"Fakir" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the snappy columns on unhappy wives, careless of the cost of his sensation in blood and tears! And now they'd write him up—Naylor would attend to that editorial himself, and do it in his most virtuous style—and brand him as a fakir, a liar, ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... most of the bazaars if you like, besides which you will find elegant accounts of the god's career on earth written by quite a number of distinguished Bengali poets of the last three centuries. But curiously enough this "god," though quite real, was not a Hindu at all; he was a Bengali Moslem, a fakir, and the Muhammadans of Bengal, among whom he is known as Satya Pir, have their own versions of his career, which seem to be much nearer the truth than those of the Hindus. In their stories he figures simply as a saint, who busied himself in performing miracles for the benefit of pious Moslems ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett
... comes—only once a year; and how soon it is over—a night and a day! If that is the whole of it, it seems not much more durable than the little toys that one buys of a fakir on the street-corner. They run for an hour, and then the spring breaks, and the legs come off, and nothing remains but a contribution to ...
— The Spirit of Christmas • Henry Van Dyke
... to the most insignificant minutiae, and reduced to questions of casuistry, was the only study. This exclusively theological and canonical culture contributed in no respect to refine the intellect. It was something analogous to the barren doctrine of the Mussulman fakir, to that empty science discussed round about the mosques, and which is a great expenditure of time and useless argumentation, by no means calculated to advance the right discipline of the mind. The theological education of the modern clergy, although very dry, gives us no idea of this, for ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... I should write anybody a letter from South Clark street, Chicago, the recipient would know I had gone wrong, and was located in the midst of a bad element, and the inference would be that I was the worst fakir, robber, hold-up man or ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... we met him now—you, who look like lunching at the Savoy or somewhere, and he like a fakir! What should you do? Fall in his arms?" Sanchia had ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... Ralph, "about reading of a Hindoo fakir in India, who claimed that he could bring to him an object ten thousand miles away, in ten minutes of time. As that was motion it must have taken considerable power ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... Mayor, sitting up in bed. 'He's a detective employed by the State Medical Society. He's been following you over five counties. He came to me yesterday and we fixed up this scheme to catch you. I guess you won't do any more doctoring around these parts, Mr. Fakir. What was it you said I had, doc?' the mayor laughs, 'compound—well, it wasn't softening of the brain, I ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... diminutive measurement, the newspaper and magazine hacks who live on abuse of everybody who has a high ideal, all joined in the whoop and chase after Douglas of the fourth district, branded him as a fakir, an idiot, a senseless dreamer, an egotist, a demagogue, a party traitor, a knocker, and every other objectionable kind of disturber of the peace, meaning by "peace," the peace of those who are let alone by reformers ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... persisted the dreary little voice, "in India once, when Father and I were going into the mountains for the summer, there was a—there was a sort of fakir at one of the railway stations doing tricks with a crippled tiger-cub—a tiger-cub with a shot-off paw. And when Father wasn't looking I got off the train and went back—and I followed that fakir two days till he just naturally had to sell me the tiger-cub; he couldn't ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... wearily, "it is too late. You might as well ask the fakir who has held his arm upright for twenty years, till it has stiffened there, to restore the dry stock by exercise. It is too late, I ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... hopeless for the most of mankind and perhaps for entire races,—anything that assumes the necessity of the extermination of instincts which were given to be regulated, —no matter by what name you call it,—no matter whether a fakir, or a monk, or a deacon believes it,—if received, ought to produce insanity in every well-regulated mind. That condition becomes a normal one, under the circumstances. I am very much ashamed of some people ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and his rigid features being apparently incapable of expressing any sentiment, either of pleasure or pain. His dress consisted of a cloth wrapped round his waist, a scarf over his shoulder, and a turban on his head—the upper part of his body and his legs being completely exposed. The man was a fakir, one of a class of religious fanatics, who, ignorant of a God of love and mercy, believe that holiness can be obtained by practising the most rigid self-denial and the infliction of every variety ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... a priori, for assigning to the domain of legerdemain the astonishing facts that are told us by a large number of witnesses, worthy of credence, regarding a young fakir who, forty years ago, was accustomed to allow himself to be buried, and resuscitated several ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... Seven or eight years ago some street fakir got hold of a showy two-blade penknife at about $2 a dozen. He took his stand on the street and they went off readily at 25 cents. The business seemed to spread all over the country like wild-fire, and especially ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... nearly fried to death by the gas and bad air. They laughed at us and our exertions, all in the way of good humour, but it was not wholesome from parents. Mary tried to make me confess that we were coming home in a self- complacent fakir state of triumph in our headaches, much inferior to her humble revelling in cool sea, sky, and moonlight. It was like the difference between the BENEDICITE and the TE DEUM, I could not help thinking; while Emily said a few words to Martyn as to how ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... least 'twould say, "All are not gone; There lingers Life, though but in one"—[dh] For many a gilded chamber's there, Which Solitude might well forbear;[75] Within that dome as yet Decay Hath slowly worked her cankering way— But gloom is gathered o'er the gate, Nor there the Fakir's self will wait; Nor there will wandering Dervise stay, 340 For Bounty cheers not his delay; Nor there will weary stranger halt To bless the sacred "bread and salt."[di][76] Alike must Wealth and Poverty Pass ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... country will supply stories of a similar kind. Finally, we have the amusing story of the manner in which Sir Richard Burton narrowly escaped deification. Exploring in Afghanistan in the disguise of a Mohammedan fakir, he received a friendly hint that he would do well to get off without delay. He expressed surprise, as the people seemed very fond of him. That, it was explained, was the cause of the trouble. They thought so much of him they intended to kill him, and thus ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... ceases, to be replaced by an all-pervading calm, beautiful, if you like, but lifeless. There is this deadness about any conception of perfection that will always make it an unattainable ideal in life. Those who, like the Indian fakir or the hermits of the Middle Ages, have staked their all on this ideal of perfection, have found it necessary to suppress life in every way possible, the fakirs often remaining motionless for long periods at a time, and one of the mediaeval ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... sitting in the swing be running; and still another is accompanying their motion, clinging to the trapeze. Hayes, meanwhile, is spinning on the horizontal bar, now backward, now forward, twenty times without stopping, pinioned through his bent arms, like a Fakir on his iron. See how many different ways of ascending a vertical pole these boys are devising!—one climbs with hands and legs, another with hands only, another is crawling up on all-fours in Feegee fashion, while another is pegging his way up by inserting pegs in holes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... talking, gay. He heard music. The main street was a moving throng. On a corner the Salvation Army, a young woman, a young man, a crippled boy, two young girls, and an old man, were singing "Nearer, My God, to Thee." Opposite the Board of Trade building on the edge of the river a street medicine-fakir had drawn a crowd to his wagon. To the beat of the Salvation Army's tambourine rose the thrum ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... unknown nervous sources of energy through what we see, hear, read, learn. You make your judgment the sole guide of your actions, but your judgment itself is the result of forces and influences unsuspected by yourself and depending on them. Well! you want to lead the life of a fakir, to unloose the ties binding you to other men, that is one of several ways to secure peace and happiness, which to me also is an object in life. The principal thing is not to be superficial, but to consider both what one requires and what one gives up before turning ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... for him to accomplish this now was obviously through finding his uncle, the Sheikh Burrachee, and to do this he must follow the course he had pointed out: find a dervish or fakir, and show the ring and parchment. Of course the efficacy of these might all be the delusion of a crazy brain, but he must take his chance of that. It was certain, however, that he would never get the chance of a hearing in his present costume. The helmet, the uniform kharkee jacket, would insure ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... out with considerable misgivings, for we had not forgotten the plot of the Hindu fakir. We could see very little of its interior, which was only partly lighted by the torch which the Tamil still carried affixed to his spear. He left us there for a few minutes, during which we rested on the limestone floor, and, being unable to distinguish any part of the cavern ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... have worn out his life in passive martyrdom, sitting patient in his grim coal-mine, looking at the "three ells" of Heaven high overhead there. In sorrow he would not dwell; all sorrow he swiftly subdued, and shook away from him. How could you have made an Indian Fakir of the Greek Apollo, "whose bright eye lends brightness, and never yet saw a shadow"?—I should say, not religious reverence, rather artistic admiration was the essential character of him: a fact connected with all other facts in the physiognomy of his life and ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... science has vouched for the fact, that there have been toads shut up in rocks for thousands of years, shut in one so small hole that only hold him since the youth of the world. Can you tell me how the Indian fakir can make himself to die and have been buried, and his grave sealed and corn sowed on it, and the corn reaped and be cut and sown and reaped and cut again, and then men come and take away the unbroken seal and that there ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... affectionately. 'What ever put such nonsense in your head? you are so comfortable here with us, and you have your own way, and I never tease you now about going to balls. It is so silly of you trying to make yourself miserable, and living in poky lodgings. You might as well be a fakir, or a dervish, or a Protestant nun, or anything else ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... his suckerdom, Charley imagined the fakir who had done him had preserved as keen a recollection of the transaction as himself. He learned afterwards that there is a sucker born every minute and the crop of fakirs is nearly ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... salvation is sought indirectly through works, though not particularly good works. The savage makes an offering, mutters a prayer, or fiercely wounds his body, before the hideous idol of his choice. The fakir, swung upon sharp hooks, revolves slowly round a fire. The monk wears a hair shirt, and flagellates himself until blood trickles across the floor of his cell. The Portuguese sailor in a storm takes a leaden saint from his bosom and kneels ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Marius who was the firebrand and M. Gillenormand who was the bellows. Marius quivered in every limb, he did not know what would happen next, his brain was on fire. He was the priest who beholds all his sacred wafers cast to the winds, the fakir who beholds a passer-by spit upon his idol. It could not be that such things had been uttered in his presence. What was he to do? His father had just been trampled under foot and stamped upon in his presence, but by whom? By his grandfather. How ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... all the time. I made a great tear in Bonsal's record today by refusing to pay a snake charmer all he wanted and then when he protested I took one of the snakes out of his hands and swung it around my head to the delight of the people. I wanted to show him he was a fakir to want me to pay for what I would do myself. It was a large snake about four feet long. Then my horse and another horse got fighting in the principal street in the city standing up on their hind legs and boxing like men and biting and squealing. It was awful and I got ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... behind him, of course, and did not need to look back, but there was something almost comical in the way he seemed to ignore our existence and go striding along alone as if on business bent. He acted as little like a priest or a fakir or a fanatic as any man I have ever seen, and no picture-gallery curator or theater usher ever did the honors of the show with less attention ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... with sorrow, often appear cold and callous to those who seem to them to feel no interest in their afflictions. An instance of this kind I will here mention; it is one of thousands that I have met with in my Indian rambles. It was mentioned to me one day that an old 'fakir',[14] who lived in a small hut close by a little shrine on the side of the road near the town of Moradabad, had lately lost his son, poisoned by a party of 'daturias', or professional poisoners,[15] that now infest every road throughout India. I sent ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... occupation and absorbed attention, and the term is not applicable to me. I who live as vainly, as uselessly, as fruitlessly, as some fakir twirling his thumbs and staring at his beard, have little right to call anything an interruption. My existence here is as still, as stagnant, as some pool down yonder in the sedge which last week's waves left among the sand hillocks, and your visits ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... a broad shouldered Green Mountaineer. The very thought of a man paddling down the river seemed to suggest some scheme of the fakir or dodge of the showman to separate him from the coins that jingled in his pocket. The old Vermonter, turning a quid of sassafras from one corner of his mouth to the other, drawled, with all impressiveness of a judge to whom some knotty ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... Holland would account for that. A reporter from one of the less reputable dailies had asked for an interview, and had written an article which barely escaped being libelous. There were not wanting those in the profession who openly denounced him as a "fakir." ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... entertainment. A young man was told to think of himself as managing a side-show at a circus. When his mind had absorbed this idea he was ordered to open his exhibition. He at once mounted a table, and, in the voice of the traditional side-show fakir, began to dilate upon the fat woman and the snakes, upon the wild man from Borneo, upon the learned pig, and all the other accessories of side-shows. He went over the usual characteristic "patter," getting more and more in earnest, assuring his hearers that for the ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... would have told them what he thought of their silly, prattling humbug about the fatherland and about the great honor it was to return home to Marcsa looking like a monkey. If he had the doctor in his clutches now! The fakir had photographed him, not once, but a dozen times, from all sides, after each butchery, as though he had accomplished a miracle, had turned out a wonderful masterpiece. And here Julia, even Julia, his playmate, his neighbor, had not ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... too true. Eva had driven immediately to the hypnotist's, and he had been instructed about her coming. At his door she had knocked, and an old, evil-visaged man, in flowing robes which were marked in cabalistic signs, had opened the door. In true fakir fashion he salaamed almost to the floor while in flowery language ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... daily practised in China from time immemorial under the name of "gina." In India they fear and hate the very name of the spirits whom the Spiritualists venerate so deeply, yet many an ignorant fakir can perform "miracles" calculated to turn upside-down all the notions of a scientist and to be the despair of the most celebrated of European prestidigitateurs. Many members of the Society have visited India—many were born there and have themselves witnessed ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... he left his palace in disguise, and entering a boat which had been engaged for the purpose, reached Rajmahal, ninety miles distant, on the evening of the fourth day. There the rowers were obliged to halt for a rest, and taking refuge in a deserted garden, the Nawab was seen by a fakir whose ears he had caused to be cut off thirteen months before and was handed over to Mir Jafar's brother, who resided at Rajmahal. He was at once captured, sent back to Murshidabad, and handed over to Mir Jafar on July 2d. He pleaded ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... plausible excuse about the horses, and they halted for four days at a roadside dak-bungalow about a mile from where a foul-mouthed fakir sat and took tribute at a crossroads. It was a strangely chosen place ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... men—so-called saints of latter days Have been mostly pious madmen, lusting after righteous praise— Or the thralls of superstition, doubtless worthy some reward, Since they came by their condition hardly of their free accord. 'Tis but madness, sad and solemn, that these fakir-Christians feel— Saint Stylites on his column gratified a ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... observe a group of the aborigines at their devotions. Conspicuous was a not ungraceful young female, whose head, ornamented with a plume of feathers, towered above the enclosure in which she was secluded, while an aged fakir, hakem or medicine man pronounced from a loftier structure resembling a ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... his vitals and he returned to his lodging, where he passed the day in trouble and transports of grief, without finding ease or patience, till night darkened upon him, when his yearning and love-longing redoubled. Thereupon, by way of concealment, he disguised himself in the ragged garb of a Fakir,[FN42] and set out wandering at random through the glooms of night, distracted and knowing not whither he went. So he wandered on all that night and next day, till the heat of the sun waxed fierce and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... asked you?" The words burst from her. She had been pale; but suddenly the lilies of her face were turned to roses, as one flower may seem to be transformed into another, by the trick of an Indian fakir. ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... one day that a poor old fakir came to the King and said, "Your prayers are heard, your desire shall be accomplished, and one of your seven Queens ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... his own existence with interest, and was so taken up on all sides that he only just had time to realize the disappointment in passing. His world was supersensual like that of the fakir; in the course of a few minutes a little seed could shoot up and grow into a huge tree that overshadowed everything else. Cause never answered to effect in it, and it was governed by another law of gravitation: events ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Wisdom were made known unto him in his immortal state, before he had taken into his body those things that made of it a thing of earth. He was warned against that very practise. He was not told to treat his body as something to be tortured. He was not told to look upon it as the fakir of India has come to look upon his body, or professes to look upon it, as a thing to be utterly contemned; but he was told that he must not take into that body certain things which were there at hand. He was warned that, ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... Highness did not mention to me this afternoon that he was dining with Mr. Edestone tonight," he drew himself up stiffly. And it was in his mind that, on the contrary, His Royal Highness had inveighed against the American inventor as a fraud and a fakir, and had loudly urged that no attention be paid to him ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... effected, and in July he returned to Lahore, and made his submission. His efforts were, however, now secretly bent to the organization of a conspiracy against the life of the Maharajah, in which the Fakir Azeer-ed-deen, a personage who had enjoyed great influence under Runjeet, and many of the principal sirdars, were implicated; and on Sept. 15th Shere Singh was shot dead on the parade-ground by Ajeet Singh, a young ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... the words with a sort of triumph. Like the fakir, he possessed the art of spiritual detachment, which is an attribute of genius. From an intellectual eminence he was surveying his own peril. Colin Camber in the flesh had ceased to exist; he was merely a ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... of the modern fakir plying his trade and the huge black steadily and systematically beckoning toward a stairway partially concealed beyond the curtain, and looking like some giant eunuch of ancient romance, there seemed something which caught and held the public eye and the public ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... mind misinterprets the thing seen, sometimes innocently, and again wantonly. The nature fakir is always on the alert to see wonderful phenomena in wild life, about which to write; and by preference he places the most strained and marvellous interpretation upon the animal act. Beware of ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... to his reverence. He would be equally indignant if any one should presumptuously dispute the divinity of this reptile, which he would have learned to venerate from the moment he quitted the womb of his mother, as the most zealous, enthusiastic fakir, when the marvellous wonders of his prophet should be brought into question; or as the most subtile theologian when the inquiry turned upon the incongruous qualities with which he has decorated his ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... break the news to Helen Dunbar? Where would he find the courage to tell the unfriendly stockholders the exact truth? It was a foregone conclusion that they would consider him a fakir and a crook. ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... help me. My little girl is in terrible trouble and there is not anyone to 'elp 'er but me. She is a good girl—you know all things, you know she is a good girl. Show me the way. I 'ave been a fakir all my life. I 'ave tricked them and fooled them, but I 'ave never meant to 'arm a soul, I 'ave never done 'arm to any person. And there is a power. It 'as come to me before, a power that I could not understand. I felt it, and I showed it. Oh God, give it to me again. ...
— The Thirteenth Chair • Bayard Veiller
... time one of the men had fetched some strips of cotton, and another brought fresh water, a portion of which the fakir drank heartily, but resented the attendant's action, as he sought to bathe his face, but submitted willingly to having his arm washed and the ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... News-Record staff was that their journal was too "respectable," too intelligent, to be widely read; that the "yellow journals" grovelled, "appealed to the mob," drew their vast crowds by the methods of the fakir and the freak. They professed pride in the News-Record's smaller circulation as proof of its freedom from vulgarity and debasement. They looked down upon the journalists of the popular newspapers and posed as the ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... in Chinatown and among them are numerous fortune-tellers. This kind of pastime is as old as the human race, and you find the man who undertakes to reveal to you the secrets of the future among all peoples. The Orientals are always ready to listen to the "neby" or the necromancer or the fakir or the wandering minstrel, who improvises for you and sings for you the good things which are in store for you. We see this tendency among our own people who would have their destiny pointed out by means of a pack ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... well shapen. A low grey cap of coarse woollen completed the costume of this singular visitor. There was, at times, in the expression of his eye, an indescribable mixture of imbecility and enthusiasm, as though the spirit of some Eastern fakir had reanimated a living body. A gleam of almost supernatural intelligence was mingled with an expression of fatuity, that in less enlightened ages would have invested him with the dangerous reputation of priest or prophet in ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... fakir begging; then ACHMET gave him five paras, although his charity was unseen; neither did he want it to be seen, for he said ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... purpose; it not only is a sure badge of chastity, but its weight and size is very often increased so as to render it an instrument of penitence, and considerable rivalry exists at times in this regard. Virey notices that the Hindoo bonze, or fakir, at times submits to infibulation at the same time that he takes his vows of eternal chastity. This ring is at times enormous, being sometimes six inches in diameter; so that it is a burden. These saints are held in great esteem ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... him started, offered to walk a piece with him. Our comrade staid out so long, that at last I went down the road in search of him, and found the pair sitting on a moonlit bank, as cozily as if they had been always friends. The stranger had revealed to the Doctor that he was a street fakir, "by perfesh," and had "struck it rich" in Chicago during the World's Fair, but somehow had lost the greater part of his gains, and was now associated with his brother, who had a junk-boat; the brother was "well heeled," and staid and kept store at the boat, while the fakir, as the ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... without any kids. And the doctor—it was always hard fur me to get to calling him anything but Doctor Kirby—how he had happened to start out with a good chancet in life and turn into jest a travelling fakir. ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... belongs the credit of domesticating the formerly ferocious Belgian hare, and the East Indian fakir makes a friend and companion of the king cobra; but it remained for those ingenious people, the Parisians, to tame the mole, which other races have always regarded as unbeautiful and unornamental, and make a cunning little companion of it and spend hours stroking its fleece. This ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... fakir soon afterward though by accident rather than design. This specimen was a genius inspired by the belief that cooking is the source of all the ills that flesh is heir to. He lectured us on the folly of eating boiled and roasted and toasted food, declaring ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... "the real yogin are no doubt sincere; but a real yogi wouldn't waste his time on a soft-brained old man, and fire sky-rockets off at midnight to impress him. My own opinion is that this fellow is a fakir—a juggler, a sleight-of-hand ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... But I can't do any of these things any more. I can no longer play the man in the hair shirt, let alone the dervish or the fakir, who dances himself to death in the midst of his self-accusations. And inasmuch as all such things are impossible I have puzzled out, as the best thing for me, to go away from here and off to the coal black fellows who know nothing of culture and honor. Those fortunate ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... a chuckle. "Indeed? Well, let me tell you, my boy, no one else does either. The rope is made to go up in the air, so stiffly that the fakir—that is, the Eastern magician—can climb it. Some claim to have seen the fakirs climb up it and vanish from sight, and the rope disappear ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... lest an I gain say him I should repent for ever and ever having let so great a treasure slip out of hand. Accordingly, giving full consent to all be said, I got together every one of my beasts and set me a-wayfaring along with the Fakir.[FN253] After travelling over some short distance we came upon a gorge between two craggy mountain-walls towering high in crescent form and the pass was exceeding narrow so that the animals were forced to pace in single file, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... to meet a friend, an Austrian, who was shortly leaving India in the Messagerie Maritimes steamer Dupleix after agreeable wanderings disguised as a fakir in Tibet; and to this friend was attached, in what capacity I never thought well to inquire, a lady who was a Pole, and played and sang as well as Strobo fiddled. I believe they dined together every night, this precious quartet, and exchanged ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... up with the kindling eye of hope, and prophetic bodings of a noble better time. Too long hast thou sat there, on crossed legs, wearing thy ankle-joints to horn; like some sacred Anchorite, or Catholic Fakir, doing penance, drawing down Heaven's richest blessings, for a world that scoffed at thee. Be of hope! Already streaks of blue peer through our clouds; the thick gloom of Ignorance is rolling asunder, and it will be Day. Mankind will ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... common sense. One excess induces another, and a finer one. This acceptance of the ridiculous is good for you. It is particularly good for an Anglo-Saxon, who is so self-contained and self-controlled that his soul might stiffen as the unused limb of an Indian fakir stiffens, were it not for periodical excitements like that of the Christmas feast. Everybody has experienced the self-conscious reluctance which precedes the putting on of the cap, and the relief, followed by ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... A fakir in his Highness's train had stolen these treasures, and carried them to the Princess. "Take the greatest care of these two things," said he; "your fate depends upon them." Then he went away, and was seen ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... a fakir. He thought he could carry off the honours from the regular force, and when he found he couldn't he quietly disappeared. We shall hear of him again in ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... and semicolons for the most part, rarely rising to the definite degree of a full point and never approaching the dramatic significance of an exclamation mark. Already he floated above the common world, looking down upon its tortured contours and half-defaced frontiers—for the true poet is a fakir who quits his physical body at the beck of inspiration, to return ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... never my desire to condemn a class even though a majority of that class may be worthy of reproach. Therefore, instead of inveighing against the "song-poem" fakir with sounding periods of denunciation, permit me to state the facts in ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... in the wind, the bronzed naked figure, like some weird old Indian fakir, still climbed on steadfastly up the mizzen-chains of the Spaniard, hatchet ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... rascaldom, usually swarmed, looking out for stray overcoats and the lids of luncheon dishes left unprotected on carriages. Yes, the pickpocket, the card-sharper, the "lumberer," the confidence man, the blarneying beggar, and the fakir of every description laid his snares on this holy spot. In fact, this is his Sanctuary and he peddles under the eye of the police. "Holy Land?" Ha, ha! "All the patriarchs out of the Bible here?" Oh, the vociferous gentlemen with patriarchal names in velveteen ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... new, not alone in the vegetable world and in the lower forms of animal life, but in the highly evolved, complex organism of man himself. A cataleptic trance is a cataleptic trance, no matter how induced. From time immemorial the fakir of India has been able voluntarily to induce such states in himself. It is an old trick of the fakirs to have themselves buried alive. Other men, in similar trances, have misled the physicians, who pronounced them ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... hypnotic fakir tricks upon me, Baroudi," she added, pushing up the cushions against the rock behind her. "I know quantities of hysterical European women make fools of themselves out here, but I am not hysterical, I ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... said the General sharply, "and don't move. Pass it down." And by way of example he sat heavily on my periscope and stayed gazing at the ground like a fakir lost ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... corrupt as those of America? Are they not? As a matter of fact, the corruption is tenfold greater. The difference is that here it is legalised and respectable. In America the corruption takes the form of a wad of dollar notes pushed into the fakir's hands in a dark corner. In this country our trade union leaders are openly corrupted in the face of day by positions on conciliation boards, Justiceships of the Peace, Cabinet positions" [this is a hit at Mr. John Burns], "and well-paid jobs ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... claws, stopping his ears to the trumpet-call of action, and always tempted to leave vengeance to Him who has promised to repay. If reason alone were his guide, undisturbed by rage he would enjoy such pleasure as he could clutch, or sit like a Fakir in blissful isolation, contemplating the aspect of eternity under which the difference between a mouse and a man becomes imperceptible. But the age has grown a skin too sensitive for such happiness. "For myself," said Goethe, in a passage I quote again later in this ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... innate in every intelligent man, woman, and child that has ever lived, though it is always showing itself in different forms; whether the individual be a Sphinx of Egypt, a Samson of Hebrew lore, an Indian fakir, a Chinese philosopher, a mahatma of Tibet, or a European ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... poetry. "Yo honk!" cries the wild goose, as it crosses the midnight sky. Others may miss that mad-tossed shadow, that heartbreaking defiance—but from amid the drift of leaves by the roadside, this bearded Fakir of Outcasts has caught its meaning; has heard, and ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... call snow-blindness. I'll bet you never heard of it. Yo're only a woman-conning dope-shooter! Else you'd have known that niphablepsia ain't permanent! I've bin' gettin' my sight back ever sence I left Seattle. An' now, damn you for a moldy hearted, slimy souled fakir, stand up an' say ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... on reaching camp by the appearance of a fakir seated under a tree close to where our tents were pitched. The man was evidently under a vow of silence, which Hindu devotees often make as a penance for sin, or to earn a title to more than a fair share of happiness ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... fleet is fitting out under Count Lally, at Brest; 'tis supposed war will break out again and the fleet is intended to attack us here. So that we may have the Subah making common cause with the French to crush us. He'll turn against the French then, but that won't save us. On top of that comes a fakir from Murshidabad demanding in the Subah's name that we should stop work on our fortifications; the insolence of the wretch passes all bounds. Mr. Drake properly refused the demand; he said we were repairing ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... no crown," is the law of life which Suso accepts in all the severity of its literal meaning. The story of the terrible penances which he inflicted on himself for part of his life is painful and almost repulsive to read; but they have nothing in common with the ostentatious self-torture of the fakir. Suso's deeply affectionate and poetical temperament, with its strong human loves and sympathies, made the life of the cloister very difficult for him. He accepted it as the highest life, and strove to conform himself to its ideals; and when, after sixteen years of cruel austerities, ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... all with one monstrous yarn. He maintained that in a Hindu family of his acquaintance there had been transmitted the secret of a drug, capable of altering a man's whole temperament until the antidote was administered. It would turn a coward into a bravo, a miser into a spendthrift, a rake into a fakir. Then, having delivered his manifesto he got up abruptly and went ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... of the Four, but no fiend appeared. The operation was repeated ineffectually a second time, and John Campbell determined upon the Grand Rite, which began by each person spinning on his own axis, and in this manner circumambulating the temple in procession. Whenever they passed an embedded fakir, they obtained an incantation from his lips, but still Baal-Zeboub failed. Thereupon the native Grand Master suggested that the evocation should be performed by the holiest of all the fakirs, who was produced from a cupboard more ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... immediately attended, and exerted his utmost skill, but in vain. In the usual time, the woman appeared to be lifeless, and he therefore left her, acknowledging that he could not be of any further service. On his reaching my bungalow, some of my servants stated, that in the neighbourhood a fakir, or wandering mendicant, resided, who could charm away the bites of snakes; and begged, if the doctor had no objection, that they might be permitted to send for him. He answered: 'Yes, of course: if the poor people would feel ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various
... himself down at his feet, and embracing his knees. The missionary could not tell who this man was, for a dark blanket covered the man's head and face. But soon the covering was lifted up, and a swarthy and withered countenance was shown; the missionary knew it to be that of an old Fakir he once had known, as the chief priest of a gang of robbers, but now the Mahomedan was become a Christian; and he had travelled six hundred miles, hoping to see once more the face of his teacher; and lo! he had seen it ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... keenly. Even the cab-horses, on whom he used to look with disdain, eyed him scornfully. Skipper stood it as long as possible and then one day, while the apple fakir was standing on the back step of the cart shouting things at a woman who was leaning half way out of a fourth-story window, he bolted. He distributed that load of apples over four blocks, much to the profit of the street children, and he wrecked the wagon on a hydrant. For this the fakir beat ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... and the heavenly source of our faith. But, as he read, he was so impressed with the wonderful narrative and the unique beauty of the character of our Lord, that he surrendered himself to him as his Saviour and found in him peace and rest. Sometime later he met a Hindu fakir, named Chet Ram, who was earnestly in search of the truth. The Mohammedan convert joyfully told him of his newly found Saviour and gave him his copy of the New Testament that he might find for himself the same blessing. The Holy Spirit carried the Gospel message of ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... sunset, had been near the place where Mark was resting at the time he thought he saw the porcupine, a Fakir might have been seen sitting on the identical spot. He appeared to be in deep meditation, but, as soon as it was dark, he crept cautiously to the entrance of the cave into which Mark thought ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... supplementary exhibition of "Old Buda" stands a reproduction of an Old Buda mosque, built of stone, majolica and wood, in a mixture of Turkish and European architecture, with minaret and cupolas, and a small kiosk in the Indian style for a sleeping fakir. Here Moslems and Dervishes assemble to say or dance their prayers; and for a florin you may ascend the gallery and watch them below. The mosque opened on the holy night of Bairam, the most solemn feast of the Mohammedan year, and quite a crowd ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... thinking of the newspaper descriptions of Lawton, which the fakir had undoubtedly read, but Kennedy was leaning forward over the crystal-gazer, not watching the crystal at all, nor with his eyes on ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... of April a fine was levied upon the caravan by the Mek of Damer, which lies a little south of the tributary Mogren (called Mareb by Bruce). This is a well-kept and cleanly Fakir village, which contrasts agreeably with the ruins and filth of Berber. The Fakirs give themselves up to the practices of sorcery, magic, and charlatanism. One of them, it is said, could even make a ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... Baradatus encased himself in leather so that only his nose and mouth were visible. Nowhere was the imitation carried to such wild extravagance as in Ireland. S. Findchua is described as living like an Indian fakir. In his cell he suspended himself for seven years on iron sickles under his arm-pits, and only descended from them to go forth and howl curses on the enemies of the King ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... about the old story of 'Jack and the Bean Stalk'; I have seen an old fakir take a bamboo stick, no thicker than his finger, and thrust it down in the ground and start and climb up it, as if it were a tree, and keep on climbing till he was out of sight; and then there would come falling down ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... that curse is as much of a philanthropist as George W. Childs or Andrew Carnegie. I want you to go away and talk about me. It don't matter what you say, just so you say something. You can call me quack, you may call me fakir, you may call me charlatan—but be sure to call me SOMETHING! Then slowly the news will spread abroad that Pain is banished, and I can smile in peace, knowing that my vast expenditures of time and money have not been in vain, and that I have been a benefit ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... daggers, nails, and similar things. Through this hoop he squeezes his body with absolute impunity. The physicians do not agree as to his immunity, and some of them think that Rhannin, which is his name, is a fakir who has by long practice succeeded in hardening himself against the impressions of metal upon his skin. The professors of the Berlin clinic, however, considered it worth while to lecture about ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... said after a while, and the risaldar drove to the right, toward where a Hindu temple cast deep shadows, and a row of trees stood sentry in spasmodic moonlight. In front of the temple, seated on a mat, was a wandering fakir of the none-too-holy type. By his side was a ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... skulls, the ugliness of which had shocked us when here formerly, and were not sorry to find that that hideous monument of bad taste is falling fast to ruin. I cannot imagine how such fantastic horrors can ever have been sanctified, but so it is; and the Indian fakir who fastens a real skull round his neck, the Roman pilgrim who hangs a model of one to his rosary, and the friar who decks his oratory with a thousand of them, are one and all acted upon either by the same real superstition, or spiritual ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... walked on till they came under the pavilion, when the Caliph said, "O Ja'afar, I wish to look in upon them unawares before I show myself, that I may see what they are about and get sight of the elders; for hitherto I have heard no sound from them, nor even a Fakir calling upon the name of Allah.[FN52]" Then he looked about and, seeing a tall walnut-tree, said to Ja'afar, "I will climb this tree, for its branches are near the lattices and so look in upon them." Thereupon he mounted the tree and ceased not climbing ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... more than usual activity on the part of the hurrying crowds, and for the unmistakable holiday air which Bleecker Street displayed. As far as we could see, lined up on both sides of the curb were the pushcart peddlers, and at every step a sidewalk fakir, all ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... oxen with gorgeous trappings, tiny chariots richly gilded and carved and painted, tiny occupants richly dressed and jewelled. Troupes of Nautchnees add their picturesque appearance to the brilliant throngs, and here and there is encountered a holy fakir, unkempt and unwashed, having, perchance, registered a vow years ago never more to apply water to his skin, his only clothing a dirty waist-cloth and the yellow clay plastered on his body. Long strings of less pretentious ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... that I saw my first fakir, and in Harrison Road, Calcutta, my last. There had been so long a series in between that I was able to confirm my first impression. I can now, therefore, generalise safely when saying that all these strange creatures resemble a blend of Tolstoi ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... with slitted eyes and bristling mustache—business of silent sleuth on the trail of the furniture-fakir! He'd pause at each door and with an eagle glance take a comprehensive survey; then, defensively, offensively, he examined things in detail. From our rambling attics to our vast and cavernous cellars did he go; and not a word crossed his lips until he had ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... miles below Rajmahal, we passed three rather steep rocks rising out of the Ganges. The largest is about sixty feet high; the next in size, which is overgrown with bushes, is the residence of a Fakir, whom the true believers supply with provisions. We could not see the holy man, as it was beginning to grow dark as we passed. This, however, did not cause us so much regret, as that we were unable to visit the Botanical Garden at Bogulpore, which is said to be the finest in all ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... footnotes and explanations that made things plainer than a week of rhetoric. He danced around, and punched us in the back, and tried to climb John Tom's leg. 'This is John Tom, mamma,' says he. 'He's a Indian. He sells medicine in a red wagon. I shot him, but he wasn't wild. The other one's Jeff. He's a fakir, too. Come on and see the camp where we live, won't ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... about Eastern affairs than any living man. Yes, I mean it. He knows any amount of Eastern dialects; speaks Arabic and Turkish like a native, and has a regular passion for mixing himself up in Eastern matters. He can pass himself off as a Fakir, a Dervish—anything you like. He knows the byways of Eastern cities and Eastern life better than any man I know of, and obtained a great reputation in certain official quarters for discovering plots inimical to British interests. That's ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... that were attached to the post, but these honours were not to be of any long duration, for Ibn Batuta being implicated in a pretended conspiracy, thought it best to give up his place, and make himself a fakir to escape the Emperor's displeasure. Mohammed, however, pardoned him, and made him ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... evening he was hastily summoned by a message from the Secretary of the Government, to attend a patient of consequence. "Yet he is, after all, only a Fakir," said the message. "You will find him at the tomb of Cara Razi, the Mahomedan saint and doctor, about one coss from the fort. Enquire for him by the name of Barak el Hadgi. Such a patient promises no fees; but we know ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... ribbon and take your turn at the most unique shooting match ever seen in this county,—one at a time,—and whoever points the arrow at anything but the balloons is ruled out," rattled Mr. Vanderveer, after the manner of a fakir at a country fair, and beaming with pleasure. For Evan says that outside of business dealings he has the reputation of being the most good-natured and generous of men, and that to invent ways to lavish money upon his son and his friends ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... women, though I loathe the sexual side of them, and when I love, though passion is certainly inextricably mixed, the prevailing sentiment is spiritual. I shall probably end by being a Carthusian or a fakir." ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the first place, it is an untenable idea that religiosity or devoutness of spirit is valuable in itself, without reference to the goodness or badness of the dogmatic forms and the practices in which it clothes itself. A fakir would hardly be an estimable figure in our society, merely because his way of living happens to be a manifestation of the religious spirit. If the religious spirit leads to a worthy and beautiful life, if ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... "It's a pack of lies!" he shouted, advancing toward Kennedy, "a pack of lies! You are a fakir and a blackmailer. I'll have you in jail for this, by God—and ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... the reputation of the hotel—a first-class establishment—several similar cases occurred elsewhere, both in Rangoon, in Prome and in Moulmein. A story got about the native quarter, and was fostered by some mad fakir, that the god Siva was reborn and that the cry was his call for victims; a ghastly story, which led to an outbreak of dacoity and gave the District Superintendent no ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... about him, and he's a regular fakir," said Roger. "He isn't a doctor at all, although he calls himself one. He puts up a number of medicines and calls them 'Montgomery's Wonderful Cures.' I was told that he used to do quite a business among the ignorant country folks, but ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... of white or red cloth is spread over the grave, green being usually reserved for Fakirs or saints. On the evening of the ninth day another feast is given, to which friends and neighbours, and religious and ordinary beggars are invited, and a portion is sent to the Fakir or mendicant in charge of the burying-ground. Some people will not eat any food from this feast in their houses but take it outside. [316] On the morning of the tenth day they go again to the grave and repeat the offering of flowers and scented oil as before. Other feasts are given ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... As long as he remained alive his friends would never question his calculations, and the fiasco which was possible under any circumstances would then be assured. I had with me an Eastern drug, which I had bought from an Indian fakir once in Murzapoor. The man was an impostor, whose tricks did not impose on me. But the drug, however he came by it, was reliable. It was a poison which produced a mild form of cerebritis that dulled but did not deaden the mental powers. It ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... from the English Government, and reigned there very quietly for some months, until, to appease the jealousy of the Turks, Lord Elgin despatched a frigate to dethrone the new sovereign. Afterwards he traversed India in the dress of a fakir. He is now eighty ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... kai) of Ta-li (Yun-Nan), Mr. E. C. Baber (Travels, 158-159) says: "A Fakir with a praying machine, which he twirled for the salvation of the pious at the price of a few cash, was at once recognised by us; he was our old acquaintance, the Bakhsi, whose portrait is given in Colonel Yule's ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... ever ruled a province in India, where religious ferment was rife, who would not have felt tempted to act as Pilate acted—nay, would not have acted as he acted without even the hesitation he showed, if the life of some poor devil of a wandering fakir stood between him and the peace of the empire? Would to God that British magistrates, even at home in our own land, would give the despised and unpopular poor man the same number of chances Pilate gave to Jesus. With Downing ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead
... that we heard could not be explained on these grounds, and the fakir and his doings were often talked over at mess, some of the officers scoffing at the whole business, others maintaining that some of these fakirs had, in some way or another, the power of foretelling ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... obtain photographs of these feats of the Hindu magicians, but their plates and films invariably show nothing whatever except the old fakir sitting quietly in the centre, with a peculiar expression in his eyes. This is as might be expected, for the picture exists only in the astral, and is perceived only by the awakened astral senses of those present, which ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi |
