"Trance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... came, The world no longer was the same. I still had pleasures:—who could live Without the healing aid they give? But, as a plant surcharg'd with rain, When radiant sunshine comes again, Just wakes from a benumbing trance, I caught a feverish, fitful glance. The dove, that for a weary time Had mourn'd the rigour of the clime, And, with its head beneath its wing, Awaited a more genial spring, Went forth again to search around, And ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... childhood she showed an intense and ever-increasing devotion to things holy; her delight in prayer became almost a passion. She never wearied of visiting the churches in and about her native village, and she passed many an hour in a kind of rapt trance before the crucifixes and saintly images in these churches. Every morning saw her at her accustomed place at the early celebration of her Lord's Sacrifice; and if in the afternoon the evening bells sounded across the fields, ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... Sixteen years ago, when I first landed in Bombay, I had been told by a wandering Armenian of the existence, somewhere in India, of a place to which such Hindus as had the misfortune to recover from trance or catalepsy were conveyed and kept, and I recollect laughing heartily at what I was then pleased to consider a traveler's tale. Sitting at the bottom of the sand-trap, the memory of Watson's Hotel, with its swinging punkahs, white-robed attendants, and the sallow-faced Armenian, ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... she was alone, in words, of which she would not have believed herself capable. With hot brow and dry eyes she paced her little chamber, sat down on the bed, staring into vacancy, sprang up and paced again: but she went into no trance—she dare not. The grief was too great; she felt that, if she once gave way enough to lose her self-possession, she should go mad. And the first, and perhaps not the least good effect of that fiery trial was, that it compelled ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... of Bithynia, a famous Grecian physician of the second century B. C., who practised at Rome, systematically employed the "induced trance" in the treatment of certain affections. Probably he considered this method to conform with certain principles which he advocated. For he professed that a physician's duty consisted in healing his patients safely, speedily, and pleasantly; and as he met with considerable success, ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... because, to the understanding of the eleventh century, the evidence at hand indicated that he embodied in a high degree the infinite energy. The eleventh century was intensely imaginative and the evidence which appealed to it was those phenomena of trance, hypnotism, and catalepsy which are as mysterious now as they were then, but whose effect was then to create an overpowering demand for miracle-working substances. The sale of these substances gradually drew ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... Everidge keep the rooms in dainty order; drove with her along the grass-bordered roads, while ears and eyes feasted on the symphonies of Nature and the ever changing beauty of the hills; or stood beside Joanna in a trance of delight out in the fragrant dairy, whose windows opened into a wild sweetness of fluttering leaves, and whose cool stone floor made a channel for a purling brook, watching her as with dexterous hands she shaped and moulded the bubbley dough or tossed up an omelet or made one of her delicious ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... gathering herself for the effort, she sang that famous canticle to the Virgin which, tradition says, saved Stradella's life from assassins. "How beautiful it is!" he exclaimed. "My God! how very beautiful!" Again she sang to him, and the dying musician passed into a trance, from which he never fully aroused till he expired, two days afterward, in the arms of his ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... Navajos of espionage and had them taken by surprise and imprisoned in an underground foul den. Then met the chiefs of the tribe in their estufa, or secret meeting place, to pass judgment on the culprits. The old medicine chief smoked himself into a trance in order to receive special instructions from the great Spirit regarding the degree of punishment to be inflicted on the unlucky Navajos. After sleeping several hours, he awoke and announced that he had dreamed the Navajos were to be clubbed to death. After sunrise the next morning ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... service is read over them, and they are hidden in the earth. After poor Ivan has seen the faces of his wife and sister still and pale in their coffins, their ghastly wounds concealed as much as possible, flowers upon them and the priest praying over them, his trance of misery is broken, the grasp of despair is loosened a little about his heart. Yet hardly does he notice whether the sun shines or no, or care whether he lives or dies. Slowly his senses steady themselves from the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... taking a deep breath as if rousing from a trance, "that is best. Child—see to it, and have your way. Senor, will you arrange that the senora has what comfort there is here? Our horses wait, ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... up again by the prison surgeon, who happened to be in the place; and the governor's wife and servant, kind people both, were with the patient. Esmond saw his mistress still in the room when he awoke from his trance; but she went away without a word; though the governor's wife told him that she sat in her room for some time afterward, and did not leave the prison until she heard that Esmond was likely to ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... reward of patient grain, He sowed his soul with hopes of swifter gain, Then sat him down and waited for the rain. He sailed in borrowed ships of usury— foolish Jason on a treacherous sea, Seeking the Fleece and finding misery. Lulled by smooth-rippling loans, in idle trance He lay, content that unthrift Circumstance Should plough for him the stony field of Chance. Yea, gathering crops whose worth no man might tell, He staked his life on a game of Buy-and-Sell, And turned each field into a gambler's hell. Aye, as each year began, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... long hath been The trance of Nature on the naked bier Where ruthless Winter mocked her slumbers drear And rent with icy hand her robes of green, That trance is brightly broken! Glossy trees, Resplendent meads and variegated flowers Flash in the sun and flutter in the breeze And now with ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... MIMOGRAPHERS, AND PANTOMIME.—Amidst all the splendor of the Latin literature of this period, dramatic poetry never recovered from the trance into which it had fallen, though the stage had not altogether lost its popularity. Aesopus and Roscius, the former the great tragic actor, and the latter the favorite comedian, in the time of Cicero, enjoyed his friendship and that of other great men, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... Judd stood eyeing each other, the news seeming too good to be true. Finally McCabe broke the trance by running across and ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman
... him upon a bed ere he breathed his last. Some pretty verses, attributed to Alaric A. Watts, commemorate a similar incident, said to have happened to two sisters who were nuns at Beverley Minister. They disappeared one evening after vespers. After some months they were found in a trance in the north tower. On being aroused they declared they had been admitted into Paradise, whither they would return before morning. They died in the night; and the beautiful monument called the Sisters' Shrine still witnesses to the truth ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... his lips in the form of an inconsequent question. But before he could even frame the sentence, the thought that prompted it had slipped back into the deeper consciousness he had just left behind with the trance of deep sleep. ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... After a few ineffectual attempts to open it, Mrs. Lane went into the parlour, and, standing there, debated for some moments whether she should leave the house by passing through the bar-room, or wait for another opportunity to get away by the private en-trance. While still bewildered and undetermined the landlady ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur
... was forty years old he went one day to a mountain called Hira which was not far from Mecca. And here a trance came upon him and in the night he believed that he saw the angel Gabriel. The angel was surrounded by a flaming aureole and in his hand he held a scroll of fire from which he commanded Mohammed to ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... on account of the pony, whose life was a strenuous one, owing to the variety of Jewel's attentions,—Anna Belle was petted with extra fondness when her turn came; and she sat at table now in a pleasing trance, her smile an impartial benediction ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... thrown her into a trance, hoping she would die, and that the king would then marry her daughter; but on the king speaking to her, the spell was broken. The queen told the king how cruelly she had been treated by her stepmother, and on hearing this he became very angry, and had the witch and her daughter brought to ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... O'Kweene, the great Irish philosopher, who was delivering to me, for my own special behoof and benefit, a brilliant, albeit somewhat abstruse, dissertation on the "visible and palpable outward manifestations of the inner consciousness of the soul in a trance;" which occupied all the time from Paris to Calais, full eight hours, and which, to judge from my feelings at the time, would certainly afford matter for three heavy volumes of reading in bed, in cases of inveterate sleeplessness—a hint to ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... gallantry, that literature contains or is likely ever to contain. The songwriting faculty of the English, which had broken out some half century before, and had produced so many masterpieces, was near its death, or at least near the trance from which Burns and Blake revived it more than a century later, which even Dryden's superhuman faculty of verse could only galvanise. But at the last it threw off by the mouths of men, who otherwise seem to have had very ordinary poetical powers, this little group of triumphs in song, to ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... is, that the compilers of the New Testament were pious, simple-minded, excellent enthusiasts, who sincerely, but not the less falsely, mistook natural phenomena for supernatural miracles. What more easy than to suppose people dead when they were not, and who were merely recovered from a swoon or trance? than to imagine the blind, deaf, or dumb to be miraculously healed, when in fact they were cured by medical skill? than to fancy the blaze of a flambeau to be a star, and to shape thunder into articulate speech, and so on? Christ was no miracle-worker, ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... he issued from his house in one of the small alleys, staff in hand, and with a curious kind of horn or whistle. This he blew as he walked along, from time to time, without turning his head, in that strange trance of passivity which distinguishes the Valencian peasant. Out from dark corners, narrow passages, mud hovels on all sides, came tearing along little pigs, big pigs, dark, light, fat, thin pigs,—pigs of every description,—and ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... herself carefully each day for that approach to the English camp at Point Levi which the tide accomplished. Her features could be distinguished half a mile. On the days when Colonel Fraser's fezlike plumed bonnet was lifted to her in the camp, she went up the river again in a trance of quiet. On other days the habitantes laughed, and said to one another, "Mademoiselle will certainly break through the ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... raising the heavy lids of his eyes, like a man coming out of a trance, presented to him and to the others a face which, in spite of its flushed and swollen ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... still in her trance of song, waved them to quiet again as they stood grouped about the Queen, in the very mood of the closing scene, creating an atmosphere of restrained passion, through which the voice of the improvisatrice throbbed and pulsated ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... reflections throughout that weary night; the stars that in their constellations had occupied the zenith, now have passed the horizon's verge; other and fresh glittering bands now occupy their former places—at last the dawn begins to glimmer in the east, and just as I could have fallen into the trance of sleep, it was time for the race for life, again to wander on, so soon as ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... which, awaking from its rapturous trance, found itself sold to a foreign, a despotic, a Popish court, defeated on its own seas and rivers by a state of far inferior resources and placed under the rule of pandars and buffoons. Our ancestors saw the best and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the smoke, the crash—the cry for quarter, mingled with the shout of victory, the flying enemy—are all commingled in my mind, but leave no trace of clearness or connection between them; and it was only when the column wheeled to re-form that I awoke from my trance of maddening excitement, and perceived that we had carried the position and cut off ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... attentively to his speech, partly because he is not attending to it himself, his thoughts being busy with the approaching crisis of his fortune, and drawn away to the other matters which he has in hand, and partly because in her trance of wonder at what he is relating she seems abstracted and self-withdrawn from the matter of his discourse. His own absent-mindedness on this occasion is aptly and artfully indicated by his broken and disjointed manner of speech. That his tongue and thought ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... close of his address. Anna shook Ivan, and Ivan came out of the trance which the President's words had brought upon him. He sat up ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... seemed to have gradually sunk into a kind of trance, rose slowly to his feet, and, with fixed, glassy eyes staring straight before him, began to mutter to himself in a voice pitched so low that at first I could distinguish nothing of what he said. Then he began to glide slowly round ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... felt seemed nothing. His angel spoke. It seemed as though he heard words spoken from another world in a heaven-like trance. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... and all life lay in trance On floor or pallet, blanketed to chin, Each in his mask of sullen-seeming death— Fond souls that recked not what was in the air, Else had the dead man's scabbard as it clashed Against the balustrade, then on the tiles, Brought awkward witness. One base hind there was ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... as I proceed with these mnemonic scraps from my diary, and try to cast them into shape, a curious change come over me. I feel as one waking from a trance, and all the numbed faculties revive and assert their power; and all the thoughts and desires, yea, even the capabilities of thirty years ago, come back and seem to claim their rightful places, as a deposed king would ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... and in a few moments was asleep. Once more Brenton struggled to awake, but with no effect. He heard the clock strike three, and then four, and then five, but there was no apparent change in his dream. He feared that he might be in a trance, from which, perhaps, he would not awake until it was too late. Grey daylight began to brighten the window, and he noticed that snow was quietly falling outside, the flakes noiselessly beating against the window pane. Every one slept late that morning, but at last ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr
... easily imitated by rogues. Since then we have learned that there are many forms of mediumship, so different from each other that an expert at one may have no powers at all at the other. The automatic writer, the clairvoyant, the crystal-seer, the trance speaker, the photographic medium, the direct voice medium, and others, are all, when genuine, the manifestations of one force, which runs through varied channels as it did in the gifts ascribed to the disciples. ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... The awkward pause following the recitation was suddenly broken by a loud and uncontrollable laugh. Doris, startled, turned to look at young Dunstable. For it was he who had laughed. Madame also shook off her stage trance to look—a thunderous frown upon her handsome face. The young man laughed on—laughed hysterically—burying his face in his hands. Madame Vavasour—all attitudes thrown aside—ran up to him in ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... the shops Joe worked as in a trance. Every iron rivet that he drove into a wooden hoop was duly informed of the romantic occurrence of the morning, and as some four thousand rivets are fastened into four thousand hoops in the course of one day, ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... tingling with my elation over my prospects of winning Vedia, for I felt sure of her personal favor, and the two notes from my great neighbors had thrown me into a sort of trance of rapture. I was genuinely pleased with the frugality, diligence and skill of my tenants. My estate was in a way to return far more than I had expected of it. I was in a position to be liberal, I ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... gleaming hilt, girt for the fray Freedom demands, he cannot stay: Forward his motion, keen his glance: 'Tis victory painted in a trance. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... many others, and trembled; rose up with every emotion petrified; counted the spots on the carpet; looked piteously up at the cornice; heard the fans creak in the pews near him; felt thankful to a fly that lit on his face, as if something familiar at last had come to break an awful trance; heard faintly a reading of the Articles of Faith; wondered whether he should be struck dead for not feeling more—whether he should go to hell for touching the bread and wine that he did not dare to take nor to refuse; spent the morning service uncertain whether dreaming, ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... waked from a trance, pressed her slender thin hands to her eyes for an instant, and then taking the molds up in herleft hand she raised the ladle with her right, filled them from it, knocked the molded balls out by a tap on the floor, and repeated the process with such dexterous quickness that ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... the Enchantress has folded and folded the world in her web, it is by all means the course to take. Your staff rings on the hard ground; the road, a misty white belt, gleams and vanishes before you; the woods are cavernous and still; the fields lie in a lunar trance, and you will yourself return fairly mesmerized by the beauty of ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... fiftene nicht Full lang before the dayis licht I lay intill a trance And then I saw baith Heaven and Hell Me thocht, amang the fiendis fell Mahoun gart cry ane dance Of shrews that were never shriven,[110] Agains the feast of Fastern's even,[111] To mak their observance. He bad gallants gae graith a gyis,[112] ...
— English Satires • Various
... if from a trance. Lashing the sheet to the pole which served as a gunwale, he laid the sleeping child by her mother, and tearing up the strip of bark on which he had been sitting, moved to ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... ransomed Tennessee? Is she floating on a lotus-leaf in Florida lagoons? Has she drunk Nepenthe in the orange-groves? Is she chasing golden apples under the magnolias? Are you toying with the tangles of her hair in the bright sea-foam? O, rouse her from her trance, loose the fetters from her lovely limbs, and speed her to our Northern skies, that ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... impressively, "I've been in a sort of trance. I think I must be going to be ill. I've always been fond of you, but I didn't want to spoil you. But yesterday, about half-past three, I was talking about you to Mr. Lewson, at the fair, and quite ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... silken running-suit. He was numb and cold. His hands performed their duties to be sure, but his brain was idle. All he knew was that he had been betrayed and all was lost. He heard Glass panting instructions into his ear, but they made no impression upon him. In a dull trance he followed his trainer back to the track, his eyes staring, his bones like water. Not until he heard the welcoming shout of the Flying Heart henchmen did he realize that the worst was yet to come. He heard Larry still coaching ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... attack of rheumatism. His legs got well, but he did not. He was different afterward, as if he had fallen into a trance. He seemed always to look and speak across a space of which he was not conscious. He filled his appointments after a fashion during the remainder of the year at the Bowtown district, but he grew increasingly forgetful of people and ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... dressing-gowns of every shape, hue, and material, with buff slippers—the "regulation Margate shoeing," both for men and women. As the hour of eleven approached, and the church bells began to ring, the town seemed to awaken suddenly from a trance, and bonnets the most superb, and dresses the most extravagant, poured forth from lodgings the most miserable. Having shaved and dressed himself with more than ordinary care and attention, Mr. Jorrocks ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... this hemisphere has managed to evolve them out of its original material nobody can explain. And young Mallett, recently from the older hemisphere, was still in a happy trance of surprise at ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... the room the sergeant took up the glass of spirits he had poured out, and kneeling down by Fletcher again, raised his head and tried to pour a little down his throat. Burleigh, sitting in his corner, watched like one in a trance. He saw the constable return with the breathless surgeon, saw the three men bending over Fletcher, and then saw the eyes of the dying man open and the lips of the dying man move. He was conscious that the sergeant made some ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... Launcelot lay as in a trance. At the end of that time he came to himself, and found those about him that had tended him in his swoon. These, when they had given him fresh raiment, brought him to the aged king—Pelles was his name—that owned that castle. The king ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... love, let music's sound In melting cadence float around, While, my young Venus, thou and I Responsive to its murmurs sigh. Then, waking from our blissful trance, Again we'll sport, again ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... that's thrue!" ejaculated Barney, who stood staring at the whole proceeding like one in a trance. "Did ye iver ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... not keep her eyes from the gold, which somehow held her tongue still, yet I knew she was hearing every word that was said, although she made no comment. Lady Mary shook herself, as if to arouse herself from a trance, then she said in ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... was at least the Cyclops' case, until, Whether the boy beguiled the Child away, Or whether that limp Matron on the Hill Woke from her novel-reading trance, one day He waited long and wearily in vain,— But, from that hour, they ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... the play progressed she envied passionately the Duke who seemed criminally stupid in his misunderstanding of Viola's love. The surprise of the play was Genevieve Singleton's Malvolio. Even Judith was moved out of her trance of adoration to laughter ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... men; shame upon you!" cried I, emerging from the temporary trance of stupefaction which seemed to have seized me while this frightful tragedy was in progress. "You have taken a human life, and branded yourselves as murderers. And for what? Simply because that poor craven of a fellow appropriated ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... down between the horns of a bleached buffalo skull, but Venning stood like one in a trance. His hand had been swallowed up by a huge palm and thick iron-like fingers, and he was staring down on a pair of the broadest shoulders he had seen, with an arching chest to match. This was the pigmy he had imagined—this man with the shoulders of ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... little book will be fortunate far beyond its deserts if it tempts a few readers to extend the circle of their visionary acquaintances, of friends who, like Brahma, know not birth, nor decay, "sleep, waking, nor trance." ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... of the room, without ever changing her position, without occupation of any kind, without uttering a word, or breathing a sigh. I soon discovered that she was not lost in thought, at these periods (as I had at first supposed): but lost in a strange lethargy of body and mind; a comfortless, waking trance, into which she fell from sheer physical weakness—it was like the vacancy and feebleness of a first convalescence, after a long illness. She never changed: never looked better, never worse. I often spoke to her: I tried hard to show my sympathy, and win her confidence and friendship. ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... top of his voice, "Dem s'ords an' dem famines!" After nearly an hour of this intense excitement, the congregation was dismissed, one of them, at least, more dead than alive; for "Aunt Ceely," who had long been known as "er pow'ful sinful ooman," had fallen into a trance, whether real or assumed must be determined by wiser heads than mine; for it was no uncommon occurrence for those "seekin' 'ligion" to lie in a state of unconsciousness for several hours, and, on their return to ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... to awake and wander There, and with delight to take and render, Through the trance of silence, Quiet breath; Lo! for there among the flowers and grasses, Only the mightier movement sounds and passes; Only winds and ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... was eminently right. After the Flood, who should be alive in the land except the Gods that made it—the Gods to whom his village prayed nightly—the Gods who were in all men's mouths and about all men's ways? He could not raise his head or stir a finger for the trance that held him, and Peroo was smiling vacantly at ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... Margie Harrison? Through the dull, stormy day she had been whirled along like the wind. The train was an express, and made few stoppages. Margie took little note of anything which occurred. She sat in her hard seat like one in a trance, and paid no heed to the lapse of time, until the piteous whining of Leo warned her that night was near, and the poor dog was hungry. At the first stopping-place she purchased some bread and meat for him, but nothing for herself. She could ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... ready too, If you have lost in play. You're even welcome to my handsome slave, With jet black hair, and eyes so grave." "No!" said the other, "I need naught, But ere I slept to-night, I thought, Being in a trance, that you were sad, And as the thought nigh drove me mad, I hurried to your tent, And ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... Mrs. Piper, uttered, in the year 1899 words which were recorded by Dr. Hodgson at the time. She was speaking in trance upon the future of spiritual religion, and she said: "In the next century this will be astonishingly perceptible to the minds of men. I will also make a statement which you will surely see verified. Before ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle
... image of the 'Mountain of Light.' A dazzling splendour lighted up the features of the divine countenance. Hiouen-thsang was lost in contemplation and wonder, and would not turn his eyes away from the sublime and incomparable object.... After he awoke from his trance, he called in six men, and commanded them to light a fire in the cave, in order to burn incense; but, as the approach of the light made the shadow of Buddha disappear, the fire was extinguished. Then five of the men saw the shadow, but the sixth ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... woman—the only woman. Before you came I was content. Since we met, I have been in torment. You woke me up. When a man is roused from a trance it gives him pain. You brought pain to me— sleeplessness, discontent, a craving that grew and grew. I wished we had never met—you had upset my life; I believed that I hated you for it. Delphine ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... look of comfortable self-absorption which a woman invariably wears when she is among strangers, and when she feels herself to be well dressed and making a satisfactory public appearance. She comes out of her trance with a start on discovering that the car has passed her corner or is about to pass it. All flurried, she arises and signals the conductor that she is alighting here. From her air and her expression, we may gather that, mentally, ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... there were no stars visible—a gray mist covered the whole firmament. He directed his view downwards to the horizon, and that, too, was not to be defined; there was a dark bank all around it. He walked to the edge of the sand-bank; there was not even a ripple—the wide ocean appeared to be in a trance, in a state of ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... considered till it became not too unreasonably early to get up. It was dark, but there was a little light close to the window: she had no writing-paper, but she would interline her old exercise-book. Down she ran, and crouching in the school-room window-seat, she wrote on in a trance of eager composition, till Norman called her, as he went to school, to help him ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... to have been in a trance, or a dream, ever since you gave me that composing draught! What was it—opium, hasheesh, amyle—what? And, mother, how much was real and how much was dream that I have passed through? It seems like the phantasmagoria of a midnight orgie—through which only one thing ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... enough—whereby he strove to bring himself to the notice of the dead, and to fit himself to see or hear the dead. Such tentative mysticism as served his turn need not be written down, but its substance can be imagined by many. Then, through an exercise of his will, he had invoked the strange, trance-like state which has been described. The soft waves flowing from an unknown source had beat upon his brain, and with them came the accustomed phenomena; the sense of some presence near, impending, yet impotent; suggesting by analogy and effect the misdirected efforts of a blind ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... imagination, fertile imagination, fancy. mind's eye; such stuff as dreams are made of [Tempest]. ideality, idealism; romanticism, utopianism, castle-building. dreaming; phrensy^, frenzy; ecstasy, extasy^; calenture &c (delirium) 503 [Obs.]; reverie, trance; day dream, golden dream; somnambulism. conception, Vorstellung [G.], excogitation^, a fine frenzy; cloudland^, dreamland; flight of fancy, fumes of fancy; thick coming fancies [Macbeth]; creation of the brain, coinage of the brain; imagery. conceit, maggot, figment, myth, dream, vision, shadow, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... on our way, a word about Paris, which I had not seen since September. At the outset of the war, Parisians who had not gone to the front were in a trance of suspense; they were magnetized by the tragic possibilities of the hour. The fear of disaster was in their hearts, though they might deny it to themselves. They could think of nothing but France. Now they realized that the best way to help ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... knoweth not what his lord doeth; but I have called you friends." The Negro loves his own and is satisfied to be with them, and yet, the man who would really help him must be a man who has seen the vision. Peter was unwilling to go to the Gentiles, being an orthodox Jew, until God put him in a trance upon the house top, let down the sheet from heaven with all manner of beasts, and bid him rise up, slay, and eat. Peter strenuously objected, saying, "Lord, I have touched nothing unclean." But God said, "What I ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... the trouble between you and this woman?" asked Lucille. "She is older than you, yet she constantly crosses your path." Then, closing her eyes, Lucille broke out passionately and rapidly, like a person in a trance: "Why does she act so? What is the matter with her? She is often interfering with you, but is always followed by that man; he must be her enemy. See! a shadow falls over her! What does it mean! She fades away and ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... he sat at his desk in a trance, with his eyes fixed upon an ink-bottle. At last, nodding ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... my boy of black-letter," said the Nabob; "with me you shall go, and we'll bring them to submission to mother-church, I warrant you—Why, the idea of being cheated in such a way, would scare a Santon out of his trance.—What dress will you wear?" ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... strain, and by that time news had come to Mr. Fairbanks that Wall Street was Easy Money's other name. Armed with his grin, he marched into the office of De Coppet & Doremus, and when the manager came out of his trance Shakespeare's worst enemy was holding down the job ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... how would my appearance, in this remote chamber, and loaded with another's property, be interpreted? Did he enter the house after me, or was he the tenant of some chamber hitherto unvisited; whom my entrance had awakened from his trance and ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... walking away from the hotel I perceived Rosa's victoria drawing up before the portico. She saw me. We exchanged a long look—a look charged with anxious questionings. Then she beckoned to me, and I, as it were suddenly waking from a trance, raised my hat, and went ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... short trance, and hastened with hurried steps to perform her well-known office. Then came a few minutes of exertion, during which the females transferred all that was necessary to their subsistence, and which had not been already provided ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... Lykon though in a trance felt, as it were, the pursuit; he turned quickly into a street full of movement, then to a square where a multitude of people were circling about, and then ran to the Nile by Fisher Street. There, at the end of some alley, he ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... moved, and Gladys heard the name ever on them, 'Netta.' This was better, far better, than that death-like trance. ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... small weekly contribution also, neatly sealed up in fair white paper; and of these crumpled scraps Herbert used to cut angels and cherubs' heads, which he would sit and look at for hours together; and then he would pray as if in a trance—so earnest and heartfelt was it—while tears of love, not grief, would stream down his face, as his lips moved in blessings on ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... trance seemed to hold her enthralled. The music was diabolically merry. She could fancy evil spirits tripping to it in swarms around her. They seemed to point at her, and wave their arms around her, and from them came an influence, magnetic ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... the stars of Arabia grew strangely dim. The wild peaks of Sinai, standing sharp and black in the lucid, purple air, melted into shadowy, changing masses. The huge branches of the cypress-tree moved mysteriously above his head, and he fell upon the earth senseless and in a trance. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... cum libro,—arguing that from one thing to another, this shock no matter how distant, might bring about a general explosion; but Clerambault, who was beginning to come out of his pleasant trance, smiled calmly, and said that ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... this way I attained a momentary respite from self-consciousness, no sooner had I reached this enviable state of oblivion, than some internal sting of irritation as rapidly dispersed the whole fickle fabric of sleep; and as if the momentary trance—this fugitive beguilement of my wo—had been conceded by a demon's subtle malice only with the purpose of barbing the pang, by thus forcing it into a stronger relief through the insidious peace preceding it. It is a well known and most familiar ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... with their boots on. Then his kindly good-nature rebelled. "I felt that this was running hospitality into the ground, so I pulled them out and left them on the floor to cool off from their alcoholic trance." ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... snapped as they went out the window. Two men with rifles plunged into the gas; sighing, they fell to the floor in a catatonic trance. ...
— The Green Beret • Thomas Edward Purdom
... Of sorrow for her tender favourite's woe, But rather, if her eyes could brighter be, With brighter eyes and slow amenity, Put her new lips to his, and gave afresh The life she had so tangled in her mesh: And as he from one trance was wakening Into another, she began to sing, Happy in beauty, life, and love, and every thing, A song of love, too sweet for earthly lyres, While, like held breath, the stars drew in their panting fires. 300 And then she whisper'd in such trembling tone, As those who, safe ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... which was to have been repeated by HAMET. But ALMEIDA instantly drew her hand from him in an agony of distress; and HAMET, who till then had stood motionless with amazement and horror, started from his trance, and springing forward rushed between them. ALMORAN turned fiercely upon him; but HAMET, who having been warned by OMAR, knew the prodigy to be effected by some evil being whom it was virtue to resist, laid his hand upon his scymitar, and, with a frown of ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... for the thick purple haze of heat that hangs over its glassy surface. If you lie there for an hour or so, gazing into the depths of the blue unfathomable sky, till the fanning of the warm wind and the murmur of the water combine to throw you into a trance, you ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... they had never seen such things before. They totter about on tip-toe; they yawn and forget to shut their mouths. Here is one, stretching out a hind leg in a sustained cramp; another is convulsed with nervous twitchings; another scratches the earth in a kind of mechanical trance. One would say she was preparing a grave for herself. The saddest of all is an old warrior with mighty jowl and a face that bears the scars of a hundred fights. One eye has been lost in some long-forgotten encounter. Now they walk ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... occupation that might be expected to go on for ever and outside of which was nothing at all. His life was not here; it was at home. He got the feeling that this business in which he was caught up was a business apart altogether from his own individual life,—a kind of trance in which his own life was held temporarily in abeyance, a kind of transmigration in which he occupied another and a very strange identity: from whose most strange personality, often so amazingly occupied, he looked wonderingly upon the identity that was his own, waiting ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... for the disciples (Luke 22:31). Are we to call these "visions"—the word is ambiguous—or are they imaginative presentments of evil, as it thrusts itself on the soul, with all its allurements and all its ugliness? "Visions" in the sense that is associated with trance, we shall hardly call them. They are pictures showing his gift ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... look of surprise as the impact brought me suddenly to full consciousness. A clock was hanging in the delicatessen-store window, and the hour-hand stood at nine. A cooling sea-breeze was blowing up from the south, and as I continued my walk home I realized that I had just passed out of a sort of trance,—a trance superinduced by physical misery,—a merciful subconscious condition of apathy, in which my soul as well as my body had taken refuge when torture ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... to flow down a winding path. The goats were standing quite still. Suddenly they flung up their heads, as if at an imperious call, and in wild abandon rushed toward the shadowy woods above. The dog, as if roused from a trance, gave chase, shattering the silence with yelping barks. The boy, his heart beating violently, followed. It took all the afternoon to collect and quiet the flock, and when Marcus started home he had himself not lost the awed sense of a Presence in his pasture. The nearness seemed less familiar ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... overspread the face of the marquis, while the lady drew back behind the draperies, almost as if in fear. At the conclusion of that effort the walls echoed with plaudits; the actress stood as in a trance; her face was pale, her figure seemed changed to stone and the light went ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... yet they live by that heat which is stored up in the heart and inward arteries. At the approach of summer, however, the internal heat, being restored to the outer parts, they are then brought to life again, out of their sleeping trance. ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... Eleanor!" which burst from him, made her feel on the instant as if she were paid to the full, not only for all she had done, but for all that life might have of disagreeable in store for her. Her eyes fell; she stood still in a sudden trance of contentment which made her as blind and deaf as another feeling had made her just before. Those two words—there had been such a depth in them, of tenderness and gladness; and somehow she felt in them too an appreciation of all she had ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... sufficient to receive the praises of the dead included in four heroic lines. Nor shall the laying out of the dead in the house continue for a longer time than is sufficient to distinguish between him who is in a trance only and him who is really dead, and speaking generally, the third day after death will be a fair time for carrying out the body to the sepulchre. Now we must believe the legislator when he tells us that ...
— Laws • Plato
... of that part of Scotland of his rank generally speak. "The young leddy, they told me, no sooner heard that the vessel was in safety, than she gave way to a sorrow which it was pitiful to witness. They tried to comfort her, but she was not to be comforted. She had gone off into a sort of trance when the vessel brought up this morning ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... you," he said quickly, on recognizing Harry. Then he passed his hand over his eyes as if returning from a trance. ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... his adventures in Purgatory. Gilbert and his companions subsequently returned to England, and there he repeated the story, and some one said he thought it was all a dream, to which Gilbert answered: 'That there were some who believed that those who entered the Purgatory fell into a trance, and saw the vision in the spirit, but that the knight had denied this, and declared that the whole was seen and felt really in the body.' Both Gilbert, from whom Henry of Salterey received the story, and the bishop of the diocese, assured him that many perished in this Purgatory, and were ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... he opened the French window that gave upon the balcony, drew a chair in the recess behind the curtain, and gazed upon the night. It was very quiet; the moon was high, the square was sleeping in a trance of checkered shadows, like a gigantic chessboard, with black foreshortened trees for pawns. The click of a cavalry sabre, the sound of a footfall on the pavement of the distant Konigsstrasse, were distinctly ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... beat and stop. And how it would have ended, if he had been left to himself, whether he would have stood or fallen, have spoken or have continued silent, can never now be known, for all was decided without the action of his will. He was awakened from his trance by these simple ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... Psychometry, Clairvoyance, Clairaudience, Inspiration, Trance, and Physical Mediumship; Prayer, Mind, and Magnetic Healing; and all classes ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... one let lovers cry, Alas! Since passion's leaguer shall break through in vain To that cold centre of bright adamas.— Storm through her being, rapturous spears of pain! Ye shall not wound that queen of gracious guile, The soul that with immortal trance keeps troth: For Helen is in Egypt all the while, Learning great magic from the Wife of Thoth. Throned white and high on red-rose porphyry, And coifed with golden wings, she lifts her eyes O'er Nile's green lavers where most sacredly The Pattern of the ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... as they came, with Alpine's Lord The Hermit Monk held solemn word: "Roderick! it is a fearful strife, 110 For man endowed with mortal life, Whose shroud of sentient clay can still Feel feverish pang and fainting chill, Whose eye can stare in stony trance, Whose hair can rouse like warrior's lance— 115 'Tis hard for such to view, unfurled, The curtain of the future world. Yet, witness every quaking limb, My sunken pulse, my eyeballs dim, My soul with harrowing anguish torn— 120 This for my Chieftain have I borne! The shapes that ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... les neiges d'antan? As I transcribe once more that ancient sigh, perhaps the most real sigh in all literature, it is high mid-summer, and the woodland surrounding the little cabin in which I am writing lies in a trance of green and gold, hot and fragrant and dizzy with the whirring of cicadas, under the might of the July sun. Bees buzz in and out through my door, and sometimes a butterfly flits in, flutters a while about my bookshelves, and presently is gone again, in search of sweets more ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... should never again see or hear of them. He then returned to the kitchen, in which the unhappy woman remained, her hands still clenched, her eyes fixed, and her limbs extended, like those of a person in a trance. Much moved by her situation, and with the prospect which lay before her, he endeavoured to awaken her to existence by every means in his power, and at length apparently succeeded in dispelling her stupor, and attracting her attention. He then explained to her that he was in the act ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... the voice, but still its accents thrilled The throbbing hearts its lingering sweetness filled. The simple story which a tear repays Asks not to share the noisy breath of praise. A trance-like stillness,—scarce a whisper heard, No tinkling teaspoon in its saucer stirred; A deep-drawn sigh that would not be suppressed, A sob, a lifted kerchief told ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... themselves. This is what Mr. Hart means when he says that any stick or stone may produce hypnotism. If a person will gaze steadily at a bright fire, or a glass of water, for instance, he can throw himself into a hypnotic trance exactly similar to the condition produced by a professional or trained hypnotist. Such people, however, must ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... at Hippo. Curma then, in the vision, went to Paradise, where he was told to go and be baptised. He said it had been done already, and was answered, "Go and be truly baptised, for that thou didst but see in vision". So Augustine christened him, and later, hearing of the trance, asked him about it, when he repeated the tale already familiar to his neighbours. Augustine thinks it a mere dream, and apparently regards the death of Curma the smith as a casual coincidence. Un esprit fort, le ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... was the time of day when the promenade deck was always full. Passengers in cocoons of rugs lay on chairs, waiting in a dull trance till the steward should arrive with the eleven o'clock soup. Others, more energetic, strode up and down. From the point of view of a man who wished to reveal his most sacred feelings to a beautiful girl, the place was practically Fifth ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... a trance; the slaves made their cries; in short, there was that stir amongst them, that one would have thought they had heard the "blast of consternation from the ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... at Somerset House was, in all probability, Mrs. Hannah Trupnel. She, that in April of this year is spoken of, in an old news-book, as having "lately acted her part in a trance so many days at Whitehall." She appears to have been full of mystical, anti-Puritan prophecies, and was indicted in Cornwall as a rogue and vagabond, convicted and bound over in recognizances to behave herself in future. After this she ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... went along the trance towards an open room, and on entering it they met a fair damsel in the garb of a handmaid, to whom the knight spoke in familiarity, and kittling her under the chin, made her giggle in a wanton manner. By her he was informed that the Archbishop was ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... your forces with discretion. Potterers and scruple-mongers are soon reduced to inaction. It needs but a glimmer of common sense to perceive that man is not made to pass his life in a self-centered trance. ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... informs them as to their future, and for a dollar a sitting gives them advice at every turn of their lives. I do not know whether she takes it from the tea leaves or from an Egyptian dream book or from her own trance fancies, but I do know that the prophecies of this fraud have deeply influenced some of their lives and shaped the faculty of the high school. What does this mean? Mature educators to whose training society has devoted its fullest effort and who are chosen to bring to the youth the ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... threat had so much power over the rest of the party that we sat out to the bitter end, leaving the medium at last still in her trance, with husband and son hovering over her in an anxiety which, if acted, showed first-class ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... like all sweet, sense-enfolding things, That lift us in a dream-delicious trance Beyond the flickering good and ill of chance; But most is Death like Music's buoyant wings, That bear the soul, a willing Ganymede, Where joys ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... oracles are dumb:[122] No voice or hideous hum Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving; Apollo from his shrine Can no more divine, With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving; No nightly trance, or breathed spell, Inspires the pale-eyed ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald |
