before the two women. My hands were unconsciously extended as if to fend them off, and each of them seized a hand, pulled me to the round bench at the back of the control cabin. They stroked my cheeks, began to murmur their "magical" phrases in their mysterious mystic secret words, and my wits began to float into a very genuine paradise where their two faces, side by side, became flower and fruit and ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... into their mystic conference, the two English cavaliers entered the cabin in the highest possible spirits, and announced to Angus M'Aulay that orders had been issued that all should hold themselves in readiness for an immediate march to the westward. Having delivered themselves ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... something; Eleanor's perturbed letter; the father's half furtive defiant existence. He was too proud to ask more than the other cared to tell, too loyal to pry into any part of her life that she could not willingly share with him. He sat gazing into the mystic afterglow of the Desert, a flame of fire over a lake of light. It was as the old man had said, he had asked her to strengthen his resolution; and he drank in the love light of her eyes as he asked. ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... left him benumbed in his baseness, cowardliness and weakness. Now he understood that love, in order to triumph, must first humble its own power, still its own movement and soften its brutal will. Now he comprehended that he must carve mystic runes of passion upon his own heart as upon a glowing rose and fling it into the mighty sea of feeling, praying it to bring the maiden Gro into ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... aright Dreams and visions of the night? Wouldst thou future secrets learn And the fate of dreams discern? Wouldst thou ope the Curtain dark And thy future fortune mark? Try the mystic page, and read What the vision ...
— The Voice • Margaret Deland
... mystic exaltation was not the only experience that he had of it: it recurred several times, but never with the intensity of the first. It came always at moments when Christophe was least expecting it, for a second only, a time so short, ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... noiseless, rolling over a sluggish sea; but still he raised aloft his grisly head, eager to enclose them both in his murderous jaws. But she with a newly cut spray of juniper, dipping and drawing untempered charms from her mystic brew, sprinkled his eyes, while she chanted her song; and all around the potent scent of the charm cast sleep; and on the very spot he let his jaw sink down; and far behind through the wood with its many trees were those countless ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... a wonder-world full of delights—and full of terrors. They soon became familiar with the plants in their own way, and entered into a kind of mystic companionship with them, met them in a friendly way and exchanged opinions—like beings from different worlds, meeting on the threshold. There was always something mysterious about their new friends, which kept them at a distance; they did ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... lend, pulsed life create, What unlike things must meet and mate: A flame to melt—a wind to freeze; Sad patience—joyous energies; Humility—yet pride and scorn; Instinct and study; love and hate; Audacity—reverence. These must mate, And fuse with Jacob's mystic heart, ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... and storm and stress, the luckier cabin-boy grew in health and courage until his time was out. When he went home he wore a thick blue coat, wide blue trousers, and a flat cap with mystic braid; and on the quay he strolled with his peers in great majesty. Tiny children admired his earrings and his cap and his complicated swagger. Then in due time came the blessed day when he called himself ordinary seaman, and when the most ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... sign," Nance nodded. "I found, up in Mystic Canyon this afternoon, all that was left of a deer. The lions had killed it and stripped all the best flesh from the deer. So it's plain enough that the cats are hanging around. I thought we'd come up with some ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... as of the selected delights of the arts and crafts of the Middle Ages. His passion for trappings—and what fine trappings!—is admirably suggested by Mr. Cunninghame Graham in his preface to Mr. Compton-Rickett's William Morris: a Study in Personality. Morris he declares, was in his opinion "no mystic, but a sort of symbolist set in a medieval frame, and it appeared to me that all his love of the old times of which he wrote was chiefly of the setting; of tapestries well wrought; of needlework, rich colours ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... too soon to pass final judgment on D'Annunzio's style, which has been undergoing an obvious transition, not yet accomplished. Realist and psychologist, symbolist and mystic by turns, and first and always a poet, he has been compared successively to Bourget and Maupassant, Tolstoi and Dostoievsky, Theophile Gautier and Catulle Mendes, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Baudelaire. Such complexity of style is the outcome of his cosmopolitan taste in literature, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... call Christ Master with adoration of that life are of the same band." Her favourite theologians were James Martineau, Alfred Ainger (whose Life she wrote admirably), and Samuel Barnett, whom she elevated into a mystic and a prophet. The ways of the Church of England did not please her. She had nothing but scorn for "a joyless curate prating of Easter joy with limpest lips," or for "the Athanasian Creed sung in the highest of spirits in a prosperous church" filled with "sealskin-jacketed ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... god of gods, strung the invisible wires of mental telegraphy between our hearts, and over the mystic, unseen lines our thoughts, bright as hope, dark as sin, lighter than the thistle down, heavily charged with the electricity of doubt and trust, faith and fear, love and longing, flew noiselessly ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... I should like to live; naming them in the inverse order of preference,—the Isle of Wight, Sorrento, and Heaven. The first two have something in common, the almost mystic union of sky and sea and shore, a soft atmospheric suffusion that works an enchantment, and puts one into a dreamy mood. And yet there are decided contrasts. The superabundant, soaking sunshine ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... already passed from mouth to mouth. A circumstance, insignificant enough at any other time, gave them an opportunity of attacking him indirectly. An old woman, called Catherine Theot, played the prophetess in an obscure habitation, surrounded by a few mystic sectaries: they styled her the Mother of God, and she announced the immediate coming of a Messiah. Among her followers there was on old associate of Robespierre in the constituent assembly, the Chartreux Dom Gerle, who had a civic certificate from Robespierre himself. When the committees ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... which Speke made with the king to the Nyanza, they landed on an island inhabited by a magician and his wife, who were supposed to be priests of of the water-spirit of the lake. His head was decorated with numerous mystic symbols, among them a paddle, the badge of his high office. He was dressed in a little, white, goat-skin apron, adorned by various charms, and, instead of a walking-stick to support his steps, he ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... heretical followers of Marcion; and the same head was the palladium set up by Antiochus Epiphanes over the gates of Antioch, though it has been called the visage of Charon. The memory of Nimrod was certainly regarded with mystic veneration by many; and by asserting himself to be the heir of that mighty hunter before the Lord, he vindicated to himself at ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... seems to me; for not otherwise can I explain the fact that, like my beloved R.L.S., I have always enjoyed waiting at railway junctions. I love not merely the marching phrases, but also the commas and the semi-colons of a journey,—those mystic moments when "we look before and after" and need not "pine for what is not." I have never done much waiting in America, which is in the main a country of express trains, that hurl their lighted windows through the night like what Mr. Kipling calls "a damned hotel;" but there is scarcely ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... critic, however, in carefully studying the works of these authors, tried to get at the real meaning,—the idea between the lines. Gorky's philosophy has often been discussed; a great many men of letters have tried to unravel what there was of pessimism, of indifference or of mystic idealism in the soul of Tchekoff. This everlasting habit, not to say this mania, of analyzing the mind or soul of an author in order to get at his conception, his personal doctrine of life, often leads to partial and erroneous conclusions, ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... forth the smoaking feast. And by his side came on a brother form, With fiery cheek of purple hue, and red And scurfy-white, mix'd motley; his gross bulk, Like some huge hogshead shapen'd, as applied. Him had antiquity with mystic rites Ador'd, to him the sons of Greece, and thine Imperial Rome, on many an altar pour'd The victim blood, with godlike titles graced, BACCHUS, or DIONUSUS; son of JOVE, Deem'd falsely, for from FOLLY'S ideot form ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... west, no day, no night; nothing but a white darkness, billowing snow, and a silence as of death. It was the cold, silent, mystic, white world of ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... bright good-humoured eye to guide one under this sepulchral figure to the Giovanni or Beppino who was cracking jokes yesterday till the Blue Grotto rang again. Then beneath a great canopy upborne by the four elder fishers of the island, vested in gowns of "samite, mystic, wonderful"—somewhat like a doctor of music's gown in our unpoetic land—comes the Madonna herself, "La Madonna di Carmela," with a crown of gold on her head and a silver fish dangling from her fingers. It is the Madonna ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... coordination of muscular effort. In the light of knowledge gained in later years, I can now see in that long, slouching, shuffling figure, in that tallow-colored face with the bloodless, loose lips and the wandering, mystic eyes of periwinkle blue—I can see in that girl-face framed by a trashy picture-hat, and in that girl-form wrapped in the old golf-cape, one of the earth's unfortunates; a congenital failure; a female creature doomed from her mother's womb—physically, mentally, ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... themselves only the personified attributes of the true Gods, the God with the Eyes of Fire, the God with the Face of Smoke. I saw again Anubis, the dog-faced deity, and the children of Horus, eternal watcher of the ages, as they swathed Osiris, the first mummy of the world, in the scented and mystic bands, and I tasted again something of the ecstasy of the justified soul as it embarked in the golden Boat of Ra, and journeyed onwards to rest in the ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... power is the fruit of experience. The only mystery of art is the mystery of all life itself. In nature the artist finds the manifestation of a larger self toward which he aspires, and this is what his work expresses. Alone with his spirit, he cries to us for that intimate mystic companionship which is appreciation, and our response gives back the echo of his cry. He reaches out across the distance to touch other and kindred spirits and draw them to ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... he pencilled on all provisions that had passed his inspection became in the eyes of officers and soldiers a guarantee of excellence. Samuel’s old friends, the boys of Troy (now enlisted in the army), naïvely imagining that the mystic initials were an allusion to the pet name they had given him years before, would accept no meats but “Uncle Sam’s,” murmuring if other viands were offered them. Their comrades without inquiry followed this example; until so strong did the prejudice for food marked “U.S.” become, that other ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... Osteolepis; and here the occipital plates of Cheirolepis Cummingiae; and here the spine of the anterior dorsal of Diplacanthus striatus." My reading of the fossils was at once recognized, like the mystic sign of the freemason, as establishing for me a place among the geologic brotherhood; and the stout gentleman producing a spirit-flask and a glass, I pledged him and his companion in a bumper. "Was I not sure?" he said, addressing ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... translucent even Shed mystic light o'er earth and heaven, Dim shadowed on the deep; His fancy tinged each passing cloud With the fine phantom, and he bowed Before it in ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... voice pierced keenly through the air. I was right glad when the little creature came and sat on my knee, and in its affectionate way began to nibble at my finger-tips. It sat erect, its thin paws waving with a tiny, measured swing, and in its mystic voice, so infinitely small, so sweet and yet so majestically strong, began a song which no pen can transcribe. Knowing that the awakening must come, but unwilling to lose a moment of the dream, I, who with one finger could have crushed the little thing, sat prizing ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... portion of it by one of the officiating priests, and the division of the remainder among the worshippers. As the juice was drunk immediately after extraction and before fermentation had set in, it was not intoxicating. The ceremony seems to have been regarded, in part, as having a mystic force, securing the favor of heaven; in part, as exerting a beneficial effect upon the body of the worshipper through the curative power inherent in the Homa plant. The animals which might be sacrificed were the horse, the ox, the sheep, and the goat, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... Claribel, and several other poems. Qualities which were not for long to find public expression, speculative powers brooding, in various moods, on ultimate and insoluble questions, were attested by The Mystic, and Supposed Confessions of a Second-rate Sensitive Mind not in Unity with Itself, an unlucky title of a remarkable performance. "In this, the most agitated of all his poems, we find ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... that you forgot the classic griffin in the grotesque conception of the Italian artist. Here was a gibbering monkey, there a grinning pulcinello; now you viewed a chattering devil, which might have figured in the "Temptation of St. Anthony;" and now a mournful, mystic, bearded countenance, which might have flitted in the back ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... as the bearer of the heart translates it into its true meaning—a cry after God, even the living God. And by all your unrests, your disappointments, your hopes unfulfilled, your hopes fulfilled and blasted in the fulfilment, your desires that perish unfruited; by all the mystic movements of the spirit that yearns for something beyond the material and the visible, Jesus Christ is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... warmest umber; the rugged gray of the grand old oaks; the lichens and mosses, the mysterious wintry growths of toadstool and weed and berry; that awful air of unearthliness which pervaded the thicker portions of the wood, as of some mystic underworld—half shadow and half dream. No, Lord Mallow could never forget it; nor yet the way that flying figure in Lincoln green led them by bog and swamp, over clay and gravel—through as many varieties of soil as if she had ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... prince of Persian poets, and in his extraordinary gifts adds to some of the attributes of Pindar, Anacreon, Horace, and Burns the insight of a mystic, that sometimes affords a deeper glance at Nature than belongs to either of these bards. He accosts all topics with an easy audacity. "He only," he says, "is fit for company, who knows how to prize earthly happiness at the value ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... this art of programme music, as we may call it, brought to a full flower, we must seek in the mystic utterances of Robert Schumann. It is wise to keep in mind, however, that although Schumann's piano music certainly answers to our definition of the higher programme music, it also marks the dividing line between emotional programme music without a well-defined object ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... the electric verve and romantic ardor of Edmund Kean. Of the feu sacre which irradiated Rachel and gives to Bernhardt splendor ineffable, Miss Anderson has not a spark. She is not inspired. Hers is a pure, bright, steady light; but it lacks mystic effulgence. It is not empyreal. It is not 'the light that never was on sea or land—the consecration and the poet's dream.' It is not genius. It is talent. In a word, Miss Anderson is beautiful, winsome, gifted, and accomplished. To say this is to say much, and it fills to the brim the ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... darkness was our day, Signal fires, your pains untold, Lit us on our wandering way To the mystic heart of gold. ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... heritage, And inly starving; Dulling the spirit's mystic edge, The banquet carving; Feasting with Pride, that Barmecide Of unreal dishes; And wandering ever in a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the world something that was not choately there before; that at least we fashion or shape something anew; and we ought to feel the tie that binds us to all the toilers of the shop and field, not as a galling chain, but as a mystic bond also uniting us to Him who ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... was bitter to thee, pardon, If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live; And to give thanks is good, and to forgive. Out of the mystic and the mournful garden Where all day through thine hands in barren braid Wove the sick flowers of secrecy and shade, Green buds of sorrow and sin, and remnants grey, Sweet-smelling, pale with poison, sanguine-hearted, Passions that sprang ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... January, 1845, we find her writing "And I had a letter from Browning the poet last night, which threw me into ecstasies—Browning, the author of Paracelsus, and the king of mystics;" and a little later she says, "I am getting deeper and deeper into correspondence with Robert Browning, poet and mystic, and we are growing ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... circle swayed in unison with his swaying form as he chanted the departed glories of those happy days when the red man roamed free those plains and woods, lord of his destiny and subject only to his own will. The mystic magic power of that rich resonant voice, its rhythmic cadence emphasized by the soft throbbing of the drum, the uplifted face glowing as with prophetic fire, the tall swaying form instinct with exalted emotion, swept the souls of his hearers with surging ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... a form of mysticism nearly allied to the 'ecstasy' of Plotinus. The Quaker silences his reason, his every faculty, and in utter passivity waits for the infusion of divine light into his mind; the mystic of Alexandria, as far as possible, divests his intellect of all personality, and becomes absorbed in the Infinite intelligence ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... that he took second place in the name. But the three B's were there; did they not point psychically to the golden bees of the Corsican? Indeed, an astrologist in Chicago had once told him, for a paltry half-dollar, that those B's in his name were of a profoundly mystic significance. ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... things that night. Phantom forms with a dark mystic beauty about them glided round me. I saw a woman with long raven tresses and tear-dimmed eyes shrouded in flowing draperies, leaning over a narrow rustic bridge under which dark and muddy water ran in a gurgling stream. Her elbow leaned upon the railing, and her pensive face lay ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... fancy by accumulated images. The next eleven triplets introduce the presiding genius of the pageant. Students of Petrarch's "Trionfi" will not fail to note what Shelley owes to that poet, and how he has transmuted the definite imagery of mediaeval symbolism into something metaphysical and mystic. ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... the writers did not press this idealistic conception of nature, but much of the nature literature of this group shows a belief in the soul's mystic companionship with the bird, the flower, the cloud, the ocean, ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... these three notes abound in the mystic first "prelude," and they are the core of the great swinging tune of the Andante maestoso, the beginning and main pulse ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... not the first time I had heard of the spiritualist who had established such an extraordinary hold on the Russian ruler's mind. The common impression was that he was a mystic, a sort of Madame Kruedener. At the worst he was regarded as a charlatan of the ordinary spirit-rapping type, cultivating the occult as a ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... story of Lazarus we cannot help suspecting some secret concert. Christ did perform some uncontested miracles, however and there was in his manner that inexpressible something which makes greatness irresistible. The mystic obscurity thrown over his future kingdom, the many parables he used, and his assured manner of speaking of future things, begot reverence. The prudence of his judgment and the strictness of his life are praiseworthy. He could pursue the destruction of old usages but very slowly; ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... There is the mystic Book of Changes, that is to say, the eight changes or combinations which can be produced by a line and a broken line, either one of which is repeated twice with the other, or three times ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... mystic, you cannot guess The strange tales of Ocean it tries to confess. So lady, thine eyelids, as skies shut the sea, Or shells try to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... possible," I said. "Yonder old Safe, if rumor says true, holds many mystic signals which the past and present could address only to the future,—signs meaningless, no doubt, to you or me, but which the freemasonry of higher intelligence shall render plain in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... en la verdad." Francisco de St. Thoma, in his Medulla Mystica, p. 204, quoting this passage, has, "firmeza en la voluntad." Philip a SS. Trinitate, Theolog. Mystic. p. 354, and his Abbreviator, Anton. a Sp. Sancto, Direct. Mystic. tr. iv. disp. i. section 11, n. 94, seem also to have preferred "voluntad" to "verdad;" for the words they use are, "nec intellectui lux nec voluntati firmitas;" and, "defectus lucis in intellectu, ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... Lang, "is the question how the groups got animal names, as long as they got them, and did not remember how they got them, and as long as the names according to their way of thinking indicated an essential and mystic rapport between each group and its name-giving animal. No more than these three things—a group animal name of unknown origin; belief in a transcendental connection between all bearers human and bestial of the same name; and belief in the blood superstitions (the mystically ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... important than practice, and belief stands higher than mere conduct. No wonder that Maimonides was not satisfied until he elaborated a creed with a definite number of dogmas. Dogmas and faith in reason go together. It is the mystic who is impatient of prescribed generalities, for he is constantly refreshed by the living and ever flowing stream of individual experience. The rationalist has a fixed unchangeable Idea or reason or method, whose reality and value consists in its unity, permanence and immutability. In favor ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... several years), he was about to put himself into the hands of justice, that he might atone in a striking way for the crimes with which he was polluted. This man, endowed as he was with conspicuous abilities, had acquired a mystic eloquence in the cloister. He spoke with so much grace and persuasiveness that I was fascinated no less than the abbe. It was in vain that the latter attempted to combat a resolution which appeared ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... That was the truth. He knew it now, despite the longing that Cairo, the real Cairo of the strange, dimly-lit and brightly-tinted interiors, of the shrill and weary music, of the painted girls and the hashish smokers, and of that voice which cried aloud in the mystic hour the acclamation of the Creator—had waked in his Eastern nature to sink into the life which his ancestors knew—the life of the Eastern Jews. He knew what his real ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... in the hall, And now behind the trees the sun 'gan fall, And they as yet no history had heard, Laurence, the Swabian priest, took up the word, And said, "Ye know from what has gone before, That in my youth I followed mystic lore, And many books I read in seeking it, And through my memory this same eve doth flit A certain tale I found in one of these, Long ere mine eyes had looked upon the seas; It made me shudder in the times gone by, When I believed in many a mystery I thought divine, that now I think, ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... they left it, exploring the Charles and the Mystic Rivers, and finally joining the settlement at Charlestown, to which Francis Higginson had gone the previous year, and which proved to be in nearly as desperate case as Salem. The Charlestown records as given in Young's ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... horizon wants mystery, the sea wants beauty, the coast wants verdure, and has a too bare austereness and aridity. At last one turns round and looks westward. Everything is changed. Over the mouth of the Conway and its sands is the eternal softness and mild light of the west; the low line of the mystic Anglesey, and the precipitous Penmaenmawr, and the great group of Carnedd Llewelyn and Carnedd David and their brethren fading away, hill behind hill, in an aerial haze, make the horizon; between the foot of Penmaenmawr and the bending coast of Anglesey, the sea, a ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... for many years; that whether a science of naval strategy will ever be formulated need not now concern us deeply, and that the art of naval strategy, like every other art, needs practice for its successful use. Naval strategy is so vague a term that most of us have got to looking on it as some mystic art, requiring a peculiar and unusual quality of mind to master; but there are many things to indicate that a high degree of skill in it can be attained by the same means as can a high degree of skill in playing—say golf: by hard work; and not only by hard work, but by ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... general economy. It formed a spacious court about the temple, a sacred temenos as the Greeks would have called it, a haram as a modern Oriental would say. It could be peopled with statues and decorated with mystic emblems; religious processions could be marshalled ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... geographical limitation was always important and was one cause of the spread of the decentralized and democratic Baptist faith among the slaves. At the same time, the visible rite of baptism appealed strongly to their mystic temperament. To-day the Baptist Church is still largest in membership among Negroes, and has a million and a half communicants. Next in popularity came the churches organized in connection with the white neighboring churches, ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... father Fray Pedro de San Joseph (whose family name was Roxas) prior of Tandag in the time of the above troubles. He was born in Manila (where he took the Recollect habit) April 21, 1621. He achieved distinction in the study of moral and mystic theology. At the completion of his studies he was sent to various villages to preach, proving himself a successful preacher. In 1635 he was sent to the island of Romblon, where he worked with good results in spite of the hostile attempts of the Moros in that district. At the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... witnessed exhibitions of necromancy and mesmerism, which, in various forms and under different names, have always been practised. Possibly he may have boasted to be a medium himself, a scholar and adept in the mystic art, able to read and divine "the workings of spirits." At any rate, when it became known, that, at a glance, he attributed to the boy the cause of the mischief, and that it ceased on his taking him away from the house, the opinion became ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... thieves and gipseys, called pedlars's French, St. Giles's Greek, and the Flash tongue: also the mystic language of Geber, used by chemists. Gibberish likewise means a sort of disguised language, formed by inserting any consonant between each syllable of an English word; in which case it is called the gibberish of the letter inserted; if f, it is the f gibberish; ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... Litanies the Virgin is denominated "the Mother of God, the Queen of Angels, the Refuge of Sinners, the Mother of Mercy, the Gate of Heaven, the Mystic Rose, the Virgin of ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... of magic during his wanderings, while the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman had seen a great deal of many sorts in their lives, yet all three were greatly impressed by Mrs. Yoop's powers. She did not affect any mysterious airs or indulge in chants or mystic rites, as most witches do, nor was the Giantess old and ugly or disagreeable in face or manner. Nevertheless, she frightened her prisoners more than any ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum |
