"Trance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and he in the dance, Whilst a step to'ards his foe did advance, "By the Father of Men, say but that word again, And I'll soon knock you back in a trance—to your dance, For with me you'd ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... head, more mysterious than ever. "I don't know," says he. "Maybe I am crazy. But I see that same man this afternoon, when I was in that trance, and—" ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... again; Elsie heard both words and laugh, as she lay in that marble trance. Had she been laid out shrouded for burial she could ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... as she took her seat, and sat, wide-eyed, looking almost as if in a trance of delight. Celeste Arleson was less embarrassed, as her profession took her into fine mansions and in presence ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... low. He would hint it was the police he feared. This would explain why he could not come forward, and why he sought the aid of the clairvoyant. If the clairvoyant fell in with his plan he would tell him where the will could be found, the clairvoyant would pretend in a trance to discover the hiding-place, would confide his discovery to Mrs. Blagwin's lawyer, the lawyer would find the will, the clairvoyant would receive the reward, and an invaluable advertisement. And Jimmie's ghost ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... occasion, trained In all by duty's law ordained, Strove with his prudent speech to find Soft access to the monarch's mind. He, skilled in every gentle art Of eloquence that wins the heart, Sugriva from his trance to wake, His salutary ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... in spite of the lethargy which necessitated at least some artificial feeding, she was not falling away. She seemed, if anything, plump. To all appearances there was really a retardation of metabolism connected with the trance-like sleep. She was actually gaining ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... his trance of grief, and stung by the unmerited reproach, which he felt was misplaced, even if deserved, in an hour like that, he raised his dark eyes, flashing through the tears that blinded them, to demand of the Captain an explanation. But the self-elected monitor was gone; and the unhappy ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... and possessed her. She felt that, to destroy the destroyer of her peace, she would be willing to meet and suffer all that man could inflict upon her body, or devil do to her soul! And so she brooded, until suddenly out of this trance-like state she started, as if a serpent had ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... young wife sank powerless into her chair, and covering her face with her hands, wept bitterly. Gay voices and loud laughter, sounding from beneath her window, aroused her from this trance of grief. ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... In an admiring trance Bud had followed the two friends from the office of the doctor. Now he was in the seventh heaven at being taken into friendship by one of these heroes. At last he screwed up his courage to refer ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... witch, averred to have done serious mischief to her neighbours. For this reason, she was indicted for holding communication with demons. She admitted having intercourse with the Queen of Elfland and the good neighbours. When she fell into a trance, which happened often, she saw her cousin, William Sympsoune, of Stirling (who had been conveyed away to the hills by the fairies), from whom she received a salve that could cure every disease; and from this ointment ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... went on, seeing that the young man was absorbed in his narrative, "if you would pass your word to me never to betray me, I would procure for you a sight of the external world, and in a trance you should see those places where gold is dug, and traverse those regions forbidden to your ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow
... smoke had now grown very thick, so that it drove the troopers out into the open air. Before them were burning houses. Behind them shone the painted windows of the Abbey filled with saints and martyrs, awakened, as from a sacred trance, into an angry and animated life. The eyes of the troopers were dazzled, and for a while could see nothing but the flaming faces of saints and martyrs. Presently, however, they saw a man covered with dust who came running towards them. 'Two messengers,' he cried, 'have been sent ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats
... platform with him, and Brother Jornsen, who weighed two hundred and sixty pounds, was standing in the aisle holding on to the back of a chair on which a man was sitting, as the chapel was packed. After the preacher had spoken ten or fifteen mintues seven women were lying on the floor in a trance. ...
— Personal Experiences of S. O. Susag • S. O. Susag
... either. It was somehow all wrong in itself. It wouldn't have done on Christmas morning. It would have struck a jarring note at the first night of "Hernani." I was trying to account for its wrongness when Soames suddenly and strangely broke silence. "A hundred years hence!" he murmured, as in a trance. ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm
... was most happy to smooth the way for him, and he came repeatedly after this to see me and express his satisfaction in the opportunities for study he enjoyed at Cambridge. He was a dark, still, slender person, always with a trance-like remoteness, a mystic dreaminess of manner, such as I never saw in any other youth. Whether he heard with difficulty, or whether his mind reacted slowly on an alien thought, I could not say; but his answer would often be behind time, and then a vague, sweet smile, or a few words spoken under ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... portrait—my ugliness in paint, and on ivory too, dearest, you shall have yet, as you desire it," he added, forcing pleasantry; "only do not fall into that frightful sort of trance again." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... and listened; they received and sent secret messengers; and they stole Jane's books and records, and finally the papers that were deeds of her possessions. Through it all they were silent, rapt in a kind of trance. Then one by one, without leave or explanation or farewell, they left Withersteen ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... daring compliments, and, therefore, as she murmured a polite word of welcome, Alaire stepped through the French window at her back and into the brightly lighted living-room. Paloma Jones followed as if in a trance. ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... 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, ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... He regards the whole of nature as a development of higher forms out of the lower, through shade after shade of systematic change. The dim stir of chemical atoms towards the axes of a crystal form, the trance-like life of plants, the animal troubled by strange irritabilities, are stages which anticipate consciousness. All through that increasing stir of life this was forming itself; each stage in its unsatisfied susceptibilities seeming to be drawn out of its own limits by the more ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... atmic; and provided that the person whose consciousness is spoken of does not need to leave his active body, his body of action, in using his consciousness on any of these planes, does not have to throw the body into trance in order to be conscious on any or on all of them, we speak always, then, of that consciousness as being "his waking consciousness." Some disciples, for instance, will often include in the waking consciousness the astral, mental, and even buddhic planes; but it is characteristic of ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... have frightened me so!" replied the girl. "You have been dreaming or in a trance, and seeing dreadful things that I could not see at all! I could see nothing but that hateful 'Eye,' which has been shining as if all the fires of hell were in it. Come away! we will sell the Marsh ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... begun to "attend lectures," as she said, when she was quite an infant, because her mother had no one to leave her with at home. She had sat on the knees of somnambulists, and had been passed from hand to hand by trance-speakers; she was familiar with every kind of "cure," and had grown up among lady-editors of newspapers advocating new religions, and people who disapproved of the marriage-tie. Verena talked of the marriage-tie as she would ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... intimate friends and historians, that after every great battle the first thing he did the next day was to ride over the field, where lay the dead and wounded, and when he would come to those points where the battle had been desperate and the dead lay thickest, he would sit as in a trance, and with silence and meditation never witnessed on other occasions, view the ghastly corpses as they lay strewn over the field. The field of carnage had a fascinating power over him he could not resist, and on which ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... could no more, but lay like one in trance, That hears his burial talked of by his friends, And cannot speak, nor move, nor make one sign, But lies and dreads his doom. She turned; she paused; She stooped; and out of languor leapt a cry; Leapt fiery Passion from the brinks of death; And I believed that in the living world ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... becoming dreamlike. She didn't find it tedious, or over-fraught with suspense. On the contrary, it was soothing. It was a little trance-like, too, almost as if she had been enwrapped in ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... supplied the night before in anticipation of the mission, the three cadets trouped wearily out of their rooms and rode down to the lobby in the vacuum elevator. They walked across the deserted lobby as though in a trance and outside to the quiet street. A jet cab stood at the curb, the driver watching them. He whistled sharply and waved at them. "Hey, ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... oracles are dumb; 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 ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... able to tell. And so I come to the story of his adventure, and I piece it all together again. Whether it really happened, whether he imagined it or dreamt it, or fell upon it in some strange hallucinatory trance, I do not profess to say. But that he invented it I will not for one moment entertain. The man simply and honestly believes the thing happened as he says it happened; he is transparently incapable of any lie so elaborate ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... from the grave to the world, to health and beauty, by swift gradations; to see the roses return to the loved cheek, love's glance to the loved eye, and his words to the loved mouth—this was Margaret's—a joy to balance years of sorrow. It was Gerard's to awake from a trance, and find his head pillowed on Margaret's arm; to hear the woman he adored murmur new words of eloquent love, and shower tears and tender kisses and caresses on him. He never knew, till this sweet moment, how ardently, how tenderly, she loved him. He thanked his enemies. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... trance; and Mac threw a sharp, searching glance at me, as I sat curled up against a swag. "You're right," he laughed; "there's not a trace of the towney left." And rising to "see about fixing up camp," he added: "You'd better look out, missus! Once caught, you'll never get free again. We're all tethered ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... on board the vessel are obscured, loud voices are hushed; you fancy a thousand men on shore, and yet see nothing; the lonely river, unaccustomed to furrowing keels, lapses by the vessel with a treacherous sound; and all the senses are merged in a sort of anxious trance. Three times I have had in full perfection this fascinating experience; but that night was the first, and its zest was the keenest. It will come back to me in dreams, if I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... Immediately, in trance, I was carried over land and sea to some distant kingdom, and placed upon a triumphal car, amongst companions crowned with laurel. The darkness of gathering midnight, brooding over all the land, hid from us the mighty crowds that were weaving restlessly about ourselves ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... possible for poor Cardo; the nurses were unremitting in their care and attention, but nothing roused him from his trance-like stupor. ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... lay like one in a trance for some considerable time, and it is said that all arrangements were made for her funeral. Presently, however, she gave signs of life, and in course of time Naomi ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... majority depended on Mr. Hewes of North Carolina. While a member one day was reading documents to prove that public opinion was in favor of the measure, Mr. Hewes suddenly started upright, and lifting up both hands to heaven, as if in a trance, ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... divining-box, and leaning her head upon her hand, mutters prayers and incantations until she has summoned the soul of the dead or absent person, which takes possession of her, and answers questions through her mouth. The prophecies which the Ichiko utters during her trance are held in high esteem ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... short period of time than in any season since the Reformation. Ministers were painful, people were diligent. At their solemn communions many congregations met in great multitudes, some dozen of ministers used to preach, and the people continued as it were in a sort of trance (so serious were they in spiritual exercises) for three days at least."—Kirkton ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... ceremonial was for some quarter of an hour afterwards perfectly paralyzing on the neighbours, and was much enhanced by the worthy lady airing herself for that term in a kind of splendidly serene trance on ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... 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 earnestly: "If you ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... remember, or fear, Nothing; of one thing aware And one only, that we two are here, And together, unhindered: then, Dear, This one hour were our life,—all the past But the ignorant sleep before birth, All the future a trance, that should last Till we turn us again to ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... were stiff. Instantly Cortlandt unfastened the collar, while Bearwarden applied a flask to the lips. But they soon found that their efforts were vain. "The spirit!" ejaculated Cortlandt. "Dick may be in a trance, in which case he can help us. Let us will hard and long." Accordingly, they threw themselves on their faces, closing their eyes, that nothing might distract their concentration. Minutes, which seemed like ages, passed, and there was no response. "Now," said Bearwarden, ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... Indian charm-case with instructions to put it on with a chain round the neck whenever he required her. Immediately he put on the chain, to which this charm-case was attached, round his neck, he felt as if he was in a trance and then his wife came. Whether she came in the flesh or only in spirit Jogesh could not say as he never had the opportunity of touching her so long as she was there, for he could not get up from the bed or the chair or wherever he happened to be. On the last occasion she had entreated him not ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji
... curvature Of that strange mirror, something that might cure The ache in me—some message, said perchance Of her dead loveliness, which once it glassed, That might repeat again my lost romance In momentary pictures of the past, While in its depths her image swam in trance. ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... other impressions come to aid it. It is aided by everything which makes us feel that a man is, as we say, terribly unlucky; and of this there is, even in Shakespeare, not a little. Here come in some of the accidents already considered, Juliet's waking from her trance a minute too late, Desdemona's loss of her handkerchief at the only moment when the loss would have mattered, that insignificant delay which cost Cordelia's life. Again, men act, no doubt, in accordance with their characters; but what is it that brings ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... at an early hour was crowded with men in 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 walked his friends ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... again the Autumn skies, As on that evening, shine, When, from a trance of agony, ...
— Indian Legends and Other Poems • Mary Gardiner Horsford
... Baal's altar: "Search deeper, ye 'strong men,' in the thickets and caves; peradventure I sleep in the brakes, and must be awaked; call, with your fifty voices together, that I may be startled from my trance; will ye give over till ye bring me back to Jericho? Will ye search but three days? Shall I lose the remnant ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... insensibility, and precious were the tears which his eyes rained down upon that pale but lovel countenance. She was soon placed upon a settee, but Reilly knelt beside her, and held one of her hands in his. After a long trance she opened her eyes and again started. Reilly pressed her hand and whispered in her ear, "Helen, I am with ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... an impression so vivid that it seemed to stand alone divested of any outward sensations by which to measure its duration. She, who could call up visions in the minds of others, who possessed the faculty of closing her bodily eyes in order to see distant places and persons in the state of trance, she, who expected no surprises in her own act, had seen something very vividly, which she could not believe had been a reality, and which she yet could not account for as a revelation of second sight. That dark, ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... think that she was asleep, but yet during all her vigil the white lids had not stirred, no spark of vitality had touched the marble face. She was possessed by a great longing to speak to her, to call her out of that trance-like silence; but she did not dare. She was as one bound by a spell. The great stillness was too holy to break. All her own troubles were sunk in oblivion. She felt as if she moved in a shadow-world where no troubles could penetrate, where no voice was ever ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... Cyriax, editor of the Spiritualistische Bltter, published at Liepsic, Ger., has given in the issue of March 31st the following communications from Dr. Hahnemann and Dr. Spurzheim, delivered through a trance medium. They are valuable essays, whatever may be their source, and the reader will not fail to observe their general coincidence with the doctrine presented by myself in the May number of the JOURNAL OF MAN in the article on the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... no longer tremulous as it was wont to be, but firm and dull, monotonous in tone like that of one who speaks whilst in a trance. Squire Boatfield had uttered an exclamation of boundless astonishment. Mechanically he took the packet of papers from the Quakeress's hand and after an instant's hesitation, and in response to an appealing look from Richard, he broke the string ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... triplicity of beauty, grace and elastic strength. Some have doubtless possessed each separate perfection, but the names of those who had all three are as unforgotten as those of conquerors and supreme poets. Gilbert's eyes fixed themselves, and for a moment he was in a sort of waking trance, during which he could not for his life have described one feature of the Queen's face; but when she spoke to him, his heart leapt and his eyelids quivered, and her image was fixed upon his memory forever. Young though he was, it would have been contrary to his grave and rather ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... fancy a thousand men on shore, and yet see nothing; the lonely river, unaccustomed to furrowing keels, lapses by the vessel with a treacherous sound; and all the senses are merged in a sort of anxious trance. Three tunes I have had in full perfection this fascinating experience; but that night was the first, and its zest was the keenest. It will come back to me in dreams, if I live a ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... tone of the low uttered, "Oh, 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 done and gone through. Eleanor was satisfied. ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... Studded with stars;—it is no dream; The wild horse swims the wilder stream! The bright broad river's gushing tide Sleeps, winding onward, far and wide, And we are half-way, struggling o'er To yon unknown and silent shore. The waters broke my hollow trance, And with a temporary strength My stiffen'd limbs were rebaptized. My courser's broad breast proudly braves, And dashes off the ascending waves. We reach the slippery shore at length, A haven I but little prized, For all behind was dark and ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... 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 myriad Lotos lies, Unto ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... Like one in a trance, Tom obediently pulled on the line. The noose tightened about the chest. Tom dragged with all his might but was unable to move the object. He glanced at the others. They seemed unable to move, but gazed with staring ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... course through Life portray! New scenes of Wisdom may each step display, 10 And Knowledge open as my days advance! Till what time Death shall pour the undarken'd ray, My eye shall dart thro' infinite expanse, And thought suspended lie in Rapture's blissful trance. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Miss Tabor, and her effect upon him was extraordinary. His mouth opened and he gazed stodgily, his widening eyes like sun-dogs coming out of a fog. He did not recognize her escort; did not see him at all until they had passed, after which Mr. Flitcroft experienced a few moments of trance; came out of it stricken through and through; felt nervously of his tie; resolutely fell in behind the heeling mongrel and followed, at a distance of some forty paces, determined to learn what household this heavenly visitor honored, and thrilling with the intention to please ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... of Paris, and from whom, among others, I have had an account of the whole affair, was engaged to magnetise this woman, while M. Cloquet operated on the diseased part. The patient was put asleep, or rather into the magnetic trance, for it can scarcely be called sleep, and the cancer was extracted, without the woman's manifesting the least terror, or the slightest sense of pain! To the truth of the substance of this account, M. Cloquet, who does not pretend to explain the reason, nor profess ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... And when I've done it, what good have I done? Rather than tip a table for you, let me Tell you what Ralle the Sioux Control once told me. He said the dead had souls, but when I asked him How that could be—I thought the dead were souls, He broke my trance. Don't that make you suspicious That there's something the dead are keeping back? Yes, there's something ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... jar to be awakened so rudely from a trance of love, to turn suddenly from the one you care for most in all the world, and behold the one you have best reason to hate. Nevertheless, it is not in human nature to descend rocket-wise from the ethereal ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... went on rifling his victim, Miles partially recovered from his trance of horror, and anxiety for his own life nerved him to attempt action of some sort. He thought of the revolver for the first time at that moment, and the remembrance seemed to infuse new life into him. Putting his right hand to his belt, he found it there, but drew it with difficulty. Doubting ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... digs up a dead body, especially of a child, to secure a familiar. The evocation of spirits, especially in the form of necromancy, is an important branch of the demonology of many peoples; and the peculiarities of trance mediumship, which seem sufficiently established by modern research, go far to explain the vogue of this art. It seems to have been common among the Jews, and the case of the witch of Endor is narrated in a way to suggest something beyond fraud; in the book of magic which bears the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... on table and huge misshapen hands supporting chin and jaws, sat puffing stinking Siwash tobacco and staring straight before him. It would have seemed ruminative, the stare, had his eyes been softer or had he blinked; as it was, his face was set and trance-like. ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... the men in responding to the new influences which were at work upon them. The number of convents increased rapidly, every countryside had its wonder-working nun who could unveil the mysteries of the world while in the power of some ecstatic trance, and women everywhere were the most tireless supporters of the clergy. It was natural that this should be the case, for there was a nervous excitement in the air which was especially effective upon feminine minds, ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... guided, gen'rous Mornay came Where loiter'd Henry, mindless of his fame; 275 The artful god prolong'd the am'rous trance, And in her hero rul'd the fate of France. No sameness there the varied bliss destroy'd, No languor chill'd, no forward pleasure cloy'd; Each wish attain'd, another wish inspires; 280 Each new enjoyment led to new desires: Such vary'd ways to please, love taught d'Etree, Nor ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... Death be truly one, And every spirit's folded bloom Through all its intervital gloom In some long trance should slumber on; ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... that, in both its aspects, it is acknowledged by those most interested in denying it. The two churches slept the sleep of torpor through the eighteenth century; so much of the fact is acknowledged by their own members. The two churches awoke, as from a trance, in or just before the dawning of the nineteenth century; this second half of the fact is acknowledged by their opponents. The Wesleyan Methodists, that formidable power in England and Wales, who once reviled the Establishment as the dormitory ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... now; and if you'll listen, daddy mine, and if the others will hold their peace for a minute, I 'll let my great secret out.' There was a new sound in Hollyhock's voice. Old Duncan stood in a kind of trance of wonder. To be sure, things were coming round, and that week of misery was over. 'Daddy,' said Hollyhock, 'I didn't think you'd enjoy my absence as much as you will. I talked a lot of nonsense, and said I'd see to you, Daddy Dumps; but what's the use? I 'm ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... they accepted as their portion; when the last stern evil befell them they clad themselves in a veil and walked upon an earth they had passed from for all purposes save service of hands. Italy revived in these mothers. Their torture was that of the re-animation of her frame from the death-trance. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a moment as in a trance. He heard somebody say: "What can Miss Aagot and Coldevin be so deeply absorbed in?" He heard that Aagot was on the point of answering, and he ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... exclusively. After a few weeks I succeeded in completely suspending animation in one of them for several hours. There was no life apparently existing during that period. It was not a trance or coma, but the complete simulation of death. No harmful results followed the revivifying of the animal. The contraction of the cells was far more difficult to accomplish; I finished my last experiment ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... like one in a trance when he spoke of the brave, bearded Frenchmen, From the green sun-lit valleys of France to the wild Hochelaga [a] transplanted, Oft trailing the deserts of snow in the heart of the dense Huron forests, Or steering the dauntless canoe through the waves of the fresh water ocean. "Yea, stronger ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... in the performances of the spiritualists, trance mediums, and other persons pretending to supernatural powers. How far he believed in this occult science can now only be conjectured, but he was not a man to be easily played upon. He thought at least that there was more in it than was dreamed ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... knew better. I knew that she was fighting some evil power; and what power it was, I knew full well; for twice, during her pains, I heard the click of the horseshoe. But no one could help her. After her delivery, she lay as if in a trance, neither dead, nor at rest, but as if frozen to ice, and conscious of it all the while. Once more I heard the terrible sound of iron; and, at the moment, your mother started from her trance, screaming, 'My child! my child!' We suddenly became aware that no ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... which is placed over the spot be larger than would be 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 the soul is in all respects superior to the body, and that even in life what makes each one ...
— Laws • Plato
... muttered. "It ain't in it wid dat cove! He coitinly done der whole gang, an' done dem good. He was sloidin' along in a trance when we went at him, but der way he come outer dat trance was a shock to der bunch. He's got more foight in him dan any ten blokes ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... his life. He thought he would use me to further his purpose. He constrained me to sittings such as you have often taken part in, with a view to sending me into a trance and employing me, when in that condition, as a means of communication with the other world—if there was one. We sat secretly in this ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... clock in the little church tower struck ten. The village was asleep—and there was no sound of human life anywhere. The faint, subtle scent of sweetbriar stole on the air as he stood in a trance of desperate uncertainty—and as the delicate odour floated by, a rush of tears ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... though in a trance. How was this? The copper bath he had used for months was gone—gone like a shot, with nothing to make it go. Nothing, that is, except an electric cell and a few drops of the unknown solution. He ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... was likely to live as long as if he had never heard the report of a pistol in his life. He had made a narrow escape, however; the bullet had grazed his head, and stunned him for a moment or two, which trance terror and confusion of spirit had prolonged, somewhat longer. He now arose to demand vengeance on the person of Waverley, and with difficulty acquiesced in the proposal of Mr. Morton, that he should be carried ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... proportion I have never seen since; and yet it was all very small indeed. The stores had a smell about them that was like chloroform in its effect upon me; for, once in them, I fell into a kind of trance and had scarce sense enough to know my own mind. The smart clerks, who generally came and asked, 'Well, young man, what can I do for you?' I regarded with fear and suspicion. I clung the tighter to my coin always, and said nothing, although ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... Socrates has been left behind; also, (2) how the courtesy of Agathon anticipates the excuse which Socrates was to have made on Aristodemus' behalf for coming uninvited; (3) how the story of the fit or trance of Socrates is confirmed by the mention which Alcibiades makes of a similar fit of abstraction occurring when he was serving with the army at Potidaea; like (4) the drinking powers of Socrates and his love of the fair, which receive a similar attestation in the ...
— Symposium • Plato
... moved about almost in a trance, absorbing and enjoying the sights. It was Humanity in ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... spoken. She walks like one in a trance to the quaint old chair Mrs. Mounteagle draws forward. She sits down mechanically and gazes at the colours in the carpet, just as she did once before ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... 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 under Saint ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... turned south here at the gate and went down the street, a-lookin' neither to the right nor the left. He looked to me like a man in a trance, almost. He keeps right on through Legal Row till he comes to Franklin Street, and then he goes up Franklin to B. Weil & Son's confectionary store; and there he turns in. I happened to be followin' 'long behind him, with a few others—with several others, in fact—and we-all sort ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... made a sort of mark with his fingers on my forehead. Hugh told me afterwards that he seemed to trace a kind of zigzag on my left temple. All the time he was muttering he seemed to be half-conscious, almost in a trance, or as if he were mad: he frightened us dreadfully. After he had made the mark upon my brow he came to ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... rushed out into the street. Issachar was at the entrance as he passed, and he fancied he saw the face of the reader peeping at him from the vestry window, but he crushed his hat hard down on his head and strode away, courting the bluster of the wind, striving by the energy of action to cast off the trance ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... that could give entrance to air. Then, having taken off the clothing that he had on, he was enveloped in a canvas sack, and, according to his wish, his tongue was turned back in such a way as to close the entrance to his windpipe. Immediately after this he fell into a sort of trance. The bag that held him was closed and a seal was put upon it by the Maharajah. The bag was then put into a wooden box, which was fastened by a padlock, sealed, and let down into the tomb. A large quantity of earth was thrown into ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... of so-called demoniacal possession are capable of being resolved into cataleptic trance, a state not unlike that produced by mesmerism, and in which many of the same phenomena seem naturally to display themselves; the well-known instance of the young servant girl, related by Coleridge, who, though ignorant and uneducated, could during her sleep-walking discourse learnedly in rabbinical ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... Germany, as yet unconscious probably of the subordination of the entire Turkish fleet to the German Admiralty, he gave an interview to a representative of the Cologne Gazette, which deserves more than that ephemeral appearance. It shows Jemal the Great in a sort of hypnotic trance induced at Potsdam. 'The German fleet,' he says, 'is simply spotless in its power, and a model for all states which need a modern navy—a model which cannot be surpassed.' ... He went for a cruise in a submarine which proceeded 'so smoothly, elegantly, calmly and securely that ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... relapsed into the brain stupor that was sometimes sent, like an anodyne, to those whom fate had consigned to Mrs. Cotton's keeping. The Reverend Matthew, in whom a prolonged course of his wife had developed a condition, when in her society, of semi-hypnotic trance, sat in silence at his hostess' side, devouring cake, and swallowing cups of tea, until what had apparently been starvation was averted; he then dreamily withdrew, and joined himself vaguely, to the group of which Miss Coppinger formed one. Frederica's early ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... out of night the earth has rolled her dewy side, With every haunted mountain and streamy vale below; When, as the mist dissolves in the yellow morning tide, The maidens' trance dissolveth so. ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... that should care to gaze upon it. Yet its spell was too terrible, the morbid magnetism of it too potent; and I looked again and again, and turned away, and looked yet once more; and went to the ice to gaze more closely at the dead faces, and was so carried away with the trance of it that I seemed to forget the dead men, and thought that they lived. When I recalled myself, I observed Doctor Osbart watching ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... a spring-day, serene and divine, In the star of the morning went by as a trance; His murmurs he drown'd in the gold of the wine, And his sorrows were borne on the wave of the dance. Worlds lay conceal'd in the hopes of his youth, When once he shall ripen to manhood and fame! Fond Father exult!—In the germs of his youth What ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... some time, quite dazed; partly because his pupil was so dilated he could hardly see—partly (he thinks) because he in some way became unconscious; although when he woke from this little seeming trance, which may have lasted for more than a minute, he found himself still standing upright on his legs. What woke him was the sudden consciousness of the north, which he hadn't felt for many years; and this gave him extraordinary confidence in himself, and such ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... limbs were flaccid as an infant's, that the sound of a rattle had caused him to stop short—that a pleasant halo danced before his eyes, and sweet sounds met his ears—and that from that instant until the conclusion of the trance, "he was as happy as he ever expected ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... a Christmas party is something, but it is not everything. The disengaging of the erotic motive is everything, is the only touchstone. If while that is being done we are soothed into a trance, a nebulous delirium of the nerves, then we know the novelist to be a supreme novelist. If we retain consciousness, he is not supreme, and to be less than supreme in art is to not exist.... Dickens disengages ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... before the two stars broke under the 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 ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... full flush of life and health,—that soft and consecrating spell which falls upon us, drawing in all our thoughts from the present, arresting, as it were, the current of our being, and turning it back and holding it still as the flood of actual life rushes by us,—while in that trance of soul the beings of the past are shadowed—old friends, old days, old scenes recur, familiar looks beam close upon us, familiar words reecho in our ears, and we are closed up and absorbed with the by-gone, until tears dissolve the film from our eyes, and some shock of the ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... read more and more. Sometimes, deep in Scott, before dinner, I did not hear the bell, and had to be hunted up by some one and roused from my trance. I hardly knew where I was, when they called me. I got up from my chair not knowing whether it was for dinner or breakfast or for school in the morning. Sometimes, late at night, even after a long day of play—those violent and never-pausing exertions that we call play, in boyhood—I would ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... wonderful to Bebee that he, this stranger from Rubes' fairyland, could come at all to keep pace with her little clattering wooden shoes over the dust and the grass in the dim twilight time. The days went by in a trance of sweet amaze, and she kept count of the hours no more by the cuckoo-clock of the mill-house, or the deep chimes of the Brussels belfries; but only by such moments as brought her a word from his lips, or even a glimpse of him from afar, across the ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... bent over the unconscious young man, Philippa seemed to come out of her trance; slowly, with upraised hands, and head bent upon her breast, she stepped backward, backward, out of the room, out of the house. On the doorstep, in the darkness, she paused and listened for several minutes to certain dreadful sounds in the house. Then, ...
— The Voice • Margaret Deland
... of his trance with a start to find a hundred and seventy pounds of cow-puncher sprawling in his lap and clinging about his neck. His dull eyes, gummy with sleep, showed him a hat of sorts, ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... be made to do their own work, how the shirt may with one hand be so manipulated as to be drawn swiftly over the head... Pa was adept at undressing. He was in bed within five minutes, after a panting, exhausted interval during which he sat in a kind of trance, and was then proudly as usual knocking upon the floor with his walking-stick for Jenny to come and tuck him in ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... night, but joy cometh in the morning." There are victorious powers in our nature which are all the while working for us in our deepest pain. It is said, that, after the sufferings of the rack, there ensues a period in which the simple repose from torture produces a beatific trance; it is the reaction of Nature, asserting the benignant intentions of her Creator. So, after great mental conflicts and agonies must come a reaction, and the Divine Spirit, co-working with our spirit, seizes the favorable moment, and, interpenetrating natural ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... my forty years, and wasted every one; And yet, I tell you honestly, my life is just begun; I've walked the world like one asleep, a dreamer in a trance; But now you've gripped me wide awake—I ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... space they stood there in silence, the old man glaring, the younger slowly coming back from his mania of emotion as from a trance. ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... put on her diadem; I beheld the future prospect of one broad, free land, barriered by Alps and set impregnably in summer seas, storied seas, keys of the West and East. We embraced each other as brothers of this glorious nation, ancient Rome risen from trance; as we walked the streets, we sang; Milan was turbulent with gladness; no gala-day was ever half so bright; the very spires appeared to spring in the white radiance of their flames up a deeper heaven; the sun stayed at perpetual dawn for us. Walking ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... it was a good beginning. But that was as far as I got. Mrs. Hominy came out of her trance, hastened from the cage, and grabbed my arm. She was quite ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... the most useful missionaries in the neighborhood of Port Royal. Some weight is, no doubt, to be attached to the opinions of those who had known white men only as masters; but we should not wholly ignore the judgment of the only delegate who had met them on equal terms. In restoring men from the trance of slavery, the instincts of the patient, though doubtless an important fact, are not the only point to be considered. It may be true, as Hippocrates said, that the second-best remedy will succeed better than the best, if the patient likes it best. But it is not safe to forget that those who have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... retires to the back of the stage. MAX. remains for a long time motionless, in a trance of excessive anguish. At his first motion WALLENSTEIN returns, and ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... sword she caught, And fell in trance that wist of nought, Swooning: but softly Balen sought To win from her the sword she thought To die on, dying by Launceor's side. Again her wakening wail outbroke As wildly, sword in hand, she woke And struck one swift and bitter stroke That ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... things unto them, he sent them to Joppa. 9. On the morrow, as they went on their journey, and drew nigh unto the city, Peter went up upon the housetop to pray about the sixth hour: 10. And he became very hungry, and would have eaten: but while they made ready, he fell into a trance, 11. And saw heaven opened, and a certain vessel descending unto him, as it had been a great sheet knit at the four corners, and let down to the earth: 12. Wherein were all manner of fourfooted beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air. 13. And there ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... accordance with the answer. He goes on ignoring all the interesting towns and oases on the way to his Timbuctoo. Excessively uncertain about future joy, and too breathlessly preoccupied to think about joy in the present, he just drives obstinately ahead, rather like a person in a trance. Singular conduct for a plain man priding ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... now the solid rocks divide, A glorious fairy hall disclosing; There Cleena stands, and by her side, In slumber, Gerald seems reposing: She wakes him from his fairy trance; And, hand in hand, they both advance; And, now, the queen of fairy charms Gives Gerald ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... hind hoofs into them other blameless mules, peacefully munchin' their rations. Also, after Jerry's let me put the nosebag onto him he reeverses his p'sition an' swiftly lets fly at me. But I ain't in no trance an' Jerry misses. I don't frale him; I saveys it's because he feels hoomiliated with me not ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... entertain a conjecture, to imagine how these fatal accidents had fallen out, Juliet awoke out of her trance, and seeing the friar near her, she remembered the place where she was, and the occasion of her being there, and asked for Romeo, but the friar, hearing a noise, bade her come out of that place of ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... If golf had come late in life to Mortimer Sturgis, love came later still, and just as the golf, attacking him in middle life, had been some golf, so was the love considerable love. Mortimer finished his dinner in a trance, which is the best way to do it at some hotels, and then scoured the place for someone who would introduce him. He found such a person eventually ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... fell with the dews at even; Her tears fell ere the dews were dried; She could not look on the sweet heaven, Either at morn or eventide. After the flitting of the bats, When thickest dark did trance the sky, She drew her casement-curtain by, And glanced athwart the glooming flats. She only said, "The night is dreary, He cometh not," she said; She said, "I am aweary, aweary, I would that ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various |
