"Mystic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... piglet and pushed it into the first, where it disappeared. And so, one by one, the nine tiny piglets were pushed together until but a single one of the creatures remained. This the Wizard placed underneath his hat and made a mystic sign above it. When he removed his hat the last ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... I have no riches to bequeath to you; my only wealth was those secrets of magic which you know. Some stones you already have, engraved with mystic signs, and long ago I taught you how to make others. But you still lack the most precious of all talismans—the three rings belonging to the daughters of Siroco. Try to get possession of them, but take heed on beholding these young girls that you ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... saint's day, had come out to indulge in swinging, but who had forgotten to supply themselves with a swinging-rope. Bappa agreed to get them one if they would play his game first. This the young ladies readily agreed to do; whereupon, all joining hands, he danced with them a certain mystic number of times round ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... A silence from the moon's deepest valley. Fire rays fall athwart the robes Of hooded men, squat and dumb. Before them, a woman Moves to the blowing of shrill whistles And distant thunder of drums, While mystic things, sinuous, dull with terrible color, Sleepily fondle her body Or move at her will, swishing stealthily over the sand. The snakes whisper softly; The whispering, whispering snakes, Dreaming and swaying and ...
— War is Kind • Stephen Crane
... the old desk. It coiled and hesitated, and then began to swim a languorous way down the mahogany slant. At the angle it waved its sizzling molten head to and fro over the closed eyes of the man beneath it. Then, in a moment, with a mystic impulse, it moved again, and the red snake flowed directly down ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... by year the Viking's raven Made that mystic spot his rest; Year by year within the eyot Brooded he as on a nest; And no man would ever venture To invade the lone domain Where in solitary scheming The grim ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... produced many singular, mysterious beings," said Monsieur Bernard. "To-day, for instance, besides this extraordinary doctor, we have Hoene Wronski, the enlightened mathematician, the poet Mickievicz, Towianksi the mystic, and Chopin, whose talent is supernatural. Great national convulsions always produce ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... did he mean? He told her to read philosophy. He said she had the eyes of a mystic. She had spent several minutes looking in the mirror trying to see the strange mysticism he saw in her eyes, and remembering ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... river, Josey lay broad awake, resignedly conscious of his extreme age, and thinking soberly of the beginning and end of life,—the dawn and fruition of love,—the wonderful, beautiful, complex labyrinth of experience through which every human soul is guided from one mystic turn to another of mingled joy and sorrow by that supreme Wisdom, Whom, though we cannot see, we trust,—and feeling the near close of his own long life-journey, he folded his withered hands and ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... of the girls a man has loved, whom she has never seen, than of any number of attractive rivals. In the blind adoration which he yields her, she takes no thought of immediate defection, for her smile always makes him happy—her voice never loses its mystic ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... way, that way, forward, back, Swings the pendulum to and fro, Always regular, always slow. Grave and solemn on the wall,— Hear it whisper! hear it call! Little Ginx knows naught of Time, But has heard the mystic rhyme,— "Hickory, dickory, dock! The mouse ran up ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... wroth, muttered anathemas against my faithless friend, rang for the waiter, and—having ascertained the fact that a Masonic Lodge was that evening engaged in celebrating the festival of its peculiar patron—I set out for the purpose of assisting in the pious and mystic labours of the Brethren of the Jedburgh St Jeremy. At twelve, when I returned to my quarters, escorted by the junior deacon, I was informed that Strachan had not made his appearance, and accordingly I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... Ciano, an eccentric man, but respected after his kind, a sign for his shop, containing a gipsy woman telling the fortune of a lady in a very graceful manner, which was the idea of Ciano, and not without mystic meaning. Another who learnt to paint from the same master was Antonio di Donnino Mazzieri, who was a bold draughtsman, and showed much invention in making horses and landscapes. He painted in chiaroscuro the cloister of S. Agostino at Monte Sansovino, executing therein ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari
... going on at our table. A peep under the lid of the sugar-bowl has shown me that there is another poem ready for the company. That receptacle is looked upon with an almost tremulous excitement by more than one of The Teacups. The two Annexes turn towards the mystic urn as if the lots which were to determine their destiny were shut up in it. Number Five, quieter, and not betraying more curiosity than belongs to the sex at all ages, glances at the sugarbowl now and then; looking so like a clairvoyant, ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... vulture cap on which traces of colour remained. Her arms were held forward as though to support a child, which perhaps she was suckling as one of the breasts was bare. But if so, the child had gone. The execution of the statue was exquisite and its tender and mystic face extraordinarily beautiful, so life-like also that I think it must have been copied from a living model. Oh! my friend, when I looked upon it, which we did by the light of the candles, for the sun was sinking and shadows gathered in that excavated ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... over, gambling and speculation are joined in many ways to superstition; and the Eastern diver is superstitious to the hour of his death. At Marichchikkaddi he devotedly resorts to the mystic ceremony of the shark-charmer, whose exorcism for generations has been an indispensable preliminary to the opening of a fishery. The shark-charmer's power is believed to be hereditary. If one of them can ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... lands they talk in flowers, And they tell in a garland their loves and cares: Each blossom that blooms in their garden bowers On its leaves a mystic language bears. —PERCIVAL. ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... evermore was heaving. All her limbs were gracefully reclining, Set at rest by sweet and godlike balsam. Gladly sat I, and the contemplation Held the strong desire I felt to wake her Firmer and firmer down, with mystic fetters. ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... assumed a stately air, wore white and flowing robes, and were adept in the arts of sorcery and magic. They were even consulted by kings and chieftains, as if they possessed prophetic power. They were a picturesque body of men, with their mystic wands, their impressive robes, their tall caps, appealing by their long incantations and frequent ceremonies and prayers to the eye and to the ear. "Pure Zoroastrianism was too spiritual to coalesce readily with Oriental luxury ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... at Cronin, startled. Another mention of the mystic number. He called for information about ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... identified with art, and the artistic fact is always clearly distinguished from beauty, mimetic from its content. Plotinus first identified the two, and with him the beautiful and art are dissolved together in a passion and mystic elevation of the spirit. The beauty of natural objects is the archetype existing in the soul, which is the fountain of all natural beauty. Thus was Plato (he said) in error, when he despised the ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... a gentler bard Gaze on the mystic vase with fond regard— But see, Thalia checks the doubtful thought, 'Canst thou, (she cries,) with sense, with genius fraught, Canst thou to Fashion's tyranny submit, Secure in native, independent wit? Or yield to Sentiment's insipid rule, By Taste, by Fancy, chac'd through ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... word 'God' which follows than with the word 'King' which precedes. The Apostle's meaning is this: 'The King of the ages, even the God who is,' etc. And the epithets thus selected all tend in the same direction. 'Incorruptible.' That at once parts that mystic and majestic Being from all of which the law is decay. There may be in it some hint of moral purity, but more probably it is simply what I may call a physical attribute, that that immortal nature not only does not, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Schopenhauer, a Taine, a Tolstoy; below them, thousands of humbler voices repeat it in chorus. According to each one's turn of mind, the new philosophy assumed shades different in appearance—Buddhist nirvana, atheistic nihilism, mystic asceticism; but all these theories proceeded from the same sentiment, and all these doctrines may be reduced to the same formula:—'Let us depreciate life, let us escape from ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... mountains; but Crabbe remained faithful to the dismal and yet, in his hands, the impressive scenery of his native salt-marshes. His method of description suits the country. His verses never become melodramatic, nor does he ever seem to invest nature with the mystic life of Wordsworth's poetry. He gives the plain prosaic facts which impress us because they are in such perfect harmony with the sentiment. Here, for example, is a fragment from the 'Village,' which is simply a description of the ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... may well mean a life of luxury and affluence. Most peasants in Europe will tell you that a dream about the flower foretells not only a happy marriage, but long life and prosperity. For ages the clover has been counted a mystic plant, and all sorts of good and bad luck were said to attend the finding of variations of its leaves which had more than the common number of leaflets. At evening these leaflets fold downward, the ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... and food, and with little air to breathe, our Claus was, indeed, in a pitiful plight. But he spoke the mystic words of the Fairies, which always command their friendly aid, and they came to his rescue and transported him to the Laughing Valley in the twinkling ...
— The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus • L. Frank Baum
... list of dreams with their significations and lucky numbers, and the getting of fortunes by the Mystic Circle, Cards Dice, Coffee and Tea Grounds, etc. Also a list of curious superstitions and omens, birthdays, lucky day, their significance and their numbers. It is unquestionably the best and most reliable book of its kind published and is worth many times the price asked ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... to the basements of Italian mountains. Higher, the roseate whiteness of ridged snow on Alps or Apennines. Highest, the blue of the sky, ascending from pale turquoise to transparent sapphire filled with light. A mediaeval mystic might have likened this chord to the spiritual world. For the lowest region is that of natural life, of plant and bird and beast, and unregenerate man; it is the place of faun and nymph and satyr, the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... precaution to which the Ceylon diver devotedly resorts, is the mystic ceremony of the shark-charmer, whose exorcism is an indispensable preliminary to every fishery. His power is believed to be hereditary; nor is it supposed that the value of his incantations is at all dependent upon the religious faith ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... times; or, in all, the Ave Maria's one hundred and sixty-five times, without variation. From the indistinct utterance, elevated voice, and rapid manner in which it is pronounced, it certainly has a wild effect, and is more strongly impressed with the character of a mystic rite, or incantation, than with any other religious ceremony with which we ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... affrightedly at the mystic beings who had come for her, but settled into peace as I closed her ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... that the great medicine man of the Utes came here to receive the mystic cure, bringing with him Eagle-Foot's staff and belt. Long strips of cedar bark were bound together into a rope. This was soaked in deer's grease, one end lighted, and dropped into the Pit, the other fastened to the staff, ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... Seti, "filled with the moon, lovely as the moon, mystic as the moon and worshipping the moon, ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... designated a lady's-maid, but who had risen from that humble position to be no less than Chancellor of State to her sovereign majesty, Miss Ocky. The two women had shared the ups-and-downs, the sunshine and shadow, of that mystic, colorful Orient through whose extent the restless curiosity of the younger had led them to and fro. Out there the line between mistress and servant had inevitably been supplanted by the bond of companionship; but ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... luxury of imagination, which sought nothing beyond itself (as a child burdens itself with spring flowers, thinking of no use beyond the enjoyment of gathering them), often showed itself in his verses: they will be only appreciated by minds which have resemblance to his own; and the mystic subtlety of many of his thoughts will share the same fate. The metaphysical strain that characterizes much of what he has written was, indeed, the portion of his works to which, apart from those whose scope was to awaken mankind to aspirations for what he considered the true and good, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... The mystic monogram of the club, the initials P and D contained in a circle, which was placed on their designs submitted in the two Beaux-Arts competitions, has probably set more than one interested person guessing ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Volume 01, No. 03, March 1895 - The Cloister at Monreale, Near Palermo, Sicily • Various
... sharp to the right. We are now following the coast-line towards Ostend. How beautiful the sand dunes looked from above. The heavy billows of sea-mist gave it a somewhat mystic appearance. How cold it was. I huddled down close into my seat, my head only above the fuselage. Keeping my eye upon the wonderful panorama unfolding itself out beneath me, I glanced at my camera and tested the socket. Yes, it ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... of the mystic League, I hope, by sly intrigue, To rule the seventh also, And let it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... discussed over the teacups in Riverboro. The months had come and gone, and at length the great day had dawned for Rebecca,—the day to which she had been looking forward for five years, as the first goal to be reached on her little journey through the world. School-days were ended, and the mystic function known to the initiated as "graduation" was about to be celebrated; it was even now heralded by the sun dawning in the eastern sky. Rebecca stole softly out of bed, crept to the window, threw open the blinds, and welcomed the rosy light that meant a cloudless ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... he said to me: "By the Arctic Sea there's a treasure to be won. Follow and follow a lone moose trail, till you come to a valley grim, On the slope of the lonely watershed that borders the Polar brim." Then I woke my pals, and soft we swore by the mystic Silver Flail, 'Twas the hand of Fate, and to-morrow straight we would seek the ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... the hour gone by? The mystic strain, Degenerate once, may never spring again. What long-forsaken gods shall we invoke To grant such increase to ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... gems of dear England's soil, Welcomed alike in palace as in the cot of toil; Tender and soft their tintings, as gentle maiden's blush, Soothing their perfumed breathings, as twilight's mystic hush. ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... watered the stocks, and finally took up the crystal and looked into it with awe, wondering why the Cobbler could see so much, and she only the distorted reflection of her own face. So interested, however, for once, did she become in the inspection of this mystic globe, that she did not notice the dawn pass into broad daylight, nor hear a voice at the door below,—nor, in short, take into cognition the external world, till a heavy tread shook the floor, and then, starting, she beheld the Remorseless Baron, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... formulation. The earlier Middle Ages did, in fact, extinguish antique civility. The later Middle Ages did create, to use a phrase of Michelet, an army of dunces for the maintenance of orthodoxy. The intellect and the conscience became used to moving paralytically among visions, dreams, and mystic terrors, weighed down with torpor, abusing virile faculties for the suppression of truth and ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... a-going to tell anybody else about it. He made them boys cross they hearts and bodies not to. I didn't cross mine 'cause I knew I had to tell you, but I do it now." And Eliza stood up and solemnly made the mystic sign, thus locking the barn door of her secret chambers after having quartered the troublesome steed of confidence on the ranges of Mother ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... straitly, With a courtly mien; Crossing hands and changing places, Bowing low between, While the minuet inlaces Waving arms and woven paces,— Glittering damaskeen. Where is she whose form is folden In its royal sheen? From our longing eyes withholden By her mystic girdle golden, Beauty sought but never seen, Music walks ...
— Music and Other Poems • Henry van Dyke
... eyes of Llewellyn Leigh, however, the place had no such mystic significance. On the afternoon following the visit of Miss Wycliffe to the tower, he had walked hither from the college, down the long, winding street on whose well-worn pavements the yellowing leaves of the elms threw a sheen like gold. ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... "Al-Kutb al-Ghauth" lit. the pole-star of invocation for help; or simply "Al-Ghauth" is the highest degree of sanctity in the mystic fraternity of Tasawwuf. See v. 384; and Lane (A. N.) i. 232. Students who would understand these titles will consult vol. iii. chapt. 12 of The Dabistn by Shaw and Troyer, Paris and London, 1843. By the learned studies of Dr. Pertsch the authorship of this work ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... personal memories of him here. I knew him well enough to love him, and to catch a glimpse of the beauty and sincerity of his soul; but I did not know him well enough to discover the secrets of his mind. Those who had the happiness of being his intimate friends seem always to represent him as a mystic who shut himself away from the spirit of his time. I hope at some future date one of his friends will publish some of the conversations that he had with him, of which I have heard. But this man who had so strong a faith was also very independent. In his religion he ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... like that, Ruth?" he begged. "Don't! My new friends are part of the new life. You wouldn't have me cling to the old any longer than I can help? Why, you and I together have sat here hour after hour and prayed for a change, prayed for the mystic treasure that might come to us from those ships of chance. Dear, if mine comes first, it brings good for you, too. You can't believe that I ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... compared with the obscure Gnosticism, with the distorted metaphysics, which fill the discourses of John, would speak loudly enough. This by no means implies that there are not in the discourses of John some admirable gleams, some traits which truly come from Jesus.[2] But the mystic tone of these discourses does not correspond at all to the character of the eloquence of Jesus, such as we picture it according to the synoptics. A new spirit has breathed; Gnosticism has already commenced; the Galilean era of the ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... A mystic German writer calls a house, properly ordered, the "home of the soul," carrying out the idea that the house in which an orderly soul lives, is only an expansion of the body built and adorned out of her passing experiences. ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... ago. True, he did not know it, it was so slyly done; but nothing could tempt her to a like act again. Not that she is sorry for the deed—ah! no. This little talisman will ever be most precious unto her. But the brow seemed so hallowed now; there was a mystic light upon it, as though a beam from Heaven were shining directly there, and a superstitious awe crept over the heart of the young maiden as she remembered the cold dews that her hand had felt as she stroked back ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... at the upper end of the great hall, directly before the accused, sat the Grand Master of the Temple, in full and ample robes of flowing white, holding in his hand the mystic staff, which bore the symbol of the Order. At his feet was placed a table, occupied by two scribes, whose duty it was to record the proceedings of the day. Their chairs were black and formed a marked contrast to the warlike appearance of the knights who attended the solemn gathering. ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... well. Sixty converts were baptized on October 3, and the priests rejoiced at the success of their efforts. But the Indians back in the mountains were alarmed and hostile. Who were these white-faced strangers causing their brother aborigines to kneel before a strange God? What was the meaning of that mystic ceremony of sprinkling with water? The demon of priestly jealousy was awakened in the breasts of the tingaivashes—the medicine-men—of the tribes about San Diego, who arranged a fierce midnight attack which should rid them forever of these ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... they returned, headed by a Medicine-man, whom the English called the 'mace-bearer.' With the slow and stately measure of a mystic dance this great high priest of heathen rites advanced chanting a sort of litany. Both litany and dance were gradually taken up by tens, by hundreds, and finally by all the thousands of the devotees, who addressed Drake with shouts of Hyoh! and invested him ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... or two get hold of some ill-conditioned meat, and suffer for it, the groans of their colics are echoed all over the land. If a milkman misrepresents his honest cows by falsifying their product, the chemist detects him, and the press puts him in the pillory. If the Cochituate or Mystic water is too much like an obsolete chowder, up go all noses, and out come all manner of newspaper paragraphs from "Senex," "Tax-payer," and the rest. But air-poisoning kills a hundred where food-poisoning kills one. Let me ...
— Parks for the People - Proceedings of a Public Meeting held at Faneuil Hall, June 7, 1876 • Various
... the god of gods, strung the invisible wires of mental telegraphy between our hearts, and over the mystic, unseen lines our thoughts, bright as hope, dark as sin, lighter than the thistle down, heavily charged with the electricity of doubt and trust, faith and fear, love and longing, flew noiselessly back and forth through the stillness ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... looked into each other's eyes. It was a momentary flash which they exchanged, but in that instant both of them were thrilled with the strange, sweet knowledge that no human soul may analyze: it is the mystic conviction which makes this man or that woman different from all the rest of humankind to the ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... enchanted region, he reached the vicar-general's office in safety and having procured a highly flattering address on parchment, from the Archbishop of Canterbury, to his 'trusty and well-beloved Alfred Jingle and Rachael Wardle, greeting,' he carefully deposited the mystic document in his pocket, and retraced his steps in ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... call upon his Snake with due and portentous ceremony and, according to Stephen, who was present, which I declined to be, that mystic reptile declared that Dogeetah, alias Brother John, would arrive in Beza Town precisely at sunset on the third day from that night. Now as he had divined on Friday, according to our almanac, this meant that we might hope to see him—hope exactly described ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... private and personal experience, is the drift of this poem, or rather cycle of poems, that ring throughout with a deeper accent and a more direct appeal than has yet made itself felt. It is the drama of the human soul,—"the mystic winged and flickering butterfly," "flitting between earth and sky," in its passage from birth ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... two will lie i' the shadow of That living mystic tree Within whose secret growth the Dove Is sometimes felt to be, While every leaf that His plumes touch ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... lifted, and the leader wove her mystic paces in and out among the children, while the ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... ceased to be held sacred they were endowed with sundry magical or mystic properties. The apple has been supposed to possess peculiar virtues, especially in the way of health. 'The relation of the apple to health,' says Mr. Conway, 'is traceable to Arabia. Sometimes it is regarded as a bane. In ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... full of riant laughter, recalls the sad students who wandered past, and then from amid the airy ripple of notes comes the sweet, mellow strain of the 'cello, which tells of love eternal amid the summer roses; how the tender melody sweeps on full of the perfume and mystic meanings of that night. Hark! is that the nightingale in the trees, or only the silvery notes of a violin, which comes stealing through the steady throb and swing of the heavier stringed instruments? ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... is ever most deeply enamoured, when it is with he knows not what—and the devotion of a mystic has a rude Gothic grandeur in it, which the respectful adoration of a philosopher will never reach. I may be thought fanciful; but it has continually occurred to me, that, though, I allow, reason in this world is the mother of wisdom—yet some flights of ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... the earlier days of the church, when men were staid and sincere, it was, no doubt, an impressive sight to see rank succeeding rank, of the old and the young, all calm and all devout, seated before the tent of the preacher, in the sunny hours of June, listening to his eloquence, or partaking of the mystic bread and wine; but in these our latter days, when discipline is relaxed, along with the sedate and the pious come swarms of the idle and the profligate, whom no eloquence can edify and no solemn rite affect. On these, and such as these, the poet has poured ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... the woods to themselves; there was no sound at all except the occasional soft drop of melting snow. Once they stood quite still holding their breath to watch the squirrels skim from tree to tree as if they were weaving the measures of a mystic dance. If it hadn't been for the squirrels they might have been the only creatures alive in all ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... liked the idea of Vivien. It had cachet, she thought. She was very fond of posing as a mysterious enchantress, the mystic touch pleased her vanity. ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... Phoenix, Japanese H[o]-w[o], the second of the incarnations of the spirits, is of wondrous form and mystic nature. The rare advent of this bird upon the earth is, like that of the kirin or unicorn, a presage of the advent of virtuous rulers and good government. It has the head of a pheasant, the beak of a swallow, the neck of a tortoise, and the features of the dragon and ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... small islands, stretching out to the horizon on the right, and a boundless wilderness of trees on the left. Here were collected the ladies and gentlemen of Norway House, and a number of indescribable personages, apparently engaged in mystic preparations for the approaching feast. It was with something like awe that I entered the schoolroom, and beheld two long rows of tables covered with puddings, pies, tarts, stews, hashes, and vegetables of all shapes, sizes, and descriptions, ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... complex powers, it reminds me of some stupendous mechanism which shall spin electric bands of stupendous thought and feeling, illuminating the vista of eternity with corruscations of brilliancy, and blending the mystic brow of eternal ages with a tiara of never-dying beauty, whilst for those who have trampled on the truth of Christ, it shall spin from its terrible form toils of eternal funeral bands, darker and darker, till sunk to the lowest ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... the sea. His hens "turned in," at night. He was full of sayings and formulas of a maritime nature; there was one which always seemed to me to have something of a weird and mystic character: "South moon brings high water on Coast Island Bar." In describing the transactions of domestic life, he used words more properly applicable to the movements of large ships. He would speak of a saucepan as if it weighed a hundred tons. He never tossed or threw even the ...
— By The Sea - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... ears: "Faith and doubt are mere empty forms until we pour out the heart's blood that vivifies them." It was her heart's blood that she had put into her dreams, and it was this, he told himself, that gave her mystic visions their illusive appearance of reality. Beauty enveloped her as an atmosphere; it softened her sternest sacrifice, it coloured her barest outlook, it transformed daily the common road in which she ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... little children gather, Half in wonder, round his knees; And the faithful dog, mute, watchful, In the mystic glass he sees; And the voice of song, and pictures, And the simplest homestead flowers, Unforgotten, crowd before him ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... been, had the prediction which he put into the mouth of Galeotti Martivalle, the astrologer of Louis the Eleventh, in the romance of Quentin Durward, been written at the period of its date! Louis, who has justly been held as the Tiberius of France, is represented as paying a visit to the mystic workshop of the astrologer, whom his Majesty discovered to be engaged in the then newly invented art of multiplying manuscripts by the intervention of machinery—in other words, the apparatus ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... no move, either with his feet or his tongue. In the haze that lay between him and Bangs, the man of the robe seemed to tower and to take on a mystic dignity which had been lacking in the candid light of day. After the silence had continued for some time Bangs spoke again. His new manner showed that his eyes had been reprimanding his tongue. "Excuse me! I didn't mean to sound ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... . . mercy.' This stirred Keats's imagination, and he produced the wonderful, mystic ballad of ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... His old brown holland was good enough when he stayed at home. Sometimes, when she was away, and Dolly the maid was making his bed, he came into his mother's room. It was as the abode of a fairy to him—a mystic chamber of splendour and delight. There in the wardrobe hung those wonderful robes—pink and blue and many-tinted. There was the jewel case, silver clasped; and a hundred rings on the dressing table. There ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... should reveal her true mission, and on needles lest his wife should reveal her true depths. Likewise he worried Eileen to drink his choicest wines. Vintages that she felt her father would have poised on his tongue in mystic clucking ecstasy stood untasted in a regiment of little glasses ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... break our keys. But God meant music; and we may, If we will keep our lives in tune, Hear the whole year sing roundelay, December answering June. God ever at his keyboard plays, Harmonics, right; and discords, wrong: "He that hath ears," and who obeys, May hear the mystic song. ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... that statement of the "Autocrat" appears to me at least as certain as that two and two make four. It may, indeed, contain some recondite and malignant reference which the stupid American divines know, and which I do not; it may be a mystic Shibboleth, indicating far more than it asserts; as at one time in Scotland it was esteemed as proof that a clergyman preached unsound doctrine, if he made use of the Lord's Prayer. But, understanding it simply as meaning that the Judge of all the Earth will do right, it appears ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... Who composed this Mystic Krewe no one knew. Year after year, like a splendid dream, a glittering procession moved through the streets at dusk of Shrove-Tuesday, representing the fairest myths of fable and the most gorgeous pageants of history. Mrs. Long, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... sits in long array a reverend troop Teaching the mystic truths of law divine: 'Mid these by right takes Agapetus place Who built to guard his books this fair abode. All toil alike, all equal grace enjoy— Their words are different, but ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... in mystic circles and went to the sideboard for a drink. In the evening, when the exaltation of the day had died down, he went to the sideboard again, and after some visits became convinced that the eye-doctor was a liar, since he could still see ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... and in actual existence for about four years. During the period of development the revolutionists denounced the monarch in most extravagant terms and compared him to the devil. Their aim was to kill the mystic belief of the people in the Emperor; for only by diminishing the dignity of the monarch could the revolutionary cause make headway. And during and after the change all the official documents, school textbooks, press views and social gossip have always coupled ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... she behaved with a sort of mystic hostility, a holy detachment and displeasure, as if she suspected them of getting over it, or of wanting to get over it if they could. But to her one married daughter and to her grand-children she was ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... dying. He walked on—slowly and mechanically back to the scene of the overwhelming cataclysm where all his hopes lay irretrievably buried. He walked on—majestic as he had never been before, in the brilliant throne-room of the Tuileries or the mystic vastness of Notre Dame when the Imperial crown sat so ill upon his plebeian head. . . . He walked on—silent, exalted and great—great through the magnitude of ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... and to nobler lives. They, in turn, recognized and paid willing homage to a noble soul, a great genius, whose power to sway and control them was not in the least deflected or dimmed by a thought of his deformed body. Under the mystic spell of divine music, which appeals to the highest aspirations of the human heart; which calls forth the hidden forces of the soul: they came in such perfect rapport with him in his inner life, that they ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... Jefferson's writin', and Hamilton's, and Benjamin Franklin's—he who also discovered a New World, the mystic World that we draw on with such a stiddy and increasin' demand for supplies of light, and heat, and ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... Philebus falls very far short of the Republic in fancy and feeling. The development of the reason undisturbed by the emotions seems to be the ideal at which Plato aims in his later dialogues. There is no mystic enthusiasm or rapturous contemplation of ideas. Whether we attribute this change to the greater feebleness of age, or to the development of the quarrel between philosophy and poetry in Plato's own mind, or perhaps, in some degree, to a ...
— Philebus • Plato
... upon, and a considerable sum advanced for a philter, compounded of strange Eastern plants and mystic jewels; and then Diane, with a shudder of relief, passed into the full light of the hall, bade her father good night, and was handed by him into the litter that had long been awaiting ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... barren ground, She stood on inner ground that budded flowers; While circling in their never-slackening round Danced by the mystic hours. ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... expedition, which Speke made with the king to the Nyanza, they landed on an island inhabited by a magician and his wife, who were supposed to be priests of of the water-spirit of the lake. His head was decorated with numerous mystic symbols, among them a paddle, the badge of his high office. He was dressed in a little, white, goat-skin apron, adorned by various charms, and, instead of a walking-stick to support his steps, he used a paddle. Though not an old ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... the voice which I seem to hear murmuring in my ears, like the sound of the flute in the ears of the mystic; that voice, I say, is humming in my ears, and prevents me from hearing any other. And I know that anything more which you may say will be vain. Yet speak, if ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... stimulate, yet never to satisfy or exhaust. The regularity of stated hours of prayer, and of a kind of idle industry, weaving mats or plaiting baskets, alternated with periods of morbid reflection on the moral state of the soul, and of mystic communion with the Deity. It cannot indeed be wondered that this new revelation, as it were, of the Deity, this profound and rational certainty of his existence, this infelt consciousness of his perpetual presence, these ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... adapted for their purpose. The almost universal use of the rattle among the Indians in their sacred dances is very significant. The meaning of the snake song is unknown to the Indians who sing it. The words are probably either archaic or remnants of a sacred language or mystic words of ...
— Contribution to Passamaquoddy Folk-Lore • J. Walter Fewkes
... loved Carol, longed to and did not pry into the details of her relations with Kennicott, enjoyed her spirit of play as expressed in childish tea-parties, and, with the mystic bond between them forgotten, was healthily vexed by Carol's assumption that she was a sociological messiah come to save Gopher Prairie. This last facet of Vida's thought was the one which, after a year, was most often turned to the light. In a testy ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... who admitted the baptism of heretics repeated the rite, or, as it was afterwards styled, the sacrament, of confirmation, to which they ascribed many mystic and marvellous prerogatives both visible and invisible. See Chardon. Hist. des Sacremens, tom. 1. p. 405-552.] His son and successor, Recared, the first Catholic king of Spain, had imbibed the faith of his unfortunate brother, which ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... But somehow the great Victorian man was more and less than this. He was at once a giant and a dwarf. When he has been sweeping the sky in circles infinitely great, he suddenly shrivels into something indescribably small. There is a moment when Carlyle turns suddenly from a high creative mystic to a common Calvinist. There are moments when George Eliot turns from a prophetess into a governess. There are also moments when Ruskin turns into a governess, without even the excuse of sex. But in all ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... sandalled, so they weave their way, And so they stand, with silence panoplied, Chanting, through mystic symbollings of flame, Their solemn invocation to ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... a white Christmas Eve, Thor's priests held their winter rites beneath the Thunder Oak. Through the deep snow of the dense forest hastened throngs of heathen folk, all intent on keeping the mystic feast of the mighty Thor. In the hush of the night the folk gathered in the glade where stood the tree. Closely they pressed around the great altar-stone under the overhanging boughs where stood the white-robed priests. Clearly ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... Slowly the mystic waters fell away, sinking with slightly rolling action into the valleys, and out of the wool-white waves sudden sharp dark forms upthrust like strange masters of the deep. Towers took shape and islands upheaved, crowned with dark fortresses. To the west a vast and inky-black ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... stump of a tree, or it may be only the symbol of a tree. The story of the tree of good and evil, and the tree of life, has been the origin of many superstitious notions regarding trees. The notion that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was an apple tree, caused the apple to have a great many mystic meanings, and gave it a prominent place in many legends, and also brought it into prominence as a divining medium. In many parts of Scotland the apple was believed to have great influence in love affairs. If an apple seed were shot between the fingers it was understood that it would, ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... "How is he to get through the stove without burning himself?" Reason falters and Faith triumphs. It would be done somehow, and then the reindeer would fly to the next house, and the next, and so on, and so on. The mystic hour draws near. Like a tidal wave it rolls around the world, foaming at its crest in a golden spray of gifts and love. ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... cheat my brain with airy vanishings And mystic glories of the world beyond. A whole enchanted town Thy ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... Morn's mystic rose is reddening on the hills, Dawn's irised nautilus makes glad the sea; There is a lyre of flame that throbs and fills Far heaven and earth with hope's wild ecstasy.— With lilied field and grove, Haunts of the turtle-dove, Here is the land ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... child at play, Like a living ocean-child, Through the feathery spray she cleaves her way To the billows' music wild; The sea is her wide-spread pleasure ground, And the waves around her leap, As with joyous bound, to their mystic sound, She ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... yet. She crossed on her bosom her dimpled hands, And fearlessly entered the phantom bark; We felt it glide from the silver sands, And all our sunshine grew strangely dark; We know she is safe on the farther side, Where all the ransomed and angels be: Over the river, the mystic river, My childhood's ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... wonder-music spoke. She and he were wandering alone together along that fairy shore where every sea-shell gleamed like pearl and every wave broke iridescent at their feet. The sun shone in the sky for them alone, and the caves were mystic palaces of delight that awaited their coming. And once it seemed to her that he drew her close, and she felt his ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... the coat which he was wearing. The experience occurred on 23 November, 1654, and there is no reason to doubt its genuineness unless we choose to deny all mystical experience. Now, Pascal was not a mystic, and his works are not to be classified amongst mystical writings; but what can only be called mystical experience happens to many men who do not become mystics. The work which he undertook soon after, the Lettres ecrites ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... and other, prompt for fate— Listless the first and heavy-eyed, Astrain the second—she espied That strange white flower, unseen before, With chalice pale, which thin stalk bore And swung, as hanging by a hair, So fine it seemed afloat in air, Unlinkt and wafted for the feast Of some blest mystic, without priest Or acolyte to tender it: Whereto the maid did stoop and fit Her hand about its silken cup To close it, that her mouth might sup The honey-drop within. The bloom Saw Kore then, and knew her doom Foretold in it; and stood in trance Fixed and still. No nigromance Used she, but ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... dead body, nor shall you. You have other vials in the casket of better hue and flavor. What is this?" continued Angelique, taking out a rose-tinted and curiously-twisted bottle sealed on the top with the mystic pentagon. "This looks prettier, and may be not less sure than the milk of mercy in its ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... to the inmates of the cottage of all that the trushul or cross trident suggested, still less did I vex their souls with the mystic possible meaning of the antique patteran or sign which I had drawn. For it has, I opine, a deep meaning, which as one who knew Creuzer of old, I have a right to set forth. Briefly, then, and without encumbering my book with ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... rows of vines, or what will be vines when the summer comes, but are now black, knotted and gnarled clubs, without a sign of life in the seemingly dead stick. One who sees that sight may find a new beauty and meaning in the mystic words, "I am the Vine, ye are the branches." It is not merely the connection between branch and stem common to all trees; not merely the exhilarating and seemingly inspiring properties of the grape, which made the ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... inferred from the words of a proselyte warrior, who declared with enthusiasm that he had learned from the Sulpitian missionary that the King of France was the eldest son of the wife of Jesus Christ.[32] This he of course took in a literal sense, the mystic idea of the Church as the spouse of Christ being beyond his savage comprehension. The effect was to stimulate his devotion to the Great Onontio beyond the sea, and to the lesser Onontio who represented him as ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... gladness, Of filmy sun, and opal tinted skies; Of warm midsummer air that lightly lies In mystic rings, Where softly swings The music of a thousand wings That almost tones ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... looked at her with a gentle mockery that passed immediately into that sudden seriousness—that unconscious air of command—of which the man of interior life holds the secret. In his jests even, he is still, by natural gift, the confessor, the director, since he sees everything as the mystic ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... air. I was right glad when the little creature came and sat on my knee, and in its affectionate way began to nibble at my finger-tips. It sat erect, its thin paws waving with a tiny, measured swing, and in its mystic voice, so infinitely small, so sweet and yet so majestically strong, began a song which no pen can transcribe. Knowing that the awakening must come, but unwilling to lose a moment of the dream, I, who with one finger could have crushed the little ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... for him, and he came repeatedly after this to see me and express his satisfaction in the opportunities for study he enjoyed at Cambridge. He was a dark, still, slender person, always with a trance-like remoteness, a mystic dreaminess of manner, such as I never saw in any other youth. Whether he heard with difficulty, or whether his mind reacted slowly on an alien thought, I could not say; but his answer would often be behind time, and then a vague, sweet smile, or a few words spoken under his breath, ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the bells at midnight Ring in the dawning year; And above the clanging chorus Of the song, I seemed to hear A choir of mystic voices Flinging echoes, ringing clear, From a band of angels winging Through the haunted atmosphere: "Ring out the shame and sorrow, And the misery and sin, That the dawning of the morrow May in ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... a spot," said a friend who chanced to be near at hand, "which occupies in the world of fancy the same position which the Bourse, the Rialto, and the Exchange do in the commercial world. All who have affairs in that mystic region, which lies above, below, or beyond the actual, may here meet and talk over ...
— The Hall of Fantasy (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... term for the harmony that binds the different parts of a story into one whole. In the present case there are three 'motives' underlying the plot. (1) What has been called the 'oracular action': the interest of mystic dream oracles gradually becoming clear as the oracles are fulfilled. (2) The development of an ironic situation—Joseph recognising his brethren but not recognised by them: once developed this situation is prolonged to the utmost ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... people to a higher plane of living, but the fruits of the lives of these superiors were handed on to other groups to utilize, and they are not without influence {23} over the whole human group of to-day. So, too, the religious mystic philosophy and literature of India represented a high state of mental development, but the products of its existence left the races of India in darkness because the mystic philosophy was not adaptable to the practical affairs ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... admirer of Charles Strickland, and there was no danger that he would whitewash him. He had an unerring eye for the despicable motive in actions that had all the appearance of innocence. He was a psycho-pathologist, as well as a student of art, and the subconscious had few secrets from him. No mystic ever saw deeper meaning in common things. The mystic sees the ineffable, and the psycho-pathologist the unspeakable. There is a singular fascination in watching the eagerness with which the learned author ferrets out every circumstance ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... veil over the sun or a white gauze around the midnight moon; sporting in the glacier; folding its bright snow-curtain softly about the wintry world; and weaving the many-colored bow whose warp is the rain-drops of earth, whose woof is the sunbeam of heaven, all checkered over with the mystic ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... made all his troubles, now urging him he knew not where. All he knew for certain was that the shy woman-look had crept back for a moment into her eyes; and after that the fate of empires was as nothing to the import of her smile. Did she feel, as he felt, the mystic bond between them, the appeal of his young man's strength; or was that smile a mask, a provocative weapon, to veil her own thoughts while she read through his like a book? He gave it up; but there was a way of knowing—he could call out ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... insisted on staying with us, and Aunt Nan (we all call her that now) had gone to Mystic Lake with Donald's brother, so we four girls were all alone. Virginia said "Yes" on the spot, and Mary and I were wild at the prospect. Vivian's eyes got big when Dick said "bear-traps," but she wouldn't let us know she was afraid. Really, you'd ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... longer the same woman. On her face was the candid and virtuous expression of the pure young girl such as she had been in her parents' home. The dawn of eternal life was already whitening her brow and glorifying her face with its celestial tints. Doubtless she heard the mystic harmonies, and gathered strength to live from her desire to unite herself once more with God in the last communion. The rector came beside the bed and gave her absolution. The archbishop administered the sacred oils with a fatherly ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac |
