"Occult" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... conception witchcraft and its demonstrations centered in the claim of power to produce certain effects, "things beyond the course of nature," from supernatural causes, and under this general term all its occult manifestations were classified with magic and sorcery, until the time came when the Devil was identified and acknowledged both in church and state as the originator and sponsor of the mystery, sin and crime—the sole father of the Satanic compacts with men and women, ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... fact that an unusual number of eclipses happen to have been visible in that country, and the occult bent natural to the Scottish character has traditionalised a few of them in such terms as the "Black Hour" (an eclipse of 1433), "Black Saturday" (the eclipse of 1598 which has been alluded to above), ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... "facts" is, in some ways, crucial. I have spoken with Jesuits and Plymouth Brethren, mathematicians and poets, dogmatic republicans and dear old gentlemen in bird's-eye neckcloths; and each understood the word "facts" in an occult sense of his own. Try as I might, I could get no nearer the principle of their division. What was essential to them seemed to me trivial or untrue. We could come to no compromise as to what was, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... historian, in pursuance of his stern duties, reveals to the scorn of future ages some of the occult practices which discredit the march of ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that," said Madame de Villefort; "but I have a passion for the occult sciences, which speak to the imagination like poetry, and are reducible to figures, like an algebraic equation; but go on, I beg of you; what you say interests me ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... occult sense, is to read with the eyes of the spirit. To ask is to feel the hunger within—the yearning of spiritual aspiration. To be able to read means having obtained the power in a small degree of gratifying ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... I have ever done when this subject has been the theme. That so many thousands of educated and intelligent people should yield their belief to so bold a delusion as this must be, if there be no occult cause at work, is inconceivable. By occult cause I mean, of course, nothing at all analogous to hidden trickery, but to the interference of some power with which the earth has been hitherto unacquainted. If it were not taking too great ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... different opinions were once conversing. The one scoffed at innate ideas, instinctive principles, and occult causes: the other was a believer in natural gifts, and an active fabricator of suppositions. Suggest but the slightest hint and he would erect a hypothesis which no argument, at least none that he would listen ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... we have no record of these men from the east offering gifts to Herod in his palace; they did, however, impart of their treasure to the lowly Infant, in whom they recognized the King they had come to seek. The tendency to ascribe occult significance to even trifling details mentioned in scripture, and particularly as regards the life of Christ, has led to many fanciful suggestions concerning the gold and frankincense and myrrh specified in this incident. Some have supposed a half-hidden ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... would have noted all this; but he saw and realized the transformation with a pang—something had gone; the innocence and wonder of the child, and in their place had grown up something to him incomprehensible and occult. ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... my wife requested me to build her a new kitchen. The house erected by us, when we first came to live upon the vineyard, contained a very conveniently arranged kitchen; but for some occult reason my wife wanted a kitchen in the back yard, apart from the dwelling-house, after the usual Southern fashion. Of course I had ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... this sanative tea is not from any combination of the animal or mineral kingdom, but a collection of the most salutary native and exotic herbs that are produced in the vegetable empire of nature. These have not been collected by the fanatic devotees of occult qualities, but by the scientific researches and personal experience of a character that is equally and justly admired for his philosophical, medical, and botanical knowledge. The discoverer, Dr. Solander, of this tea, inquired into the virtues of each native and exotic herb of which it is composed, ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith
... he believed it necessary to do something in religion. So he gave up religion, and allowed it to be understood that he was a man of advanced views: a Positivist, a Buddhist, or something equally occult. Thus he became ripe for the highest employment, and was placed successively on a number of Special Commissions. He inquired into everything; he wrote hundredweights of reports; he proved himself to have the true paralytic ink flux, precisely the kind of wordy discharge or brain haemorrhage ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... O mysterious tome, whose Arab name breathes a strange mustiness of occult lore and claims kindred with the sciences of almagest and alchemy. What will you show me? Let us turn the leaves at random. Before fixing one's eyes on a definite point in the landscape, it is well to take a summary view of the whole. Page follows swiftly upon page, telling me nothing. ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... over, as if, by same sort of occult intuition of woman, she were reading our souls. Then, instinctively almost, she turned to Kennedy. Kennedy seemed to recognize her need. Norton and I retired, somewhat more ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... endeavour to bring pressure to bear from without, or in allowing despair to take the place of cheerful expectation, is reversing the action of the original cause and consequently reversing the nature of the results. It is for this reason that the Bible, which is the most deeply occult of all books, continually lays so much stress upon the efficiency of faith and the destructive influence of unbelief; and in like manner, all books on every branch of spiritual science emphatically warn us against ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... Parsees are very proud of this temple of Zaratushta, as they call Zoroaster. Compared with it the Hindu pagodas look like brightly painted Easter eggs. Generally they are consecrated to Hanuman, the monkey-god and the faithful ally of Rama, or to the elephant headed Ganesha, the god of the occult wisdom, or to one of the Devis. You meet with these temples in every street. Before each there is a row of pipals (Ficus religiosa) centuries old, which no temple can dispense with, because these trees are the abode of the elementals and the ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... conversation at table was lively. The prince could not forbear relating his adventure of the key, which excited general astonishment. A warm dispute on the subject presently took place. Most of the company positively maintained that the pretended occult sciences were nothing better than juggling tricks. The French abbe, who had drank rather too much wine, challenged the whole tribe of ghosts, the English lord uttered blasphemies, and the musician made a cross to exorcise ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the character of a schoolboy, "pulling his treasures from his pocket—'That's a wassher—for makkin motor-cars!'" Nineteen hundred and twelve pinned its faith on matter and nothing else; Nineteen hundred and thirteen assured us that "occurrences now regarded as occult can be examined and reduced to order by the methods of science carefully and persistently applied."[2] Further, the examination of those facts had convinced the deliverer of the address "that memory ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... the announcement of Dorothea's occult powers, which, needless to say, had come as a surprise to her ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... to all her charms Valerie added the highly-prized advantage of being an occult power. Claude Vignon, now secretary to Marshal the Prince de Wissembourg, and dreaming of promotion to the Council of State as a Master of Appeals, was constantly seen in her rooms, to which came also some Deputies—good ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... you, the same Infinite Power that creates and governs all things in the universe, the same Infinite Power that governs the endless systems of worlds in space. Send out your thought,—thought is a force, and it has occult power of unknown proportions when rightly used and wisely directed,—send out your thought that the right situation or the right work will come to you at the right time, in the right way, and that you will recognize it when ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... the purpose of exhibiting distinctly some phases in the life of this dangerous and implacable woman who, by her affiliation with the Order of Jesuits, had acquired an occult and formidable power. For there is something even more menacing than a Jesuit: it is a Jesuits; and, when one has seen certain circles, it becomes evident that there exist, unhappily, many of those affiliated, who, more or less, uniformly dress (for the lay members of the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... required a faith so childlike as to verge on the imbecile. Conversation during deals had an awkward tendency towards discussion of the coal strike. As often as it drifted there the subject was changed very abruptly, just as if there was some occult reason for not speaking of so natural a topic. It concerned everybody, but it was rightly felt to concern ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... for) indicated that but one quarter of the sheep found on the Rancho Palomar belonged to Loustalot, the remainder being owned by his foreman and employees. To Farrel, therefore, these sheep were awarded, and in some occult manner Don Nicolas Sandoval selected them from the flock; then, acting under instructions from Farrel, he sold the sheep back to Loustalot at something like a dollar a head under the market value and leased to the amazed Basque for one year the grazing privilege on ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... existing range of knowledge and power, and accordingly are no longer reputed miraculous. And one cannot reasonably believe that a limit to the understanding and control of forces in Nature and mind that now are more or less occult has been already reached. It is, therefore, not incredible that some of the mighty works of Jesus, which still transcend the existing limits of knowledge and power, and so are still reputed miraculous, and are suspected by many as ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... Not indeed that these penmen require any fresh inflation; for never has there been a race of professors in any art who have exceeded in solemnity and pretensions the practitioners in this simple and mechanical craft. I must leave to more ingenious investigators of human nature to reveal the occult cause which has operated such powerful delusions on these "Vive la Plume!" men, who have been generally observed to possess least intellectual ability in proportion to the excellence they have obtained in their own art. I suspect this maniacal vanity is peculiar to the writing-masters ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... could look over the heads of other men. That position, he argued, was not worth the life-long effort required. Withal, he could not bring himself to quite understand why he had married Mary Greenwater, unless that she possessed some occult power and gained control over forces of his nature which he did not understand. True, there was but little or no obligation to the ceremony. It held good in the Cherokee Indian nation, that government within a government. ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... have proclaimed and vindicated the eternal gospel of love, believing, as I also firmly believe, that any opinion which tends to keep out of sight the living and loving God, whether it substitute for Him an idol, an occult agency, or a formal creed, can be nothing better than a vain and portentous shadow projected from the selfish ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... they, too, for all their legal difference, rest also on the grey. The party conflicts of the future will turn very largely on the discovery of the true patriot, on the suspicion that the crown or the machine in possession is in some more or less occult way traitorous, and almost all other matters of contention will be shelved and allowed to stagnate, for fear of breaking the unity of ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... in no hurry to reply. He was busy taking in a variety of pleasant impressions. Notwithstanding the severely cut riding habit and the hard little hat, he decided that he had never looked into a more attractively feminine face. For some occult reason, unconnected, he was sure, with the use of any skin food or face cream, this young woman who had the reputation of living out of doors, winter and summer, had a complexion which, notwithstanding its faint shade of tan, would have passed muster for delicacy ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of evils in an equitable administration. In the present instance there can be no compensation, for the acts of injustice are committed against different classes. It is the trading classes which enjoy the means, from the occult nature of their gains, of evading by fallacious returns the income tax. The honest and honourable pay it to the last farthing: it is the dishonest who escape. The persons upon whom the levying the income tax in its present form operates with the most cruel ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... communion with his marked abdominal prominence, showed that she was gaining part of what she played for. Wise youths who buy their loves, are not unwilling, when opportunity offers, to try and obtain the commodity for nothing. Examinations of her hand, as for some occult purpose, and unctuous pattings of the same, were not infrequent. Adrian waxed now and then Anacreontic in his compliments. Lucy would say: "That's worse than ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in short, as devoid of actual foundation as are the modern beliefs in the venomous properties of the toad, or the ancient beliefs in the occult and mystic powers of various parts of its frame when used in incantations. Shakespeare, whilst attributing to the toad venomous qualities, has yet immortalized it in his famous simile by crediting it with the possession of a "precious jewel." But even in the latter case the animal ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... Kabbalists believe that the sage, who by his astrological knowledge is brought into relation with the celestial powers, can affect nature, alter the course of phenomena, and work miracles. The Kabbala forms part of the history of the marvelous and of occult science rather than of the history of philosophy. Nevertheless men of real learning were initiated and were infatuated, among them the marvelous Pico della Mirandola, Reuchlin, not less remarkable as humanist and Hebraist, who would have run grave risk at the hands of the Inquisition ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... beats temperately—my hand is cool—I am fasting from everything but sin, and possessed of my ordinary faculties—Either some fiend is permitted to bewilder me, or the tales of Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, and others who treat of occult philosophy, are not without foundation.—At the crook of the glen? I could have desired to avoid a second meeting, but I am on the service of the Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... rested fully and lingeringly upon the shadowy recess, where a glowing amber-golden head bloomed richly forth against the frigid back-ground of a bare wooden wall. The dainty little lady, enveloped in the antique richness of a stiff brocade, should have been made aware by some mysteriously occult means of a strange thrill at the heart, caused by the protracted gaze of a handsome fellow-worshipper, but to tell the truth her thoughts were piously intent upon the enormity of her own sins, and the necessity of reclaiming her brother from ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... foresaw the assassination of McKinley. Most of them, however, are gifted in curing diseases. The typical letter reads as follows: "There is a young man living here who seems to be endowed with a wonderful occult power by the use of which he is able to diagnose almost any human ailment. He goes into a trance, and while in this condition the name of the subject is given him, and then without any further questions he proceeds to diagnose his case fully and correctly and prescribes a treatment ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... I conclude as follows: If there is a form of Christianity now in the world which is accused of gross superstition, of borrowing its rites and customs from the heathen, and of ascribing to forms and ceremonies an occult virtue; a religion which is considered to burden and enslave the mind by its requisitions, to address itself to the weak-minded and ignorant, to be supported by sophistry and imposture, and to contradict reason and exalt mere irrational faith; a religion ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... gentlemen prefer." We were about to rise, wash, and depart, but an impediment is offered by the artist. "Non l'ho raffinato ancora, Signor, bisogna raffinarlo un poco!" and before we could arrive at the occult meaning of raffinare, his fingers were exploring very technically and very disagreeably the whole surface over which his razor had travelled, and a number of supplementary scrapings were only stopped by an impatient basta ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... was the occupation of ambitious men who played an occult but important part in all those national risings, religious disturbances, and also in the organized piratical movements on a large scale which, during the first half of the last century, affected the fate ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... Instead of combating, it absorbed. It adapted itself to circumstances, and finding certain beliefs prevalent among the people, it imbibed them, and thus gained by accretion until its bulk, both of beliefs and of disciples, was in the inverse ratio of its purity. Even to-day, the occult theosophy of "Isis Unveiled," and of the school of writers such as Blavatsky, Olcott, etc., seems to be a perfectly logical product of the Northern Buddhisms, and may be called one of them; yet it is simply a repetition of what took place centuries ago. Most of the primitive beliefs and superstitions ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... Lawrence (still designated as the "Baroness" by her stepdaughter and by old acquaintances) to whom Preston owed the constant reminder of his dependence upon the purse of his father-in- law. In those subtle, occult ways known only to a jealous and designing nature, the Baroness found it possible to make Preston's life a torture, without revealing her weapons of warfare to her husband; indeed, without allowing him to even smell the powder, ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... worthy, good, intolerable woman whom the burgess turns out for his world in regiments, that do and look and all but step alike; and they mean well, and have conventional worships and material aspirations, and very peculiar occult refinements, with a blind head and a haphazard gleam of acuteness, impressive to acquaintances, convincing themselves that they impersonate sagacity. She had said this, done that; and it was, by proof, Providence ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the mountain tops, than Sabra repaired to the Champion's pavilion, and presented him with a diamond ring of inestimable value, which she prayed him to wear on his finger, not only as an ornament, but because it was endued with many excellent and occult virtues. ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... room which he had not yet investigated. It was somewhat bare as to furniture; it struck strange to his senses as if he had stumbled into another world; in some occult way it preserved a tradition of travel and adventure. The bookcase he came to inspect was flanked by a small cabinet of coins and curios—Italian, Grecian, Egyptian, and Japanese; the walls were hung with ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... the clear May morning, with what occult trepidations I cannot say. You may depend upon it, though, we ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... buried in perplexed, unintelligible, peripatetic Philosophy, and disfigured with romantic Legends, and Gothic Jingle! But, at the Doctor's Appearance, Entities, Quiddities, Sympathies, Antipathies, occult Qualities, substantial Forms, metaphysical Degrees, Categories, and all this unideal wordy Stuff, vanished; and were succeeded by a clear, concise Method of Reasoning, and sound, useful, and experimental Philosophy. Greek, ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... unessential; it may come and go, may settle or be fanned away. It has life and it is not without law; it has an obvious life, and a less obvious law. But with Greece abides the obvious law and the less obvious life: symmetry as apparent as the symmetry of the form of man, and life occult like his unequal heart. And this seems to be the nobler and the more ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... shaped by the most opposite fancies, called a Theory, for Nature herself! Men of genius, whose great occupation is to be conversant with the inspirations of Nature, made up a factitious one among themselves, and assumed that they could operate without the intervention of the occult original. But Nature would not be mocked; and whenever this race of idolaters have worked without her agency, she has afflicted them ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... coral, and apply to the belly the plaster of bread, the stomach cerate, or bread dipped in hot wine; or take oil of mastich, quinces, mint, wormwood, each half an ounce; of nutmegs by expression, half a drachm; chemical oil of mint, three drops. Coral hath an occult property to prevent vomiting, and is ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... allowed their pictorial wisdom to pass for a revealed science, for a physics of the unseen. If even among the pagans the poetic expression of human experience could be mistaken in this way for knowledge of occult existences, how much more must this have been the case among a more ignorant and a more intense nation like the Jews? Indeed, events are what the Jews have always remembered and hoped for; if their religion was not a guide to events, an assured means towards a positive and experimental salvation, ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... by Theodoric of the means of justification, and rigorously confined in the tower of Pavia, while the senate, at the distance of five hundred miles, pronounced a sentence of confiscation and death against the most illustrious of its members. At the command of the Barbarians, the occult science of a philosopher was stigmatized with the names of sacrilege and magic. [96] A devout and dutiful attachment to the senate was condemned as criminal by the trembling voices of the senators themselves; and their ingratitude deserved ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... doing 'What is Wrong' all this morning." And one minister of religion moved quite sharply in his chair when I told him (as he understood it) that I had to run upstairs and do what was wrong, but should be down again in a minute. Exactly of what occult vice they silently accused me I cannot conjecture, but I know of what I accuse myself; and that is, of having written a very shapeless and inadequate book, and one quite unworthy to be dedicated to you. ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... become with Malthus, as with Darwin, the normal results of admitted conditions. Godwin had admitted that there was some 'principle which kept population on a level with subsistence.' 'The sole question is,' says Malthus,[261] 'what is this principle? Is it some obscure and occult cause? a mysterious interference of heaven,' inflicting barrenness at certain periods? or 'a cause open to our researches and within our view?' Other writers had had recourse to the miraculous. One of Malthus's ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... elation and with very little gratitude. In some occult fashion, Nick was making it horribly awkward for him. He longed to change the subject, but could find nothing to say—possibly because Nick quite obviously had not ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... hastily, thus averting what would have been a calamity to all earnest students of the occult. The advertisement, it is true, had specifically mentioned one dollar as the accustomed honorarium, but this ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... as a natural and sometimes as an occult cure. One who has tried it and other herbs, says: 'Indeed the porter did me good, and good that I'd hardly like to tell you, not to make a scandal. Did I drink too much of it? Not at all. But this long time I am feeling a worm in my side that ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... of grace one thousand one hundred and seventy-four, by the just but occult judgment of God, the Church of Christ at Canterbury was consumed by fire, in the forty-fourth year from its dedication, that glorious choir, to wit, which had been so magnificently completed by the care and ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... of Wesleyan missionaries in the Sandwich Islands. Then she had to find her glasses, and considerable delay was incurred by putting them on upside down. All this while the Rector sat glaring at her as if in some occult way she were responsible for the disaster in ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... movement towards a national unity which would embrace all classes and creeds to the forgetfulness of past wrongs, animosities and deep divisions. It seemed to have got into their minds that the appearance of the Irish Reform Association covered some occult plot between Lord Dunraven, Mr Wyndham, Sir Antony MacDonnell and Mr O'Brien. Mr Davitt declared that "No party or leader can consent to accept the Dunraven substitute without betraying a national trust." Others of lesser note denounced the new movement and its ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... but neither of them could understand him. I have never, however, been able to make up my mind whether the point of the story told against him or against them. [420] Although Burton was a student of occult science, I could never lead him to talk about crystals or kindred subjects; and this gave me the idea that he was perhaps pledged to secrecy. Still, he related his experiences freely in print." Oddly, enough, Burton used to call Mr. ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... was in progress in 1510.[46] In the second work Agrippa repents of having wasted time on the magic of the first; but all those who actually deal with demons are destined to eternal fire with Jamnes and Mambres and Simon Magus. This means, as is the fact, that his occult philosophy did not actually enter upon black magic, but confined itself to the power of the stars, of numbers, etc. The fourth book, which appeared after the death of Agrippa, and really concerns dealing with evil spirits, is undoubtedly spurious. It is very difficult to make ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... I remained at home, and one evening when, during the course of a gay party, the conversation came around to the subject of mysticism and occult occurrences, I dished up my story of the enigmatical manuscript. The Unknown, the Occult, was the rage just then, and my story was received with great applause and called forth numerous quotations as to 'more things in ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... inconvenient, but I already love it to distraction, and feel as if I should sit up all night for the first month to enjoy the sensation of being no longer that horrid thing, a resident of the suburbs. I hunt the paper shops and collect samples of odd and occult pattern, and compare them with carpets, and am altogether in my element, only longing for the time to come when I may put together my pots and pans and betake me across the mill-dam. Meantime, Roslein is living in a state of quarantine. She is not permitted to speak with any other children, or even ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... poetry of Walt Whitman obeys inflexible, occult laws, the laws commanded unto it by his own creative instinct. We need, as Nietzsche says, to learn the art of "commands" of this kind! Transvaluers of old values do not spend all their time sipping absinthe. ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... Chastity Zorastrianism on the Septenary Constitution of Man Brahmanism on the Sevenfold Principle in Man The Septenary Principle in Esotericism Personal and Impersonal God Prakriti and Parusha Morality and Pantheism Occult Study Some Inquiries Suggested by Mr. Sinnett's "Esoteric Buddhism" Sakya Muni's Place in History Inscriptions Discovered by General A. Cunningham Discrimination of Spirit and Not-Spirit Was Writing Known ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... of philosophers and commanders will some time or other be needed, at the very idea of which everything that has existed in the way of occult, terrible and benevolent [!] beings might look pale and dwarfed. The image of such leaders hovers before our eyes.... The conditions which one would have partly to create and partly to utilize for their genesis [include] a transvaluation of values, under the new pressure ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... structures has the effect of pushing the thickened membrane further between the bones of the joint than occurs in a like condition elsewhere, leading, of course, to a lameness that is marked in degree but occult as to cause. ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... of such bliss is diffusive; it seemed as if all the living creatures around understood. In the thick, green branches the birds began to twitter the secret, and certainly the wise, wise bees knew also, in some occult way, of the love and joy that had just been revealed. A wonderful humming and buzzing filled the hives, and the air vibrated with the movement of wings. Some influence more swift and secret than the birds of the air carried the matter further, for it finally reached Royal, the ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... But scarcely had it taken two steps and reached the depth of its knees, when, from the intenser cold, or from coming sharply against a submerged stone, or from indignation at the fiddler's prod, or from the occult cause known as pure devilment, it shied up its back legs, and tossed down its tousled head, and pitched the musician ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... expedient of impersonating the criminal's victim—a murdered woman—and appearing to him at night before a concealed witness. But spirits are doomed. The present extraordinary wave of superstition and the immense prosperity of the dealers in the 'occult' is a direct result of the war. They are profiteers—every one of them—crystal gazers, mediums, fortune tellers, and the rest. They are reaping a rare harvest for the moment. We punish the humbler rogues, but we don't punish the fools who go to ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... the adaptation of the new photography to brain study. The relation of the new rays to thought rays is being eagerly discussed in what may be called the non-exact circles and journals; and all that numerous group of inquirers into the occult, the believers in clairvoyance, spiritualism, telepathy, and kindred orders of alleged phenomena, are confident of finding in the new force long-sought facts in proof of their claims. Professor Neusser in Vienna has photographed gallstones in the liver of ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... for some time, for never could we refer to that Vision—whether an objective fact, or an impression communicated from one spirit to the other by the occult force of intense sympathy—save by such allusion; and the remembrance never failed to affect us both with a feeling too deep for words. Eveena ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... such sacrifices. From it runs a little crack in the boulder, which has been artificially enlarged and may have been intended to carry off the blood of the victim killed on top of the rock. It is still used for occult ceremonies of obscure origin which are quietly practiced here by the more superstitious Indian women of the valley, possibly in memory of the nusta or Inca princess for whom ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... done so they continued to look at each other without speaking, after the manner of old friends possessed of occult means of communication; and as the result of this inward colloquy Mr. Langhope at length said: "Well, what ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... man was no longer talking at random, but slowly, with his eyes on the collar he held in his hand, like a scholar in his closet, perusing the occult pages ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the charm with which they're fraught; He may be a friend of Nature And may understand her laws; He may prove embryo creature Has within itself a "cause"; He may fathom all creation And dwell among the stars, Visit every land and nation And return with honor's scars; Yet he may lack a power,— Occult to scientific truth— Which is Heaven's richest dower To the guides of ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... the ground, when they are in their flight over certain 'neighbouring fields hereabouts: a relation I should not have made, if I had not received it from several credible men. But those who are less inclined to heed superstition, attribute it to some occult quality in the ground, and to somewhat of antipathy between it and the geese, such as they say is betwixt wolves and scyllaroots: for that such hidden tendencies and aversions, as we call sympathies and antipathies, are implanted in many things by provident Nature ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... upheld the State; they have successfully resisted the open assaults of the invader, and frustrated the occult machinations of the traitors in our midst. We have great generals, but what were they without great men to obey them? Generals have fallen, and divisions and brigades have fought on without them. Regiments have lost their field officers and continued the fight, and companies have ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... delicate one. This much is certain, she cannot have any sense that other people may not have, and the existence of a special sense is not evident to her or to any one who knows her. Miss Keller is distinctly not a singular proof of occult and mysterious theories, and any attempt to explain her in that way fails to reckon with her normality. She is no more mysterious and complex than any other person. All that she is, all that she has ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... that Anne Turner made coin out of the notes which her late husband, so inquisitive of mind, had left on matters much more occult than the manufacture of yellow starch and skin lotions. "It was also rumoured,'' says Mr Sabatini, "that she amassed gold in another and less licit manner: that she dabbled in fortune-telling and the arts of divination.'' We shall see, as the story develops, that the ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... not merely an impression of beauty, but a mood in the soul. The grand old landscape gardeners, those Buddhist monks who first introduced the art into Japan, and subsequently developed it into an almost occult science, carried their theory yet farther than this. They held it possible to express moral lessons in the design of a garden, and abstract ideas, such as Chastity, Faith, Piety, Content, Calm, and Connubial Bliss. Therefore were gardens contrived ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... each other, but they never betrayed any coolness. Even had they desired it, they would have been held in awe by fear of Napoleon, who insisted on harmony in his court. Still, there could be distinguished at the Tuileries two parties in occult opposition, belonging respectively to the old and to the new nobility. At the head of the first stood the Count and the Countess of Montesquieu; of the second, the Duchess of Montebello, to whom the Empress's preference gave great authority. Madame Durand says that ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... truth he spoke was too mighty to be narrowed within the limits of half-blinded men. And in such a subject as we are to study to-day, certain grooves have been made, certain ruts as it were, in which the human mind is running, and I know that in laying before you the occult truth, I must needs, at some points, come into clash with details of a tradition that is rather repeated by memory than either understood or the truths beneath it grasped. Pardon me then, my brothers, if in a speech on this great topic I should ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... girls, factory girls—all had told her their troubles; and men of every condition had come to scoff and had remained to express, more or less offensively, their admiration. Some of the younger of these, after a first visit, returned the day following, and each begged the beautiful priestess of the occult to fly with him, to live with him, to marry him. When this happened Vera would touch a button, and "Mannie" Day, who admitted visitors, and later, in the hall, searched their hats and umbrellas for initials, came on the run and threw the infatuated ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... any crime so dark or desperate of which, in the excitement of thus acting upon the imaginations of others, he would not have hinted that he had been guilty; and it has sometimes occurred to me that the occult cause of his lady's separation from him, round which herself and her legal adviser have thrown such formidable mystery, may have been nothing more, after all, than some imposture of this kind, some dimly hinted confession of undefined horrors, which, though intended by the relater ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... in their respective and characteristic manners, the Oneidas eating like gentlemen and talking together in their low and musical voices; the Wyandotte gobbling and stuffing his cheeks like a chipmunk. The Stockbridge Mole, noiseless and mum as the occult and furry animal which gave to him his name, nibbled sparingly all alone by himself, and read in ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... two countries, we find at the outset a striking difference. The Chinese did not conceive any creator, ineffable, formless, living in space; whereas the Japanese imagined a great central Kami and two producing powers, invisible and working by occult processes. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... his and they were silent. Presently the boy, as if acted upon by some occult influence of the girl, said ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... minor Upanishads, "the hundred-and-eight" as they are called. Then comes the enormous mass of literature called the Tantras. These books have an evil significance in the ordinary English ear, but not quite rightly. The Tantras are very useful books, very valuable and instructive; all occult science is to be found in them. But they are divisible into three classes: those that deal with white magic, those that deal with black magic, and those that deal with what we may call grey magic, a mixture of the two. Now magic is the word ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... June, 1791, were parties situated, such the men and things in the midst of which the irresistible spirit of a vast social renovation advanced with occult and continuous impulse. What but contention, anarchy, crime, and death, could emanate from such elements! No party had the reason, no mind had the genius, no soul had the virtue, no arm had the energy, to control this chaos, and extract from it justice, truth, and strength. Things will only ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... necessary to point out—surprising though the necessity be—that, if the biometrical conclusion be valid, what it demonstrates must surely be not the occult working of certain changes in the germ-plasm, for instance, of a father, because a certain number of his germ-cells, after separation from his body, have gone to form new individuals (changes which would ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... club-houses, it is well; promote the building of more like them. But if they never taught you any thing, and never made you happier as you passed beneath them, do not think they have any mysterious goodness of occult sublimity. Have done with the wretched affectation, the futile barbarism, of pretending to enjoy; for, as surely as you know that the meadow grass, meshed with fairy rings, is better than the wood pavement cut into ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... one evening when his watch was done sauntered Con. His professional curiosity had been stirred by these occult bartenders at whose bar none drank, and who daily drew upon Kenealy's store of liquors to follow their ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... affirmation of absolute reality independent of the conditions of the process of knowing? Do we mean to ... affirm, in language savouring strongly of scholasticism, that beneath the phenomena which we call subjective there is an occult substratum Mind, and beneath the phenomena which we call objective there is an occult substratum Matter? Our conclusion cannot be stated in any such form.... Our conclusion is simply this, that no theory of ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... almost every generation, in almost every country, in almost every city. She is not a typical adventuress, she is not a genius. The reason for her strong power is occult. The nameless charm is found as often in homely, clumsy, dull, old masculine women as in ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
... the struggle for Catholic emancipation, Toryism and High-Church principles were associated against Whigs and Dissenters. By that kind of dumb instinct which outruns reason, the Whig had learnt that there was some occult bond of union between the claims of a priesthood and the claims of a monarchy. The old maxim, 'No bishop, no king,' suggested the opposite principle that you must keep down the clergy if you would limit the monarchy. The natural interpretation of this prejudice into political theory, ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... antiquity can consecrate some follies, they are of very ancient date. They were classed, among the Hebrews, among the cabalistic sciences; they pretended to discover occult qualities in proper names; it was an oriental practice; and was caught by the Greeks. Plato had strange notions of the influence of Anagrams when drawn out of persons' names; and the later Platonists are full of the mysteries of the anagrammatic virtues ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... the other's as completely as would have been the case if he were invested with a power to charm in some occult way. Moreover, every trace of his amiable, confiding smile was gone. His gaze was hard and cold and gleaming. His face was drawn into grim lines. When he spoke he talked smoothly, rapidly, and with an edge to his words which convinced ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... and poetry, and the occult, and Tagore and the Russian novelists, and the Russian music," Harriet said, "he lectures about them and he has been extremely successful! He wears pongee coats and red ties, and has his hair long, and—well, you never saw women act so ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... to the girl, and he brought a cloying odor of frangipani, bergamot and vervain. His nostrils quivered, his face had taken on an odd pinched look, for all that he smiled as over some occult jest. Graciosa was a little frightened by his bearing, which was both furtive ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... Smiths' cabin, had seen awful apparitions and been glad to fly from the place, leaving their property behind. There was a story of diabolical influence which Smith had exercised in order to gain the young wife whom he had stolen from her father's roof, and, worse than all, there were descriptions of occult rites carried on in secret places, where the most bloody mysteries of the Mosaic priesthood were horribly travestied by Smith and his friends, Cowdery and Rigdon, in order to dupe the simple into belief in ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... satisfactorily demonstrated that some wiseacre cannot be found to disprove it, . . hence it happens my friend..." and his face assumed its wonted careless expression ... "that we men whose common-sense is offended by priestly hypocrisy and occult necromantic jugglery,—we, who perhaps in our innermost heart of hearts ardently desire to believe in a supreme Divinity and the grandly progressive Sublime Intention of the Universe, but who, discovering naught but ignoble Cant and Imposture everywhere, are incontinently ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... taken fortune at the flood and secured De Forest at last, Bell Masters was embarked on another kind of craft, a thorough-going, fully-freighted flirtation, all sails set; and through the trees were glimpses of lazily moving figures beyond, generally in twos and twos, following some occult rule of common division peculiar to picnics. By degrees the children wandered off up the bank, and presently there came a shout, followed by an evident squabble. Phebe looked around uneasily. Gerald kept on with ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... some occult reason (which I have entirely forgotten) I trusted fervently that a Hungarian or Polish name might be given after the satisfactory "Yes" had been spelt out, but, alas! nothing ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... took a great interest in occult phenomena, and was for some time an enthusiastic member of the "Psychical Society." It was his interest in ghosts that led to his meeting with the artist Mr. Heaphy, who had painted a picture of a ghost which he himself had seen. I quote the following ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood |
