"Occult" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... here?" asked Claudius, who was as yet in complete ignorance of the Countess's name, title, nationality, and mode of life, for Mr. Barker had, for some occult reason, left him in ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... an Indian Brachman, and versed in all those mysterious Secrets which your European Philosopher, called Pythagoras, is said to have learned from our Fraternity. I had so ingratiated my self by my great Skill in the occult Sciences with a Daemon whom I used to converse with, that he promised to grant me whatever I should ask of him. I desired that my Soul might never pass into the Body of a brute Creature; but this he told ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... 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 ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... the most distinguishing attention, and the barber's son was promoted to high office. After some days, the sultan requested the dervish to instruct him in the transmutation of metals, which he readily did, as well as in many other occult mysteries; which so gratified his royal patron, that he trusted the administration of government to his care. This disgusted the ministers and courtiers, who could not bear to be controlled by a stranger, and therefore resolved to effect his ruin. By degrees ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... his time. Hence it appears that the man who has his self-denial before him, however good may be his intention, cannot be as the man who has his self-denial behind him. Some seem to think that this is very unjust, but they get their notions of justice from some occult source of inspiration, not from observing the facts of this world as it has ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... means of the lad, unto whom that treasure was fortuned by the stars-shut up [252] the earth upon him and left him to die of hunger. Now this accursed Maugrabin wizard was from the city of Africa [253] in Hither Barbary and had from his childhood been addicted to magic and all the occult arts, for which the city in question is renowned. He ceased not from his tenderest years to study and learn in his native land Africa till he became versed in all sciences, and of the much skill and proficiency which he acquired, by dint of study and application for the space ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... out, and proceeded to read. It was a long letter in her ladyship's own handsome, high-bred, old-fashioned handwriting; and it was addressed to Messrs. Farrow, Bernscot, and Tisdale, Solicitors, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London. She read it twice through, and at last (with a smile that seemed occult) restored it to its envelope. "Stop at the Post Office," she said to her coachman, as they entered Roccadoro; and to her footman, giving him the letter, "Have ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... Liebeault and Bernheim has been a veritable scientific revelation for human psychology. Unfortunately it has remained to a great extent unknown to the public and the majority of medical men and jurists. Even at the present day, this subject is regarded either in the light of magic and occult phenomena, or as being connected with imposture and charlatanism. This results from the incapacity of most men to think in a psychological and philosophical manner, to observe for themselves and to take into account ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... hands slipped from his and they were silent. Presently the boy, as if acted upon by some occult influence of the girl, said in a ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... metaphysic of morals, completely isolated, not mixed with any anthropology, theology, physics, or hyperphysics, and still less with occult qualities (which we might call hypophysical), is not only an indispensable substratum of all sound theoretical knowledge of duties, but is at the same time a desideratum of the highest importance ...
— Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals • Immanuel Kant
... 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 Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... radiant beams the mountain tops, than Sabra repaired to the Champion's pavilion, and presented him with a diamond ring of inestimable value, which she prayed him to wear on his finger, not only as an ornament, but because it was endued with many excellent and occult virtues. ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... sounded in business, in diplomacy, in social life, is expressed by the phrase, "Live openly!" From every quarter, in regard to every manner of human activity, has come the cry, "Let in the light!" By a physical correspondence not the result of coincidence, but of the operation of an occult law, we have, in a very real sense, let in the light. In buildings of the latest type devoted to large uses, there has been a general abandonment of that "cellular system" of many partitions which produced the pepper-box exterior, in favour ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... fell to in their respective and characteristic manners, the Oneidas eating like gentlemen and talking together in their low and musical voices; the Wyandotte gobbling and stuffing his cheeks like a chipmunk. The Stockbridge Mole, noiseless and mum as the occult and furry animal which gave to him his name, nibbled sparingly all alone by himself, and read in his ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... not occurred to her before. But love is not to be turned from its object by trifles. She was all that we have more than once described her to be; but she was not a meta-physician or a philosopher, capable of comprehending and explaining occult mysteries. Enough for her if she loved Miles and Miles loved her, and then, even if he did not deserve her love, she would remain true—secretly but unalterably true—to him as the ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... standing in the gloaming by a window, her hands clasped over her head, a smile parting her lips, her eyes haunting in the witchery of their expression. By some occult power her glance fell unconsciously on him; and he beheld, with mingled amazement and speculation, a rosy hue overspread her face and throat; her hands went swiftly to her face as if she would hide something it might reveal, and she passed quickly from the room. Arnold ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... inculcating the fanciful elements of an occult art. We know whence its principles may be drawn; and we may observe how it was practised by the wisest among the ancients. Aristotle, who collected all the curious knowledge of his times, has preserved some remarkable opinions on the art of divination. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... 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 ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... occult force which was exercised to great advantage by my people. This force eliminates both distance and obstruction and exposes to view the object sought even if it is located on the opposite side of the ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... there was godlessness in turning to politics for a weapon to strike a domestic blow, manfulness in some degree signalized it. Beauchamp could fancy his uncle crying out, Who set the example? and he was not at that instant inclined to dwell on the occult virtues of the example he had set. To be honest, this elevation of a political puppet like Cecil Baskelett, and the starting him, out of the same family which Turbot, the journalist, had magnified, into Bevisham with such pomp and flourish in opposition to the serious young champion of popular ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... rather remarkably handsome, when you considered how frequently his love-affairs had left disastrous souvenirs: yes, for a man in middle life so often patched up by quack doctors, Ormskirk looked wholesome enough, said Mr. Bulmer. He may have had his occult purposes, this poor cousin, but of Ormskirk he undoubtedly spoke with engaging candor. Here was no parasite cringingly praising his patron to the skies. The Duke's career was touched on, with its grimy passages no whit extenuated: ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... Bonaparte; without consulting any thing but her own correct judgment, and well-intentioned heart, she contrived to procure, from some being of a superior order, sylph, fairy, magician, or other person skilled in the occult sciences, as many in Naples, as well as elsewhere, positively profess themselves to be, a small association of talismanic characters, fraught with such magical and potential influence, in favour of the possessor, that the slightest glance of this mystic charm no sooner ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... that any further comment or illustration is unnecessary. The opposing armies had been handled with skill and energy, the men had never fought better, and the result seems to have been decided rather by an occult decree of Providence than by any other circumstance. The numbers on each side were nearly the same, or differed so slightly that, in view of past conflicts, fought with much greater odds in favor of the one side, they might ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... yourself) have come to pass after so surprising a 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 are originally of Staffordshire, which took its name from them: ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... surprise in any one at all skilled in the history of human nature; but this is altogether inadequate to account for that preternatural eagerness with which men seek after this wonderful plant. In fact, there appears to be some occult charm connected with it—some invisible spirit, which, be it angel, or be it devil, has never yet been, and perhaps never will be, satisfactorily explained. To those who have never revelled in this habit, and consequently can ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... The quoted passage 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 good, and plenty of pleasure from it; ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • 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 ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... the progress of his education," by—it is difficult, even after the most painstaking study of its explanations, to record the phenomenon without astonishment—a perusal of the sonnets of William Lisle Bowles. Deferring, however, for the present any research into the occult operation of this converting agency, it will be enough to note Coleridge's own assurance of its perfect efficacy. He was completely cured for the time of his metaphysical malady, and "well were it for me perhaps," he exclaims, "had I never relapsed ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... mechanically they kept the trail, and why they did so they could not have told. No coherent thoughts passed through their brains. But always the trees, frost-rimed, drifted past like phantoms; always the occult influences of the North loomed large on their horizon like mirages, dwindled in the actuality, but threatened again in the bigness of mystery when they had passed. The North was near, threatening, driving the terror of her tragedy home to the hearts ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... almost every generation, in almost every country, in almost every city. She is not a typical adventuress, she is not a genius. The reason for her strong power is occult. The nameless charm is found as often in homely, clumsy, dull, old masculine women as in the reverse of ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
... be occult and complex. The offspring of a rebellious and disobedient child, is certainly entitled to no filial instincts; and some day the strain will tell, and you will overwhelm your mother with ingratitude, black as that which she ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... all his feats upon The Devil's looking-glass, a stone; Where playing with him at bo-peep, He solv'd all problems ne'er so deep. AGRIPPA kept a Stygian pug, 635 I' th' garb and habit of a dog, That was his tutor, and the cur Read to th' occult philosopher, And taught him subt'ly to maintain All ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... whose controlling agency is an occult power which the world thus far has doubted and wondered at alternately rather ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... weather conditions were perfectly adjusted to meet certain occult exactions he had come to require, Yancy could be induced to go into the woods and there labor with his ax. But as he pointed out to Hannibal, a poor man's capital was his health, and he being a poor man it behooved him to have a jealous care of himself. He made ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... 