"Occult" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... care whether the region they propose to search has been scientifically tested and thought to contain gold. They adhere to the miner's adage, "Gold is where you find it"; and they seem to have some occult power of divination for they have uncovered fabulous fortunes in regions which, like Cripple Creek, had been declared "barren of gold." Yet, as the old settlers say, "Prospectors never get anything out of their finds." Having struck it rich, they take to the ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... gift; practically every one of them foresaw the assassination of McKinley. Most of them, however, are gifted in curing diseases. The typical letter reads as follows: "There is a young man living here who seems to be endowed with a wonderful occult power by the use of which he is able to diagnose almost any human ailment. He goes into a trance, and while in this condition the name of the subject is given him, and then without any further questions he proceeds to diagnose his case fully and correctly ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... doubtless the invention of the singer. It has that abandon which usually characterizes the songs of workers in the occult ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... reaches the intelligence in other ways. . . . Because a fact is rare is no reason that it does not exist. Because a study is difficult, is that a reason for not understanding it? . . . Those who have railed at metaphysics as an occult science will be as ashamed of themselves as those who railed at chemistry on the ground that pursuit of the philosopher's stone was illusory. . . . In the matter of principles there are only those of Lavoisier, Claude Bernard, and Pasteur-the EXPERIMENTAL everywhere and always. Greetings, ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... him until he was out of sight; for some occult reason, not comprehensible even to her, she felt interested in the old man, although she had never spoken to him; but he looked old and ill and lonely; three decided claims on Olivia's bountiful ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... learned "the art of glammorie In Padua beyond the sea," and who is famous in the annals of Massachusetts, where he was at one time a resident, as the first man who dared petition the General Court for liberty of conscience. The full title of the book is Three Books of Occult Philosophy, by Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Knight, Doctor of both Laws, Counsellor to Caesar's Sacred Majesty and Judge of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... truths which reason feels after without finding. It appears as though a priori reasoning, human nature being the subject, is like a skilful piece of mechanism, carefully and scientifically put together, but which some perverse and occult trifle will not permit to act. This is eminently true of many questions regarding education, and precisely the state of the argument concerning the position and duties of women. The facts of moral and intellectual equality being established, it seems somewhat irrational to condemn women ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... Looked at dramatically, most occult phenomena make just this sort of impression. They are inwardly as incoherent as they are outwardly wayward and fitful. If they express anything, it is pure "bosh," pure discontinuity, accident, and disturbance, with no law apparent ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... concord or a visible discord between the events of a man's life and his name which is truly surprising; often some remote but very real correlation is revealed. Our globe is round; everything is linked to everything else. Some day perhaps we shall revert to the occult sciences. ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... be money. A foot is always twelve inches, but when is a dollar a dollar? If ton weights changed in the coal yard, and peck measures changed in the grocery, and yard sticks were to-day 42 inches and to-morrow 33 inches (by some occult process called "exchange") the people would mighty soon remedy that. When a dollar is not always a dollar, when the 100-cent dollar becomes the 65-cent dollar, and then the 50-cent dollar, and then the 47-cent dollar, as the good old American gold and ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... greatly interested in the performances of the spiritualists, trance mediums, and other persons pretending to supernatural powers. How far he believed in this occult science can now only be conjectured, but he was not a man to be easily played upon. He thought at least that there was more in it than was dreamed of by philosophers. When the Longfellow party was at Florence in April, 1869, Prince George of Hanover, ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... the peculiar gift, which developed into ever-increasing perfection as her hair grew whiter, of being able to express ideas by means of words which had no relation to them at all. Within three minutes, by three different remarks whose occult message no stranger could have understood but which forced itself with unpleasant clearness upon Edwin, Mrs Hamps had conveyed, "Janet Orgreave only cultivates Maggie because Maggie is the sister of ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... deluded by false predictions or ensnared by magic;[150] princes were governed in their political movements by astral calculations;[151] a grave minister details with complacency, although without comment, various anecdotes of the operation of the occult sciences,[152] and even makes them a study; while a European monarch, strong in the love of his people and his own bravery, suffers the predictions of soothsayers and prophets to cloud his mind and to shake his purposes, ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... goal. It brings us back to those uncanny soul-adventures by which Strindberg himself won his way to the "full, rock-firm Certitude" of which the play in its entirety is the first tangible expression. The elements entering into this current are not only mystical, but occult. They are derived in part from Swedenborg, and in part from that picturesque French dreamer who signs himself "Sar Peladan"; but mostly they have sprung out of Strindberg's own experiences in moments ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... window was as distinct as it ever had been. I sprang to my feet, and, as I stood wondering what this strange thing could mean, the dog brushed up against me and licked my hand. Then the idea suddenly flashed into my mind that by some occult influence Ajax had been ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton
... hurry to reply. He was busy taking in a variety of pleasant impressions. Notwithstanding the severely cut riding habit and the hard little hat, he decided that he had never looked into a more attractively feminine face. For some occult reason, unconnected, he was sure, with the use of any skin food or face cream, this young woman who had the reputation of living out of doors, winter and summer, had a complexion which, notwithstanding its faint shade ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... considerable liberality on the part of the officials (all paid for), and both Raleigh and Percy had each a garden to cultivate and walk in, and a still-room or laboratory in which to study and perform their ' magic.' Hariot was the master of both in these occult sciences. The ' furnace ' and the ' still' were at first Raleigh's chief amusement and study. Assaying and transfusing metals, distilling simples and compounds, concocting medicines, and testing antidotes, with exercises in chemistry and alchemy, were the studies of both Raleigh and the Earl. But ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... is from the works of Cornelius Agrippa, a well-known professor of occult philosophy, and is indeed introductory to a treatise upon it. The writer is quite aware that his work may be scandalizing, hurtful, and even poisonous to narrow minds, but is sure that readers of a superior understanding will get no little ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... kinds; that from without we are threatened with the invasion of microbes with every breath we draw, and from within by leucomaines, robes, aerobes, anaerobes, and what not. But Science never yet went so far as to assert with the Occult Doctrine that our bodies, as well as those of animals, plants, and stones, are themselves altogether built up of such beings, which, except larger species, no microscope can detect. So far as regards the purely animal and material portion of man, Science is on its way ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... with him at a fence, it was his habit to force the animal till he jumped it,—as the groom had recommended Phineas to do. But when he had encountered a decided fall, it was not sensible practice to ride the horse at the same place again. There was probably some occult cause for failure. He could not but own that he had been thrown on the present occasion,—and upon the whole, he thought that he had better give it up. He found his way back to the house, put up his things, and got away to Spoon Hall in time ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... had applied for had not yet arrived; she seemed to remain as hopelessly entangled in the web of war as ever, watching, without emotion, the old spider. Death, busy all around her, tireless, sinister, absorbed in his own occult affairs. ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... picture is, it is furthermore permeated by a significance that is not occult. It bears witness to the possible strength of a passion that is so spiritual as to be without taint of sense; and to a confident belief in an immortality wherein the utmost limits of a blessedness not of this world may be compassed. Such are in this picture the simpler, ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... Comte terms Metaphysical, accounts for phaenomena by ascribing them, not to volitions either sublunary or celestial, but to realized abstractions. In this stage it is no longer a god that causes and directs each of the various agencies of nature: it is a power, or a force, or an occult quality, considered as real existences, inherent in but distinct from the concrete bodies in which they reside, and which they in a manner animate. Instead of Dryads presiding over trees, producing and regulating their phaenomena, every plant ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... right. It is good for us now and then to converse with a world like Mr. White's, where Man is the least important of animals. But one who, like me, has always lived in the country and always on the same spot, is drawn to his book by other occult sympathies. Do we not share his indignation at that stupid Martin who had graduated his thermometer no lower than 4o above zero of Fahrenheit, so that in the coldest weather ever known the mercury basely absconded into the bulb, and ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... course this could designate only the impressions made by the outward objects, and so far, therefore, having been thus metamorphosed, they were effects of these objects; but then made to supply the place of their own causes, under the name of occult qualities. Thus the properties peculiar to gold, were abstracted from those it possessed in common with other bodies, and then generalized in the term Aureity: and the inquirer was instructed that the Essence of Gold, or the cause which constituted the peculiar modification of matter ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... up frequent with that form of horned toad? Thar's nothin' you can lodge ag'inst 'em, nothin' at which a vig'lance committee can rope an' fasten; they're honest, well meanin', even gen'rous; an' yet thar they be, upholstered by nacher in some occult way with about the same chance of bein' pop'lar as a wet dog. Speakin' for myse'f, I feels sorry for these yere onforchoonate mavericks, condemned as they be at birth to go pirootin' from the cradle to the grave, meetin' everywhar about the same welcome ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... witchcraft and its demonstrations centered in the claim of power to produce certain effects, "things beyond the course of nature," from supernatural causes, and under this general term all its occult manifestations were classified with magic and sorcery, until the time came when the Devil was identified and acknowledged both in church and state as the originator and sponsor of the mystery, sin and crime—the sole father of the Satanic compacts ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... stove in the boarding-house office also possessed the charm of balsam fragrance. One told the other occult facts about the "Southeast of the southwest of eight." The second in turn vouchsafed information about another point of the compass. Thorpe heard of many curious practical expedients. He learned that one can prevent awkward air-holes in lakes by "tapping" the ice with an ax,—for the air must ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... the opera refined and extended the illusion that she had been transported out of the world by some occult agency. The wonderful creature that had taken her up out of her abandoned misery before the sordid shop-shutter appeared now in a fairy costume glittering with jewels. And the gnomes, the monsters and goblins appearing ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... lore. She drew magic circles, saw visions of people in a glass, possessed numerous charms and incantations, and, above all, kept a wonderful magic book. She attempted to find lost money, to tell the future, and to cure disease; indeed, she had a varied repertoire of occult performances. ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... The occult quality in the air did not depart with the coming of night, though the winds no longer alternated, the warm blasts ceasing to blow, while the cold came steadily and with increasing fierceness. Yet it ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... may be known; important in the reconstruction of the history of philosophy; and important in furnishing necessary data to psychology. No labor can be more fruitless than the search in mythology for true philosophy; and the efforts to build up from the terminology and narratives of mythologies an occult symbolism and system of allegory is but to create a new and fictitious ...
— On Limitations To The Use Of Some Anthropologic Data - (1881 N 01 / 1879-1880 (pages 73-86)) • J. W. Powell
... spoke to one in Persian, and the other in Russian, but neither of them could understand him. I have never, however, been able to make up my mind whether the point of the story told against him or against them. [420] Although Burton was a student of occult science, I could never lead him to talk about crystals or kindred subjects; and this gave me the idea that he was perhaps pledged to secrecy. Still, he related his experiences freely in print." Oddly, enough, Burton ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... happiness to meet with many rarities in my time unexpectedly. I had a sister lived in the Minories, in that very house where formerly had lived one Evans, not my tutor, but another far exceeding him in astrology, and all other occult learning, questioned for his life about 1612. I am sure it was when the present Earl of Manchester's father was Lord Chief Justice of England. He was found guilty by a peevish Jury: but petitioning King James by a Greek ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... delusion that the mesmerist or hypnotizer counts for anything in the experiment. The operator, whether priest, physician, charlatan, self-deluded enthusiast, or conscious imposter, is not the source of any occult influence, does not possess any mysterious power, and plays only a very secondary and insignificant part in the chain of phenomena observed. There exist at the present time many individuals who claim for themselves, ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... slipped from his and they were silent. Presently the boy, as if acted upon by some occult influence of the girl, said ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... because the turnspit in the king's kitchen was a member of parliament. Such sinecures and the pensions on the civil list or the Irish establishment provided the funds by which the king could build up a personal influence, which was yet occult, irresponsible, and corrupt. The measure passed by Burke in 1782[2] made a beginning in the removal of ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... of ears and queries of Sir Lukin put him to the test of his right to the remark; for it sounded of occult acquaintance with interesting subterranean facts; and there was a communication, in brief syllables and the dot language, crudely masculine. Immensely surprised, Sir Lukin exclaimed: 'Of course! when fellows live quietly and are careful of themselves. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... think, a matter of pride that no member of it had ever been in trade nor politics, nor suffered any kind of distinction. Mohun was a trifle sentimental, and had in him a singular element of superstition, which led him to the study of all manner of occult subjects, although his sane mental health safeguarded him against fantastic and perilous faiths. He made daring incursions into the realm of the unreal without renouncing his residence in the partly surveyed and charted region of what we ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... solids; from colourless liquids gaudy precipitates were suddenly called into existence; flames were disengaged without any adequate cause; explosions took place spontaneously. So much that was unexpected and unaccountable justified the title of "the occult science," "the black art." From being isolated marvels unconnected with one another, these facts had been united. The Chaldee notions of a soul of the world, and of indwelling spirits, had furnished a thread on which all ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... this great number of unexplained facts is often interpreted by the admirers of Da Vinci, as showing an almost occult insight into science many centuries in advance of his time. Such interpretations, however, are illusive. The observation, for example, that a tube placed against the ground enables one to hear movements ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... very unequal company I have before mentioned met; the former of these is apparently impracticable. Let Socrates, for instance, institute a discourse on the nature of the soul, or Plato reason on the native beauty of virtue, and Aristotle on his occult qualities—What must become of our dancing-masters? Would they not stare at one another with surprise, and, most probably, at our philosophers with contempt? Would they have any pleasure in such society? or would they not rather ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... blandum meditata laborem Basia lasciv Cypria Diva manu. Ambrosiae succos occult temperat arte, Fragransque infuso nectare tingit opus. Sufficit et partem mellis, quod subdolus olim Non impune favis surripuisset Amor. Decussos violae foliis admiscet odores Et spolia aestivis plurima rapta rosis. Addit et illecebras ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... hidden spring in a desire for the marvelous. The search for the philosopher's stone has done as much for chemistry as the legend of the elixir of life for exploration and geographical discovery. From the excitements of these suggestions of the occult, the world settled down into a reasonable understanding of the facts of which they were but the ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... she ought to be slinking in disgrace. She never felt quite sure, in herself, whether she were wrong, or whether the others were wrong. She had not done her lessons: well, she did not see any reason why she should do her lessons, if she did not want to. Was there some occult reason why she should? Were these people, schoolmistresses, representatives of some mystic Right, some Higher Good? They seemed to think so themselves. But she could not for her life see why a woman should bully and insult her because she did not know thirty lines of As ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... one may be of the occult, he must needs be interested in things that others believe to be objective—that certainly are subjectively very real ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... smitten glass or the jingle of a dropped spoon. But if I should try to render his words, I should spoil their impression in the vain attempt, and I feel that it is best to give the story as best I can in words of my own, so far from responsive to the requisitions of the occult incident. ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... constitution of certain angelical choirs.... the Seraphim, Virtues, and Powers (being) of a fiery character, the Cherubim terrestrial, the Thrones and Archangels aquatic, while the Dominations and Principalities are aerial." A. E. Waite, The Occult Sciences, London, 1891, ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... in the middle of the road is characteristic of the genuine tramp. There must be some occult reason for this peculiarity, since in a general way, it is far easier going on the margin. Perhaps it is because he commands a better view of either side, with a regard to the possible onslaught of dogs. There is something about a man with a pack on his back ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... unsuspicious of these suspicions, a change had come. Whether it was that for the time he heard less of the best sheep-dog in the North, or for some more occult reason, certain it is that he became his old self. His tongue wagged as gayly and bitterly as ever, and hardly a night passed but he infuriated Tammas almost to blows with his innuendoes ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... went to chapel, and oddly enough, Mr. Maydig, who took a certain interest in occult matters, preached about "things that are not lawful." Mr. Fotheringay was not a regular chapel goer, but the system of assertive scepticism, to which I have already alluded, was now very much shaken. The tenor ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... your house and mine there are mysteries unknown to us. I am not going in to the horrid old question of "followers." I don't mean cousins from the country, love-stricken policemen, or gentlemen in mufti from Knightsbridge Barracks; but people who have an occult right on the premises; the uncovenanted servants of the house; gray women who are seen at evening with baskets flitting about area-railings; dingy shawls which drop you furtive curtsies in your neighborhood; demure little Jacks, who start ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... manner; it is with no small concern I see the original of the Staffian race so little known in the world as it is at this time; for which reason, as you have employed your studies in astronomy and the occult sciences, so I, my mother being a Welsh woman, dedicated mine to genealogy, particularly that of our own family, which, for its antiquity and number, may challenge any in Great Britain. The Staffs ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... Countess of Montesquieu had little sympathy for each other, but they never betrayed any coolness. Even had they desired it, they would have been held in awe by fear of Napoleon, who insisted on harmony in his court. Still, there could be distinguished at the Tuileries two parties in occult opposition, belonging respectively to the old and to the new nobility. At the head of the first stood the Count and the Countess of Montesquieu; of the second, the Duchess of Montebello, to whom the Empress's preference gave great authority. Madame Durand says that all the influence ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... instruction was absolutely free, and that no interference would be allowed with the teaching of science in the public schools. After all, public opinion alone can deal with the question of the confessional and the occult influence of the priest, for the remedy lies in the hands of those who place themselves under the domination of ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... we cannot understand the real Paracelsus without reference to the occult sciences so largely cultivated in his day, as also to the mental atmosphere which produced them; and he quotes in illustration a passage from the writings of that Bishop of Spanheim who was the instructor ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... this evening, my friends," the one Pash was saying, "a very remarkable lady—if I may use so democratic a term in the connection—to whom the limits of Time and Space are empty words, and before whose supreme Will the most portentous Forces of Occult Nature mutely confess themselves her attending slaves—" But at that moment the rolling drums of Kiang-ti's thunder drowned his words, although he subsequently raised his voice above it to entreat that any knives or other articles of a bright and attractive kind should at once be removed ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... to follow the course of early man in his efforts to bring plants into medicinal use. That some of the indigenous plants had therapeutic properties was often an accidental discovery, leading in the next place to experiment and observation. Cornelius Agrippa, in his book on occult philosophy, states that mankind has learned the use of many remedies from animals. It has even been suggested that the use of the enema was discovered by observing a long-beaked bird drawing up water into its beak, and injecting the water into the bowel. ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... to blow the seven forts of Cronstadt into the air. The revelations of the spy went for nothing; and, after the cutlasses of the lads in blue-jackets had been sharpened to a razor-like degree of keenness, those blades, for some occult reason, were not allowed to cut deep enough; the only cutting—and running into the bargain—being done by the Russian fleet, which, safely ensconced in the harbour of Cronstadt, defied us from behind the walls of fortresses which we did not care to bombard. Still, the Baltic fleet was ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... energy, apparently radio-active in character, issued from her fingers, and gradually discharged the electroscope. This is the "radiation" or "emanation" issuing from the body, which has been studied extensively by students of the occult. Dr. Imoda concluded—as the result of his experiments—that "the radiations of radium, the cathode radiations of the Crookes' tube, and mediumistic radiations are fundamentally ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... impossible to say, for at that moment Scott joined the group. "Did you speak to me?" he asked of the Colonel, dropping his hand, as if with accidental familiarity, on that gentleman's shoulder. The Colonel, recognizing some occult quality in the touch, and some unknown quantity in the glance of his questioner, contented himself by replying, "No, sir," with dignity. A few rods away, York's conduct was as characteristic and peculiar. "You had a mighty fine chance; why didn't you plump him?" ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the face or any part of the body. The causes producing naevi materni have probably been the origin of such marks, rather than the idea entertained by the Chinese that the father, having performed an action by some occult mode, influences the child yet unborn. A case is said to have occurred in which ill effects were obviated, or rather obliterated, by the red papers being torn down, after the birth of the infant, and ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... business than is practically necessary. For months I had kept all my knowledge to myself, and breathed not a word to a soul. But I thought it my duty to tell Wardlaw about the letter, to let him see that we were not forgotten. I am afraid it did not encourage his mind. Occult messages seemed to him only the last proof of a deadly danger encompassing us, and I could ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... yellow man was no longer talking at random, but slowly, with his eyes on the collar he held in his hand, like a scholar in his closet, perusing the occult pages ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Mr. Gowdy—no, Miss Hallowell," he said to the office boy. And then he looked sharply at the pert young face for possible signs of secret cynical amusement. He saw none such, but was not convinced. He knew too well how by a sort of occult process the servants, all the subordinates, round a person like himself discover the most intimate secrets, almost get the news before anything has ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... head and fixed upon Parsifal her prayerful wet eyes. Either from his recent contemplation of the flowery lea, or some occult association of her personality with the past, the flowers of Klingsor's garden come into his mind. "I saw them wither who had smiled on me. May they not also be hungering for redemption now?... Your tears, too, are turned to blessed dew.... You weep, and see, the meadow blooms in ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... of different opinions were once conversing. The one scoffed at innate ideas, instinctive principles, and occult causes: the other was a believer in natural gifts, and an active fabricator of suppositions. Suggest but the slightest hint and he would erect a hypothesis which no argument, at least none that he would listen to, could overthrow. So convinced was he of the force of ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... radiating and luminous Lady, hidden in the pine woods, who will reveal among other things the following: (1) The nature of Woodrow Wilson's personal character; (2) The full reasons for his conduct; (3) His occult international designs; (4) How he purposes to free Ireland; (5) The value of being House-broken; (6) The real name of the Man in ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... him was the occult tie between him and Miss Roots. Up to the day fixed for his departure he was drawn by an irresistible fascination to Miss Roots. His manner to her became marked by an extreme gentleness and sympathy. Of course it was impossible to believe that it was Miss Roots who lit the intellectual ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... familiarity, but I was determined to keep him at a distance, and soon he gave it up. He displeased me extremely. At the first glance I saw that he was a filthy debauche. I was jealous of him, even before he had seen my wife. But, strange thing! some occult fatal power kept me from repulsing him and sending him away, and, on the contrary, induced me to suffer this approach. What could have been simpler than to talk with him a few minutes, and then dismiss him coldly without ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... occult symbolism in this section is enormous, and the key of it is the name of the letter I, which is IVD, Yod. This is a trinity of letters, and their numerical value is I 10, V 6, D 4, total 20, equivalent ...
— Hebrew Literature
... uncle. However, I consoled myself with the reflection that the occasion for such a revelation no longer existed, and I had no desire needlessly to persecute a man whose iniquities could, at all events, harm no one but himself. And still, knowing from experience his talent for occult diplomacy, I took the precaution (without even remotely implicating Miss Hildegard) to put Mr. Pfeifer on his guard. One evening, as we were sitting alone in his library enjoying a confidential smoke, I related to him, merely ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... the flattering attention that is given the condemned; no one else is given half the chance to make a glorious finish. By some occult influence his faults are utterly effaced and every latent talent is developed to a point of absolute perfection. When this 'ne plus ultra' is reached, a quick curtain is dropped over his career, and he lives in the memory of countless thousands as a martyred hero of the most ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman
... Anne Turner made coin out of the notes which her late husband, so inquisitive of mind, had left on matters much more occult than the manufacture of yellow starch and skin lotions. "It was also rumoured,'' says Mr Sabatini, "that she amassed gold in another and less licit manner: that she dabbled in fortune-telling and the arts of divination.'' We shall see, as the story develops, that the rumour ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... to believe in the occult sciences. I dinna haud a'thegither wi' Salverte. There was mair in them than Magia naturalis, I'm thinking. Mesmerism and magic-lanterns, benj and opium, winna explain all facts, Alton, laddie. Dootless they were an unco' barbaric an' empiric method o' ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... imagination alone is in good condition, but the intellect is defective, we have statesmen, lawgivers, magicians, dreamers of true dreams and occult artists. These men are so confused sometimes by visions and reveries that they think they have the ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... of the influences that had pressed me out of my destined groove, by every human right my own. I remember how sanguine Count Reitzenstein was that through the Service I ought to gain the power I had lost. But as I sat in the hotel room had occult powers been given me, I never would have taken up Secret Service work. But one is not quite as wise ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... up in Chicago as a Persian Magus, teaching Yogi breathing exercises and occult sex-lore to the elegant society ladies of the pork-packing metropolis. The Sun God, worshipped for two score centuries in India, Egypt, Greece and Rome, has a new shrine on Lake Park Avenue, and the prophet ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... on earth, and incidentally revealed to him the whereabouts of the now-familiar fresco of Dante on the wall of the Bargello Chapel, where it had been hidden for ages beneath a coat of whitewash. In these occult researches, Kirkup, of course, had need of a medium, and he found among the Florentine peasants a young girl, radiantly beautiful, who possessed an extraordinary susceptibility to spiritual influences. Through her ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... circle; he even attended communion in spite of his unhappy memories of that sacrament, and was present at a Synod of the Herrnhut Community to which Fraeulein von Klettenberg belonged. Bound up with the Fraeulein's religion was a curious interest in the occult powers of nature from the point of view of their relation to the human body. It is with evident irony that Goethe relates how in his own case the efficacy of these occult powers was tried. Among the members of the religious community was ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... tatters of a storm, and Valentin regarded it with a wistfulness unusual in such scientific natures as his. Perhaps such scientific natures have some psychic prevision of the most tremendous problem of their lives. From any such occult mood, at least, he quickly recovered, for he knew he was late, and that his guests had already begun to arrive. A glance at his drawing-room when he entered it was enough to make certain that his principal guest was not there, at any rate. He saw all the other pillars ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... in. But scarcely had it taken two steps and reached the depth of its knees, when, from the intenser cold, or from coming sharply against a submerged stone, or from indignation at the fiddler's prod, or from the occult cause known as pure devilment, it shied up its back legs, and tossed down its tousled head, and pitched the musician ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... it came to me that what he really sang for was not there only, Nor for his mate nor himself only, nor all sent back by the echoes, But subtle, clandestine, away beyond, A charge transmitted and gift occult for those ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... a la Nazarene, which is the mode most of our Sicilian gentlemen prefer." We were about to rise, wash, and depart, but an impediment is offered by the artist. "Non l'ho raffinato ancora, Signor, bisogna raffinarlo un poco!" and before we could arrive at the occult meaning of raffinare, his fingers were exploring very technically and very disagreeably the whole surface over which his razor had travelled, and a number of supplementary scrapings were only stopped by an impatient basta of the victim. Still he was unwilling ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... the concept of beauty as some occult undefinable quality, we get rid of much of the contradiction which appears to inhere in our aesthetic experience. For example, a bit of brilliant colour in a bonnet which pleases the wearer but offends her superior in aesthetic matters takes its place as something ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... readers—perhaps to no other reader—and which no other books make to him. It is something in them apart from their absolute value or charm, or rather it is something in him, some private experience of his own, some occult association in depths below consciousness. He has a perfectly just estimate of their small importance in the abstract, they are not even of the second or third rank. Yet they speak to him; they seem written to him—are more to him, in a way, than ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... premonition concerning the result of the elections which were about to take place over the whole surface of France. Often things are as spiritually intelligent as men,—an argument in favor of the occult sciences. ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... that with care and prudence they might last ten days longer. "That is," said Mr. Oakhurst, sotto voce to the Innocent, "if you're willing to board us. If you ain't—and perhaps you'd better not—you can wait till Uncle Billy gets back with provisions." For some occult reason, Mr. Oakhurst could not bring himself to disclose Uncle Billy's rascality, and so offered the hypothesis that he had wandered from the camp and had accidentally stampeded the animals. He dropped a warning ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... elephants and camels and fakirs and palm trees. Oh, Jonesville yarn! you never expected to be knit amid seens like this. I can knit and admire scenery first rate, and my blue and white yarn seemed to connect me with Jonesville in some occult way, and then I knew Josiah would need his socks ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... Lord, a woman of rare culture and research, my daughter and I had become interested in the school of theosophy, and read "Isis Unveiled," by Madame Blavatsky, Sinnett's works on the "Occult World," and "The Perfect Way," by Anna Kingsford. Full of these ideas, I soon interested my cousins in the subject, and we resolved to explore, as far as possible, some of these Eastern mysteries, of which we had heard so much. We looked in all directions to find some pilot to start ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... incredible caliber, of what illusion-creating power! For years he could not see a Salvation Army girl without a sense of cerebral exaltation. If he could have met Debora again, he would have forgiven her sibylline deceptions, her father's chicanery. And how did they spin their web? Ferval, student of the occult, greedy of metaphysical problems, at first set it down to Indian Yogi magic. But the machinery—the hideously discordant human orchestra, the corybantic dancing! No, he rejected the theory. Music is sometimes hypnotic, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... no response, which appeared to satisfy Hedrick perfectly. Neither parent met his glance; the mother troubled and the father dogged, while the boy rejoiced sternly in some occult triumph. He inflated his scant chest in pomp and hurled at the defeated ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... connected train of thought. These men, whose conversation was a jargon fitting only for lunatics, had proved that they could read my mind with the ease of a telegraph operator taking a message off a wire. That they, further, possessed marvellous, if not miraculous powers, over occult natural forces could hardly be doubted. The net in which I had voluntarily entangled myself was closing around me. An irresistible impulse to fly—to desert Natalie and save myself—came over me. I put this aside presently. It was both unworthy and unwise. ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... variety of salutary medicaments into Europe. The Spanish Arabs, in particular, are commended by Sprengel above their brethren for their observations on the practice of medicine. [41] But whatever real knowledge they possessed was corrupted by their inveterate propensity for mystical and occult science. They too often exhausted both health and fortune in fruitless researches after the elixir of life and the philosopher's stone. Their medical prescriptions were regulated by the aspect of the stars. Their physics were debased by magic, their chemistry degenerated ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... back room one evening when his watch was done sauntered Con. His professional curiosity had been stirred by these occult bartenders at whose bar none drank, and who daily drew upon Kenealy's store of liquors to follow ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... is lone and still; When to the blaze that crackles near, I turn a tired and pensive ear, And Nature conquering bids me sigh For love's soft accents whispering nigh; O teach me, on that heavenly road, That leads to Truth's occult abode, To wrap my soul in dreams sublime, Till earth and care no more be mine. Let bless'd Philosophy impart Her soothing measures to my heart; And while with Plato's ravish'd ears I list the music of the spheres, ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... in chaos hurl'd, Self-form'd of atoms, sprang the infant world: No great FIRST CAUSE inspired the happy plot, But all was matter—and no matter what. Atoms, attracted by some law occult, Settling in spheres, the globe was the result; Pure child of CHANCE, which still directs the ball, As rotatory atoms rise or fall. In ether launch'd, the peopled bubble floats, A mass of particles and confluent motes, So nicely poised, that if one atom flings Its weight away, ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... ever been known in the district, and since it had not only baffled Mooty's skill, but had irreverently seized him—the only physician of credit and renown—its cause must be supernatural. Thus did he reason, as he began occult investigations. Jack and Rosey lay in their camp passively dying. Mooty prowled about, the sleeves of a discarded shirt tied under his distended jaws. No physical origin for the mysterious disease was found during the two days he devoted to methodic search and secret ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... court, he now even aspired to closer relations with royalty, and built a magnificent country home, which was large enough to accommodate a visiting court. He even persuaded the king to visit the Mortlake factory, that the royal presence might enhance the value of art in the occult way known only to the ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... seen, the sailor's confidence in the tutelary deity of his island was absolute, and, certainly, the occult power, manifested until now in so many inexplicable ways, appeared to be unlimited; but also it knew how to escape the colonists' most minute researches, for, in spite of all their efforts, in spite of the more than zeal,—the obstinacy,— ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... occult to mortal eyes, Dorm on the herb with none to supervise, Carp the suave berries from the crescent vine, And bibe ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... up, what shall we do? shall we say the foreigner beats him by his blood, or by the force and power of his tendons? or can we, without reproaching our own reason and understanding, impute that to be the effect of occult and hidden causes in the one of these instances and not in the other? both of which are demonstrated with certainty, and reduced to facts by the knowledge of anatomy and the principles ...
— A Dissertation on Horses • William Osmer
... is a long time since we studied the occult sciences—Wierius, in his erudite volume "De Prestigiis Demonum," recounts the story which is celebrated in the following ballad. Something like it is to be found in the biography of every magician; for the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... hat turned out equally simple, and the result of all the trials was only to increase my skepticism as to the whole doctrine of unknown forces and media of communication between one mind and another. I am now likely to remain a skeptic as to every branch of "occult science" until I find some manifestation of its reality more conclusive than any I have yet been ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... of bread-and-butter embracing leaves of pale lettuce, a hollow-stemmed glass effervescent with liquid sunlight of a most excellent bouquet, and then another: these served not in the least to subdue his occult jubilation. ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... of the occult science is far more widely spread than scholars, lawyers, doctors, magistrates, and philosophers imagine. The instincts of the people are ineradicable. One among those instincts, so foolishly styled "superstition," runs in the blood of the populace, and tinges no ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... under it, and a back screen of black velvet or dark material. The latter materially assists by cutting off side lights and reflections. Steady gazing in complete silence is absolutely necessary, for unlike other occult phenomena, the distraction the attention of primary (ordinary) consciousness is a great disadvantage. Success depends chiefly upon idiosyncrasy or faculty in the gazers, for "Seers" are very often men and women of imperfect education, ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... habits—such as myself, for example. Is this fad of yours madness?—which would be quite to your credit,—for gadzooks, I like a lunatic! Or is it the complaint of a man who has gathered too much data on the subject of Old Rye? Or is it, as I suspect, something more occult, and therefore ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... [Hebrew: ML'KYM] or [Hebrew: MLKYM], that is, of angels or kings (angelorum sive regum); and the third the writing of the crossing of the flood."[50] There {50} are extant also, drawings of these letters preserved by Hern. Corn. Agrippa, in his work "De Occult. Phil. lib. iii. c. 30," the copying of which would be merely matter ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... woman sat silent, scarcely daring to breathe in that artificial attitude. And then, whether from some occult sympathy in the touch, or God best knows what, a sudden fancy began to thrill her. She began by remembering an old pain that she had forgotten, an old horror that she had resolutely put away all these years. She recalled days of sickness and distrust,—days of an overshadowing fear,—days ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... committee drew up the following conjoint report, according to which only one of two things was possible—either the horse could think and calculate independently, or else he was under telepathic, perhaps occult, influence: ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... a philosopher, who had stoutly asserted, that he would draw no conclusions which do not follow from self-evident premisses, and would affirm nothing which he did not clearly and distinctly perceive, and who had so often taken to task the scholastics for wishing to explain obscurities through occult qualities, could maintain a hypothesis, beside which occult qualities are commonplace. What does he understand, I ask, by the union of the mind and the body? What clear and distinct conception has he got of thought in most intimate union ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... pursuance of his stern duties, reveals to the scorn of future ages some of the occult practices which discredit the march of light in the ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the town, as a body, has organized itself; and as Edinburgh is Edinburgh by virtue of its castle, Rome Rome by virtue of its capitol, and Egypt Egypt by virtue of its pyramids, so is Bideford Bideford by virtue of its bridge. But all do not know the occult powers which have advanced and animated the said wondrous bridge for now five hundred years, and made it the chief wonder, according to Prince and Fuller, of this fair land of Devon: being first an inspired bridge, a soul-saving bridge, an alms-giving bridge, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... broad-mouthed flue that opened above the range. This was the ominous 'signal' we had heard in answer to the footsteps. The dust was thick over everything, and the only signs of life were the rat-tracks on the floor. We stood still for a few moments, overwhelmed at this solution of the occult 'influence' that had so subtly acted on Annie's nerves, and filled ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... little doubt that, to produce effect at the moment, there is hardly any crime so dark or desperate of which, in the excitement of thus acting upon the imaginations of others, he would not have hinted that he had been guilty; and it has sometimes occurred to me that the occult cause of his lady's separation from him, round which herself and her legal adviser have thrown such formidable mystery, may have been nothing more, after all, than some imposture of this kind, some dimly hinted confession of undefined horrors, which, though intended by ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... of much wit, but of no occult pretensions, and wholly ignorant of the Oglethorpes, looked over Westbrook Place, then vacant, with the idea of renting it. On entering it she said, 'I have a feeling that very interesting things have happened ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... to, when Leila's whistle called them,—a wild troop, never allowed beyond the porch or in the house. For some occult reason Mrs. Ann disliked dogs and liked cats, which roamed the house at will and were at deadly feud with the stable canines. No rough weather ever disturbed Leila's out-of-door habits, but when for two days a lazy rain fell and froze on the ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... by charms, magic songs, magic feats, and the beating of his drum, had power over the spirits, and those occult influences inherent in animals and inanimate things. He could call to him the souls of his enemies. They appeared before him in the form of stones. He chopped and bruised them with his hatchet; blood and flesh issued forth; and the intended victim, however distant, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... swarming hives in summer. He walked some distance on level ground, till there was a break in the banks and a stile on which he could lean and look out. He found himself, as he had hoped, afar and forlorn; he had strayed into outland and occult territory. From the eminence of the lane, skirting the brow of a hill, he looked down into deep valleys and dingles, and beyond, across the trees, to remoter country, wild bare hills and dark wooded lands meeting ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... and therefore have a fanatical following among those who labor under like disabilities; the great writers who are unable to attain strength, lucidity, or beauty, and therefore secure praise for profundity and occult wisdom,—none of these influence him. In these, as in other things, the Hohenzollern sanity asserts itself. He recognizes the fact that normal and healthy progress is by an evolution of the better out of the good, and that the true function of genius in every field is to promote ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White |
