"Magical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... prevented the light from shining before them, yet their way was softly illumined from beyond, as by a dim phosphorescence. They advanced, and in a moment their eyes, grown accustomed to the obscurity, came upon a scene of surprising and magical beauty. ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... short breath of praise, as if her spirit could not repose there. Rome, its hospitals, its municipal arrangements, the names of the triumvirs, the prospects of the city, the edicts, the aspects of the streets, the popularity of the Government, the number of volunteers ranked under the magical Republic—of these things Merthyr talked, at her continual instigation, till, stopping abruptly, he asked her if she wished to divert him from any painful subject. "No, no!" she cried, "it's only that I want ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to his own production. "Cato is rather a poem in dialogue than a drama; rather a succession of just sentiments in elegant language, than a representation of natural affections, or of any state probable or possible in human life. Nothing here 'excites or assuages emotion:' here is no 'magical power of raising phantastick terrour or wild anxiety.' The events are expected without solicitude, and are remembered without joy or sorrow. Of the agents we have no care; we consider not what they are doing, or what they are suffering; we wish only ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... Trailles had thoroughly bewitched me. I had given him my promise that I would introduce him the next day to our Papa Gobseck. The words 'honor,' 'virtue,' 'countess,' 'honest woman,' and 'ill-luck' were mingled in his discourse with magical potency, thanks to that golden tongue ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... scene under the increasing sunlight took on every moment more strange and magical effects. The ice-incased twigs and boughs acted as prisms, and reflected every hue of the rainbow, and as they approached the summit the feathery frost-work grew more and more exquisitely delicate and beautiful, and yet it was proving to be as evanescent as a dream, for in all ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... it is kindly; everything in it is feminine, from its name upwards. It has well been given the name of 'the fair city.' Its masses of palaces and churches stand out light and wonderful like the graceful dream of a young god; there is something magical, something strange and bewitching in the greenish-grey light and silken shimmer of the silent water of the canals, in the noiseless gliding of the gondolas, in the absence of the coarse din of a town, the coarse rattling, and crashing, and uproar. 'Venice is dead, Venice is deserted,' her citizens ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... conscience. This law is all the more worthy of remark, inasmuch as Diocletian had legislated more severely against the Manicheans in his Edict of 287: "We thus decree," he writes Julianus, "against those men, whose doctrines and whose magical arts you have made known to us: the leaders are to be burned with their books, their followers are to be put to death, or sent to the mines." In comparison with such a decree, the legislation of the Christian ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... were done at Mount Sinai. Yet was the king very angry with him and called him an ill man, who had formerly run away from his Egyptian slavery, and came now back with deceitful tricks, and wonders, and magical arts, to astonish him. And when he had said this, he commanded the priests to let him see the same wonderful sights; as knowing that the Egyptians were skillful in this kind of learning, and that he was not the only person who knew them, and pretended them ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... the simple and appropriate ceremony we call confirmation. We claim for it no magical powers. It is not a sacrament. It adds nothing to the sacrament of baptism, for that is complete in itself. There is no conferring of Grace by the pastor's hands, but simply a directing of the Church's prayers to ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... magical time for Mary, this dawn of a new life. The immensity of her happiness almost frightened her. She could hardly believe in it, or ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... lake and the icy splendours of the 'Valais depths profound.' What made the charm of the narrow prospect was, first, the sense it produced in the spectator of hanging dizzily above the lake, with infinite air below him, and, then, the magical effects of dawn and evening, when wreaths of mist would blot out the valley and the lake, and leave the eye of the watcher face to face across the fathomless abyss with the majestic mountain mass, and its attendant retinue of clouds, as ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... The signs of which the meanings are given are in the middle column; the Sumerian values are given in the column to the left, and their meanings in Assyrian in the column to the right. To many of his copies of Sumerian hymns, incantations, magical formulas, etc., Ashur-bani-pal caused interlinear translations to be added in Assyrian, and of such bilingual documents the following extract from a text relating to the Seven Evil Spirits will serve as a specimen. The 1st, 3rd, 5th, etc., lines are written in ...
— The Babylonian Story of the Deluge - as Told by Assyrian Tablets from Nineveh • E. A. Wallis Budge
... waves, as they curl and break, sparkle and flash forth light, and the track of the moving ship is marked by a lustrous line. 'In the torrid zones between the tropics,' says Humboldt, 'the ocean simultaneously develops light over a space of many thousand square miles. Here the magical effect of light is owing to the forces of organic nature. Foaming with light, the eddying waves flash in phosphorent sparks over the wide expanse of waters, where every scintillation is the vital manifestation of an invisible animal world.' Beneath the surface larger ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... those, then living might see most of those naked rocks clothed with verdure, for the progress of vegetation in such a climate, favoured by those accidental causes which seemed to prevent that particular region from ever suffering by droughts, is almost magical, and might convert a wilderness into a garden in the course of a very ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... of the Awatska by some British sailors, at once excited in their minds a thousand tender remembrances of their country. And it would, I suspect, be rather a poor criticism, and scarcely suited to grapple with the true phenomena of the case, that, wholly overlooking the magical influences of the associative faculty, would concentrate itself simply on either the-workmanship or the materials of the spoon. Nor is the Dwarfie Stone to be correctly estimated, independently of the suggestive ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... she had undertaken, she chanced to enter in his company, in order to pass the night, a dwelling, the funeral of whose dead master was being conducted with melancholy rites. Here, desiring to pry into the purposes of heaven by the help of a magical espial, she graved on wood some very dreadful spells, and caused Hadding to put them under the dead man's tongue; thus forcing him to utter, with the voice so given, a ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... so improper that I pretend not to understand. The women, with wakened, dilated faces, are listening, listening hard, their two faces beautiful in their attention, as if listening to something magical, a long way off. And the men sitting round the wall sing more plainly, coming nearer to the correct Italian. The song comes loud and vibrating and maliciously from their reedy throats, it penetrates everybody. The foreign women can understand ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... uniformity more sustained. The strong bent of his infancy was pursued through youth, matured in manhood, and maintained without decay to an advanced old age. In the biographic spell, no ingredient is more magical than predisposition. How pure, and native, and indigenous it was in the character of this writer, can only be properly appreciated by an acquaintance with the circumstances amid which he was born, and by being able to estimate how far ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... individuals, which follow one another without any exact order. There are laws concerning deposits and the finding of treasure; concerning slaves and freedmen; concerning retail trade, bequests, divorces, enchantments, poisonings, magical arts, and the like. In the twelfth book the same subjects are continued. Laws are passed concerning violations of military discipline, concerning the high office of the examiners and their burial; concerning ...
— Laws • Plato
... 39 as we learn more and more how to unvail her secrets, comprehend the mechanism of the movements of the heavenly bodies, and estimate numerically the intensity of natural forces. It is true that, properly speaking, the forces of nature can only exercise a magical power over us as long as their action is shrouded in mystery and darkness, and does not admit of being classed among the conditions with which experience has made us acquainted. The effect of such a power is, therefore, ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... in charge, with Mr. Gray as second in command. One of the engineers, acting on the captain's orders, brought a can of oil from the engine-room and threw it over the side in handfuls. The result was magical. We lowered the boat easily, placed Monsieur de Poincilit on board, because he was worse than the women, and then Courtenay, as you know, brought Isobel, the minister's wife—who refused to go without her husband—and the maid. There was room for you and another, so, ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... glassy ice takes place on every branch and twig of the leafless shrubs and trees. The layer of ice goes on increasing, sometimes, till it attains the thickness of half an inch or more. Thus, in a few hours, a magical transformation is brought about. The trees seem to be hung with glittering jewels; the larger limbs are edged with dazzling ice-ropes; the minutest twigs with threads of gleaming crystal, and all this, with the sun shooting on and through it, presents a scene of splendour ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... the darkness dropping upon them. It was only five miles to the metairie, but at the end of the second mile the sky was absolutely blank and the snow so thick that heaps of it lay on the horse's flanks and on their own laps and hands. It kept increasing at such magical rate that the roadway was obscured and twice Dr. Renaud found himself out on the rocky plateau at the left, instead of the middle path. The priest and Miss Clairville had vanished in front, but the three men could hear the sound of a horse on the slabs of ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... of Mendelssohn (whom I have already mentioned apropos of the tempo di menuetto of the eighth symphony), [Footnote: Ferdinand Hiller] to play the eighth Prelude and Fugue from the first part of "Das Wohltemperirte Clavier" (E flat minor), a piece which has always had a magical attraction for me. [Footnote: i.e. Prelude VIII., from Part I. of Bach's 48 Preludes and Fugues.] He very kindly complied, and I must confess that I have rarely been so much taken by surprise. Certainly, there was no ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... did seem no longer on live I did run both toward and forward in the castle seeking a magical salve whereby I might succor ye, whereupon I did come to a white box in the chapel wherein lay many magical tubes of diverse colors and natures whereof I did ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young
... transactions thus: "Capital punishments were inflicted on the Christians, a class of men of a new and magical superstition (superstitionis novae et maleficae)." What gives additional character to this statement is its context, for it occurs as one out of various police or sanctuary or domestic regulations, which Nero made, such as "controlling private expenses, forbidding taverns to serve meat, repressing ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... Eva de Braose—she is the only person in the wardrobe, and there is no one in the ante-chamber. And as I have heard her say more than I did just now, I don't suppose there is much harm done.—Then, secondly,—they charged my fair father with stealing— only think, stealing!—a magical gem from the royal treasury which made the wearer victorious in battle, and sending it to the Prince of Wales." [Llywelyn the Great, with whom King Henry was ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... ruder wrongs of men, to appreciate fully its proud superiority to all the accidents of changing taste and modified culture. It is only the truest art that can bear that test. The fanes of Paestum will always be more beautiful even than the magical shore on which they stand. The Parthenon, fixed like a battered coronet on the brow of the Acropolis, will always be the loveliest sight that Greece can offer to those who come sailing in from the blue Aegean. It is scarcely possible to imagine a condition of thought or ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... dupe of her own magical practices, and she was arduous in her studies of old black-letter books on the subject of spirit-raising, love potions, spells, and the rest of those meddlings with the unknown forces which have fascinated mankind for countless ages under ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... the new and startling character of their pursuer. Wild antelopes are timid things at all times, and, as may be readily imagined, the sight of a mysterious glistening object, speeding along at a fourteen or fifteen mile pace to intercept them, has a magical effect upon their astonishing powers of locomotion. They seem to fly rather than run, and to skim like swallows over the surface of the level plain rather than to touch the ground; but they were some distance from the road when they first realized my terrifying presence, and I am within fifty yards ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... came wine—bright, sparkling wine, whose magical influence gilds the dull realities of life with the soft radiance of fairy land! How the foaming champagne glittered in the silver cup, and danced joyously to the ripe, pouting lip of beauty, and the eloquent mouth of divinity! How brilliant became ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... picturesque collection. You can make in your Ward case lovely little grottoes with any bits of shells, and minerals, and rocks you may have; you can lay down, here and there, fragments of broken looking-glass for the floor of your grottoes, and the effect of them will be magical. A square of looking-glass introduced into the back side of your case ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... for what is noble and distinguished gave his poetry style; his indomitable personality gave it pride and passion; his sensibility and nervous exaltation gave it a better gift still, the gift of rendering with wonderful felicity the magical charm of nature. The forest solitude, the bubbling spring, the wild flowers, are everywhere in romance. They have a mysterious life and grace there; they are nature's own children, and utter her secret in a way which makes them something ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... what in his name, That magical word of war, we have effected; How, with his banners, and his well-paid ranks, The ne'er-yet-beaten horse of Parthia We have jaded ...
— Antony and Cleopatra • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... whose summits seemed to touch the clouds, and were covered with eternal snow. Within this wider circumference was a second formed by an impervious grove of oaks, which, though of no long standing, yet, having been produced by magical art, had appeared from the first in full maturity. Their vast trunks, which three men hand in hand could scarcely span, were marked with many a scar, and their broad branches, waving to the winds, inspired into the pious and the virtuous that religious awe, which is one of the principal lessons ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... magical influence—an influence which he was not sure he understood—that first woman, the woman of business, his partner, his co-worker, had disappeared, and there sat before him the woman he loved. He felt in his soul that if he tried to ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... them to hurry to the walls, a third to seize the gate and see that it was not opened. The confusion reached its height as the Scots poured in through the open gate. The garrison, surprised and confounded as they were at this, to them, almost magical seizure of the castle by their foes, fought bravely until the governor and many of the officers were killed. Some of the men threw down their arms, and others, taking advantage of their knowledge of the castle, made their way to the gate and escaped ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... like such a magical mirror. We can look into it and see, clearly represented there, what will happen to us in the future, not of this life indeed, but of the life to come. It leads our minds on to the marriage supper of the Lamb. And a voice ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton
... with the face of heaven, which from afar Comes down upon the waters; all its hues, From the rich sunset to the rising star, Their magical variety diffuse: And now they change; a paler shadow strews Its mantle o'er the mountains; parting day Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues With a new color as it gasps away, The last still loveliest, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... closet was stained with blood, she tried two or three times to wipe it off, but the stain would not come out; in vain did she wash it, and even rub it with soap and sand, the blood still remained, for the key was magical; when the blood was removed from one side it came ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... magical picture, then," replied her friend, "else I never can look away from it. It is strange, dear Hilda, how an innocent, delicate, white soul like yours has been able to seize the subtle mystery of this portrait; as you surely must, in order to reproduce it so perfectly. Well; ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in some inflammable mixture, and each thread, being kindled at the bottom at the same instant, the light is carried in a few seconds to every candle in the hall. This instantaneous kindling of so many thousand wicks has a magical effect. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... prostrate on the stair. I saw De Noyan leaning forward, his teeth clinched, his face death-like. From wall to wall Naladi's gaze wandered; once she looked into his eyes, then down again upon the mob of savages. Like the sharp hiss of a snake a single sentence leaped from her thin lips. The effect was magical. I scarcely realized the transformation, so rapidly was it accomplished. Confusion filled the chamber, yet out of the tumult I caught sight of Madame being driven toward the altar, her white face full of pleading, her hands, now freed, clasping her rosary. De Noyan ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... eastward of the shadowy gates to the grave of a wonderful prophetess. It was a cold, gloomy place, and the soul of the great god was pierced with a feeling of hopeless sorrow as he dismounted from Sleipner, and bending over the grave began to chant weird songs, and weave magical charms over it. When he had spoken those wonderful words which could waken the dead from their sleep, there was an awful silence for a moment, and then a faint ghost-like voice came ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... contrived to darken him a little. He was disguised in a whitish Robe, which he had put on, that he might appear to us with a nearer Resemblance to Truth: And as she has a Light whereby she manifests the Beauties of Nature to the Eyes of her Adorers, so he had provided himself with a magical Wand, that he might do something in Imitation of it, and please with Delusions. This he lifted solemnly, and muttering to himself, bid the Glories which he kept under Enchantment to appear before us. Immediately we cast our Eyes ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the enchanted garden. Those trifling and petty graces, the insignia to him of that nobler world of aspiration and idea, even now that he is aware, as I conceive, of their true littleness, bring back to him, by the power of association, all the old magical exhilaration of his dream—his dream of a better world than the real one. There, is the formula, as I apprehend, of his success—of his extraordinary hold on things so alien from himself. And I think there is more real hilarity in my brother's fetes champetres—more truth to life, and therefore ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... How absolutely magical those palaces look in the moonlight! BOB, how can you yawn ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, Jan. 2, 1892 • Various
... party hung in the balance for just so long as it takes a mug to fall to the ground, and Judith for a nightmare second felt the bitterness of having betrayed her friends to the enemy; but Jane, with a magical dexterity, caught the mug "on the fly" as Judith described it later, and for the time being ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... entrance—halls was heaped much gold and silver, and here the folk were content to stay, taking their fill of pleasure. At last the vizier had compassion upon them and called out to them: 'All these treasures and all these walls and corridors do not in truth exist at all. They are magical illusions. Push forward bravely and you ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... shore of the mysterious lake, which lay not far from the spot where Arthur had been wounded, his heart misgave him at throwing away so beautiful and magical a sword. Therefore he hid the sword in the rushes and returned to the dying King, telling him that he had done as was commanded. But Arthur did not believe him, and asked him what he had seen when Excalibur sank beneath the waves. ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... baron, touched and softened by the one magical word. "Come back! I admire your calmness—I respect your powers of endurance. Can you ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... too specialised. But let it at once be understood that the Mysticism here contemplated is neither of the popular nor of the esoteric sort. In other words, it is not loosely synonymous with the magical or supernatural; nor is it a name for peculiar forms of ecstatic experience which claim to break away from the spheres of the senses and the intellect. It will simply be taken to cover the causes and the effects involved in that wide range of intuitions ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... spectacle is not in the west alone, but the gorgeous conflagration of the palaces we build in dreams spreads all around the sky. The scene one evening in the vicinity of the sun departing in Asia to light up the morning of the everlasting to-morrow touching America with magical riches, was that of Niagara Falls ten thousand times magnified and turned to molten gold, that burned with inconceivable luster, while the south and north and east were illuminated with strange fires and soft lights, fading and merged at last in the daffodil sky. Then ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... war:—these formed a curious back-ground to the more prominent figures that occupied the present time, and Mr. Tooke worked out the minute details and touched in the evanescent traits with the pencil of a master. His conversation resembled a political camera obscura—as quaint as it was magical. To some pompous pretenders he might seem to narrate fabellas aniles (old wives' fables)—but not to those who study human nature, and wish to know the materials of which it is composed. Mr. Tooke's faculties might appear to have ripened ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... credulity and superstition have constantly and strongly competed with the art of medicine. There is no doubt, according to Pliny, that the magical art began in Persia, that it originated in medicine, and that it insinuated itself first amongst mankind under the plausible guise of promoting health.[217] In proof of the antiquity of the belief, this great ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... 'unawakened earth.' Shelley had sat at the feet of Godwin, and represented that vague metaphysical dreaming to which the Utilitarians were radically hostile. To the literary critic, Shelley's power is the more remarkable because from a flimsy philosophy he span an imaginative tissue of such magical and marvellous beauty. But Shelley dwelt in an ethereal region, where ordinary beings found breathing difficult. There facts seemed to dissolve into thin air instead of supplying a solid and substantial base. His idealism meant unreality. His 'trumpet' did not ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... His subtlety and artifices had acquired for him the reputation of a wizard. He knew, they say, what was going on at a distance as well as if he were present; and he could destroy his enemies by some magical art, while he himself was far away. In spite of the fear which he inspired, his domination would probably not have been endured by an Indian community, but for his success in war. He had made himself and his people a terror to the Cayugas and the Senecas. According to ...
— Hiawatha and the Iroquois Confederation • Horatio Hale
... was subsiding. A calm night followed. The moon rose, shedding a magical lustre upon the sea. Barthelemy stood on the deck of his ship with folded arms, gazing at ...
— The Corsair King • Mor Jokai
... the cab door for them himself, and gave them the gaze of wondering approval which he reserved for these fair daughters. To him their growth, development, and beauty seemed something magical, incomprehensible. He had left them in the lank, homely, tooth-shedding period, at the time he placed them in school, and when he returned to see them graduated, here were two blooming maidens on the very borderland of charming womanhood. The ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... yourself to imitate Hans Holbein and Titian, Albrecht Durer and Paul Veronese in a single picture. A magnificent ambition truly, but what has come of it? Your work has neither the severe charm of a dry execution nor the magical illusion of Italian chiaroscuro. Titian's rich golden coloring poured into Albrecht Dureras austere outlines has shattered them, like molten bronze bursting through the mold that is not strong enough to hold it. In other places the outlines ...
— The Unknown Masterpiece - 1845 • Honore De Balzac
... the inhabitants of the dormitory siding with Stephen, and some with Bramble, until it seemed as if the coveted blanket would have parted in twain. In the midst of the confusion a sentry at the door suddenly put his head in and shouted "Nix!" The signal had a magical effect on all but the uninitiated Stephen, who, profiting by his adversaries' surprise, made one desperate tug at his blanket, ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... beauty of Charles Kean's diction. His voice was also of a wonderful quality—soft and low, yet distinct and clear as a bell. When he played Richard II. the magical charm of this organ was alone enough to keep the house spellbound. His vivid personality made a strong impression on me. Yet others only remember that he called his wife "Delly," though she was Nelly, ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... comes to me the thought that I am looking at something immemorially old, something belonging to the unrecorded beginning of this Oriental life, perhaps to the crepuscular Kamiyo itself, to the magical Age of the Gods; a symbolism of motion whereof the meaning has been forgotten for innumerable years. Yet more and more unreal the spectacle appears, with silent smilings, with its silent bowings, as ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... poem in dialogue than a drama, rather a succession of just sentiments in elegant language than a representation of natural affections, or of any state probable or possible in human life. Nothing here "excites or assuages emotion:" here is "no magical power of raising phantastic terror or wild anxiety." The events are expected without solicitude, and are remembered without joy or sorrow. Of the agents we have no care; we consider not what they are doing, or what they are suffering; we wish only to know what they have to say. Cato is a being ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... has not wished, after reading them, to be enabled to say, "anche io son pittore?" When we are told of picture galleries with their thousand works of art, and are warmed by the descriptions, feeble though they must be, of many of them, we seem to be suddenly led by a lamp of more magical power than Aladdin's; for what was his gallery of fruit-trees bearing, precious stones, to a gallery rich in pictures, the still brighter fruits of genius, presenting endless variety, each one almost a world in itself, and all, enticing the imagination into regions unbounded, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... courage in the face of the widest scepticism is nowhere more daring than in The Golden Scarecrow." Mr. Walpole's courage, I shall always hold, is nowhere more apparent than in the choice of his birthplace. He was born in the Antipodes. Yes! In that magical, unpronounceable realm one reads about and intends to look up in the dictionary.... The precise Antipodean spot was Auckland, New Zealand, and the ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... possible humbleness, but yet with a countenance taking knowledge, that we knew that he spake it but merrily. That we were apt enough to think, there was somewhat supernatural in this island, but yet rather as angelical than magical. But to let his lordship know truly what it was that made us tender and doubtful to ask this question, it was not any such conceit, but because we remembered he had given a touch in his former speech, ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... wondrous echo of a far-off strain. The best of what is produced under these conditions is not imitation, but free production. If we decline to tolerate any borrowed forms in art, if we either set no value on antiquity at all, or attribute to it some magical and unapproachable virtue, or if we will pardon no slips in poets who were forced, for instance, to guess or to discover a multitude of syllabic quantities, then we had better let this class of literature alone. Its best works were not created in order ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... century—of Gray in the "Elegy," for instance! Grandeur, and Envy, and Honour, in that admirable poem, are not real persons to the imagination; the abstraction remains an abstraction. But in Coleridge's poem all nature is alive with the life of men. Other elements of "that synthetic and magical power to which we have exclusively appropriated the name of imagination," and which blends "the idea with the image" and "the sense of novelty and freshness with old and familiar objects" will be felt as the ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... were making Ermentrude more hike a lady. Christina was encouraged to proceed with a set of chessmen, and the shaping of their characteristic heads under her dexterous fingers was watched by Ermentrude like something magical. Indeed, the young lady entertained the belief that there was no limit to her attendant's ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a little side-twist of the head, and a lip-pinch, expressing doubt, then resumed: "So I'll give you my advice, and you can think it over. It is that you young people just keep out of each other's way, and let the thing die out. You've no idea till you try what a magical effect absence has; poetry is all gammon. Take my advice, and try it. Have some more port? No—thank me! ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... through the scintillant, magical sheen, their moccasins rhythmically crunching the snow and their breaths wreathing mysteriously from their lips in sprayed opalescence. Neither spoke, nor cared to speak, so wonderful was it all. At their feet, under the great vault of heaven, a speck in the midst of the white vastness, huddled the ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... reputation for her fogs; but little do they know how much a fog may add to natural scenery, who never witnessed its magical effects, as it has caused a beautiful landscape to coquette with the eye, in playful and capricious changes. Our opening scene is in one of these much derided fogs; though, let it always be remembered, it was a fog of June, and not of November. On a high head-land of the coast of ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... heart the only consolation you have left me. But Venetia shall still be mine; and I, I am no longer yours. Our love, our still lingering love, has vanished. You have been my enemy, now I am yours. I gaze upon your portrait for the last time; and thus I prevent the magical fascination of that face again appealing to the sympathies of my child. Thus and thus!' She seized the ancient dagger that we have mentioned as lying on the volume, and, springing on the chair, she plunged it into the canvas; then, tearing with unflinching resolution ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... in addressing juries and the court with equal effect; that knowledge of the law in its innumerable doctrines, principles, and decisions, which made the study even in Lord Coke's day the work of twenty years; the prompt application of this learning to the rapid matter in hand; the magical use of the faculties of the mind and the wondrous discipline which they must have undergone, every hour, every minute demanding a stretch of thought and an adroitness of discrimination which have justly classed the dialectics of the bar above all the dialectics of the ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... dazzling gems one after another in Timea's lap, until the sparkling heap quite covered her embroidered apron. It was like some magical gift from the ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... a glorious winter's night. Through a blue haze one saw the ground, covered with snow, shining under the magical moon. And the trees of the forest were also covered with snow; great clusters glistened in their branches. Almost as light as day. Not a bleak light, but an enchanting one, which dazzled in the cold, brisk air. Into the woods walked the Spirit of Art. As he gazed at the surrounding beauty he ...
— Futurist Stories • Margery Verner Reed
... of Lola spread through the borough, and now she can walk feared, honoured, unmolested by night or by day through the streets of horror and crime, which neither I nor any other man—no matter how courageous—dare enter at certain hours without the magical protection of ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... so strong is not so easily eradicated. But when the old miserly feeling came over him, and he began to dole out grudgingly the means with which to make his family comfortable, his wife would pleasantly say: "You are taking it out of the wrong pocket, John!"—words which seemed to have a magical effect ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... having once seen a winter inside the Arctic Circle, would ever wish to see another. In spite of the warm, gorgeous, and ever-changing play of colour hovering over the path of the unseen sun, in spite of the dazzling auroral dances and the magical transfiguration of the forests, the absence of true daylight and of all signs of warmth and life exercises at last a depressing influence on the spirits. The snow, so beautiful while the sunrise setting illumination ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... of power was increased and his time enlivened by a store of magical articulation with which he made the baby crow, or drove the large cat into a dark corner, or promised himself to frighten any incidental Christian of his own years. One week he had unfortunately seen a street mountebank, and this carried off his muscular imitativeness in sad divergence from New ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... Dee: a river which probably derived its magical character from Celtic traditions: it was long the boundary of Briton and Saxon.—These places are introduced, as being near the ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... realizing his own. Sometimes he met a surly Mexican who would not listen to him, but nearly always he won the man over in the end. He was amazed at his own resourcefulness and eloquence. It seemed as though some inhibition in him had been broken down, some magical elixir poured into his imagination. He found that he could literally take a sheep camp by storm, entering into the life of the men, telling them stories, singing them songs, passing out presents of tobacco and whisky, often delivering a wildly applauded harangue on the necessity for all Mexicans ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... and Chris' rifles sent thirty-two bullets zipping and singing in amongst the trees. Before the convicts recovered from their surprise, forty-eight more leaden messengers whined through the air above them. The effect was magical, the convicts ceased their fire, and puzzled and alarmed by the sudden leaden hail, sought shelter behind the largest ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... transitional passage of the Recapitulation (measures 231-253) illustrates Schubert's fondness for modulation just for its own sake; we care not what the objective point of the music may be—enthralled, as we are, by the magical shifts of scene. In the Second Movement, likewise, the chief beauty—especially of the second theme—consists in the lyric quality, in the color of the solo instruments, the oboe, clarinet and horn, and in the enharmonic changes, e.g., where, in measures ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... eleven good men and women with the ruddy glow of health upon their cheeks, and she would have died for any one of them any moment of her life, and finally she, bowed with age and bent with care and labor, dies, and at the moment the magical touch of death is upon her face, she looks as though she never had had a care, and her children burying her cover her face with tears. Do you tell me God can afford to damn that kind of a woman? One such act of injustice would turn Heaven itself into ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... maiden's face. His features, by a magical transition, now beamed with confidence and hope. Mary was in tears—not tears of pity for his impending death, but a gush of generous emotion that his life was spared. The savage read her heart—he knew that the white ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... party, and thin-skinned Radicals were inclined to think him somewhat cold and even condescending. Lord Grey lacked the warm heart of Fox, and his speeches, in consequence, able and philosophic though they were, were destitute of that unpremeditated and magical eloquence which led Grattan to describe Fox's oratory as 'rolling in, resistless as the waves of the Atlantic.' On one memorable occasion—the second reading of the Reform Bill in the House of Lords—Lord Grey entirely escaped from such oratorical restraints, and even the Peers were moved ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... "Return from Parnassus," of Shakspeare's date, and a few snatches, like "When I was a little boy," occur in Shakspeare himself, just as a German version of "My Minnie me slew" comes in Goethe's Faust. Indeed, the scraps of magical versified spells in Maerchen are entirely of the character of nursery rhymes, and are of dateless antiquity. The rhyme of "Dr. Faustus" may be nearly as old as the mediaeval legend dramatised by Marlowe. The Elizabethan and Jacobean ...
— The Nursery Rhyme Book • Unknown
... Queens", in which the first hag says: "I have been all day, looking after A raven feeding on a quarter, And soon as she turned her beak to the south I snatched this morsel out of her mouth." —Ben Jonson, "Masque of Queens". But more probably the meaning is that the wolf's bite gave the flesh magical efficacy. (37) Confusing Pharsalia with Philippi. (See line 684.) (38) One of the miraculous stories to be found in Pliny's "Natural History". See Lecky's "Augustus to Charlemagne", vol. i., p. 370. ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... binnacle, reader, not to let it go any further, I believe it was poor Mary's letter, with its "dear luv" and its "sweet kisses," that was at the bottom of Jack's resolve. For had she not written, as plain as quill can write, the magical sentence, "Yes, missus misses you; so do I"? It didn't matter a spoonful of tar about the "so do I," but there was the "missus misses you." Ah! it was around these simple, euphonious words that hope hung like a garland of forget-me-not. ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... life under lateen sails on seas that lie beyond the horizon line of civilization. And they had spoken of the colours of sails, of the red, the brown, the tawny orange-hued canvases, that, catching the winds under sunset skies, bring romance, like some rare fruit from hidden magical islands, upon emerald, ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... gorgeous buildings we had left, its beautiful simplicity and correct taste struck me at first with an impression of poverty and coldness. At the Church of St. John and St. Paul is the famous martyrdom, or rather assassination, of St. Peter Martyr, by Titian, one of the most magical pictures in the world. Its tragic horror is redeemed by its sublimity. Here too is a most admirable series of bas-reliefs in white marble, representing the history of our Saviour, the work of a modern sculptor. Here too the Doges are buried; ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... ridiculous little images made from Bryony roots, cut into the figure of a man, and with grains of millet inserted into the face as eyes, the same being known as pappettes or mammettes, were accredited with magical powers, and fetched high prices with simple folk. Italian ladies have been known to pay as much as thirty golden ducats for one of these artificial mandrakes. Readers of Thalaba (Southey) will remember the fine scene in which Khawla procures this plant to form ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... wisdom of the necromancers, and could have turned them into baboons, and all their diamonds into strings of onions, by a single wave of my rod!" So she locked up her books in her cupboard, declined further magical performances, and scarcely used her wand at all except as a cane ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... standing on the brink as if fascinated, the silver moon rose behind us, spread a broad road of light on the quiet sea, played round us with her cool light, shone on the opposite wall of the crater, and caressed the sulphurous cloud. It was a magical sight, the contrast of the pure moonlight and the dirty glare of the volcano; an effect indescribably grand and peculiar, a gala performance of nature, the elements of heaven and ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... for curiously enough people everywhere rose like a tide, and moved spontaneously towards these manifestations of liberty and beauty, and away from their loyalty to the God-State. A method, therefore, had to be discovered, first for obliterating what remained in the public memory of what was magical and rebellious, and then for the elimination of any possibility of original genius arising; and genius was, it was seen, first and last, the cause ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... thinking confusedly and wearily what a fool he had been. He felt he had wandered a long distance from his house, but had no distinct perception of his whereabouts. He only knew he was in some thinly peopled street, whose familiar aspect seemed lost to him in the magical disguise the superb moonlight had thrown over all. Suddenly a film seemed to drop from his eyes, as they became riveted on a lighted window, on the opposite side of the way. He started, and a secret terror crept over him, vaguely mixed ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... as to its origin and use in a babel of curious native languages. I thought I would provide a little entertainment for them, so I stepped on to the footplate and blew off the steam, at the same time sounding the whistle. The effect was simply magical. The whole crowd first threw themselves flat on the ground howling with fear, and then—with heads well down and arms well spread out—they fled wildly in all directions; nor did the stampede cease until I shut off steam and stopped the whistle. Then, their curiosity ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... an affecting incident, the language becomes more touching through the depths of her sensibility. She lends so much life to every scene, that the auditor becomes witness of the transaction. Her powers of instructing and delighting are almost magical; and her artless fascination leaves on every heart those deep traces which even time ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... soul. He made sacrifices, gave alms and instituted ceremonies in his honour. At night, the bleak walls of the castle lighted up by the glare of the torches that flared amid bumpers of rare wines and gipsy jugglers, and blushed hotly under the unceasing breath of magical bellows. The inhabitants invoked the devil, joked with death, murdered children, enjoyed frightful and atrocious pleasures; blood flowed, instruments played, everything echoed ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... my wife was gone, I dressed myself in haste, took my cimeter, and followed her so quickly, that I soon heard the sound of her feet before me, and then walked softly after her, for fear of being heard. She passed through several gates, which opened upon her pronouncing some magical words, and the last she opened was that of the garden, which she entered. I stopt at this gate, that she might not perceive me, as she passed along a parterre; then looking after her as far as the darkness ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... preparations for years," he said. "I lived in a cubbyhole in Westminster, writing and writing and writing, but when I thought of this journey to be, certain to be, the walls would dissolve, and I would walk in magical places ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... wonderful,—so magical it seemed to Waldo in the exaltation of the moment,—that he did not pause to consider how his name should be known to a chance passer-by; and when the stranger went on to give his own name, and ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller |
