"Esoteric" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thought. Of many gospels but few remain. Among the lost evangels was one that Valentinian said was imparted only to the more spiritual of the disciples. It may be that in it a main idea was elucidated and, perhaps, as a consequence, the meaning of the esoteric proclamation: "Before ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... But all things in this dreadful story ought to be harmonized. Already in itself it is an ennobling and an idealizing of the riddle, that it is made a double riddle; that it contains an exoteric sense obvious to all the world, but also an esoteric sense—now suggested conjecturally after thousands of years—possibly unknown to the Sphinx, and certainly unknown to dipus; that this second riddle is hid within the first; that the one riddle is the secret commentary upon the other; ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... discovered, and this gives the finder, and chosen members of his clan with whom he shares it, a peculiar sanctity in the eyes of the rest of the tribe. Like facts, however, become known to other clans, and then coalitions are made which take the form of esoteric societies, and from these the stronger savages gradually exclude the weaker and their descendants. Meanwhile an elaborate ritual is developed, and so an hereditary priesthood comes into life, which always ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... the Philological Society in 1876, and a few years later Dr. Jago received some of the same tradition. Thus it may be said that so long as any of these three are alive, a faint flicker of living Cornish remains, even if there is no verity in the weird legends of the survival of more as an esoteric language among the peasantry and the mining and fishing folk of the West. But even if the spoken Cornish be dead, its ghost still haunts its old dwelling, for the modern English speech of West Cornwall is full of Celtic words, and nine-tenths of the places and ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner
... intellectual system of doctrine, comprehending at once the past, the present, and the future condition of man. Jesus Christ divulged the sacred and eternal truths contained in these views to mankind, and Christianity, in its abstract purity, became the exoteric expression of the esoteric doctrines of the poetry and wisdom of antiquity. The incorporation of the Celtic nations with the exhausted population of the south, impressed upon it the figure of the poetry existing in their mythology and institutions. The result was a sum of the action and reaction of all the causes included ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... the same rental a far more convenient and roomy cottage in Upper Clapton or Stoke Newington. But Lady Le Breton was a thoroughly and conscientiously religious woman, who in all things consulted first and foremost the esoteric interests of her ingrained creed. It was a prime article of this cherished social faith that nobody with any shadow of personal self-respect could endure to live under any other postal letter than W. or S.W. Better not to be at all than to drag out ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... friends of the late Mr. Oliver Offord; but whenever we chance to meet I think we are conscious of a certain esoteric respect for each other. "Yes, you too have been in Arcadia," we seem not too grumpily to allow. When I pass the house in Mansfield Street I remember that Arcadia was there. I don't know who has it now, and don't want to know; it's enough to be so sure that if I should ring the bell there ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... Colour was abolished, and its possession prohibited. Even the utterance of any word denoting Colour, except by the Circles or by qualified scientific teachers, was punished by a severe penalty. Only at our University in some of the very highest and most esoteric classes—which I myself have never been privileged to attend—it is understood that the sparing use of Colour is still sanctioned for the purpose of illustrating some of the deeper problems of mathematics. But of this I can ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... original curve and what a modest curve that curve was. Suddenly and magically his eyes had been opened. Or it might have been that a deceitful mist had rolled away and the real Louvre been revealed in its esoteric and ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... we should neither take photographs nor write down exact descriptions. As regards the latter, the Staff officers had reason to be reassured. No living journalist could have reproduced the scientific account of the sighting arrangements given to us in an esoteric yet quite comprehensible language by the high priest of these guns, who was a middle-aged artillery Captain. It lasted about twenty minutes. It was complete, final, unchallengeable. At intervals the artillery Captain himself admitted that such-and-such ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... conquest of Britain, says that the Druids profess to know the shape and size of the world, the movements of the stars, and the will of the Gods. They teach many secrets in caves and woods, but only to the nobles of the land. Of this esoteric instruction one doctrine alone has been permitted to leak out to the common people—that of the immortality of the soul—and this only because that doctrine was calculated to make them the braver in battle. In accordance with it, food and the like was buried with ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... name of Papias [210:2]. This explanation might have been left to itself if it had remained as a mere hypothesis of Overbeck's, but it has been recently accepted by Hilgenfeld. He speaks of these five 'exoteric' books, as attached to 'the five esoteric or genuine books;' and to this source he attributes not only the account of the four Maries, but also a notice relating to the death of St John which is given by Georgius Hamartolos on ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... be worth while to refer to this taste in the apparel of our fiction did it not have deep and esoteric suggestions, and could not the novelists themselves get a hint from it. Is it realized how much depends upon the clothes that are worn by the characters in the novels —clothes put on not only to exhibit the inner life of the characters, but to please the readers who ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... initiated of such craft, trade or profession. It may be correct, according to the rules of grammar, but it is not universal; it is confined to certain parts and localities and is only intelligible to those for whom it is intended. In short, it is an esoteric language which only the initiated can understand. The jargon, or patter, of thieves is cant and it is only understood by thieves who have been let into its significance; the initiated language of professional gamblers is cant, and is only ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... result. To judge fully, it is necessary to get behind the scenes, a thing not easy for a stranger anywhere, least of all here. There is too the further difficulty, that when you have got behind the scenes, it is not very easy to narrate your esoteric experiences to the public. Even if there were no other objection, it would be useless to quote individual stories and facts which have come privately to my knowledge, and which would show Rome, in spite of its external ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... land." It had a public representative in Mr. Randall, who had "for some years preached peaceably in the Spital" (already mentioned among the Antinomians), and of whom Baillie had heard that he entertained such ideas as these, though reserving them probably as esoteric mysteries for the highest class of the Family of Love—"that all the resurrection and glory which Scripture promises is past already, and no other coming of Christ to judgment, or life eternal, is to be expected than what presently in this earth the saints ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... and by I discovered that there was an inner and an outer circle in this mystery. Every creed has an esoteric side which is kept from the common herd. I struck this side in Constantinople. Now there is a very famous Turkish shaka called Kasredin, one of those old half-comic miracle plays with an allegorical meaning which they call ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... all his old knowledge in the study of babies and things. The Englishman allowed Dana Da to tell a fortune for charity's sake, and gave him five rupees, a dinner, and some old clothes. When he had eaten, Dana Da professed gratitude, and asked if there were anything he could do for his host—in the esoteric line. ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... as the upper classes in rural districts are designated by the lower with so much true discrimination, were to eat a breakfast, and the non-quality were to eat a dinner. Two marquees had been erected for these two banquets: that for the quality on the esoteric or garden side of a certain deep ha-ha; and that for the non-quality on the exoteric or paddock side of the same. Both were of huge dimensions—that on the outer side was, one may say, on an egregious scale—but Mr. Plomacy declared that neither would be sufficient. To remedy this, an auxiliary ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... title of Siberian Magic. The reticence wore off in a week or two under the influence of an entire lack of general curiosity, and Leonard began to make more detailed allusions to the enormous powers which this new esoteric force, to use his own description of it, conferred on the initiated few who knew how to wield it. His aunt, Cecilia Hoops, who loved sensation perhaps rather better than she loved the truth, gave him as clamorous ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... enjoying all the advantages of high position. The dear Vidame was a repositary for everybody's secrets, and the gazette of the Faubourg besides; nevertheless, he was discreet, and, like other gazettes, only said things that might safely be published. Again Victurnien listened to the Chevalier's esoteric doctrines. The Vidame told young d'Esgrignon, without mincing matters, to make conquests among women of quality, supplementing the advice with anecdotes from his own experience. The Vicomte de Pamiers, it seemed, had permitted himself much that it would serve no purpose to relate here; so remote ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... this a closer, a more intimate revelation, a more exalted symbolism of the Divine Nature and Presence? Just as in the various Greek 'mysteries' the student was gradually advanced from one set of symbols to another even more abstruse and esoteric, so here, on the broad face of heaven itself, vouchsafed for a brief space of time and at long intervals apart, the Deity revealed Himself to the initiated by a higher and more difficult symbol than ordinarily. The symbol would vary in shape. We may take it for granted ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... the capture of her affections so early by Walter had prevented her from viewing Paul in any other light than that of an ingenious artist, and a man of kindly sympathies, however much he was separated from mankind by a theory of the world too esoteric for ordinary thought, and which yet, at some time of man's life, forces its way amidst palpitations ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... perfumes, essences, pomades, head-gears from France, dishes or ornaments from China, then already beginning to be fashionable; not to mention drugs of various descriptions, chiefly for the use of the ladies, and partly by other services, more or less connected with the esoteric branches of ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... at her doubtingly, although the idea appealed to him. Outriding his admiration of the idea, however, was a recurrence of his old impression of Romola Borria. He knew that he never had been a match for her cunning, her esoteric knowledge ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... 'slates'),—considering her literary reputation, I say, she was one of the most respectable women it is possible to imagine. She furnished correctly, dressed correctly, had severe notions of whom she might meet, went to church, and even at times took the sacrament in some esoteric spirit. And Jessie she brought up so carefully that she never even let her read "A Soul Untrammelled." Which, therefore, naturally enough, Jessie did, and went on from that to a feast of advanced literature. Mrs. Milton not only brought ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... to the efficacy of the Word, and the prohibition against pronouncing it, could, being errors, have formed no part of the pure primitive religion, or of the esoteric doctrine taught by Moses, and the full knowledge of which was confined to the Initiates; unless the whole was but an ingenious invention for the concealment of some other Name or truth, the interpretation and meaning whereof was made known only to the select ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... much," said Lionel, timidly (for what did he know about such esoteric matters?). "I suppose the money they might get from a novel would be of little consideration—but it would show that the ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... breadth, a freshness and spontaneity which are anything but common in the typical music of our day. It is a curious experience to turn from the music of such typical moderns as Loeffler and Debussy, with its elusive melodic contours, its continual avoidance of definite patterns, its passion for the esoteric and its horror of direct communication, to the music of such a writer as MacDowell. For he has accomplished the difficult and perilous feat of writing frankly without obviousness, simply without triteness. His melodic ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... account of how a farmer got the best of a bunco steerer in New York City, and was delivered in the esoteric dialect of the Bowery. It was not long before willing smiles gave place to long-drawn faces of comic bewilderment, and, although Copernicus set his best example by artificial grins and pretended inward laughter, he could evoke naught but silence and ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... user. Pure art, a fine-spun specialty, a process carried on by an elect few who openly despise the unappreciative many. Art has become an occult profession requiring a long special education even to enjoy, and evolving a jargon of criticism which becomes more esoteric yearly. ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... we to know the best; how are we to gain this definite idea of the vast world of letters? There are some who appear to suppose that the "best" are known only to experts in an esoteric way, who may reveal to inquirers what schoolboys and betting-men describe as "tips." There are no "tips" in literature; the "best" authors are never dark horses; we need no "crammers" and "coaches" to thrust us into the presence of the great writers of all time. "Crammers" ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... run no risk of being misunderstood when we define a myth as, in its origin, an explanation, by the uncivilized mind, of some natural phenomenon; not an allegory, not an esoteric symbol,—for the ingenuity is wasted which strives to detect in myths the remnants of a refined primeval science,—but an explanation. Primitive men had no profound science to perpetuate by means of allegory, nor were they such sorry pedants as to ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... a matter for esoteric speculation. He had three rooms in a bachelor apartment on Forty-forth street, but he was seldom to be found there. The telephone girl had received the most positive instructions that no one should even have his ear without ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... little, Maitland, one might believe, to some extent,[8] Professor Bury, Lord knows, neither that nor any other emotion comprehensible in man. To the don, indeed, the absence of the past is one of the factors in his fascinating, esoteric game: were some astounding document to appear that should make the origin and constitution of the mediaeval manor as clear as daylight, the problem would lose its interest, the agile don would find it too easy for ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... what is more, quite superior, virtuous people, religious in the best sense of the word, are apt to have, besides the ostensible and perhaps rather obsolete one of churches and meeting-houses, another cultus, esoteric, unspoken but acted upon, of which the priests and casuists are ladies'-maids ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... to stand no nonsense from Kate. Other girls' big sisters had been known to assume superiority as their skirts lengthened, and to imply an esoteric something in their experience which younger sisters could not comprehend, and privileges which they might not share. But for them, the Madigans, though they were graciously willing to count Kate out of such outdoor sports as were incompatible with lengthened ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... was most courteously and pleasantly disputatious. In truth, his quickness in discovering and apprehending distinctions and analogies was such as a veteran judge might envy. The lawyers of the Duchy of Lancaster were astonished to find in an unprofessional man so strong a relish for the esoteric parts of their science, and complained that as soon as they had split a hair, Lord Holland proceeded to split the filaments into filaments still finer. In a mind less happily constituted, there might have been a ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... with the Moslems, contemptuous of the Latin Christians, impatient of dogma, they might have been the Orangemen of Syria. Their emirs had a great dignity and a great simplicity, like an old-time Highland chief. They acknowledged God, but after that their faith ran into esoteric subtleties of nature-worship, which they kept to the initiates among themselves.... And the common run of them had strange legends, as that in a mountain bowl of China lived tribe on tribe of Druses, ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... unnatural heat when the "Gypsy's Malison" was rejected by the ingenious editors of the Gem, on the ground that it would "shock all mothers"; and even this expression, uttered with pardonable irritation, manifests no solicitude for a narrow and esoteric audience. ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... under the auspices of SMITH, ELDER, hoping that they will prove "a source of interest and pleasure to the friends of the expedition." He need have no fears. Of course a paper produced under such conditions is in its nature esoteric, and many of its jokes are lost if you "don't know Jimson." But if you have previously read Scott's Last Expedition then you will "know Jimson"; you will feel that every man at Cape Evans in 1911 was a personal friend of yours, and you will be delighted with this facsimile reproduction ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... form, but of inestimable value to the pupils and the school. A further service that is far more unusual than difficult may be performed by the pupils who are not new, in the way of removing strangeness for those who are entering what seems to them a sort of new esoteric cult in the high school. The girls of the Washington Irving High School[55] of New York City recently put into practice a plan to give a personal welcome to each entering girl, and a personal escort for the first hour, including the registration and a tour of the building, in addition to ...
— The High School Failures - A Study of the School Records of Pupils Failing in Academic or - Commercial High School Subjects • Francis P. Obrien
... Tao Te Ching, which centers on belief in the Tao, or the way, as the flow of the universe and the nature of things. Taoism encourages a principle of non-force, or wu-wei, as the means to live harmoniously with the Tao. Taoists believe the esoteric world is made up of a perfect harmonious balance and nature, while in the manifest world - particularly in the body - balance is distorted. The Three Jewels of the Tao - compassion, simplicity, and humility - serve as the basis ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... part of the camel looked at the back part of the camel—and they exchanged a particularly subtle, esoteric sort of wink that only ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... profession serves on both the land and the sea, in armies and navies; and while both the land and the sea branches are exacting in their demands, the sea or naval branch is the more exacting of the two; by reason of the fact that the naval profession is the more esoteric, the more apart from the others, the more peculiar. In all the naval countries, suitable youths are taken in hand by their governments, and initiated into the "mysteries" of the naval profession—mysteries that would always remain mysteries to them, if their initiation ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... these walks the name of Peripatetic was given to the School which he subsequently established. Like several others of the Greek philosophers, he had a select body of pupils, to whom he delivered his esoteric doctrines; and a larger, more promiscuous, and less accomplished company, to whom he delivered his exoteric lectures on less abstruse subjects. When he had resided thirteen years at Athens, he found himself threatened with a prosecution ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... appear that some, at least, of the English clergy have adopted the Jesuit principle, practically so convenient, by which any one may have an esoteric religion for himself as the comfortable lining of the cloak, and an esoteric religion for other people as the outside of the cloak. Meanwhile these clergymen are deeply respected, whilst honest men whose opinions are not one whit more heretical ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... many of them took place. It was written one night between twelve and three, and cost the poet, he said, "hardly an effort." Indeed, it is the spontaneous ease and grace, the unfailing taste of Longfellow's lines, which are their best technical quality. There is nothing obscure or esoteric about his poetry. If there is little passion or intellectual depth, there is always genuine poetic feeling, often a very high order of imagination and almost invariably the choice of the right word. In this volume were also included the Village Blacksmith ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... namely from Newbiggin in Forfar, where for fourteen years he had his one and only charge, to Strathmiglo in Fife. The marriage was fruitful and a happy one, although there is a hint in the record of some religious difference upon which one would like to dwell if the subject were not too esoteric for this generation. The minister showed a certain indulgence, and so long as his wife lived he never employed the paraphrases in the solemn worship of the sanctuary. She was a woman of provident mind. Shortly after they were married he made the discovery ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... nonsense (that was his way of "living dangerously")—but can we reasonably suppose that soldiers in a "conquered" country, soldiers full of the belief that any opposition to Germanism was in itself a crime (see No. 344), paused to look beneath his surface eulogies of murder and lust for some esoteric meaning that may possibly underlie them? Can it be a mere coincidence that, in the first war which Germany has waged since Nietzsche entered upon his apostolate of ruthlessness, the German armies should have been animated, to all appearance, ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... scientific method of delineating character, diagnosing disease, determining mental, physical, and business qualifications, conjugal adaptability, etc., etc., from the date of birth.—By HIRAM E. BUTLER, with illustrations." Boston, Esoteric Publishing Company, 478 Shawmut Avenue ($5.00). This is a handsome volume, which, from a hasty examination, appears to be a large fragment of Astrology, containing its simplest portion, requiring no abstruse calculations, and hence ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... discernible though hidden away amidst the mass of esoteric doctrine back of the exoteric teachings of the Egyptians, which latter were expounded to the common people, while the truth was reserved for the few who were ready for it. The inner circles of the Egyptian mystics believed in and understood the inner truths of Reincarnation, ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... The really esoteric part of it, Amidon felt, was to come, as he could see no reason for making a secret of these very solemn and edifying matters. Stevens felt very much the same way about it, and was full of expectancy when informed that the next degree would test his obedience. He highly resolved to ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... interpreted. Christian boldness and Christian liberty must be reconquered; it is the church which is heretical, the church whose sight is troubled and her heart timid. Whether we will or no, there is an esoteric doctrine, there is a relative revelation; each man enters into God so much as God enters into him, or as Angelus, [Footnote: Angelus Silesius, otherwise Johannes Soheffler, the German seventeenth century hymn-writer, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... while in respect of revealed religion I remained a zealous Unitarian. I considered the idea of the Trinity a fair scholastic inference from the being of God, as a creative intelligence; and that it was therefore entitled to the rank of an esoteric doctrine of natural religion. But seeing in the same no practical or moral bearing, I confined it to the schools of philosophy. The admission of the Logos, as hypostasized (that is, neither a mere attribute, nor a personification) in no respect removed my doubts ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... in many things that Balzac did. One little incident will perhaps be sufficiently characteristic of many others. He had a belief that names had a sort of esoteric appropriateness. So, in selecting them for his novels, he gathered them with infinite pains from many sources, and then weighed them anxiously in the balance. A writer on the subject of names and their significance has given the ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... the two men seem inevitable; they were made by readers when In Memoriam and Men and Women came hot from the press, and they have been made ever since. There could, of course, scarcely be two men more dissimilar, Tennyson elaborating and decorating the obvious; Browning delving into the esoteric and the obscure, and bringing up strange and unfamiliar finds; Tennyson in faultless verse registering current newly accepted ways of thought; Browning in advance thinking afresh for himself, occupied ceaselessly in the arduous labour of creating an audience fit to judge him. The ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... and of the exponents of his purely esoteric doctrine, belong to the reflective type which will presently be given special consideration. But with the ordinary believer, even where an extraneous but almost inevitable polytheism is least in evidence, the religious experience ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... secret and perilous doctrines—Communism, for instance, under some modification, or rancorous Jacobinism. And secondly, suppose that for the present, or in the existing stage of the secret society, there really were no esoteric and mischievous doctrine propagated, there was at any rate the custom established of meeting together in secret, of corresponding by an alphabet of conventional signals, and of acting by an impenetrable organization, always applicable to evil purposes, even where it might ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... natural sustenance project themselves on to some plane of the imagination. The martyr, even the most heretical martyr, sees the vision of his crown in the skies, the lover sees in obvious defects only rare and esoteric beauties. Epicurus avoided sedulously the transcendental optimism of the Stoics. He avoided mysticism, avoided allegory, avoided faith; he tried to set the feet of his philosophy on solid ground. He can make ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... scripture of this sect is the Ta-jih-ching or sutra of the Sun-Buddha.[847] A distinction is drawn between exoteric and esoteric doctrine (the "true word") and the various phases of Buddhist thought are arranged in ten classes. Of these the first nine are merely preparatory, but in the last or esoteric phase, the adept becomes a living Buddha and receives full intuitive knowledge. In this respect the Tantric school resembles ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... news of these mysteries was the conclusion of them. When so darkly esoteric a body begins to issue an extremely catchpenny 'organ,' with advertisements of theosophic 'developers,' magic mirrors, and mesmeric discs, and also advertises large copies of the dread symbol of the Order, 'suitable for framing,' ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... more than avuncular and less than cousinly; they are tender without being romantic, and confiding without being burdensome. He has the private entree at chhoti hazri, or early breakfast; he sees loose and flowing robes that are only for esoteric disciples; he has the private entree at five o'clock tea and hears plans for the evening campaign openly discussed. He is quite behind the scenes. He hears the earliest whispers of engagements and flirtations. He ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... spiritual excellencies of marriage and virginity are combined, Catholic teaching is quite clear and decided; in this, as in other points, Patmore's untaught intuitions, and instincts—his mens naturaliter catholica—had led him, whither the esoteric teaching of the Church had led only the more appreciatively sympathetic of her disciples, from time to time, as it were, up into that mountain of which St. Ambrose says: "See, how He goes up with the Apostles and comes ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... trinketed Eliza) and with a conviction of her own as to what their stay is going to amount to. On the basis of Lorraine's similar conviction about ours it would seem then that we ought to meet for an esoteric revel; yet somehow it doesn't come off. Sometimes I think I'm quite wrong and that he can't really be a child of light: we should in this case either have seen him collapse or have discovered what inwardly sustains him. We ARE ourselves inwardly ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... these minute particulars were being driven into my soul, the cause of it all—the indefinable, esoteric column—stood silent and motionless over-against the hedge, a baleful glow ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... has to use these words in order to be understood; but you know what I mean, Harding, the mystery lying behind all phenomena, the Breath, esoteric philosophers would say, out of which all things came, which drew the stars in the beginning out of chaos, creating myriads of things or the appearance of different things, for there is only one thing. That is how ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... been difficult to have found a more thoroughly qualified exponent of the mysteries of Buddhism than Professor Monier Williams. Readers will find the story of Buddhism clearly told, both in its outward manifestations and its esoteric leading, in a volume made readable by capital type, and pleasant by ...
— Mr. Murray's List of New and Recent Publications July, 1890 • John Murray
... for any substitute,"—said the gentleman rather impatiently.. For those who want to believe in something supernatural, there are plenty of different ideas afloat, Esoteric Buddhism for example,—and what is called Scientific Religion and Natural Religion,—any, or all, of these are sufficient to gratify the imaginative cravings of the majority, till they have been educated out of ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... on tradition for its clearness? Jeremy Taylor was a true Father of the Church, and would furnish as fine a subject for a 'concordantia discordantiarum' as St. Austin himself. For the exoteric and esoteric he was a ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... Saturday night, when the paper was made up and sent away to press. But when the true value of the meetings became apparent, the day was changed to Wednesday. The Dinner was established ostensibly for the discussion and determining of the "big cut," and the function became as exclusive and esoteric as a Masonic initiation. From that day to this it has, with few exceptions, been held januis clausis; and beside it the Literary Ladies' Dinner and Bluebeard's Chamber are as open to the world and free from mystery as the ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... But such esoteric combinations are not at all necessary for the postulation of wildly variant life forms. Earth itself was prolific in its variations; Earthlike planets were equally inventive. Carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, plus varying proportions of phosphorus, potassium, iodine, nitrogen, sulfur, calcium, ...
— Cum Grano Salis • Gordon Randall Garrett
... for their desires and curiosities. The publicity of a city, the universal surveillance, the studied decorum of a population conscious that it is continually exposed to the gaze of strangers, combine to spread a veil over the esoteric side of life, which, even when at last it fails to conceal from the young the urban stimuli of that life, effectually conceals, for the most part, the gratifications of those stimuli. In the country, however, these restraints do not exist ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... specialize, designate, determine; denote, indicate, point out, select. descend to particulars, enter into detail, go into detail, come to the point. Adj. special, particular, individual, specific, proper, personal, original, private, respective, definite, determinate, especial, certain, esoteric, endemic, partial, party, peculiar, appropriate, several, characteristic, diagnostic, exclusive; singular &c (exceptional) 83; idiomatic; idiotypical; typical. this, that; yon, yonder. Adv. specially, especially, particularly &c adj.; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... a year, and D'Alembert's acquaintance with him was of the slightest. And there must, we should suppose, have been some difficulty in cordially admitting even a penitent member of the abhorred class of farmers-general among the esoteric group of the philosophic opposition. There was much point in Turgot's contemptuous question, why he should be thankful to a declaimer like Helvetius, who showers vehement insults and biting sarcasms on governments in general, and then makes it his business to send to Frederick ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... from this passage by Isidore Geoffroy, that Buffon had modified his opinions, and was inclined to believe in a more limited mutability than he had done a few years earlier. His exoteric position is still identical with what it was in the outset, and his esoteric may be seen from the spirit which is ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... and the song of birds. There is a moral training in clearness and tangibility. An occult impulse to vice is hidden in all vagueness and in all teachings meant to be heard but not to be understood. Nature is never obscure, never occult, never esoteric. She must be questioned in earnest, else she will not reply. But to every serious question she returns a serious answer. "Simple, natural, and true" should make the impression of simplicity and truth. Truth and virtue are but opposite ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... say, the lover fastens upon an unsuitable mate, and, with possession, love dies. Here I attack your facts. If an awakening comes, it is not for either of these reasons. Love is not essentially rational, but then it is love. There is some consistency in affairs natural, and the esoteric draught that enchanted at one time ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... chief visitor was one Mapiao, a great Tahuku—which seems to mean priest, wizard, tattooer, practiser of any art, or, in a word, esoteric person—and a man famed for his eloquence on public occasions and witty talk in private. His first appearance was typical of the man. He came down clamorous to the eastern landing, where the surf was running very high; scorned all our signals ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as we have intimated, a fast-growing esoteric literature of exposition and comment,— part of it simply the expression of the disciple's loyal homage, part of it designed to win and educate the reluctant Philistine intellect to the comforts of a true faith. In the latter ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... consciousness of, or participation in God. Baader's philosophy is thus essentially a theosophy. God is not to be conceived as mere abstract Being (substantia), but as everlasting process, activity (actus). Of this process, this self-generation of God, we may distinguish two aspects—the immanent or esoteric, and the emanent or exoteric. God has reality only in so far as He is absolute spirit, and only in so far as the primitive will is conscious of itself can it become spirit at all. But in this very cognition of self is involved the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... ecstasies, their outward asceticism and material purifications. And the central object of their worship comes before us as a tortured, persecuted, slain god—the suffering Dionysus—of whose legend they have their own special and esoteric version. That version, embodied in a supposed Orphic poem, The Occultation of Dionysus, is represented only by the details that have passed from it into the almost endless Dionysiaca of Nonnus, a writer of the ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... scene, let me gather from it first a recollection of pure romance. One night at a London dinner-party I found myself sent down with a very stout gentleman, an American Colonel, who proclaimed himself an "esoteric Buddhist," and provoked in me a rapid and vehement dislike. I turned my back upon him and examined the table. Suddenly I became aware of a figure opposite to me, the figure of a young girl who seemed to me one of the most ravishing creatures I had ever seen. She was ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... changed. And this change is always easy and natural. Dogmas and creeds may remain the same, but progress consists in giving a spiritual or poetic interpretation to that which once was taken literally. The scheme of the Esoteric and the Exoteric is a sliding, self-lubricating, self-adjusting, non-copyrighted invention—perfect in its workings—that all wise theologians fall back upon ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... forgotten. Nowhere in the world—quite as little in Egypt as elsewhere—had any man the slightest clew to their meaning; there were those who even doubted whether these droll picturings really had any specific meaning, questioning whether they were not rather vague symbols of esoteric religious import and nothing more. And it was the Rosetta Stone that gave the answer to these doubters and restored to the world a lost language and a ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... to acquire that air and tact which make one official man agreeable to another. He was always good-humoured; when in earnest, there was a dash of drollery about him; in his most comic moods he ever had some serious purpose in view; he thoroughly understood the esoteric and exoteric bearings of modern politics, and knew well that though he should be a model of purity before the public, it did not behove him to be very strait-laced with his own party. He took everything in good part, was not over-talkative, over- pushing, or ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... How perfect her accord with her partner! How faultless her intelligence, divining the very source of every hidden motive controlling him, forestalling his intent—acquiescent, delicate, marvellous intelligence—the esoteric complement of two parts of ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... shuddered over a seven-times sneeze or at a howling dog at midnight. And the gentle sex, especially, would and did tell fortunes almost as jealously as play quadrille and piquet. Let us be courteous to them. Let us remember that Esoteric Buddhism, Faith Healing, and Psychic Phenomena were not yet enjoying systematic cultivation and solemn propagandism; and that relatively few dying folk were allowed to "go on with their dying" as part of a process of healing which excludes medicine and insists on ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... develop the quadrature of the eight diagrams of Feuh-hi." I hope readers will not ask me to explain this, for I have not the slightest idea what it means. Yet I am persuaded that for ages the symbol has had occult and probably mathematical meanings for the esoteric student. ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... in a moment of financial perplexity. His illness, his unwonted holiday, the necessity of postponing a course of well-paid lectures, had combined to diminish his resources; and when Harviss offered him an advance of a thousand dollars the esoteric savour of the joke became irresistible. It was still as a joke that he persisted in regarding the transaction; and though he had pledged himself not to betray the real intent of the book, he held in petto the notion of some day being able to take the public into his confidence. As for ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... nevertheless they were necessarily so veiled by the highly spiritual and metaphorical language of the poet, that it required some previous acquaintance with the system enforced, to be able to detect and recognise the esoteric spirit of his Muse. The public read only the history of an ideal world and of creatures of exquisite beauty, told in language that alike dazzled their fancy and captivated their ear. They were lost in ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... that we have nothing to proceed upon beyond a few disfigured fragments.[121] And yet Chaldaeism comprises a great mass of teachings; he whom we know as "the divine Zoroaster" had been preceded by twelve others, and esoteric doctrine was as well known in ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... as a classic. There is not a hill-post in India, nor a village in England, where there is not a coterie to whom Omar Khayyam is a familiar friend and a bond of union. In America he has an equal following, in many regions and conditions. In the Eastern States his adepts form an esoteric sect; the beautiful volume of drawings by Mr. Vedder is a centre of delight and suggestion wherever it exists. In the cities of the West you will find the Quatrains one of the most thoroughly read books in every Club Library. I heard Omar quoted once in one of the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... actually the same old game!" Aggie mused. She was doing her best to get a clear understanding of the matter, though to her it was all a mystery most esoteric. ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... all sorts of mischief, arisen since you left us; and it may be said that inordinate philanthropy, genteel sympathy with Irish murder and arson, Societies for Badgering the Poor, Esoteric Buddhism, and a score of other plagues, including what was once called AEstheticism, are all, primarily, due to want of humour. People discuss, with the gravest faces, matters which properly should only be stated as the wildest paradoxes. It naturally follows that, in a period almost ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... tried to find out what he had been up to, but, with the air of mystery he affects, he would go into no details. He gave me to understand that he had sojourned in lands where the white man had never been before, and had learnt esoteric secrets which overthrew the foundations of modern science. It seemed to me that he had coarsened in mind as well as in appearance. I do not know if it was due to my own development since the old days ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... was the principal source of this contentment, for he was a young man—he wasn't really young, but you always thought of him as young—of infinite potentialities; Burnaby, just back from some esoteric work in Roumania, whither he had gone after the War, and in Washington for the night and greatly pleased to accept an invitation for dinner; but essential as he was, Burnaby was only part of the tableau arranged. To meet ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... freely into the domain of spiritual things, and has dealt, with more daring than knowledge, with esoteric mysteries. The great reading public knows little of these matters, because, as a rule, they have been expressed by writers whose works are too abstruse to catch the popular ear. It is only when they are handled by writers of imaginative fiction that they become popularly known at all. ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... on till the times of Trajan (98-117 A.D.). If so, it is very possible that the Gospel was not yet published, or barely published, when Clement of Rome wrote his Epistle to the Corinthians. Neither, considering its almost esoteric character and the slow rate at which such a work would travel at first, should we be very much surprised if it was not in the hands of Barnabas (probably in Alexandria) and Hermas (at Rome). In no case indeed could the silence of these two writers be of much moment, as in the Epistle of Barnabas ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... one real Occult Philosophy, and we find it in evidence everywhere—once the Truth is grasped, it is found to be the Master Key with which to unlock the various doors leading to the esoteric phase of any and all religions or philosophies. The Yogi Fathers, centuries and centuries ago, solved the Riddle of the Universe, and the highest efforts of the human mind since that time have but corroborated, ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... a task than that of reforming the State religion of Egypt. For many centuries the religion of the priests and scribes had been inclining to pantheism. Inside the temples there had been an esoteric teaching, that the various deities of Egypt were but manifestations of the one supreme God. But it had hardly passed outside them. With the accession of Amenophis IV. to the throne came a change. The young king boldly rejected the religion of which he was officially ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... emphatically that, whatever may have been the original intention, and whatever may be the esoteric meaning, the millions that perform idolatrous practice in this country see nothing symbolic behind the image and take the whole show quite literally. And can anything be more degrading to an intelligent human being? We know that all religions are necessarily ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... the bowel systematically to empty itself at a certain time every day. This can be done in nearly every case without artificial assistance. It may take time but it is worth a little methodical persistence. The point is, you must do it; no "ism" or esoteric agency can do it ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... unctuous and fat, and furious at the lack of feminine attention, said something suavely outrageous about modern women. He was immediately surrounded by several mature examples who adored to be safely smitten by the gelatinous and esoteric. ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... the daemons, and down to men. All that is, is God; evil is not-being. One of the great features of the system was that it guaranteed all the old religions—for the crowd; while for the initiated, for the esoteric, it had something more—it had mystic trance, mystic vision, mystic comprehension. Twice or three times, Plotinus, by a great leap away from all mortal things, saw God. In the meantime, the philosophy justified all ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... never enjoyed, of a correct Republican upbringing and a mind. The Republican upbringing and the mind have come of late years to preponderate. Looking at Mr. Hughes to-day, you could not tell him from a Republican, except perhaps by his mind, though such esoteric Republicans as Brandegee, Cabot Lodge, and Knox profess ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... this, the believers will answer him that the true mark and sign whereby a man may be known to hold the truth is the observance of certain forms, the performance of certain ceremonies, more or less mystical, more or less symbolical, of some esoteric meaning. That a man should be baptized, should wear certain marks on his forehead, should be accepted with certain rites, is generally the outward and visible sign of a believer, and the badge whereby others of the same faith have known ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... rather indeed the reverse. They have been forced from me by earnestness of heart, and they express my most serious convictions. For seventeen years they have been lying in my mind, continually thought of and pondered over. I was not more than eighteen when an inner and esoteric meaning began to come to me from all the visible universe, and indefinable aspirations filled me. I found them in the grass fields, under the trees, on the hill-tops, at sunrise, and in the night. There was a deeper meaning everywhere. The ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... But we have to turn to a later collection of writings known as the Upanishads for our knowledge of the more abstract speculations out of which Hindu thinkers, not always of the Brahmanical caste, were concurrently evolving the esoteric systems of philosophy that have exercised an immense and abiding influence on the spiritual life of India. There is the same difficulty in assigning definite dates to the Upanishads, though many of the later ones bear the post-mark of the various ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... of its existence. His Pessimism resembles far more the optimism which the so-called Books of Moses borrowed from the Ancient Copt than the mournful and melancholy creed of the true Pessimist, as Solomon the Hebrew, the Indian Buddhist and the esoteric European imitators of Buddhism. He cannot but sigh when contemplating the sin and sorrow, the pathos and bathos of the world; and feel the pity of it, with its shifts and changes ending in nothingness, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... ashamed of. It would be a very trying ordeal, no doubt, to admit even intimate friends to this confidence. But as eugenics spread, concealment of taint will become almost impracticable, and the facts may as well be confessed. But even then there will be limitations. There might be an esoteric book for the individual's own account of himself. Such important items as the incidence of puberty (though notorious in some communities) could not well be included in a book open even to the family circle, for generations ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... example of a writer who enjoyed immense fame but little popularity. Some of his best books, I believe, never passed into second editions. He was, above all novelists, an esoteric author. His disciples had the pleasure of feeling like persons initiated into mysteries. He was subject, like a religious teacher, to all kinds of conflicting interpretations. He puzzled and exasperated even intelligent people. They often wondered what he meant and whether it was worth ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... other hand, you think of your intended ride as the most romantic of all your possibilities; of the Campagna generally as an illimitable experience. One's rides certainly give Rome an inordinate scope for the reflective—by which I suppose I mean after all the aesthetic and the "esoteric"—life. To dwell in a city which, much as you grumble at it, is after all very fairly a modern city; with crowds and shops and theatres and cafes and balls and receptions and dinner-parties, and all the modern confusion of social pleasures and pains; ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... cross-town car was blocked by a stalled coal-cart. We alighted and passively awaited further directions from our esoteric guide. Quite an amusing game for a dull, rainy afternoon, and I felt grateful to Indiman for ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... The esoteric flat of Madame Cassandra was darkened except for the electric lights glowing in amber and rose-colored shades. There were several women there already. As they entered Constance had noticed a peculiar, dreamy odor. There did not seem to be any hurry, any such ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... hopeful to learn and strives to see; since ignorance is now no longer hopeful. In this and in many other ways it may differ from the past art, but in one thing it must needs be like it; it will not be an esoteric mystery shared by a little band of superior beings; it will be no more hierarchical than the art of past time was, but like it will be a gift of the people to the people, a thing which everybody can understand, and every one surround with love; it will be ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... instruction were in use among the Jews; the one public, or exoteric; the other secret, or esoteric. The exoteric doctrine was that which was openly taught the people from the law of Moses and the traditions of the fathers. The esoteric was that which treated of the mysteries of the Divine nature, and other sublime subjects, and was known by the name of the Cabala. The ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... to pronounce a decided opinion upon the much disputed question, whether, in addition to their Constitutions and Declarations, the Jesuits were provided with an esoteric code of rules known as Monita Secreta.[169] The existence of such a manual, which was supposed to contain the very pith of Jesuitical policy, has been confidently asserted and no less confidently denied. In the absence of direct evidence, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... common mistake which gathers a nimbus of mystic sense around every book excessively revered. Thus the Greeks fancied an inner and mystical sense in Homer; and thus Italian professors expound the esoteric significance ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... space between itself and "vulgarity." The bond of a common faith, moreover, no longer held the race together. The last years of the nineteenth century were distinguished by the rapid development among the prosperous idle of esoteric perversions of the popular religion: glosses and interpretations that reduced the broad teachings of the carpenter of Nazareth to the exquisite narrowness of their lives. And, spite of their inclination towards the ancient fashion of living, neither Elizabeth nor Denton had been sufficiently original ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells |
