"Transmute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... emancipation to human emancipation. We criticize the religious weakness of the political State by criticizing the political State in its secular construction, apart from the religious weaknesses. We transmute the contradiction of the State with a specific religion, like Judaism, into the contradiction of the State with specific secular elements, and the contradiction of the State with religion generally into the contradiction of the State with its ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... the mouth of the angel who brought me here, that Barjas, the tavern-keeper of the Porta Capena, had sold for wine a decoction of roots and barks in which there was not a single drop of the juice of the grape. I had been unable to transmute this vile brew into blood, for it was not wine, and wine alone is changed into the blood of Jesus Christ. Therefore all my consecrations were invalid, and unknown to us, my faithful and myself had ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... would be lives of misery. Here and there an individual, irritated beyond endurance, would throw it off in anger, plunging probably into what would be deemed deeper abysses of depravity. Hawthorne's way was the best, for he contrived, by an exquisite process, best known to himself, to transmute this heavy moral burden into the very substance of the imagination, to make it evaporate in the light and charming fumes of artistic production. But Hawthorne, of course, was exceptionally fortunate; he had his genius to help him. Nothing is more ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... pursuing Welbeck with peculiar animosity. The latter was the uncle of him whose fate had been related by Mervyn, and was one of those who employed money, not as the medium of traffic, but as in itself a commodity. He had neither wines nor cloths, to transmute into silver. He thought it a tedious process to exchange to-day one hundred dollars for a cask or bale, and to-morrow exchange the bale or cask for one hundred and ten dollars. It was better to give the hundred for a piece of paper, which, ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... Bruckner,—a pedant who by persistent ingenuity simulates a master-work almost to perfection. By so much as genius is not an infinite capacity for pains, by so much is Bruckner's Ninth not a true symphony. Sometimes, under the glamor of his art, we are half persuaded that mere persistence may transmute pedantry into poetry. ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... world, and Augustus Rome, by right of conquest; and that is the most precarious right of all, and must always vanish with a change in the cycles. He had to, and did, transmute it into a stable right: first with respect to his own standing in Rome,—which might be done, with tact for weapon,— in a few years; then with respect to Rome's standing in the world,—which could not be done ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... shops and factories with men, women and children, and I transmute the base metal of their bones into the noble coin of the realm; my coffers grow fat, my slaves grow lean, but I acquire the reputation of a public benefactor, a public-spirited ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... life. Thus he never grew rich. His thrifty townsmen used to tell him, that, in any other man's hands, Dr. Swinnerton's Brazen Serpent (meaning, I presume, the inherited credit and good-will of that old worthy's trade) would need but ten years' time to transmute its brass into gold. In Dr. Dolliver's keeping, as we have seen, the inauspicious symbol lost the greater part of what superficial gilding it originally had. Matters had not mended with him in more advanced life, after he ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... affinity for the opposite of saintship. Sanctity is not aloofness. 'There were saints in Caesar's household'—a very unlikely place; they were flowers on a dunghill, and perhaps their blossoms were all the brighter because of what they grew on, and which they could transmute from corruption into beauty. So sanctity is no blue ribbon of the Christian profession, to be given to a few select (and mostly ascetic) specimens of consecration, but it is the designation of each of us, if we are disciples who are more than disciples, that is, 'believers.' And thus, brethren, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... inspired them. Keats, it must be remembered, was a sensualist. His poems belong to the literature of the higher sensualism. They reveal him as a man not altogether free from the vulgarities of sensualism, as well as one who was able to transmute it into perfect literature. He seems to have admired women vulgarly as creatures whose hands were waiting to be squeezed, rather than as equal human beings; the eminent exception to this being his sister-in-law, Georgiana. His famous declaration of independence of them—that he would rather ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... the end. Transmute it into its finest possible form, let it be as subtle and civilized as you please, as yearning and noble, as enlightened, it still sets itself over against the wholeness of things; its role is that of the part at war with the whole. ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... patiently Abiding wrack and scaith! O Faith that meets ten thousand cheats Yet drops no jot of faith! Devil and brute Thou dost transmute To higher, lordlier show, Who art in sooth that lovely Truth ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... be done during these forty-nine days was to invite one hundred and eight Buddhist bonzes to perform, in the main Hall, the High Confession Mass, in order to ford the souls of departed relatives across the abyss of suffering, and afterwards to transmute the spirit (of Mrs. Ch'in); that, in addition, an altar should be erected in the Tower of Heavenly Fragrance, where nine times nine virtuous Taoist priests should, for nineteen days, offer up prayers for absolution from punishment, and purification from retribution. That ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... wise, and verily, in a most sublime sense to see God face to face; which, alas! it seems too true, that no man can do and 'live', i.e. a 'human' life. It would become incompatible with his organization, or rather it would 'transmute' it, and the process of that transmutation to the senses of other men would be called 'death'.—Even as to caterpillars; in all probability the caterpillar dies, and he either does not see, which is most probable, or at all events he does not see the connection between the caterpillar and ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... mind mental, demented *Miror wonder mirror, admirable Mitto, missum send commit, emissary *Mordeo, morsum bite mordant, morsel, remorse Mors, mortis death mortal, mortify Moveo, motum move remove, locomotive *Multus many multiform, multiplex Muto, mutatum change transmute, immutable, moult Nascor, natus be born renascence, cognate *Nihil nothing nihilism, annihilate *Nomen, nominis name denomination, renown *Norma rule abnormal, enormous /Nosco, notum cognosco cognitum know / notation, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... madam, who, if she were discovered, would transmute us all into stone," said the novelist, bowing gravely. "If she existed at all," he added deliberately, "it was my business to find her, and she has cost me many a vain pilgrimage. Like Rudel of Tripoli, I have crossed seas and penetrated ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... The Romantic (COLLINS), will entirely depend upon your attitude towards the long-vexed question of the permissible in art. If you hold that all life (which in this association generally means something disagreeable) is its legitimate province and that genius can transmute an ugly study of morbid pathology into a romance, you will admire the force of this vivid little book; otherwise, I warn you frankly, you are like to be repelled by the whole business. The title, to begin with, is an irony as grim as anything that follows, in what sense you will find as the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... see is merely energy. Your eye is merely a machine. It catches certain colours. Which in turn are merely rates of vibration. There is nothing to matter but force, Harry; if we could get down deep enough and know a few laws, we could transmute it." ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... for the wants of the emigrating myriads to the coast of Africa: we have ships enough, and, notwithstanding the hardness of the times, money enough. O, the surpassing utility of the arithmetic! it is more potent than the stone of the philosopher, which, when discovered, is to transmute, at a touch, ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... recovery. After all, it was the best that could have happened. It should not be difficult to transmute that obvious dejection of Asad's into resentment, and to fan this into a rage that must end by consuming Sakr-el-Bahr. And so the thing could be accomplished without jeopardy to her own place at Asad's side. For it was inconceivable that he should now take Rosamund to his hareem. ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... on the occasion referred to, had remarked of him most truly,—"He has not been deterred by the aspect of vice and wickedness, and misery and guilt, from seeking a spirit of good in things evil, but has endeavoured by the might of genius to transmute what was base into what is precious as the beaten gold;" observing, indeed, yet further—"He has mingled in the common walks of life; he has made himself familiar with the lower orders of society." As if in supplementary ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... civilization in the subjective world, in the sphere of behavior, conduct and morality, has been precisely the gradual accumulation and popularization of methods which teach people how to direct, transform and transmute the driving power of ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... had some great architect among us," replied he, "he would transmute for our country ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... To transmute creatures belongs to Him Who preserves them. Now this belongs to God alone, according to Heb. 1:3: "Upholding all things by the word of His power." Therefore God alone has omnipotence with regard to the transmutation ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... or two at once. "Now, Williams, you are on your mettle, old boy; stand true to your colours, and transmute the sentence into ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... with Logic absolute The Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects confute: The Sovereign Alchemist that in a trice Life's leaden metal into Gold transmute: ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... others appear, and all wrestling with the enemy prevented by what is often nothing less than a fatal charm. From that moment, Thomas Dodds was changed after the manner of action of moral poisons; for we are to remember that while the physical kill, the other only transmute, and the transmutation may be from any good below grace to any evil ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... that a free, Protestant people, happy under the government of the best of princes, can be so infatuated as, without the utmost contempt and indignation, to hear of any terms from a Popish bigoted Pretender." But was it loyalty or sycophancy that could thus transmute even George I. into "the best ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... transmute wretched humanity into gold. But who is going to call order out of this horrid chaos? No one, I am thinking, for no one seems to dare attempt in any thorough way to solve the question of housing the very poor, and that question lies at ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... good, but also much that is bad. The bad, it is hoped, is dropped for all time; but the good, when picked up again, never is picked up as originally dropped. Between the original dropping and return to its vicinity along the tracks of the spiral, fresh elements join. These new accretions so transmute whatever is re-picked up that it is essentially remodeled. The "Communism," for instance, that the race is now heading toward, is, materially, a different article from the "Communism" it once left behind. We move ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... System that with logic absolute Both Standard Oil and Copper can confute; The Sovereign Alchemist that in a trice National Lead can into Gold transmute. ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... most remarkable of their vested powers was that of manufacturing money. The industrial manufacturer could not make goods unless he had the plant, the raw material and the labor. But the banker, somewhat like the fabled alchemists, could transmute airy nothing into bank-note money, and then, by law, force its acceptance. The lone trader or landholder unsupported by a partnership with law could not fabricate money. But let trader and landholder band in a company, incorporate, then persuade, wheedle or bribe a certain entity ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... required at a moment like this to transmute such thoughts as seethed in the man's head to a burst of fury. Fury is action, and action a relief to the strained heart. There was a half-concealed, unintended mockery in her tones which brought a sudden fire of anger to ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... Grape that can with Logic absolute The Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects confute: The subtle Alchemist that in a Trice Life's leaden Metal into Gold transmute. ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... more than gold and pearls, And shall I now hold back the gifts of fortune? Oh, come! Let my example challenge thee To noble self-denial! Let's at once Cast off the needless ornaments of life! Thy courtiers metamorphose into soldiers; Thy gold transmute to iron; all thou hast, With resolute daring, venture for thy crown! Peril and want we will participate! Let us bestride the war-horse, and expose Our tender person to the fiery glow Of the hot sun, take for our canopy The clouds ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... experience the thrilling joy of religion in the ever-abiding Divine Presence, and witness the marvels of faith in the conquering of the world? How is it we are no longer able to communicate the secrets to the suffering world which are able to transmute the people's want into God's plenty, and attract and hold the hearts of men with the joys of the Vision Splendid? Why is it that hope has given way to resignation, that the preaching of forgiveness has been dwarfed by the insistence ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... straight and square.... Life is round, and death is angular." [Footnote: Ellen Key, The Few and the Many, translated from a quotation in Max Dessoir, Aesthetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, page 396.] What vividness of imagination or sentiment can transmute these dead and hollow masses into a life ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... she believed in fine things and she never could long persuade herself that fine things missed were as beautiful as fine things achieved. Once Rowland passed an angry day. He had dreamed—it was the most insubstantial of dreams—that she had given him the right to believe that she looked to him to transmute her discontent. And yet here she was throwing herself back into Roderick's arms at his lightest overture, and playing with his own half fearful, half shameful hopes! Rowland declared to himself that his position was essentially detestable, ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... after days how real were Ayesha's alchemy, and the knowledge which enabled her to solve the secret that chemists have hunted for in vain, and, like Nature's self, to transmute the commonest into the most precious of the metals. At the first town that I reached on the frontiers of India, I took this knife to a jeweller, a native, who was as clever as he proved dishonest, and asked him to test the handle. He did so ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... nothing more was needed; and the name of Goethe himself reminds one how great for the artist may be the danger of overmuch science; how Goethe, who, in the Elective Affinities and the first part of Faust, does transmute ideas into images, who wrought many such transmutations, did not invariably find the spell-word, and in the second part of Faust presents us with a mass of science which has almost no artistic character at all. But Leonardo will ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... of Columbus shows how rarely men of the greatest insight and foresight, and also of the greatest perseverance, attain the exact ends they aim at. In this respect all such men partake the career of the alchemists, who did not transmute other metals into gold, but made valuable discoveries in chemistry. So, with Columbus. He did not rebuild the Holy Sepulchre; he did not lead a new crusade; he did not find his Kublai Khan, or his Prester John; but he ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... of those characteristic arithmetical illustrations to which Ricardo's practice gave a sanction. We are always starting an imaginary capitalist with so many quarters of corn and suits of clothes, which he can transmute into any kind of product, and taking for granted that he represents a typical case. This gives a certain mathematical air to the reasoning, and too often hides from the reasoner that he may be begging the question in ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... husband was extracting from this circumstance a delicate but substantial satisfaction. It is, as a rule, the people who scorn money who get most out of it; and Jack's elegant disdain of his wife's big balance enabled him, with an appearance of perfect good-breeding, to transmute it into objects of art and luxury. To the latter, I must add, he remained relatively indifferent; but he was buying Renaissance bronzes and eighteenth-century pictures with a discrimination that ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... for meat; it is equally impossible to get it any where else; and as for the only two natural productions of the country, vegetables and eggs, I need no extraordinary penetration, to be certain, that your cook cannot transmute the latter into an omelette aux huitres, on the former into legumes ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and has latterly allowed himself to decline to the manufacture of literary sillibub in the guise of novels about the smart set and Bohemia? How shall the stern critic dispose of Gertrude Atherton, who knows so much about California, New York, and the international scene but who somehow fails to transmute her materials to any lasting metal and leaves the impression of a vexed aristocrat scolding the age without either convincing it or convicting it of very serious deficiencies? How shall the accurate critic dispose of Frank Harris, who was born in Ireland and who had the most conspicuous ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... colors, and so pliant in texture that he could at any time turn it inside out. His coat was—as indeed were all his clothes—made upon the time principle, so that when hard pressed by the authorities he could in a minute or two transmute himself into the appearance of a nun very different from the individual described to them. Indeed he was such a perfect Proteus that no vigilance of the Executive was ever a match for his versatility of appearance, swiftness ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... conduct does not admit of excuse. But it is not for the plain, matter-of-fact man to pass judgement lightly on the weakness of a highly-strung, nervous, artistic temperament; the artist's imagination may transmute pain such as others might hope to bear, to anguish such as they cannot even imagine. There lies the palliation, if palliation it be, of Lucan's crime. But it availed him nothing: the reprieve was never won; he was condemned to die, ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... the hazardous game he was playing, and he was unafraid, because he had only his life to lose, a life that was not much more than a hopeless derelict at most. Now it was different. Mary Josephine had come like some rare and wonderful alchemy to transmute for him all leaden things into gold. In a few minutes she had upset the world. She had literally torn aside for him the hopeless chaos in which he saw himself struggling, flooding him with the warm radiance of a great love and a still greater desire. On his lips he could feel ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... shift, veer, tack, chop, shuffle, swerve, warp, deviate, turn aside, evert, intervert[obs3]; pass to, take a turn, turn the corner, resume. work a change, modify, vamp, superinduce; transform, transfigure, transmute, transmogrify, transume[obs3]; metamorphose, ring the changes. innovate, introduce new blood, shuffle the cards; give a turn to, give a color to; influence, turn the scale; shift the scene, turn over a new leaf. recast &c. 146; reverse &c. 218; disturb &c. 61; convert into &c. 144. Adj. changed ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... man: in the great Art of Varnish he may be said to seek his fellow. Has there an explosion arisen, as many do arise, a confusion, unsightliness, which no tongue can speak of, nor eye look on; give it to Barrere; Barrere shall be Committee-Reporter of it; you shall see it transmute itself into a regularity, into the very beauty and improvement that was needed. Without one such man, we say, how were this Convention bested? Call him not, as exaggerative Mercier does, 'the greatest liar in France:' nay ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... window at the pale streamers of dawnlight penciling the sky, Magda's eyes grew wistful—wonderingly questioning the future. Was she, too, only waiting for the revelation of dawn—the dawn of that mysterious thing called love which can transmute this everyday old world of ours into heaven ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... of a healthy town: and if it had been otherwise, Dr. Singletary was the last man in the world to transmute the aches and ails of its inhabitants into gold for his own pocket. So, at the age of sixty, he was little better off, in point of worldly substance, than when he came into possession of the small ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... voice of Percy Darrow, awestricken. "With fifty centigrammes only you could—you could transmute any substance—why, you could make anything you pleased almost! You could make enough diamonds to fill that chest! It is ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... he continued to utter these words, until at length the growing volume dominated the whole room and mastered the manifestation of all that opposed it. For just as he understood the spiritual alchemy that can transmute evil forces by raising them into higher channels, so he knew from long study the occult use of sound, and its direct effect upon the plastic region wherein the powers of spiritual evil work their fell purposes. Harmony was restored ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... much of his money until it began to acquire the virtue of an alkahest in his mind, an universal solvent that would transmute all the baser metals in Nancy's life and the lives of the people in whom Nancy was interested, into the pure gold of luxury and ease. He knew that the conventional fairy gifts would mean very little to her, ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... anthers. What family tie is betrayed in all this? No other than that sepals, petals, anthers and pistils are but leaves in disguise, and that we have detected nature returning to the form from which ages ago she began to transmute the parts of flowers in all their teeming diversity. The leaf is the parent not only of all these but of delicate tendrils, which save a vine the cost of building a stem stout enough to lift it to open air and sunshine. However ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... this purse. Each stitch she netted, each bead she strung, was a new source of delight—for she was working for Philip. Love is the true magic of life, effecting more strange metamorphoses than ever did the spells of Archimago, or the arts of Armida—the moral alchemy which can transmute the basest things into the most precious. It is true of all circumstances, as well ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... may be made. Their genuine use is to excite our own minds to master the principles which their authors have set forth in them. Fresh honesty of personal thought, aspiration, and patience, is the spiritual talisman wherewith alone we can vivify truisms into truths, and transmute noble maxims into flesh and blood, nay, into immortal mind. The master-thinkers aid us to do this by the quickening power of their suggestions,—the great critic not only giving his readers direction, but also helping them ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... to resist a tremendous force majeure. Besides, all the Parliaments in the world cannot upset the laws of the universe. If things are false and corrupt, they MUST be swept away,—Nature will not have them,—she will transmute and transform them somehow, no matter at what cost. It is the cry of the old Prophets over again,—'Because ye have not obeyed God's Law, therefore shall ye meet with destruction.' Egoism is certainly NOT God's Law, and we shall have to return on our imagined ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... from the four qualities of the four Elements, 783-l. Printing, power and art of, 54-m. Priscillianists believed in two principles, Divinity and Matter and Darkness, 567-l. Prismatic separation of seven colors correspond to the Sephiroth, 727-m. Problem of the Hermetics to transmute metals and possess the elixir of life, 772-l. Problems, most important, are social, 180-u. Problems of populous and wealthy country, 178-179. Problems solved by the ancient poetic and philosophic mind, 653-m. Proclus held that each Star contained an immortal ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... itself, not so much by seeking experiences different from those that naturally come your way, as by becoming aware of the value of those that belong naturally to your life; and second, through learning to absorb and transmute the life that is in books, beginning with those that stand nearest to your stage of development. In the process of reading you will turn more and more to those writers who have a larger mastery of ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... assertion that he is only a mirror in which the religion of his immediate society and nothing more is reflected. There is from a very early time an active principle of personality, a growing selective power, a plus that comes out of the unmapped laboratory of creation, that may so arrange, transmute, and enrich the commonplace elements of the socio-religious matrix as to amount to genius. But, nevertheless, the newcomer can scarcely do more than select the given quarter which from day to day proves least unpleasant, while the fact of being on the great ship and in one cabin or another—or ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... Adam and Eve among embowering roses and lilies, while the sun, moon, and stars simultaneously shine, is impermissible to the portrait-painter or the landscapist, who has to idealise actuality to the point only of artistic realism, and not to transmute it at the outset from happily-perceived concrete facts to a glorified ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... he could transmute speech into action. Instead of wasting words, he began to deliver convincing blows. His first stroke sent the obscene corporal to the floor, minus front teeth and consciousness. The amazed captain labored to unsheath his sword, but Byle snatched ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... fortnight. Having succeeded, you can choose a harder thing to do, and so on. By this forcing of action, you strengthen the will. Day after day it grows greater in power, and you find your inner strength increases. First have a strong desire. Then transmute it ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... divine, a Saviour of men, and he takes up the world-work for which all this has been the preparation. Into him must pour all the forces that make against man, in order that in him they may be changed into forces that help. Thus he becomes one of the Peace-centres of the world, which transmute the forces of combat that would otherwise crush man. For the Christs of the world are these Peace-centres into which pour all warring forces, to be changed within them and then poured out as forces ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... to transform it to ashes, yet you need only carry it to the nearest banker's to see it changed into a heap of gold, or glitter as a parure of the costliest diamonds. If you desire it, these papers will transmute themselves into a magnificent castle, into liveried servants, into superb carriages. Oh, I already see you standing as the proud mistress of a stately castle, in your ancestral hall, with vassals bowing before you, and counts and princes suing for your hand. For these ...
— A Conspiracy of the Carbonari • Louise Muhlbach
... in English, "the fellow frightened me." We should be pretty sure not to find the same words in Mr. Macaulay. He would pause—he would first consider whether "the fellow" spoken of was a Whig or a Tory. If a Whig, the thing would be treated as a joke, and Mr. Macaulay would transmute it playfully into "the rogue startled me"; but if a Tory, it would take a deeper dye, and we should find "the villain assaulted me"; and in either case we should have ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... won't do. Miss Richardson does not, and cannot, tell us all. A novel is a piece of art which does not so much report life as transmute it. She takes up what she needs for her purpose, and that may not be our purpose. And so it is with poetry—we don't go to that for the facts, but for the essence of fact. The poet who told us all about himself at some particular pass would write a bad poem, for it is his affair to transfigure ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... ago Haswell became interested in the work of an obscure chemist over in Brooklyn, Morgan Prescott. Prescott claims, as I understand, to be able to transmute copper into gold. Whatever you think of it offhand, you should visit his laboratory yourselves, gentlemen. I am told it is wonderful, though I have never seen it and can't explain it. I have met Prescott several times while he was trying to persuade Mr. Haswell to ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... haste slowly, Than to antedate your day; The farmer waits for the sunshine, To transmute the grass to hay. When the fields are ripe for harvest Fear neither the heat or rain, But thrust in your sharpened sickle, And ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... ferrets which I sent into its burrow, my brace of terriers which unearthed it.... Other seeds I have which will find other things in that corner of my garden. Perfect alchemists I keep who can transmute substances without end, and thus the corner of my garden is an inexhaustible treasure-chest. Here you can dig, not gold, but the value which gold merely represents; and there is no Signor Blitz about it. Yet farmer's sons will stare by the hour to see a ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... circumstances sometimes remains in the form of Ku-. The 16th, Pa-, prefix is one of the most puzzling in its distribution and its phonetic changes. A very large number of the Bantu languages in the north, east and west have a dislike to the consonant P, which they frequently transmute into an aspirate (H), or soften into V, W, or F, or simply drop out. There is too much evidence in favour of this prefix having been originally Pa- or Mpa-pa to enable us to give it any other form in reconstructing the Bantu mother-tongue. Yet in the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... light on the view of Greek mythology taken in the Mysteries. The world of the gods is born in the soul. Man looks upon what he creates in images as his gods (cf. p. 33). But he must force his way through to another conception. He must transmute into divine images the divine force which is active within him before the creation of those images. Behind the divine appears the mother of the divine, which is nothing else than the original force of the human soul. Thus side by side with the gods, ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... alchemists must have done," he often thought. "Here is a base metal. Why can I not transmute it into gold?" ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... journals of the period from 1830 to 1855—are neither rare nor expensive; but I happened to have lighted on a particularly copious collection, and I made the most of my small good-fortune, in order to transmute it, if possible, into a sort of compensation for my having missed unavoidably, a few months before, the curious exhibition "de la Caricature Moderne" held for several weeks just at hand, in the ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... ancestry of these deities and their connexion with the guardians of the subterranean palaces where pearls are found. But Artemis was not only the opener of the treasure-houses, but she also possessed the secret of the philosopher's stone: she could transmute base substances into gold,[341] for was she not the offspring of the Golden Hathor? To open the portal either of birth or wealth she used her magic wand or key. As Nub, the lady of gold, the Great Mother could not only change other substances into gold, but she was also the guardian of the ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... imprisoned the master devil in the bellies of the swine, no malignant beast had ever been seen in any portion of the earth so mischievous, venomous and so clutching; so much so that if one threw the town of Tours into this field of Venus, she would there transmute it into the grain of cities, and this demon would swallow ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... fierce power; love, hate, grief, frenzy; in a word, all the worn-out heart of the old earth had been revealed to him under a new form. His portfolio was filled with graphic illustrations of the volume of his memory, which genius would transmute into its own substance, and imbue with immortality. He felt that the deep wisdom in his art, which he had sought ...
— The Prophetic Pictures (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ;every man leading an active life, ought to read that," he said. "We should have a new order of things as the result Instead of fancying that our ordinary daily work was one thing and our religion quite another thing, we should transmute our drudgery into acts of worship. Instead of going to prayer-meetings to get into a 'good frame' we should live in a good frame from morning till night, from night till morning, and prayer and praise would be only another form for expressing ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... few flying glimpses into it, taken previously, to prevent me from making regular approaches to the gist and body of the book, where I fancied lay something like the philosopher's stone, a secret talisman, which would transmute even pitch and tar to ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... must here be uttered: do not overwork the pause. To do so will make your speech heavy and stilted. And do not think that pause can transmute commonplace thoughts into great and dignified utterance. A grand manner combined with insignificant ideas is like harnessing a Hambletonian with an ass. You remember the farcical old school declamation, "A Midnight Murder," that proceeded in ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... bitterness of impotent rebellion, we have learnt both to resign ourselves to the outward rule of Fate and to recognise that the non-human world is unworthy of our worship, it becomes possible at last so to transform and refashion the unconscious universe, so to transmute it in the crucible of imagination, that a new image of shining gold replaces the old idol of clay. In all the multiform facts of the world—in the visual shapes of trees and mountains and clouds, in the events of the life of man, even in ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... doctrine arose that metals, like human beings, had body and soul, the soul being regarded as a finer form of corporeality. They said that the soul or primitive stuff (prima materia) was common to all metals, and in order to transmute one metal into another they had to produce a tincture of its soul. In Egypt lead, under the name Osiris, was thought to be the primitive base of metals; later when the still more plastic quicksilver (mercury) ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... brand of Rheims is graven, To spare the poet of our common race And find forgiveness for the Bard of Avon; And all the little lore he feebly guessed, Phantasy, rhetoric, and trope and sermon, To clasp politely to your mailed breast, Refine, transmute and ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 7, 1914 • Various
... pale," "a dim religious light," the "silver lining" of the cloud, "west winds with musky wing," "the laureate hearse where Lycid lies." His poetic instinct enabled him to take common prosaic words and, by merely changing the position of the adjective, transmute them into imperishable verse. His "darkness visible" and "human face divine" are ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... work, to act. At this moment thousands of women and children are starving in England—absolutely perishing for lack of bread. Come with me and help remove the tax that places food out of the reach of many. Transmute grief for the dead into love for the living. Let us never rest until the Corn Laws are abolished— Come!" To dedicate himself to humanity now seemed easy for John Bright. This he did, and life took on a great, quiet sanctity, purified and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... reagent which is apt to transmute all things into joy—even sorrow itself. I wonder if any one seriously doubts that it was just this which was giving Browning's young David such a glorious time of it when he broke into that jubilant war-whoop about "our manhood's prime vigor" and "the wild ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... by Spain. The danger, indeed, was of a more subtle and incalculable kind, and within the Commonwealth itself. We have seen how naturally the baulked Cromwellianism of the epoch of the dissolution of Richard's Parliament and the overthrow of his Protectorate tended to transmute itself into Stuartism, and how much of the strength of Sir George Booth's insurrection consisted of new Royalism so produced. What we have now to add is that every baulked or defeated cause in succession within the Commonwealth ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... problem is also the scientific problem, that all problems are finally scientific problems. The notion that therapeutics or hygiene or surgery is any more or less scientific than making or cleaning boots is entertained only by people to whom a man of science is still a magician who can cure diseases, transmute metals, and enable us to live for ever. It may still be necessary for some time to come to practise on popular credulity, popular love and dread of the marvellous, and popular idolatry, to induce the poor to comply with the sanitary regulations they are too ignorant to understand. As I have ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... water into alcohol, ethereal and colouring matters, than there is, at this present moment, any practical difficulty in working other such miracles; as when we turn sugar into alcohol, carbonic acid, glycerine, and succinic acid; or transmute gas-refuse into perfumes rarer than musk and dyes richer than Tyrian purple. If the so-called "elements," oxygen and hydrogen, which compose water, are aggregates of the same ultimate particles, or physical units, as those which enter into the structure ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... was induced to accept the governor's hospitality, though there were not wanting those who warned Gosford that Papineau was irreconcilable. 'By a wrong-headed and melancholy alchemy,' wrote an English officer in Quebec to Gosford, 'he will transmute every public concession into a demand for more, in a ratio equal to its extent; and his disordered moral palate, beneath the blandest smile and the {50} softest language, will turn ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles
... a good speech, I'd like to be skilled in sleight-of-hand affairs. I'd like to fish up a rabbit from the depths of an old gentleman's silk tile, or extract a dozen eggs from a lady's hand-bag, or transmute a canary into a goldfish. I'd like to see the looks of wonder on the faces of the audience and hear them gasp. The difficulty with such a subject as I have chosen, though, is to fill the frame. I went into a shop in ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... purchase true friendship and only eternal things are given away. So, what matters it whether we travel east or west as long as our souls retain the freshness and fragrance of the early morning's hours? We can be our own alchemists, and through the gray vapors of our poor lives transmute them into golden flowers of character that shall gleam and sparkle as the evening of our closing days draw near, like coruscating stars in the violet dusk of ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... people, when despair has been suddenly thrown off and expectations are lofty; the apprehensiveness to a touch unkindly or irreverent, where sympathy is at once exacted as a tribute and welcomed as a gift; the power of injustice and inordinate calamity to transmute, to invigorate, and to govern—to sweep away the barriers of opinion—to reduce under submission passions purely evil—to exalt the nature of indifferent qualities, and to render them fit companions for the ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... and rich nature which could thus draw sunshine out of its trials!—which, by aid of the true philosopher's stone of cheerfulness and courage, could transmute the heavy ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... remarkable talents will it not be the possessor! By degrees, the extreme quickness of intellect becomes less remarkable; but the body begins to increase in robustness; and a year will sometimes suffice to transmute the little fairy, so quick, so clever, but so fragile, into a very commonplace, merry, rosy, romping child. I may add that it is well to bear in mind the converse of this; to remember that body and mind rarely grow in equal proportion at one time; that the incorrigible little dunce, though ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... who with genius absolute, My poor satiric Logic can confute; The only Poet who, in modern Days, His Poems can to clinking Gold transmute! ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Cayenne • Gelett Burgess
... That everything in the whole world had been natural. He was the enemy of alchemy, not only in language, but in science. One passage from him is enough to show his philosophy in this regard. He says: "To transmute iron into gold two things are necessary. First, the annihilation of the iron; second, the creation of gold." Voltaire was a man of humor, of good nature, of cheerfulness. He despised with all his heart the ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... passionately sweet association the very thing to bind Marcolina to him more firmly with each kiss that they enjoyed? Would not the ineffable bliss of this night transmute into truth what had been conceived in falsehood? His duped mistress, woman of women, had she not already an inkling that it was not Lorenzi, the stripling, but Casanova, the man, with whom she was mingling in ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... the scene shortly after I left on Saturday; a Gujar told the shikari, and the shikari told me, so it must be true.) When we had gathered as many flowers as we could carry, we strolled back to the camp to watch the sunset transmute the snowy crest of Haramok ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne |
