"Mystical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of High Jambooree, evidently of remote mystical African origin, appeared to consist of three small skips to the right and then to the left, accompanied by the holding up of very short skirts, incessant "teetering" on the toes of small feet, the exhibition ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... religion of Mohammed is not calculated to appeal to the highly poetic mind of India. It is too severe and prosaic in its character. The mind of India delights in mystical elaborations and in the multiplication of fanciful incarnations and other divine manifestations. The Allah of Islam is almost as remote and as unknowable a deity as is the Brahm of the Vedantist. But in the absence ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... whispered that a supernatural communication, of a nature obvious even to the exterior senses, had produced this wonderful change; and though some mentioned the proselyte as an enthusiast, none hinted at his being a hypocrite. This singular and mystical circumstance gave Colonel Gardiner a peculiar and solemn interest in the eyes of the young soldier. [4] It may be easily imagined that the officers of a regiment, commanded by so respectable a person, composed a society more sedate and orderly than ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... the evening breeze. By the water's margin, and in its shoals and depths, what treasures of the underworld! Here a sponge, with stem bearing five cups; there a sea-fan, large enough for a Titan's use yet delicate enough to be a mermaid's. Red-lipped shells; mystical eye-stones; shell petals heaped in rocky nooks like rose leaves; and, moving among these in grotesque leisure, crabs of a brilliance and variety to tax the painter. All the rector told of a fallen world seemed but idle words when the sunset glory was too much for human vision and the young heart ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... mystical visionary feeling of the Spaniards even in his religious pictures. He was too much in love with life for that, and so, sometimes, we are offended by stout Flemish Saints and Madonnas too healthy to accord with our notions of their abstemious lives. ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... and immutable for us, represents the point in the centre of the circle, or the Deity in the centre of the Universe. It is the especial symbol of duty and of faith. To it, and the seven that continually revolve around it, mystical meanings are attached, which you will learn hereafter, if you should be permitted to advance, when you are made acquainted with the philosophical doctrines ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... protector. "No one has more respect for the Christian religion than I have; but really, when it comes to intruding it into private life——" What was pure paganism in the politics of Melbourne became a sort of mystical cynicism in the politics of Disraeli; and is well mirrored in his novels—for he was a man who felt at home in mirrors. With every allowance for aliens and eccentrics and all the accidents that must always eat the ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... all; at any rate it was quite evident I was set down as a good subject, from the moment of my appearance. Even the somnambule testified to this, though she would not then consent to be put into a trance in order to give her opinion its mystical sanction. ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... preface is found the following lively passage:—'The Roman Gazetteers are defective in several material ornaments of style. They never end an article with the mystical hint, this occasions great speculation. They seem to have been ignorant of such engaging introductions as, we hear it is strongly reported; and of that ingenious, but thread-bare excuse for a downright lie, it ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... at the request of Dichu (but for what cause I know not), did the saint build the church, having its aspect against the north, and looking toward the southern point. Perchance that by this mystical structure the worshippers of idols might be persuaded from the northern coldness of unbelief unto the meridian fervor of the faith and the charity of Christ—the which to this day is called Sabhall Phadruig, that is, the Barn of Patrick; for in process of time he builded ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... though with tremulous haste, For the spell that bewitches the king; And under her tongue, for security placed, Its margin with mystical characters traced, At length he discovers a ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... at her with mystical green orbs. She could offer no help, but she served as a peg upon which Jean could hang her eloquence. She ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... journey. Now, if we are to glance at the philosophy of sanity, the first thing to do in the matter is to blot out one big and common mistake. There is a notion adrift everywhere that imagination, especially mystical imagination, is dangerous to man's mental balance. Poets are commonly spoken of as psychologically unreliable; and generally there is a vague association between wreathing laurels in your hair and ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... associate with them long before you must recognise that these Africans have often a remarkable mental acuteness and a large share of common sense; that there is nothing really "child-like" in their form of mind at all. Observe them further and you will find they are not a flighty-minded, mystical set of people in the least. They are not dreamers, or poets, and you will observe, and I hope observe closely—for to my mind this is the most important difference between their make of mind and our own—that they are notably deficient in ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... was so mystical and ecstatic while he offered his apologies to Michael for the lack of hospitality, that Michael knew that he was visualizing and enjoying far greater luxury and affluence than had ever been the lot of the richest Mameluke of ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... secret to him, but something held her back; something said to her that he was not meant to know it, that if he knew he might be tempted to do still more foolhardy deeds, he would feel compelled to put her mystical message to the test. She remained silent; her mind was working too quickly for speech. She had forgotten that Michael wanted her answer. Her heart had given it so willingly that words were scarcely needed, but he pressed her for her consent. There are some words which lovers like to hear ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... and mystical reveries of the ancients are still law in a great part of the philosophic world; and being adopted by modern theology, it is heresy to abandon them. They tell us "of aerial beings, of spirits, angels, demons, ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... imitate" their "look of dull and treacherous hate." Judging it, however, by any other standard than that of the poet's own erecting, one must certainly admit the claim of Christabel to rank very high as a work of pure creative art. It is so thoroughly suffused and permeated with the glow of mystical romance, the whole atmosphere of the poem is so exquisitely appropriate to the subject, and so marvellously preserved throughout, that our lack of belief in the reality of the scenes presented to us detracts but ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... poet's life. From the letter of September 17th it is plain that Bettina indulged, in all seriousness, the fanciful notion that her inspiration was, in a sense, necessary to Goethe's fame. In her fond, mystical interpretation of the sonnets, her heart seems to her the fruitful furrow, the earth-womb, in which Goethe's songs are sown, and out of which, accompanied by birth-pangs for her, they are destined to soar aloft as heavenly ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... Come, Muse, to our Mystical Chorus, O come to the joy of my song, O see on the benches before us that countless and wonderful throng, Where wits by the thousand abide, with more than a Cleophon's pride— On the lips of that foreigner ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes
... the Holy Flower, and within this reed fence she sits whenever the weather will allow, as I believe going through 'the rites of the Flower.' At least when I called upon her there one day, in a boat, I found her wearing a white robe and singing some mystical native song." ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... Sing him the mystical song of the Hern, And the secret that baffles our utmost seeking; For only a sound of lament we discern, And cannot interpret ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... The sounds—those mystical and thrilling sounds that at once elevate the soul and touch the heart—ceased, the chaunting of the service recommenced; the motionless form moved; and as she moved Egremont came forth from the choir, and his eye was at once caught by the symmetry of her shape and the picturesque position ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... have first expressed the mythology of Christianity and the sentiment of the Middle Ages with the conscious aim of a real artist. And here it may be noticed that, a true Italian, he infused but little of intense or mystical emotion into his art. Niccola is more of a humanist, if this word may be applied to a sculptor, than some of his immediate successors. The hexagonal pulpit in the Baptistery of Pisa, the octagonal pulpit in the cathedral ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... a very primitive view with regard to marital relations and to the greater freedom in these relations in the Socialistic State of the future: "The whole of our sexual morality (as such), in so far as it has a rational, as opposed to a mystical, basis, is nothing but a 'plant' to save the ratepayers' pockets by fixing the responsibility for the maintenance of children on the individuals responsible for the procreation of them. To the consistent Socialist, the sexual relation is, per se, morally indifferent (neither moral ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... most famous of these mystical reformers were William Briconnet, Bishop of Meaux, and his disciple, Margaret d'Angouleme, sister of Francis I. Though a highly talented woman Margaret was weak and suggestible. She adored her dissolute brother and was always, on account of her marriages, first with Charles, duke of Alencon, ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... the Rabbin, "that such are your pretensions; but they are absolutely gratuitous and false. Your system turns altogether on mystical meanings, visionary and allegorical interpretations.* With violent distortions on the letter of our books, you substitute the most chimerical ideas for the true ones, and find in them whatever pleases you; as a roving imagination will find figures in the clouds. Thus you have made ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... insanity from caprice, he had grown up with ideas of filial duty perplexed, and with a fitful love for either, that was not attachment: a baffled natural love, that in teaching us to brood on the hardness of our lot, lays the foundation for a perniciously mystical self-love. He had waged precociously philosophic, when still a junior. His father had kept him by his side, giving him no profession beyond that of the obedient expectant son and heir. His first allusion to the youth's dependency had provoked their first breach, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... first essay, "The Treasure of the Humble," is, undoubtedly, mystical. He does not argue, or define, or explain, he asserts, but even in that book and far more so in his second, "Wisdom and Destiny," it is real life which absorbs him as Alfred de Sutro his translator points out. In this book "he endeavours ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne
... silent man, in his patent-leather boots, had not the air of conveying a state prisoner into exile, and we wondered in vain what the tie between him and the amigo was. He might have been his tutor, or his uncle. He exercised a quite mystical control over the amigo, who was exactly obedient to him in everything, and would not look aside at you when in his keeping. We reflected with awe and pathos that, as they roomed together, it was his privilege to see the amigo asleep, when that little, very kissable black head ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... of water in communicating an ecstacy similar to the mesmeric lucidity, is largely dwelt on by the mystical writers known as the Neo-Platonists. Psellus describes a mode of divinition among the Assyrians by a basin, which smacks strongly of the mesmeric practice. "The water, which is poured into the basin, seems, as to its substance, to differ in ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... stood listening with a half-mystical look, a man groping for elusive truths. Now his fine composure seemed to cloud for a moment; but it shone out again, fair and strong. And presently, as he paced, he was heard humming again his strange paradoxical song, which he, a parson, seemed to lean ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... order—her powers of mind were gigantic. I felt this, and, in many matters, became her pupil. I soon, however, found that, perhaps on account of her Presburg education, she placed before me a number of those mystical writings which are usually considered the mere dross of the early German literature. These, for what reason I could not imagine, were her favourite and constant study—and that in process of time they became my own, should be attributed to the simple but ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... its impress, as certain dreams should, For, as warnings of evil, precursors of good, They are sent to our souls o'er a mystical line, Night messages, ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... one"—was a light to Celia. Till now, upon these occasions, with her black ceremonial dress, her air of aloofness, her vague eyes, and the dignity of her carriage, she had already produced some part of their effect before the seance had begun. She had been wont to sail into the room, distant, mystical. She had her audience already expectant of mysteries, prepared for marvels. Her work was already half done. But now of all that help she was deprived. She was no longer a person aloof, a prophetess, ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... spirits of another world. For, be it observed, Smith possesses all the qualities and exercises all the tricks of the necromancers during the middle ages. His speech is ambiguous, solemn, and often incomprehensible—a great proof to the vulgar of his mystical vocation. ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... look at me in a peculiar manner. I have often said to myself since then that those who are condemned to death must look thus when they are informed that their last day has come. In her eye there lurked a species of insanity, an insanity at once mystical and violent; and even more, a fever, an aggravated longing, impatient and impotent, for ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... was very marked, and his poetry ranged from Rhymes of Travel, 1848, and Poems of the Orient, 1854, to idyls and home ballads of Pennsylvania life, like the Quaker Widow and the Old Pennsylvania Farmer; and on the other side, to ambitious and somewhat mystical poems, like the Masque of the Gods, 1872—written in four days—and dramatic experiments like the Prophet, 1874, and Prince Deukalion, 1878. He was a man of buoyant and eager nature, with a great appetite for new experience, a remarkable memory, a talent ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... this poem the average reader might have to consult the dictionary for the precise meaning of "Crystalline" [clear, unalloyed], "Runic" [old-fashioned, mystical], "Tintinnabulation" [bell-ringing], "Monody" [a monotonous sound], "Ghouls" [imaginary evil beings supposed to prey upon human bodies], and "Paean" [a song of triumph]. The pupil should understand that except in the rare cases where mere sound helps us, we learn ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... boys who faced and conquered hard physical jobs that became the men of endurance later." He had seen and shared the devotion of the missionary spirit, and had seen, too, how largely it failed of fruit by being spent on supernatural conversion and mystical emotion. He knew the tropical temperament, common to Hawaiian and negro,—how accessible to transient fervor, how deficient in persistence and continuity. He had watched his father's operations, as minister of public instruction ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... lived a long time as a recluse, pretending to be abstracted from all earthly considerations, and to be given wholly to prayer and divine meditations; and the more to amuse the people who there resorted to him, he dressed up his cave with several mystical figures, representing Mithra, and other mysteries of their religion. In this cave he wrote his book, called Zendavesta, or Zend, meaning "fire-kindler," or "tinder-box." This book contains much borrowed {63} from the Old Testament. He even called it the book of Abraham, and ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... Tall Irishman. Oliver Cromwell's porter, yclept Daniel, was a giant. This fellow, through poring over mystical divinity, lost his wits: he preached, prophesied, and raved until finally he was incarcerated in Bedlam, where, after a while, his liberty was allowed him. A famous item amongst his books was a large Bible presented by Neil Gwynne. D'Urfey in his Prologue ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... west, and sank into a pleasurable trance. Caroline, going a little apart, paced to and fro beneath the rectory garden wall, dreaming too in her way. Shirley had mentioned the word "mother." That word suggested to Caroline's imagination not the mighty and mystical parent of Shirley's visions, but a gentle human form—the form she ascribed to her own mother, unknown, unloved, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... against the tree-trunk and looked up through the dusky branches at the first faint stars glimmering in a quiet sky. The dreamy, mystical eyes, deep blue under black lashes, were an inheritance from his Cornish mother, and Montanelli turned his head away, that he might not ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... besides their direct and simple reference to the Lord's Supper, exhibit also the Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence in the Eucharist. The bread he considers as the obvious material symbol, the fish the mystical symbol of the transubstantiation. His interpretation is at least doubtful. The bread was to be eaten in remembrance of the Lord, and the fish was represented as the image which recalled his words, that have been perverted by materialistic imaginations so far from their original meaning,—"This ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... evidently excited, perhaps angry, and it behoved me to restore tranquillity, if possible, to its perturbed spirit. Instead, therefore, of dibbing, I now allowed the fly to float, a little submerged, from a couple of yards above the fish, which, I fear, had never in its youthful days been taught the mystical proverb, "First, second, but beware of the third." It came up with a gallant charge, and went down ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... written, and the surprises which one feels may be in store in his future work. His feelings have already so much variety and so much apparent sincerity that it is impossible to tell in what direction his genius will develop. In whatever style he writes,—the mystical, the historical-dramatic, the impassioned description of natural beauty, the ballad, the love lyric,—he has the peculiarity of seeming in each style to have found the truest expression ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... fatal twelfth century it was woman, the goddess, the Beatrice-form beckoning on the staircase of Paradise, who attracted upward the dazzled gaze of man, and who seemed, by an unearthly smile—with which man himself had possibly endowed her—to promise a mystical salvation and a sort ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... love, trust, and peace should follow as well as precede the evening exercises. We should make the going to sleep a sacred part of our lives. In giving up our consciousness we should be sure to surrender it to the positive forces of the universe. This is not an idle dream, nor a mere mystical fancy. Even from a psychological point of view the emotion with which we go to sleep is apt to remain with us and get in its good or evil work in the unconscious, involuntary metabolism that takes place in all the cells. We must lie ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... and was about to leap, when her eyes fell upon a person who was walking below, the sight of whom suddenly aroused her from the folly, the strange charm of which had just laid hold so powerfully upon her. She drew back. She rubbed her eyes with her hands, and she, who was accustomed to mystical ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... why, on reaching the seat of Empire, he addressed his first epistle to the Christians with whom he had so recently held intercourse. The tradition that the "Babylon" from which this letter was written, [157:1] is no other than Rome, or the mystical Babylon of the Apocalypse, [157:2] is unquestionably of great antiquity; [157:3] and some of the announcements it contains are certainly quite in unison with such an interpretation. Thus, Peter tells his ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... Society of Friends and the Salvation Army, every existing "denomination" of Christians has continued in one form or another the observance of this Mystical Meal. In the Roman Church, and in many parishes of the Church of England, it is celebrated daily; and it is evident from the provisions of her Prayer-book that the Church of England intends that there shall be a celebration of the Communion in all normal parishes at least on ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... young surgeon it seemed a fairy scene flaming with the color and glow of a life which he had never known. He had lived so long surrounded by the bare, blank walls of a hospital. Even Petronella's soft green gown seemed made of some mystical stuff which had nothing in common with the cool white or blue starchiness of ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... strive to set themselves apart from the common herd, imagine that they are inhabitants of a sublimated ether, and look down with pitying contempt on all who profess an inability to detect a meaning in their vapid and mystical jargon. 'These be truths;' and our readers will bear us witness that months ago, with but little variation of terms, we promulgated them ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... Just as the ceremonial precepts foreshadowed Christ, so did the stories of the Old Testament: for it is written (1 Cor. 10:11) that "all (these things) happened to them in figure." Now in the stories of the Old Testament, besides the mystical or figurative, there is the literal sense. Therefore the ceremonial precepts had also ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... vibrant contralto, came remorselessly back. Full tides of longing beat pitilessly upon his senses, never, it seemed, to ebb again. And yet, at times, when his whole soul so cried out for her that he stretched his arms, in yearning, toward the myriad phantom Ediths that peopled the room, mystical assurance would come from somewhere that she, too, was keeping ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... force in his back and loins, and down his legs, force so perfect that it stayed him immobile, and left his face subtly, mindlessly smiling. He knew what it was to be awake and potent in that other basic mind, the deepest physical mind. And from this source he had a pure and magic control, magical, mystical, a force in ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... rare in Japan. It is to be found not only upon stone monuments, but also in religious paintings,—especially certain kakemono suspended in temples. These kakemono usually display the footprints upon a very large scale, with a multitude of mystical symbols and characters. The sculptures may be less common; but in Tokyo alone there are a number of Butsu-soku-seki, or "Buddha- foot stones," which I have seen,—and probably several which I have not seen. There ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... Church, Warwickshire. The figure of our Saviour in a sitting attitude, holding in his left hand a book, and with his right arm and hand upheld, in allusion to the saying, I am the way, and the truth, and the life, and circumscribed by that mystical figure the Vesica piscis, appears over Norman doorways at Ely Cathedral; Rochester Cathedral; Malmesbury Abbey Church; Elstow Church, Bedfordshire; Water Stratford Church, Buckinghamshire; and Barfreston Church, Kent; and is ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... address over thirty years ago, that in matter itself he saw the promise and the potency of all terrestrial life, stamps him as a scientific materialist. But his conception of matter, as "at bottom essentially mystical and transcendental," stamps him as also an idealist. The idealist in him speaks very eloquently in the passage which, in the same address, he puts into the mouth of Bishop Butler, in the latter's imaginary ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... only by this king's orders that there was a relaxation of this severity. Besides, communion is not absolutely necessary to salvation, and one may communicate spiritually in reading the word, which is like the body; in uniting oneself with the Church, which is the mystical substance of Christ; and in suffering for Him and with Him, this last communion of agony that is your portion, madame, and is the most perfect communion of all. If you heartily detest your crime and love God with all your soul, if you have faith and charity, your death is a martyrdom ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... moan of the sea became more audible in the fixed stillness. The two faces, both young and fair, yet so different in their expression, lay each still on its pillow,—their wide-open eyes gleaming out in the shadow like mystical gems. Each was breathing softly, as if afraid of disturbing the other. At last ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... a big seal and ribbon attached. The size of the receipt and seal was proportioned according to the amount paid—if you had a son or a daughter in Purgatory, it was wise to pay a large amount. The certificates were in Latin and certified in diffuse and mystical language many things, and they gave great joy ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... naturalistic simplicity of the Middle Ages, with all the directness with which the artists represented their profane conceptions, with the desire to perpetuate the triumph of the flesh in some ignored corner of the mystical buildings, in order to testify that human ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... that the world is in a permanent danger of being misjudged. That this is no fanciful or mystical idea may be tested by simple examples. The two absolutely basic words 'good' and 'bad,' descriptive of two primal and inexplicable sensations, are not, and never have been, used properly. Things that are bad are not called good by any people who experience them; but things that are good are called ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... domicile of this mystical unraveller, which for the greater facility of communication with the stars he had fixed in the loftiest apartment of the house, our trio knocked at the door, which, after some hesitation, was opened by an ancient Sybil, who was presently joined by her counterpart, both "so withered and so ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... and in a few minutes they descended the hill and silently wended their way homeward. The voice that had seemed to come from another world invested the evening landscape with mystical solemnity. The expression of the moon seemed transfigured, like a great clairvoyant eye, reflecting light from invisible spheres, and looking out upon the external world ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... of feeling forms, I think, the innermost soul of army-writings. Without any exception known to me, militarist authors take a highly mystical view of their subject, and regard war as a biological or sociological necessity, uncontrolled by ordinary psychological checks and motives. When the time of development is ripe the war must come, reason or no reason, for the justifications pleaded are invariably fictitious. War is, ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... existence, and think that it should be consulted by whomsoever would pay proper attention to his own outward appearance. The merely useful may possibly make the shape approximate to that of a Quaker's or a jarvey's, but the beautiful has to elevate and modify it into the mystical proportions fit for a man of taste. One other quality, however, which is intimately connected with the useful, has to be noticed. The substance should not be hard and unyielding. Witness, ye reminiscences—ye painful ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... another barrow also, near the same place, where I am inclined to believe that a "mystical sciencer" worked a trick on two worthy fellows, whom he promised to enrich with silver and gold if they would dig into the hillock for him and find therein a great brass pan which contained the treasure. ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... whose mystical and somber genius has caused us such profound emotions starts, in a few days' time, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... confession, Aunt Julia, pained and bewildered, had retired from the field. And Lilamani, flung back on the God within, had evolved a private creed of her own;—shedding the husks of Christian dogmas and the grosser superstitions of her own faith, and weaving together the mystical elements that are the life-blood of all ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... the Tragic Art, of the ancients, annihilates in some measure the external circumstances of space and time; while, by their changes, the romantic drama adorns its more varied pictures. Or, to express myself in other terms, the principle of the antique poetry is ideal; that of the romantic is mystical: the former subjects space and time to the internal free-agency of the mind; the latter honours these incomprehensible essences as supernatural powers, in which there is somewhat ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... it was a real ship, you old dotard!" said the skipper gruffly and looking angrily at him. "Of course it was," he added, while our new acquaintance looked at us, unable, naturally, to understand the mystical allusion; but Captain Applegarth soon turned his roving thoughts into another direction by asking him a second question. "How long did you keep in sight of your vessel after leaving her, colonel, do ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... 551 B.C., was as practical in intellect as Laoutse was mystical, and has exerted an extraordinary influence upon the Chinese race. For this reason it seems important to give some account of ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... mystical man, so made or begotten of the devil, and sent into the world, Satan himself being the chief and highest ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... and I faced William. Spiritually speaking, we parted company. He passed into a praying and fasting trance, and my heart was nearly broken with the loneliness, for praying and fasting did not agree with me, and William seemed to recede in some mystical sense hard to define, so that I became a ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... mysticism as representing a certain mode of embodying truth, common, in various degrees, to almost all, if not all, the writers of the New Testament. The attempt to define it thoroughly would require an essay. I will hazard but one suggestion towards it: A mystical mind is one which, having perceived that the highest expression of which the truth admits, lies in the symbolism of nature and the human customs that result from human necessities, prosecutes thought about truth so embodied by dealing with ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... is his favorite conventional tame man, since, among the shouting heroes, Gunnar whimpers like a Tesman. Here is Ibsen's favorite trick of unrequited self-sacrifice; it is Sigurd, in Gunnar's armor, who kills the mystical white bear, but it is Gunnar who reaps the advantage. It is only fair to say that there is more than this to applaud in The Vikings at Helgeland; it moves on a consistent and high level of austere romantic beauty. Mr. ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... and best beloved Una, "born again." These were the words upon whose mystical meaning I had so long pondered, rejecting the explanations of the priesthood, until Death himself resolved for ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... strangely mystical land So shadowy, lone and so dim, And my castle's a port on the ocean strand, Where they wait for the ferryman grim, To row them away from the silvery beach Beyond the foam of the tide, Where a palace looms far away from ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... life, death, of this supposed Christ. His story is one tissue of contradictions. It is impossible to believe that the Synoptics and the fourth Gospel are even telling the history of the same person. The discourses of Jesus in the Synoptics are simple, although parabolical; in the Fourth they are mystical, and are being continually misunderstood by the people. The historical divergences are marked. The fourth Gospel "tells us (ch. 1) that at the beginning of his ministry Jesus was at Bethabara, a town near the junction of the Jordan with the Dead Sea; here he gains three disciples, ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... well pause, before he starts to an Indian reservation. What is the mysterious benefit which the poet derives from nature? Humility and common sense, Burns would probably answer, and that response would not appeal to the majority of poets. A mystical experience of religion, Wordsworth would say, of course. A wealth of imagery, nineteenth century poets would hardly think it worth while to add, for the influence of natural scenery upon poetic metaphors has come to be such a matter of course that one hardly realizes its significance. ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... profane. It appears to make secular or mechanicalize their profession, to rob preaching of its sacrosanctity, leave it less authority by making it more intelligible, remove it from the realm of the mystical and unique. This objection seems to me sometimes an expression of spiritual arrogance and sometimes a subtle form of skepticism. It assumes a special privilege for our profession or a not-get-at-able defense ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... of apprehending a relation between the extraordinary indications of the period we live in, and the substantial purport of the divine predictions. There unquestionably gleams forth, through the plainer lines, and through the mystical imagery of prophecy, the vision of a better age, in which the application of the truths of religion to men's minds will be irresistible. And what should more naturally be interpreted as one of the dawning signs of its approach, than a new spirit come into action with ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... Carol went to the mill. The mystical Om-Om-Om of the dynamos in the electric-light plant behind the mill was louder in the darkness. Outside sat the night watchman, Champ Perry. He held up his stringy hands and squeaked, "We've ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... in my sun-lit garden, hearing the mourning-dove coo and the cat-birds cry. Last night as the sun went down the hill-tops to the west became vividly purple with a subtle illusive deep-crimson glow beneath, while the sky above their tops, a saffron dome rose almost to the zenith. These mystical things are here joined: The trill of black-birds near at hand, the cackle of barn-yard fowls, the sound of hammers, a plowman talking to his team, the pungent smoke of burning leaves, the cool, sweet, spring wind and the glowing down-pouring sunshine—all marvelous and ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... population which alone was conversant with letters—the priestly class; and the annals they have left to us have none of the value which belongs to the productions of classical antiquity. They were again mere records; or they were mystical or fanciful tales of saints and heroes, composed or distorted for the glorification of the church, and the strengthening of the influence of the priests over the people. But these also, in after times, took on a value which they had not originally possessed, and ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... Lorraine, and her heart swelled to think he had so gloriously fulfilled her vast hopes, and crowned all she had done for him. She longed that she might have been there, and then felt mysteriously that she not only was there, but was speaking to her. In a vague, unreal, mystical way, Lorraine was pleading with her ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... indeed is sexed, like the human that possesses it. It seeks a mystical union with the imaginings of others. The poet, the novelist, the essayist, seek the mind of the reader; the critic seeks the mind of the writer. That we get so much bad reviewing is due to incompatibility of ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... that what Shakspere did in poetic expression, Abraham Lincoln essentially did in his personal and official life. I should say the invisible foundations and vertebra of his character, more than any man's in history, were mystical, abstract, moral and spiritual—while upon all of them was built, and out of all of them radiated, under the control of the average of circumstances, what the vulgar call horse-sense, and a life often bent by temporary ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... flushed and mystical and blue, When the late bird sings And sweet-breathed garden-ghosts walk sudden and wide, Hesper, that bringeth all good things, Brings me a dream of you. And in my heart, dear heart, it comes and goes, Even as the south wind lingers and falls and blows, Even as the south wind sighs ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... not going to draw any far-fetched analogy between the miracle recorded in the gospel, and the subject on which I am speaking. I am not going to put any mystical and mediaeval interpretation on the seven loaves, or the two small fishes. I only ask you to accept the plain moral practical lesson which ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... sometimes styled "an Italian patriot." In his ambitious endeavor to reinstate the Caesarean power in Italy he appears alternately in the figure of a hero and the character of a charlatan. Believing himself the founder of a new era, he was inflamed by his successes, and ended in "mystical extravagances and follies which could not ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... read Miss Coleridge's poems was to make acquaintance with a charming and delicate soul that wished to be understood and was willing to be intimate. Life astonished her, and her comments on life are her poems. They are often mystical, not to say obscure; and the obscurity, as a rule, is caused by vagueness rather than profundity, by the fact that she hardly knows herself what she feels, or thinks, or believes. But from so gracious ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... 2. 8 mystical characters denoting the first principles of matter, said to be invented by Fo-shee, the founder ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... beautiful bindings, and possesses an incomparable Baudelaire (edition tiree a un exemplaire), a unique Mallarme. Catholicism being the adopted religion of the Decadence—for its venerable age, valuable in such matters as the age of an old wine, its vague excitation of the senses, its mystical picturesqueness—Des Esseintes has a curious collection of the later Catholic literature, where Lacordaire and the Comte de Falloux, Veuillot and Ozanam, find their place side by side with the half-prophetic, half-ingenious Hello, the amalgam of a monstrous mysticism and a casuistical sensuality, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... her in a dream or a revery. In the nobleness of genuine, confiding, reverential love, rather than impute to your beloved a levity of sentiment that would seem to you a treason, you accept the chimera of 'magical fascination.' In this frame of mind you sit down to read the memoir of a mystical enthusiast. Do you begin now to account for the Luminous Shadow? A dream! And a dream no less because your eyes were open and you believed yourself awake. The diseased imagination resembles those mirrors which, being themselves distorted, represent ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and management. But the widow would not consent even to speak of such an arrangement as possible. She spoke a word, with a tear in her eye, of the human lord and master who had lived with her for two happy years, and said another word with some mystical allusion to a heavenly husband; and after that Herr Steinmarc felt that he could not plead his cause further with any hope of success. "But why should not Linda be your wife?" said Madame Staubach, as her disappointed suitor was about ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... and tom-toms, and the exorcist cries out: "Evil spirits from the east, I send back to the east; evil spirits from the south, I send back to the south," and so on. Finally, he goes to the door of the house, and, after making some mystical signs in the air, manoeuvres with his sword, congratulates the owner of the establishment on the expulsion of the ghosts, ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... attached to the word day in divine ears. And who of the innumerable interpreters understands the twelve hundred and sixty days in Daniel, or his two thousand and odd days, to mean, by possibility, periods of twenty-four hours? Surely the theme of Moses was as mystical, and as much entitled to the benefit of mystical language, ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... may," interrupted Mr. Greenville, "we will not allow our imagination to wander forth into the mystical regions of the future, or picture to ourselves scenes of wretchedness, if such await us. Flatter me not with the good intentions ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... the white walls,—a star looked in at her through the dim window. The nun slowly rose and departed. Aurore was left alone. A calm, such as she had never known, took possession of her,—a sudden light seemed to envelop her,—she heard the mystical sentence vouchsafed to Saint Augustin: "Toile, lege!" Turning to see who whispered ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... O marvellous, mystical maiden, With the way of the wind on the wing; Low laughter thy lithe lips hath laden, Thy smile is a Song of the Spring. O typical, tropical tiger, With wicked and wheedlesome wiles; O lovely lost lady of Niger, Our ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... "uplifting" their fellow-countrymen. A certain number of figures written on a check and signed by a familiar name, what may it not accomplish? Some years ago at the opening exercises of the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburg, Mr. Andrew Carnegie burst into an impassioned and mystical vision of the miraculously constitutive power of first mortgage steel bonds. From his point of view and from that of the average American there is scarcely anything which the combination of abundant resources and good intentions may ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... want unanswered here which is most fully satisfied hereafter. It makes the new life all the fresher and sweeter, you see. They wanted a home; but home is not a place, it is a state. There can be no home at all if there is not that mystical house, 'not made with hands,' where spirits blend and dwell together ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... given directly, is largely through the church. What we need then, and what the world is waiting for, is the Son of God, borne witness to and revealed in all his radiant {xii} beauty of the ministry of the Holy Spirit, as he energizes with and through the saints that make up the holy and mystical body, the church. ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... external stimulation, to be manifested, or it may be transformed, in mere solitary physical sex activity, in dreams of the night, in day-dreams, in shapes of literature and art, in symptoms of nervous disorder such as some forms of hysteria, and even in the most exalted phases of mystical devotion. Since then, a more elaborate attempt to develop a similar dynamic conception of sexual activity has been made by Freud; and the psycho-analysts who have followed him, or sometimes diverged, have with endless subtlety, and courageous thoroughness, traced the ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... sharpens my hunger.' In one form or another it recurs in practically every novel.[12] Certain of the later portions of this book, especially the chapter entitled 'Her Path in Shadow' are delineated through a kind of mystical haze, suggestive of some of the work of Puvis de Chavannes. The concluding chapters, taken as a whole, indicate with tolerable accuracy Gissing's affinities as a writer, and the pedigree of the type of ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... me but I have terribly repaid him. I rule over the land like a queen. I exact tributes, and, if they are not rendered, I smite with a sharper edge than the sword. My worship is paid to the Prince of Darkness. This tower is his temple, and yon subterranean chamber the place where the mystical rites, which thou wouldst call impious and damnable, are performed. Countless sabbaths have I attended within it; or upon Rumbles Moor, or on the summit of Pendle Hill, or within the ruins of Whalley Abbey. Many proselytes have I made; many unbaptised babes offered up in sacrifice. I ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... most of my books have treated of fantastic subjects,—somewhat in the manner of Edgar Allan Poe—has made me more susceptible for all that world which lies beyond and about the world of every-day life. I have sought after,—and yet feared—the mystical; cool and lucid as I can be at times, I have always had an inclination for the ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... had been wandering aimlessly and quite alone about the great interiors of the town hall when he caught sight of Mr. Phirrips, the contractor, with the bishop and the most famous sporting peer of the north, a man who for some mystical reason was idolized by the masses of the city. Unfortunately Mr. Phirrips also caught sight of George. "Bishop, here is Mr. Cannon, our architect. He will be able to explain perhaps better—" And in an instant Mr. Phirrips had executed one ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... sociable being leading a life full of events in a universe full of phenomena. The child believes the wonders of romance by a right instinct; narratives of love and peril and achievement come home to the spirit of the youth; and the mystical, wonder-expecting eye of childhood returns to old age. The humor, wit, piety, and pathos of every age abound in the written stories ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... papa!" cried little Jeanie, always with her two arms embracing mine in a pretty way she had. I was obliged to go at last, but what could I say? I could only kiss him, and tell him to keep still,—that I was doing all I could. There is something mystical about the patience of a child. "It will come all right, won't it, father?" he said. "God grant it may! I hope so, Roland." "Oh, yes, it will come all right." Perhaps he understood that in the midst of my anxiety ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... connection to trace the influence of Boehme-ism on 'the fierce sectaries of Lower Germany,' on Anabaptism, and on the illuminati of the ultra Puritans in England, bringing forth Independent Fifth Monarchy men, George Fox, Flood, Law, and Pordage. The seeds of this mystical heresy were obscurely transmitted to New England, which has always had some 'GOD-Smith,' or Mathias with his 'Impostures,' lurking among the vulgar. I have no doubt that, through traditional influence at least, a Joe Smith and the beginning of Mormonism might be found ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the waiters know that the Sphinx is no ordinary woman. She cannot conceal even from them the mystical star of her face, they too catch far echoes of the strange music of her brain, they too grow dreamy with dropped hints of fragrance from the rose ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... the scene of her earliest memories, the circling wilderness of foliage, the shining tank with the round leaves of the lilies, the murmuring dusk under the vast branches of the central casuarina-tree. Here, in a mystical retirement more irksome to a European in fancy than to an Oriental in reality, the brain of this wonderful child was moulded. She was pure Hindoo, full of the typical qualities of her race and blood, and, as the present volume shows us for the first time, preserving ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... calendars and dream-books, and the mystical work of M. Ambodik. Many a memory did the long-forgotten but familiar "Symbols and Emblems" recall to his mind. In the furthest recess of one of the drawers in Glafira's toilette-table, Lavretsky found a small packet, sealed with black wax, and tied with a narrow black ribbon. Inside the packet were ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... the prophets professed any mystical and inexplicable illumination at which a sceptic might reasonably mock; they were prepared with ample reasons for the things they foretold. Now, quite as confidently, they point on to a new series of consequences, high probabilities that follow ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... Nature sprang from his profounder insight into love. Love was his way of approach, as it was eminently not Wordsworth's, to the transfigured Nature which Wordsworth first disclosed. It is habitually lovers who have these visions,—all that was mystical in Browning's mind attaching itself, in fact, in some way to his ideas of love. To the Two in the Campagna its primeval silence grows instinct with passion, and its peace with joy,—the joy of illimitable space and freedom, alluring yet mocking the finite ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... concluded. And what is a Christian, if he does not arrive at perfection, but an unfinished dream?" Now there is nothing more universal among the most unintellectual of the children of earth than just this sort of mystical reverie, thus grand and thus inconclusive, where the mind, moved, perhaps, to this enthusiastic rapture by that infusion of animal force which comes from a hearty dinner, remaining always just in the same place, seems to wheel away, it knows not whither, but seemingly, and as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... sail and a skirmish." When the camp was silent, he began to work. He wrote many hours, arranging the business of the regiment. He finished his labor as the midnight stars were crossing the zenith. As he sat in his tent by the shore, it seems as if the mystical gales from the near eternity must have breathed for a moment over his soul, freighted with the odor of amaranths and asphodels. For he wrote two strange letters: one to her who mourns him faithful in death; one to his parents. There is nothing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... light from far, Clearer than sun or moon or star, Luminous, wonderful, weird, oh, mark How the radiance pulses everywhere, In the shadowless vault of lucid air! Over the mountains shimmering, Up from the fountains glimmering,— Tis the mystical glow of the inner light, That shines in the very noon of night, While the river ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... craggy islands rose from the water, assuming every imaginable and unimaginable shape in the uncertain light; while on the right the eye ranged over the inky lake till it was lost in thick darkness. A thin, transparent night-fog added to the mystical appearance of the scene, upon which I looked with mingled feelings of wonder and awe. The only distinct sound that could be heard was the measured sound of the paddles, which the men plied in silence, as if unwilling to break the stillness ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... expression of intimate thought or cherished fancy was for your eyes only; it was my first approach to your maidenly heart, a mystical wooing, which neglected no resource, near or remote, for the enhancement of its charm, and so involved all other mystery in ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... portions of the vital organs, especially the brain (lolo). This last it is which gives name to the ceremony. He sets an equal portion before each novitiate. Each one must eat all that is set before him. It is a mystical rite, a sacrament; as he eats he consciously partakes of the virtue of the goddess that is transmitted to himself. [Page 35] Meantime the olohe and friends of the novitiates, inspired with the proper enthusiasm, of the occasion, lift their voices ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... the periods of rest in which he indulged were not taken because of fatigue. He rested to look, to listen, to feel. What the vast silent world meant to him had always been a mystical thing, which he felt in all its incalculable power, ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... open to the demonstration of inaccuracy; and the language by which disciples of the kindred school of Schelling illustrated in the animal structure the transcendental idea of the whole in every part seemed little better than mystical jargon. With Cuvier, answerable parts occurred in the zoological scale because they had to perform ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... Maiden mount and ride, With a good steel sperthe that swung by her side, And girt with the sword of the Heavenly Bride, That is sained with crosses five for a sign, The mystical sword of St. Catherine. And the lily banner was blowing wide, With the flowers of France on the field of fame And, blent with the blossoms, the Holy Name! And the Maiden's blazon was shown on a shield, ARGENT, A DOVE, ON ...
— New Collected Rhymes • Andrew Lang
... yourself at their feet, you will be always full of lassitude, and of wavering purpose, for a man must forget he is miserable in the bustle and noise of the multitude in this world and in time; or seek a mystical union with the multitude who govern this world and time.' And then he murmured something I could not hear, and as though to ...
— Rosa Alchemica • W. B. Yeats
... ways, to one who held that "where christened infants sport, the floor is holy," and who read a mystical meaning into many of their gestures and words, were a constant joy and inspiration; and there grew up a store of poems upon them and other little ones, especially the children of Dr. George Moberly, then headmaster of Winchester College ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... to abridge this story to suit our limits.—The mystical portion of it, or "the story of the Demon," as the narrator, a Pole, calls it, is thus ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various
... did that work, was it not the more glorious? "Shall we not continue in sin then, that grace may abound?" What does it signify, though the perishable and burthensome body defiles itself? The emancipated spirit of the "spiritual" man lives on another plane; the sensual and the mystical elements may approach, may run parallel, but can never meet. The body may sin; the spirit must be pure—if only the man is ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... perceive devotion to these interests, he calls it desinteresse, and wonders how it is possible to act "disinterestedly." There have been philosophers who could give this popular astonishment a seductive and mystical, other-worldly expression (perhaps because they did not know the higher nature by experience?), instead of stating the naked and candidly reasonable truth that "disinterested" action is very interesting and "interested" action, provided that... "And love?"—What! ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... observing with childish wonder and faith the performances of a new magician, a fresh arrival. His dress was the extreme of the fantastic; as showy and foolish as the sort of thing an Indian medicine-man wears. He was mowing, and mumbling, and gesticulating, and drawing mystical figures in the air and on the floor,—the regular thing, you know. He was a celebrity from Asia—so he said, and that was enough. That sort of evidence was as good as gold, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of the fountains of our own tongue, though not altogether most usual yet always conceivable and easy to be understood; rather than by usurping Latin terms, or by borrowing the words of any foreign language, lest the matters, which in some cases are mystical enough of themselves by reason of their own profoundness, might have been made more obscure to the unlearned by setting them down in terms utterly unknown to them."[298] Holland says in the preface to his translation ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos |
