"Magical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Samuel Colt, who more than forty years ago blew up several old vessels, including the gunboat Boxer and the Volta, by the use of electricity. Congress voted Colt $17,000 for continuing his experiments, which at that day seemed almost magical; and he then blew up a vessel in motion at a distance of five miles. Lieut. Fiske next referred briefly to the electrical torpedoes employed in the Crimean ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various
... was plenty of fight in him yet, and the consequences might have been serious if Peggy had not arrived upon the scene at the critical moment. Her stern command, "Down, Hobo! Down, sir!" emphasized by stamps of her foot had a magical effect. The poor, bleeding, bewildered creature, who had stopped at nothing to protect a member of the household which commanded his fealty, recognized in Peggy the ultimate authority. The tense muscles, bent for a spring, ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... dollars to buy a house, or five millions to buy a railroad with complete indifference, and pay it back, too, if he could, and think nothing of it. In fact, ever so many of the Duke's friends were known to have borrowed money in America with magical ease, pledging for it their seats or their pictures, or one of ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... his wife wept bitterly for him, to the utter disregard of their own lives, while in violent terms they abused the Taoist priest. "What kind of magical mirror is it?" they asked. "If we don't destroy this glass, it will do harm to not a few ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... ruled by some resolute, unseen force, against which all resistance would be unavailing. Moreover, his mind was now entirely possessed by the haunting vision of Lysia—a vision half-human, half-divine —a beautiful, magical, irresistible Sweetness that allured his soul, and roused within him a wordless ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... close of school, some compositions were read. One was entitled 'The Magical Ring,' and commenced, 'As I was sitting alone last evening, I heard a gentle tap on the door, and immediately a beautiful fairy appeared before me. She placed a ring on my finger, and left me.' The next began, 'It is my week to write composition, but I do not know what to say. ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... this speech he paused and gasped for her answer; but none came. Her eyes dilated and held his steady gaze prisoner as with a magical charm—neither could look away from the other's wild, searching gaze. When he had ended, she was silent for a moment, then she cried out, ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... changes are now rapid; the journeys innumerable; through mineral, vegetable, and animal planes, of existence. Here, the Soul Monad brings into actual practice the knowledge gained on its long voyage. The magical powers of the soul are brought into action to effect these changes in form and function, conquering material forces and planes of life, transmuting Nature's elements to its uses and purposes, and writing its history, as it journeys ever ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... persons who helped me in my magical operations with Madame d'Urfe betrayed me, Marcoline excepted, and all save the fair Venetian died miserably. Later on the reader will hear more of Possano ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... wife. The act roused her from the absent mood to which she had abandoned herself. She took a long draught of the discolored beverage, and, had it been the pure mountain spring, its effect could scarcely have been more magical. It not only refreshed the body, but inspired the mind. With this dawning hope the poor prisoners built the flimsy fabric of future joy ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... of Tacitus by his reputation, which guarded his text from the interpolations of pious fraud; and by the purport of his narration, which accused the first Christians of the most atrocious crimes, without insinuating that they possessed any miraculous or even magical powers above the rest of mankind. 2. Notwithstanding it is probable that Tacitus was born some years before the fire of Rome, he could derive only from reading and conversation the knowledge of an event which happened during his infancy. Before he gave himself to the public, he calmly ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... what in his name, That magical word of war, we have effected; How, with his banners, and his well-paid ranks, The ne'er-yet-beaten horse of Parthia We have ...
— Antony and Cleopatra • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... since the chaste kiss, Of this magical Miss, Such wonderful transports produce, Since the "world you forget," "When your lips once have met," My Counsel will ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... that the Great Mother should still her restless tongue for the moment. He was doing his duty and the will of his dead father, but his heart ached when he thought of the woman who should be by his side. Oh that they two could undertake this magical journey together, silent and alone in a silent and lonely world. He made no inquiries for Anne, and Daisy said nothing. Only when the car was humming along the homeward road to land them at the church did she open her mouth. The awe had worn off, and she babbled as of old in the very ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... speeches, did more than any single person to force the nation's entrance into the war; an American dental surgeon who abandoned an enormously lucrative practice in Rome to establish at the front a hospital where he has performed feats approaching the magical in rebuilding shrapnel-shattered faces; a Florentine connoisseur, probably the greatest living authority on Italian art, who has been commissioned with the preservation of all the works of art in the war zone; an English countess ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... called her, an old crone who had, since before the memory of our oldest patriarchs, lived in a cave in the woods on the Aemilian Estate, supported by the gifts doled out to her by the kindness, respect or fear of the slaves and peasantry living nearest her abode, for she had a local reputation for magical powers in the way of spells to cure or curse, charms for wealth or health, love philtres, fortune-telling, prophecy and good advice on all subjects likely to cause uncertainty of mind ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... the wings of the morning, or the sails of a ship, and fly to the uttermost parts of the earth. There, tarry a year or two; and then let the gruffest of boatswains, his lungs all goose-skin, shout forth those magical words, and you'll swear "the harp of Orpheus were not ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... results. The dogmas of the literal inspiration of the Scripture, or of the infallibility of the Church, recognized the presence of a flawless perfection in the midst of utter weakness. The corruption of human nature, the irresistible power of Divine grace, the magical efficacy of the Sacraments are corollaries from the same theory. In the phraseology popular with a modern school we are told that the essence of Christianity is the belief in the fatherhood of God. That doctrine is intelligible and may be beautiful so long as we retain ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... will come when the times of the Roman empire shall be fulfilled, and the consummation of the world shall approach. Ten kings of the Romans shall arise together, in different places indeed, but they shall reign at the same time. Among these the eleventh is Antichrist, who, by magical and wicked artifice, shall seize the Roman power." A large number of the ancient fathers interpreted this text in ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... charm-struck Passion for woods and wild life, the solitude of the hills. Therefore they fly the heedless throngs and traffic of cities, Haunt mossed caverns, and wells bubbling ice-cool; and their souls Gather a magical gleam of the secret of life, and the god's voice Calls to them, not from ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... by the Muslim chroniclers to have been to Solomon what Odin's ravens were to the Norse god. It is said to have known all the secrets of the earth and to have revealed them to him; hence the magical virtues attributed by the Mohammedans to ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... fame of the invader's big maple tom-tom (we wore still the deep, resonant drum of Bunker Hill and Waterloo, of Jemappes, Saratoga, and Chapultepec, not the modern rattle pan borrowed from Prussia), and the trill of his magical pipe had spread abroad throughout Apache land to the end that no higher reward for good behavior could be given by the agent to his swarthy charges than the begged-for papel permitting them, in lumps of twenty, to trudge through the evening shades to the outskirts ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... repeated, with still more magical effect (scored for divided violins and violas, two muted horns, and harp), as Melisande remarks upon the clearness of the water, while the violins and violas weave about it a shimmering figure in sixteenth-notes ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... at his name transiently, but in agreement: the tattler-spout of their set was, a fatal person to encounter, and each deemed the sudden apparition of him in the very early morning along the Carlsruhe road rather magical. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the secret virtues which were supposed to reside in gems: especially in the old Roman and Greek gems, carved into intaglios with figures of heathen gods and goddesses. Lapidaria, or lists of these gems and their magical virtues, were not uncommon in the Middle Ages. You may read a great deal that is interesting about them at the end of Mr. ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... there in the water beneath and dyeing all the shallows so that they looked like caves of cool emerald, and wide off and over them the west burned smoulderingly red like a furnace. Many a time since, I've felt the magical color between those banks and along those meadows, but then I felt none of it; every wit I had was too awake and alert ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... a higher seigniorage charge or by coining on his own account, debased the quality or reduced the weight of the money of his realm. For a time the new coins, having the same monetary use, circulated at par with the old coins. The ruler, pleased with this almost magical power of getting a revenue with little trouble, continued to issue coins until suddenly the heavier coins began to be exported or melted, and the value of the other money fell, to the mystification alike of the prince and of his people. The reason is now perfectly ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... and the darkness dropping upon them. It was only five miles to the metairie, but at the end of the second mile the sky was absolutely blank and the snow so thick that heaps of it lay on the horse's flanks and on their own laps and hands. It kept increasing at such magical rate that the roadway was obscured and twice Dr. Renaud found himself out on the rocky plateau at the left, instead of the middle path. The priest and Miss Clairville had vanished in front, but the three men could ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... be aware that this redoubted chieftain is, even in the present days of enlightenment, as famous among his illiterate countrymen for his magical powers as for his patriotism. He says himself—or Shakespeare says it for him, which is much the ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell
... and obedient wife of Jobson; taught by the strap to know who was lord and master. Lady Loverule was the imperious, headstrong bride of Sir John Loverule. The two women by a magical hocus-pocus, were changed for a time, without any of the four knowing it. Lady Loverule was placed with Jobson, who soon brought down her turbulent temper with the strap, and when she was reduced to submission, the two women were restored again to their respective husbands.—C. Coffey, The ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... this sudden craving would not have seized him for this eager beguiling, this soothing benevolence. Yet here it was in his hand; and even as it lay in his cold fingers—how cold they were, and his head how burning!—the desire for it surged up in him. And, as though the thing itself had the magical power to summon up his troubles, that it might offer the apathy and stimulus in one—even as it lured him, his dangers, his anxieties, the black uncertainties massed, multiplied and aggressive, rose before him, buffeted ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... was brisk, the sky cloudless, the sun coldly bright; and the city wore that strange, breathless, magical look so peculiar to Paris at early morning. The shops were closed; the pavements deserted; the busy thoroughfares silent as the avenues of Pere la Chaise. Yet how different from the early stillness of ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... from every part of the East. From all this we argue that S.P.Q.R. did not depend latterly upon native recruiting. And, in fact, they did not need to do so; their system and discipline would have made good soldiers out of mop-handles, if (like Lucian's magical mop-handles) they could only have learned to march and to fill buckets with water at the ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... occasionally perfectly clear and they sometimes fell so far without a break that they vanished in feathery white spray. A projecting ledge at times might gather this spray again to form a second cascade before the river level was reached. The scene was quite magical and considering the general aridity for a large part of the year, it appeared ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... like rafts over the waters. All round the margin, and occasionally far out in the lake, they saw little towns and villages half buried in foliage; and the whole scene seemed to them so new and wonderful that they could only compare it to the magical pictures of the old romances. Midway across the lake the army halted at the town of Cuitlahuae, which was not large, but was remarkable for the beauty of its buildings. The curiosity of the Indians increased as the Spaniards proceeded, and they clambered up the causeway and ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... mentioned apropos of the tempo di menuetto of the eighth symphony), [Footnote: Ferdinand Hiller] to play the eighth Prelude and Fugue from the first part of "Das Wohltemperirte Clavier" (E flat minor), a piece which has always had a magical attraction for me. [Footnote: i.e. Prelude VIII., from Part I. of Bach's 48 Preludes and Fugues.] He very kindly complied, and I must confess that I have rarely been so much taken by surprise. Certainly, there was no trace here of sombre German ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... from which itself proceeds. The fallacy is a radical one; and therefore all efforts based upon it are fore-doomed to ultimate failure, whether they take the form of reliance on personal force of will, or magical rites, or austerity practised against the body, or attempts by abnormal concentration to absorb the individual in the universal, or the invocation of spirits, or any other method—the same fallacy is involved in them all, that the less ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... so many dried sticks, that he soon collected a great heap. The magician presently set them on fire; and when they were in a blaze, threw in some incense, pronouncing several magical words, which ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... of deed, Glory of Hampden and Runnymede; Glory of ships that sought far goals, Glory of swords and glory of souls! Glory of songs mounting as birds, Glory immortal of magical words; Glory of Milton, glory of Nelson, Tragical glory of Gordon and Scott; Glory of Shelley, glory of Sidney, Glory transcendent that perishes not,— Hers is the story, hers be the ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... simple and appropriate ceremony we call confirmation. We claim for it no magical powers. It is not a sacrament. It adds nothing to the sacrament of baptism, for that is complete in itself. There is no conferring of Grace by the pastor's hands, but simply a directing of the Church's prayers to ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... I was unwilling to retire defeated; so suddenly pulling out one of my little reed whistles capable of producing two notes, I commenced a violent jig to my own "music." The effect on the scowling and ferocious-looking blacks was quite magical. They immediately threw down their spears and laughed uproariously at my vigorous antics. I danced till I was quite tired, but managed to wind up the entertainment with a few somersaults, ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... or the ratio 4:3, into what they called super-particular ratios—that is to say, a series of fractions in which each numerator differed from the denominator by unity. They had observed that all the ratios discovered by Pythagoras had this character, 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, 8/9, and they attributed magical properties to the fact, and sought to demonstrate the entire theory of music by the production of similar combinations. The latest writer of the Greek school was Claudius Ptolemy, who lived at Alexandria about 150 A.D. ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... watched by the side of an invalid mother, would not feel an exalted pleasure in creating around her the magical representations of those flowerets and rosebuds her maternal hand was wont to rear? Who, in such a moment of ministering affection, would not feel how sweet the reward of a father's love, as his approving gaze spoke more than many words his thanks to the duteous child returning the early care of ...
— The Royal Guide to Wax Flower Modelling • Emma Peachey
... A calm night followed. The moon rose, shedding a magical lustre upon the sea. Barthelemy stood on the deck of his ship with folded ...
— The Corsair King • Mor Jokai
... successive days he rode across grim solitary wastes with more enthusiasm than he could give to the wonted pilgrimages to Florence and Venice. When he was once under the spell, only the geysers with their suggestion of modern text-books and Mangnall's Questions[51] could bore him; all else was magical and entrancing. This enthusiasm bore fruit in Sigurd the Volsung, the most powerful of his epic poems, written in an old English metre, which Morris, with true feeling for craftsmanship, revived and adapted to his theme. His poetry in general, less rich than that of Tennyson, less intense ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... apparent gusto and assiduity, along the top of the building; bricks and plaster were always crashing down into the depths and sending up clouds of dust. I preferred to think the building renewed itself, by some magical process, every night. I preferred to think it was prepared thus to resist its aggressors for so long a time that in the end there would be an intervention from other powers. Perhaps from this site no 'residential' affair ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... propriety.' Had he suffered this name to escape him inadvertently, his spirits would have forsaken him—he would have pined away under a certainty of misfortune, like a poor Negro of Koromantyn who is the victim of Obi.[Footnote: 'The victim of Obi.'—It seems worthy of notice, that this magical fascination is generally called Obi, and the magicians Obeah men, throughout Guinea, Negroland, &c.; whilst the Hebrew or Syriac word for the rites of necromancy, was Ob or Obh, at least when ventriloquism ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... curious native languages. I thought I would provide a little entertainment for them, so I stepped on to the footplate and blew off the steam, at the same time sounding the whistle. The effect was simply magical. The whole crowd first threw themselves flat on the ground howling with fear, and then—with heads well down and arms well spread out—they fled wildly in all directions; nor did the stampede cease until I shut ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... appears in England are often very suspicious. Take the instance of the belladonna, or deadly nightshade, an extremely rare British species, found only in the immediate neighbourhood of old castles and monastic buildings. Belladonna, of course, is a deadly poison, and was much used in the half-magical, half-criminal sorceries of the Middle Ages. Did you wish to remove a troublesome rival or an elder brother, you treated him to a dose of deadly nightshade. Yet why should it, in company with many other poisonous exotics, be found ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... "I don't think there is any virtue about that hateful and magical herb which I believe grew in the devil's garden. Moreover, Lady Ragnall, although there are few things in the world that I would refuse you, I tell you at once that nothing will induce me to have anything ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... of these words on Mordon was magical. The malignant frown which had distorted his face cleared away. He looked from Jean to Briggerland as though it were impossible to believe the evidence ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... strengthened his faith in the realization of his plans and demonstrated that the artist's real ground was in the heart of the nation! Thus he interpreted the meaning of the celebration there. Vienna also heard classical music, as well as his own, under the direction of his magical baton. It happened that at "Wotan's Departure," and "the Banishment of the fire-god, Loge," in the "Walkuere," a tremendous thunder-storm broke forth. "When the Greeks contemplated a great work, they called upon Zeus to send them a flash of lightning as an omen. May all of us who have ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... always his glowing fancies to keep his heart warm. We felt almost guilty because we had no horrid calls to make, as he had; nothing to do but enjoy the scene made magical by his love of it: the valley with its near green hills and distant peaks of Galloway and Lowther; the river girdling wooded reaches with a belt of silver, or burrowing through deep rocky channels, purple as heather petrified. It was all as different from yesterday's ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... there. She was much pleased with the beauty of his form, and finding him gentle and kind in disposition, she approached him, patted his glossy neck and sides, and in other similar ways gratified the prince by marks of her admiration and pleasure. She was at length induced by some secret and magical influence which the prince exerted over her, to mount upon his back, and allow herself to be borne away. The bull ran with his burden to the shore, and plunged into the waves. He swam across the sea to Crete,[A] and there, resuming his proper ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... work of redemption. What emotion and what pride for them! To complete the work they are ready to sacrifice their lives. The French nation with one heart spurs them forward, and on the folds of their flag are inscribed the magical names Liberty and Right. Long live France! ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... of tiny villages which felt their first need to be a church; the congregations must have been small and poor. They, of the Surrey churches, are nearest in heart to the "little, lost down churches" of Sussex and Mr. Kipling's most magical poem. ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... transformation of one of the most unpromising looking berries imaginable into the choicest of sweetmeats, the richest of the cups "that cheer but not inebriate;" lastly, one of the best and most nourishing of the lighter kinds of food—we have to witness a transformation more magical still, namely, the hard life of toil made easy, the drudgery of mechanical labour lightened, the existence of the human machine made hopeful, healthful, reasonable, and happy. Want, squalor, disease, and drunkenness have been ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... This had a magical effect. All the disaffected knights followed the example of Sid and Wort, "making up" and joining the beach-party. The excursionists had a capital time on that occasion, and returned in such a frame of mind that ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... of the spiritual man. We come now to the dominant psychic force, the power which manifests itself in speech, and in virtue of which the voice may carry so much of the personal magnetism, endowing the orator with a tongue of fire, magical in its power to arouse and rule the emotions of his hearers. This emotional power, this distinctively psychical force, is the cause of "hunger and thirst," the psychical hunger and thirst for sensations, which is the source of our two-sided life of emotionalism, with its hopes and fears, ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... Things somehow seem more real and vivid when one can apply somebody else's ready-made phrase about them. And then there are lots of lovely names and words—Monophysite, Iamblichus, Pomponazzi; you bring them out triumphantly, and feel you've clinched the argument with the mere magical sound of them. That's what ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... principle, recognized by all physiologists, that digestion and fixed thought cannot go on together; it is even unadvisable to read while eating. Thus in all the old magical operations, which were, in fact, self-hypnotism, a perfect fast is insisted on with reason. This is all so self-evident that I need not dwell on it. It will be needless for anyone to take up this subject as a trifling pastime, or attempt self-suggestion ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... She took up the magical pen, laid ready as Helmas had directed, and she wrote with this gryphon's feather. "So here is the recipe for the Tuyla incantation with which to give life to your images. It may comfort you a little to perform that silly magic. It, anyhow, will ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... of the dim magical moonlit park, Out to the workday road and wider skies: There's a warm flush in the East where day's to rise, And I'm feeling the better for ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... that he can run about and play. And it is the same with souls: they soon recognise that a little bitter is better than too much sweet, and they are not afraid to make the acknowledgment. Sometimes the change which takes place from one day to another seems almost magical. ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air. These qualities have ever been displayed in their mightiest perfection, as attendants in the retinue of strong passions. From the first discovery of the Western ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... Frodi had a magical quern, or hand mill, called Grotti; the largest quern ever known in Denmark. Now Grotti, which ground either gold or peace for King Frodi as he willed, was stolen by a sea king named Mysing, who set the mill to grind white salt for his ships. But it happened that Mysing had only learned the spell ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... said Trask, and turned to see Shanghai Tom staring into the bowl, his eyes fairly popping out of his head at this magical cookery which transformed a sea-beach ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... borrowed from Plautus; and then came "Romeo and Juliet," founded upon a novellino by Masuccio, who had taken the story from the Greek. It has served for many countries, but nowhere has the plot found such a magical handling as Shakespeare gave it. There is internal evidence to suggest 1591 or 1592 as the date, and Shakespeare was still a young man then, on the sunny side of thirty, and with the currents of his ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... certain distinctive quality which gives all the varied specimens a kind of homogeneity. As we analyse our impressions, we find that both of these qualities have a common source—the complete objectivity and almost magical imagination of supreme genius. Objectivity and imagination, the gifts of the epic bards of classical antiquity, are today the rarest of blessings. We live in an age of morbid emotion and introspectiveness; wherein the poets, such as they are, have sunk to the level of mere pathologists ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... sworn to uphold, news travelled slowly across the land by horseback, and across the ocean by boat. Now the sights and sounds of this ceremony are broadcast instantaneously to billions around the world. Communications and commerce are global. Investment is mobile. Technology is almost magical, and ambition for a ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... large niches were deposited scrolls, clasped and bound with iron; and a profusion of strange and uncouth instruments and machines (in which modern science might, perhaps, discover the tools of chemical invention) gave a magical and ominous aspect to ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book I. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... on quivers representing natural objects, and possessing magical virtue to bring down various species of monkeys and apes and other small mammals (i. 417), and as charms for the men ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... most obvious concords of sound and discords of sense. Hood's use of words reminds one of the kaleidoscope. Throw them down in a heap, and they are the most confused jumble of unrelated bits; but once in the magical tube of his fancy, and, with a shake and a turn, they assume figures that have the absolute perfection of geometry. In the droll complaint of ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... music and the thoughts they conjured up, as well as the gowns and head-dresses of the pretty women, all awaked in him the glow a child feels at its first pantomime. The dancers were to him not flesh-and-blood women, but magical creatures, and yet he was stirred to a new excitement too. As he sat there all the sense of poise with which he usually so confidently faced the affairs of life, and which, far from failing him, generally served him only too well, began ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... antediluvian chuckle that sounded like a magical and appalling rattle from the inner recesses of his person. He was getting brighter and brighter, as the stars appear to ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... who sleep not Pass on the midnight's breath; Mystical, magical, secret, Sleep, for ...
— The Rose of Dawn - A Tale of the South Sea • Helen Hay
... without any apparent means of coercion. Every description of horse, or even mule, whether previously broke, or unhandled, whatever their peculiar vices or ill habits might have been, submitted, without show of resistance, to the magical influence of his art, and, in the short space of half an hour, became gentle and tractable. The effect, though instantaneously produced, was generally durable. Though more submissive to him than to others, yet they seemed to have acquired a docility, unknown before. When ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... of the "Peau de Chagrin," the hero becomes possessed of a magical wild ass' skin, which yields him the means of gratifying all his wishes. But its surface represents the duration of the proprietor's life; and for every satisfied desire the skin shrinks in proportion to the intensity of fruition, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... the moon and planets through my glass, which he pertinaciously refuses to do. Why are you not here? What shouts of laughter we should have at this glorious folly! And to hear the professor of philosophy at Pisa labouring before the grand duke with logical arguments, as if with magical incantations, to charm the new planets ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... said his father. "But wishing alone will never do anything, not even if you had the magical wishing-cap I read you about. You must not only wish; you must help yourself. Now, Johnny would make a ...
— Tommy Trots Visit to Santa Claus • Thomas Nelson Page
... or hollowed faces, and they are used in the same way. There were three forms of the game: To hurl or roll a disk farther than an opponent; to strike a pole or other mark set up; and to test the inherent magical powers of the stones by rolling them in such a way that they would collide, the object in this case being to see which one might prove victorious by breaking the other or forcing it out of its course. A suitable arena ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... wonder that Messrs. Gobelin had been obliged to ask a high price of admission for the many that flocked to see it. They had eagerly examined the other rolls of carpeting, in the hope of finding a repetition of the wonder, and were inclined at one time to believe that this magical effect was owing to a new method of lighting their apartments. But it was only in this beautiful pattern and through a certain portion of it that this wonderful appearance was shown. Some weeks ago they had sent to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... seemed magical. Immediately the head disappeared and an instant later the boarding ladder began to descend. But the man, a sub-officer dressed in a neat uniform of white and gold, came quickly down the steps and held out his hand ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... perfect." In the background one can discern the prancing horses of the Magi's suite; a staircase with figures ascending and descending; the rocks and trees of Tuscany; and looking at it one cannot but ponder upon the fatality which seems to have pursued this divine and magical genius, ordaining that almost everything that he put forth should be either destroyed or unfinished: his work in the Castello at Milan, which might otherwise be an eighth wonder of the world, perished; his ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... two women. My hands were unconsciously extended as if to fend them off, and each of them seized a hand, pulled me to the round bench at the back of the control cabin. They stroked my cheeks, began to murmur their "magical" phrases in their mysterious mystic secret words, and my wits began to float into a very genuine paradise where their two faces, side by side, became flower and fruit and tree and ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... the little bag in which Edward was accustomed to take the Lord's Supper to a distant chapel. To her, mushrooms were as clean as the Lord's Supper, no less mysterious, equally incidental to human needs. In her eyes nothing could be more magical and holy than silken, pink-lined mushrooms placed for her in the meadows overnight by the fairies, or by someone greater and more ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... the imposition of a duty or demand for L1,000,000 or L2,000,000 for this or that Government, placed suddenly upon the commodity in question as a tax, makes no difference whatever to the cost to the consumer; that it is borne either by the buyer or by the seller, or provided in some magical manner. As a matter of fact, the seller endeavours to transmit the burden to the purchaser, and the purchaser places it upon the consumer as opportunity may occur in relation to the general market ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... merchant, "I am not Mal Deo, but Shanta- Shil,[FN37] a devotee. I am about to perform spells, incantations and magical rites on the banks of the river Godavari, in a large smashana, a cemetery where bodies are burned. By this means the Eight Powers of Nature will all become mine. This thing I ask of you as alms, that you and the young prince ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... allow them to be spoken to strangers by any of their own immediate kindred. The reason for this lay in the superstition which held that the speaking of one's real name gave to the stranger to whom it was spoken a magical and harmful influence over such person. For the Indian religion was full of what ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... jolly repeater, And I train with the magical band, Who the legerdemain of the ballot With the skill of a ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 1, Saturday, April 2, 1870 • Various
... one doubted that, in time and with care, those, then living might see most of those naked rocks clothed with verdure, for the progress of vegetation in such a climate, favoured by those accidental causes which seemed to prevent that particular region from ever suffering by droughts, is almost magical, and might convert a wilderness into a garden in the course ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... flowers. The uniforms of the men and the dresses of the women were almost equally magnificent. The eyes of the spectators were dazzled by dresses trimmed with precious stones. Never had there been seen such profusion of light, flowers, perfumes, and diamonds. In this magical setting, fashionable beauties, with their dresses worked with silver and gold foil, their turbans of Eastern stuffs, their jewels and ancient cameos, appeared like sultanas. It was a ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... Sometimes it is stamped upon wax, and attached to the paper, sometimes into the paper itself. Sealing, in this sense, is a survival of an ancient custom of inscribing important papers with cabalistic words or signs to give them a magical efficacy independent of the authority that they represent. In the British museum are preserved many ancient papers, mostly of a sacerdotal character, validated by necromantic pentagrams and other devices, frequently initial letters of words to conjure with; ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... the habits of the young Indian was brought about by the magical power of two side-combs ornamented with colored glass. At the first sight of them, A-lee-lah manifested admiration almost equal to that which the scarlet peas had excited in her childish mind. Aunt Mary, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... is the phrase still used by Russian story-tellers to describe the drink which it was an honor to receive from the royal hand. Its strength was magical in that it was not acquired by keeping, but was ...
— Folk Tales from the Russian • Various
... favourable, becomes fatal to it, and, instead of compensating for the decay of the imagination, accelerates that decay, and renders it more obvious. When the adventurer in the Arabian tale anointed one of his eyes with the contents of the magical box, all the riches of the earth, however widely dispersed, however sacredly concealed, became visible to him. But, when he tried the experiment on both eyes, he was struck with blindness. What the enchanted elixir was to the sight of the body, language is ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... his day his profession of dramatist, and that his conscious aims and ambitions and practices were those of every contemporary man of letters. The difference between the results of his endeavours and those of his fellows was due to the magical and involuntary working of genius, which, since the birth of poetry, has exercised "as large a charter as the wind, to blow on whom it pleases." Speculation or debate as to why genius bestowed its fullest inspiration on Shakespeare is no less ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... Cojuelo answered, as he closed the secret door, "but there is nothing magical about it, after all. It was a simple matter to have an electric light plant smuggled up here in sections. It was an equally simple matter to obtain rugs and cushions from the Castillo de Ruiz, since all ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... him in its breadth of outlook. But as his gaze came in contact with the frowning crags to the east, a sudden light of interest, even apprehension, leaped into his eyes. In a moment he became a creature transformed. His bucolic calm had gone. The metamorphosis was magical. ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... godfathers, led by the astronomer Riccioli, who were busy bestowing names upon the "seas" and mountains of our patient satellite, may have pleased their imagination by picturing this arm of the "Serene Sea" as a peculiarly romantic sheet of water, amid whose magical influences the lunar gentlefolk, drifting softly in their silver galleons and barges, and enjoying the splendors of "full earth" poured upon their delightful little world, were accustomed to fall into charming reveries, ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... great deal higher still, and will have the Cloven-Foot be like the great Stone which the Brasilian Conjurers used to solve all difficult Questions upon, after having used a great many monstrous and barbarous Gestures and Distortions of their Bodies, and cut certain Marks or magical Figures upon the Stone; so, I say, they will have this Cloven-Foot be a kind of a Conjuring-Stone, and tell us, that in former Times, when Satan drove a greater Trade with Mankind in publick, than he has done of ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... never separated in Babylonia; not only the priests but also the gods performed magical ceremonies. Ea, Merodach's father, overcame Apsu, the husband of the dragon Tiamat, by means of spells: he was "the great magician of the gods". Merodach's division of the "Ku-pu" was evidently an ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... the table again. "Of course I cannot," he replied, "with all my magical utensils smashed in the ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... said Sir Patrick; "though I never thought of it before, I dare say she will suit me as well as another: but then you must persuade the ould Orpheus to draw out a few notes of rather a more magical description than those he is so fond of scraping on ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... dismembered branch of the great Appalachian family, and are seen away to the west of the river, swelling up to a noble height, and lording it over the surrounding country. Every change of season, every change of weather, indeed, every hour of the day, produces some change in the magical hues and shapes of these mountains, and they are regarded by all the good wives, far and near, as perfect barometers. When the weather is fair and settled, they are clothed in blue and purple, and print their bold outlines on the clear evening sky; but sometimes when the rest of the ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... every Scot will understand—why lowland heroes "carent vate sacro," is that the lowlands and those who live in them are wanting in the poetic and romantic elements. There is in the lowland none of that background of the unknown, fantastic, magical, terrible, perpetually feeding curiosity and wonder, which still remains in the Scottish highlands; which, when it disappears from thence, will remain embalmed forever in the pages of Walter Scott. Against that half-magical background his heroes stand ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... life, as Green says in his Short History of the English People, his life falls like a stream of light athwart the darkness of the mediaeval ages. Matthew Arnold speaks of him as a figure of most magical potency and sweetness and charm. Francis called men back to Christ and brought Christ back to men. 'All Europe woke with a start,' Sabatier affirms, 'and whatever was best in humanity leaped to ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... Committee of the Portuguese Relief Fund, formed to assist the sufferers from Massena's devastations. It consists of rather less than a hundred Spenserian stanzas, the story of Roderick merely ushering in a magical revelation, to that too-amorous monarch, of the fortunes of the Peninsular War and its heroes up to the date of writing. The Edinburgh Review, which hated the war, was very angry because Scott did not celebrate Sir John Moore (whether as a good Whig or a bad general it did not explain); but ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... fisherman Dane, Set out on a sudden for Spain, Because, runs the story, He'd met with a hoary Mysterious sorcerer chap, Who, trouble to save him, Most thoughtfully gave him A magical traveling cap. I barely believe that the story is true, But here's what that cap was reported ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... direction, from the lower culture to the higher, exchange is slow, albeit likely to be promoted, in certain cases, by peculiar conditions, such as the deliberate literary choice which seeks opportunity for archaistic representation, or the respect which an advanced race may have for the magical ability of a simple tribe, believed to be nearer to nature, and therefore more likely to remain in communion ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... image of the great man, and the part Wellington played in having him banished to St Helena, never faded from their memories. They believed the Iron Duke to be the instigator and encourager of a shabby trick. It was a wonderful phenomenon that made these men talk so systematically of their magical enemy, and yet they never lost an opportunity of showing their national dislike for and superiority over the French people as a whole. So strong was this instinct that it permeated British crews from the captain to the cabin-boy. ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... respected the inflection and disregarded the stem, whereas our accent is generally faithful to the root.[10] This sensitiveness to the sound of syllables is of the essence of our best English, and where the effect is most magical in our great poets ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... circulation of the magazine, and it was not long before the original figures were doubled, an edition—enormous for that day—of seven hundred and fifty thousand copies was printed and sold each month, the magical figure of a million was in sight, and the periodical was rapidly taking its place as one of the largest successes of ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... them—cried for joy and wept for fear, and finally raised ten or eleven good men and women with the ruddy glow of health upon their cheeks, and she would have died for any one of them any moment of her life, and finally she, bowed with age and bent with care and labor, dies, and at the moment the magical touch of death is upon her face, she looks as though she never had had a care, and her children burying her cover her face with tears. Do you tell me God can afford to damn that kind of a woman? One such act of injustice would turn ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... that only one Councillor besides the Bishop was given them, and this was Cuthbert Grant, now settled down from the period of his Bois-brules impulsiveness to be the Warden of the Plains, with an influence over the Metis, that can only be described as magical. ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... wish to enjoy the evenings of those days of industry in a larger society, on some spots of terra firma, where the severity of the winters is balanced by a variety of more pleasing scenes, not to be found here? But the same magical power of habit and custom which makes the Laplander, the Siberian, the Hottentot, prefer their climates, their occupations, and their soil, to more beneficial situations, leads these good people to think, that no other spot on the globe is so ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... clothe a wall with seeming vines, that vanished as you approached; he could conjure up in his quiet cell the likeness of a castle manned with soldiers, or a forest tenanted by deer. [See Chaucer, House of Time, Book III.; also the account given by Baptista Porta, of his own Magical Delusions, of which an extract may be seen in the "Curiosities of Literature" Art., Dreams at the Dawn of Philosophy.] Besides these illusions, probably produced by more powerful magic lanterns than are now used, the friar had stumbled upon the wondrous ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... great and magical horse Bayard, the chronicle says that, captured finally by Charlemagne's soldiers and brought before him, the Emperor deliberated what he should do with it, since it refused to be ridden. Finally he ordered that the largest mill stone in the region should be made fast to its ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... admirable, and Sir Stafford Northcote, with his everlasting hawing and humming, intolerable. He gave interesting reminiscences of Tom Corwin, his old preceptor, and said that Corwin's power over an audience was magical. He added that he once attended a public dinner in Boston, and, sitting near Everett, who was the chief speaker, noticed that when the waiters sought to clear the table and were about to remove a bouquet containing two small flags, Everett would not allow them to do ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... curtain rose again, a lantern was lowered from the ceiling, and firemen and stage carpenters departed on their rounds. The fairy scenes of the stage, the rows of fair faces in the boxes, the dazzling lights, the magical illusion of new scenery and costume had all disappeared, and dismal darkness, emptiness, and cold reigned in their stead. It was hideous. Lucien ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... By what magical interference had the timid student of theology been transformed into an officer of dragoons—in the army of the insurgents, too, towards whose cause he had ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... broke, and she fell down and was killed. Having regard to the Kumaon rite, it may be surmised that these legends commemorate the death of a Natni or acrobat during the performance of some feat of dancing or sliding on a rope for the magical benefit of the crops. And it seems possible that acrobatic performances may have had their origin in this manner. The point bearing on the present argument is, however, that the Nat performed special functions for the success of the village crops, and on this ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... recesses. The country people about here called this region the "Witches' Hollow," and had many stories about the strange things that happened there. The Indians used to hold their "powwows," or magical incantations, upon a broad mound which rose out of the common level, and where some old hemlocks and beeches formed a dark grove, which served them as a temple for their demon-worship. There were many legends of more recent date connected with this ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... transition, presented a spectacle of enchanting beauty such as I had never up to that time beheld, even at sea. But, beyond a low muttered word or two and a grunt, apparently expressive of deep satisfaction at the appearance of the unclouded moon, the savages took no notice of the magical loveliness of the scene; and while I sat entranced and practically oblivious of everything else, they merely paddled the harder, conversing in low tones among themselves. Of course I did not understand a single word of what was said, yet, so much did I gather from the glances that they flung ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... argument against mechanism is a good instance of the difficulties which mythological habits of mind import unnecessarily into science. An equilibrium would not displace itself! But an equilibrium is a natural result, not a magical entity. It is continually displaced, as its constituents are modified by internal movements or external agencies; and while many a time the equilibrium is thereby destroyed altogether, sometimes it is replaced by a more elaborate and perilous equilibrium; as glaciers ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... track of the moving ship is marked by a lustrous line. 'In the torrid zones between the tropics,' says Humboldt, 'the ocean simultaneously develops light over a space of many thousand square miles. Here the magical effect of light is owing to the forces of organic nature. Foaming with light, the eddying waves flash in phosphorent sparks over the wide expanse of waters, where every scintillation is the vital ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... as he mounted beside the one man in the world she had elected to admire and love. "Doctor and Mrs. John Tenison "—so it would be written. "Doctor Tenison's wife"—"This is Mrs. Tenison"—she seemed already to hear the magical sound ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... term of man: and, perhaps, no existence of equal duration ever exhibited an uniformity more sustained. The strong bent of his infancy was pursued through youth, matured in manhood, and maintained without decay to an advanced old age. In the biographic spell, no ingredient is more magical than predisposition. How pure, and native, and indigenous it was in the character of this writer, can only be properly appreciated by an acquaintance with the circumstances amid which he was born, and by being able ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... change its expression. Should these limitations discourage anyone? Not in the least, but rather the reverse. The fact that the cure is in the nature of a growth, is evidence that it is normal and permanent, rather than magical or capricious. Limitations are present, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... in dialogue than a drama, rather a succession of just sentiments in elegant language than a representation of natural affections, or of any state probable or possible in human life. Nothing here "excites or assuages emotion:" here is "no magical power of raising phantastic terror or wild anxiety." The events are expected without solicitude, and are remembered without joy or sorrow. Of the agents we have no care; we consider not what they are doing, or what they are suffering; we wish only to know what they have ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... I am called upon to produce a laugh from Timothy, I no longer make faces or "pop." I have discovered how to blow my nose like a mouth-organ. It's trying work, but the effect is magical. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... nay months, Billy Kirby would toil with an ardor that evinced his native spirit, and with an effect that seemed magical, until, his chopping being ended, his stentorian lungs could be heard emitting sounds, as he called to his patient oxen, which rang through the hills like the cries of an alarm. He had been often heard, on a mild summer evening, a long mile across the vale ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... study this product as they would any other altogether new article of cookery, and that the study and care used will be amply repaid by the palatability and healthfulness of all foods. A can of Crisco is no Aladdin's Lamp, which merely need be touched by a kitchen spoon to produce magical dishes. But any woman is able to achieve excellent results by mixing thought ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil
... boat, the last tie, if tie there was, that bound him to his present life. Waterman he had always been, and now had come to him the call of the Father of All Waters. The tang of the salt in his nostrils conjured up dreams as magical as those invoked by the wand of the poppy god. Wrapped in their rosy mantle, he walked the streets for the next two days, and on the third he took his way to the dock where lay the fire junk that was ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... question, and Mrs. Custard hobbled down stairs, and the children hopped, skipped, and jumped up stairs, both wondering what would come of this magical word "socks." ...
— Red, White, Blue Socks, Part First - Being the First Book • Sarah L Barrow
... that music! Did a little boy's boots ever stand still when a drum was playing, "March, march away"? No doubt his father was keeping step to just such sounds, on his path to martial glory! The fife and bugle whistled with magical ...
— Captain Horace • Sophie May
... inexpressibly. Sometimes when sad memories oppress me, how I shall long to have you charm them away by that magical spell that bears my thoughts from this world to the next. There are some songs which you must learn for ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... of Europe, primarily and immediately of geographical significance, has been converted for us by some magical process into a kind of metaphysical category. Who can say to-day—in Spain, at any rate—what Europe is? I only know that it is a shibboleth (vide my Tres Ensayos). And when I proceed to examine what it is that our Europeanizers call Europe, it sometimes seems to me that much ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno |
