"Hocus-pocus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... through, with a weel-sharpened, old, Highland, forty-second Andrew Ferrary, in single combat; whereupon, as might reasonably be expected, he would, in the twinkling of a farthing rushlight, fall down as dead as a bag of sand; yet, by their rictum-ticktum, rise-up-Jack, slight-of-hand, hocus-pocus way, would be on his legs, brushing the stour from his breeches knees, before the green curtain was half-way down. James Batter himself once told me, that, when he was a laddie, he saw one of these clanjamphrey go in behind the scenes with nankeen trowsers, a blue coat ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... Fatia Negra repeated his hocus-pocus, kneeling down beside Anicza on the steps of the altar, and raising his eyes towards the black vault of the cavern as he recited the words of a new oath, which kept all the listeners spellbound, so full it was of grisly images and hellish fancies. So deep indeed was the general attention ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... the hocus-pocus side of the case," he replied, "turns on matters Egyptian, doesn't it? Very well. Who else, that we know about, is associated, or ever has ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... a Greek asked I would fain ask too, Who knows if all the Spectacle be true, Or an illusion of the gods [the Will, To wit] some hocus-pocus ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... Then she pulled off all that was upon her of raiment and ornaments and fine linen and taking Nur al-Din in her arms strained him to her bosom. And they ceased not, she and he, from kissing and clipping and strumming to the tune of "hocus-pocus,"[FN524] saying the while, "How short are the nights of Union and the nights of Disunion how long are ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... the other no more than a raucous journalist. Brieux's elaborate proofs that two and two are four have been hailed as epoch-making; one of his worst plays, indeed, has been presented with all the solemn hocus-pocus of a religious rite. But Hauptmann remains almost unknown; even the Nobel Prize did not give him a vogue. Run the roll: Maeterlinck and his languishing supernaturalism, Tagore and his Asiatic wind music, Selma Lagerloef and her old maid's mooniness, ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... missionaries in the country, doing good work in a funny, fussy, rigorous fashion of their own. They'd raise a dickens of a hocus-pocus back in Germany if they once suspected their government of playing that game. No. But Germany intends to stand off the other powers, while Turks tackle the Armenians; and the ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy |