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 ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... highly organized a system as prevailed in Egypt. Only about twenty deities are alluded to in the monumental records of either nation, and they are supposed to have represented the sun, the moon, the stars, and various other powers, to which were delegated by the unseen and occult supreme deity the oversight of this world. They presided over cities and the elements of Nature, like the rain, the thunder, the winds, the air, the water. Some abode in heaven, some on the earth, and some in the waters under the earth. Of all these graven images existed, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... not relish having his big occult smoke blown away in this fashion; he looked at us with rather a sickish expression, as a boy might have if someone stuck a pin in his toy balloon. But it was such a relief to get back to practicalities that we ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... occult to mortal eyes, Dorm on the herb with none to supervise, Carp the suave berries from the crescent vine, And bibe the flow from ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... were certain advantages in that move. In my present abode my sudden absences might have been in the long run subject to comment. On the other hand, the house in the street of Consuls was a known out-post of Legitimacy. But then it was covered by the occult influence of her who was referred to in confidential talks, secret communications, and discreet whispers of Royalist ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... very low level; small joy either for the maker or the user. Pure art, a fine-spun specialty, a process carried on by an elect few who openly despise the unappreciative many. Art has become an occult profession requiring a long special education even to enjoy, and evolving a jargon of criticism ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... 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 to the Duchess and Mother Shipton, who of course knew the ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... I remained at home, and one evening when, during the course of a gay party, the conversation came around to the subject of mysticism and occult occurrences, I dished up my story of the enigmatical manuscript. The Unknown, the Occult, was the rage just then, and my story was received with great applause and called forth numerous quotations ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... 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 the relater but to mystify ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Chris's mustang, making the gallant little beast toss its long mane, raise its long, plume-like tail till it floated out behind, and stretching out neck and legs, its length growing closer to the track, it tore away like a greyhound, avoiding obstacles as if by some occult force, and making the air ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... to pass that they spent an unclouded fortnight together. But that is perhaps saying a little too much. Four men and three women, so that when they broke up there was one dame always attended by two cavaliers: strange to say, Fan was always the favoured one. For some occult reason no one contested the curate's right to have Constance all to himself on such occasions; for what right had he, a religious man, to monopolise this pretty infidel? Then, too, she was a widow, entitled by prescription to the largest share of attention; nevertheless, the curate was allowed ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... still is he has grown more and more preoccupied with art. There was a time when a love of the occult threatened his art, but from that the theatre has saved him, if it has taken him from the writing lyrics, in which his powers are at their highest. To old Irish legend, Mr. Yeats has, however, been true from the start, and from the start, too, there has ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... on the supposition, that 'one mind' could command an unlimited direction over any given number of 'limbs', provided they were all connected by 'joint' and 'sinew'. But suppose, through some occult and inconceivable means, these limbs were dis-associated, as to all material connexion; suppose, for instance, one mind, with unlimited authority, governed the operations of 'two' separate persons, would not this, substantially, be only 'one person', ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... strange thing, but the man seems to have some odd kind of gift. Whether it be that "second sight" which we Scotch people are so prone to believe in, or some other occult form of knowledge, I know not, but nothing of a disastrous tendency ever occurs in this place but the men with whom he lives are able to quote after the event some saying of his which certainly appears to have ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... good time," said Marvin, with that faith in some occult power, seemingly the Government and Providence working in conjunction, to which parsons and many women confide their worldly affairs and sit ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... and bloodless, White and wild his eyeballs glisten; And his smile, occult and tragic, Yet so slavish, ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... was the Comtesse de Rudolstadt. Consuelo, who through her marriage with Albert is now Comtesse de Rudolstadt, continues her European tour. She reaches Berlin, and we find her at the Court of Frederick II. We now have Voltaire, La Mettrie, the Sans-Souci suppers, Cagliostro, Saint-Germain and the occult sciences. Frederick II sends Consuelo to prison. There appears to be no reason for this, unless it be that in order to escape she must first have been imprisoned. Some mysterious rescuers take a great interest in Consuelo, and transport ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... relations between Margaret and the mummied Queen was, that in some occult way the Sorceress had power to change places with the other. This view of things could not be so lightly thrown aside. There were too many suspicious circumstances to warrant this, now that my attention was fixed on it and my intelligence recognised the possibility. ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... the Yogi "Science of Breath," which includes not only all that is known to the Western physiologist and hygienist, but the occult side of the subject as well. It not only points out the way to physical health along the lines of what Western scientists have termed "deep breathing," etc., but also goes into the less known phases of the subject, and shows how the Hindu ...
— The Hindu-Yogi Science Of Breath • Yogi Ramacharaka
... a native of Naples, famous for skill in the occult sciences. He wrote a book on Physiognomy, seeking to trace in the human face resemblances to animals, and to infer ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... jungle beach to attract and hold attention was not only direct and sensory,—through sight and sound and scent,—but often indirect, seemingly by occult means. Time after time, on an impulse, I followed some casual line of thought and action, and found myself at last on or near the beach, on a lead that eventually would take me to the verge or into ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... had been groping after a formula which might be their strength, but they had not been able to put it into shape. Jacob Boehm's mysticism, passing through the alembic of such a mind as Leader's, and subjected to that occult atmosphere which Muggleton lived in, came forth in the shape of a new theology, transcendental, unintelligible, but therefore celestial and sublime. The prophets from this moment made a ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... be formed of lines of fire within the stone, glowed, redly, through the greenness. The ring was old—incalculably old—as anyone could see at a glance. And, in some occult fashion, it spoke to Baron Hague; spoke to that which was within him—stirred up the Jewish blood and set it leaping madly ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... 426; hidden &c 528; latent &c 526. indefinite, garbled &c (indistinct) 447; perplexed &c. (confused) 59; undetermined, vague, loose, ambiguous; mysterious; mystic, mystical; acroamatic[obs3], acroamatical[obs3]; metempirical; transcendental; occult, recondite, abstruse, crabbed. inconceivable, inconceptible[obs3]; searchless[obs3]; above comprehension, beyond comprehension, past comprehension; beyond one's depth; unconceived. inexpressible, undefinable, incommunicable. unpredictable, unforeseeable. Phr. it's ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... the means of justification, and rigorously confined in the tower of Pavia, while the senate, at the distance of five hundred miles, pronounced a sentence of confiscation and death against the most illustrious of its members. At the command of the Barbarians, the occult science of a philosopher was stigmatized with the names of sacrilege and magic. [96] A devout and dutiful attachment to the senate was condemned as criminal by the trembling voices of the senators themselves; and their ingratitude ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... This visionary was in reality a philosopher, that is to say, an experimenter and a manipulator of general ideas. Proof of this may be found in his biography, which shows him to us, during his college days at Vendome, plunged into a whirl of abstract reading. The entire theological and occult library which he discovered in the old Oratorian institution was absorbed by the child, till he had to quit school sick, his brain benumbed by this strange opium. The story of Louis Lambert is a monograph of his own mind. During his youth and in the moments snatched from his profession, to what ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... g[h] ma not make all vowels long as well as i, and w[h]y ma not ye and we make vowels long, as well as a, e, and o; we must ask t[h]e natural P[h]ilosop[h]ers w[h]at sympat[h]y or antipat[h]y is in t[h]e Lettrz; and w[h]et[h]er an occult quality; or t[h]e divines, if t[h]ere be not a mystery in it above nature before we adventure to teah and cong the batl-dur; and w[h]y I ma not supply t[h]e place of y rat[h]er t[h]an g, as in yate, yell, yule, ...
— Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.
... cult, no less powerful than mysterious, which united many and diverse tribes of Mexico and Central America into organized opposition against the government and the religion which had been introduced from Europe; whose members had acquired and were bound together by strange faculties and an occult learning, which placed them on a par with the famed thaumaturgists and theodidacts of the Old World; and which preserved even into our own days the thoughts and forms ...
— Nagualism - A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History • Daniel G. Brinton
... has no slightest material interest in the nationality or the place of residence of those who conduct this traffic; though all the facts go to say that in some puzzle-headed way the common man commonly persuades himself that it does make some occult sort of difference to him; so that he is commonly willing to pay something substantial toward subsidising businessmen of his own nationality, in the way of a protective tariff ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... a genius. People in general do not recognize this fact. He is an inarticulate genius. Men feel that he is in some occult way different from them, yet they do not know just how. Nor will they ever take the trouble to study out a problem in human nature, either in man or woman, unless they ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... 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 to double I; but for reasons given in the "Book ...
— Hebrew Literature
... the more irritably because he could not think of any solution to the mystery. "You don't believe in occult powers and all that sort of thing. This is the neighborhood of the Commercial Road; time, nineteenth century. The thing's got on your nerves. Keep your eyes open, and stay indoors; they can't hurt you here. ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... 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 was warm and close in the cave, and the two went outside ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... himself in a room which he had not yet investigated. It was somewhat bare as to furniture; it struck strange to his senses as if he had stumbled into another world; in some occult way it preserved a tradition of travel and adventure. The bookcase he came to inspect was flanked by a small cabinet of coins and curios—Italian, Grecian, Egyptian, and Japanese; the walls were hung with ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... commentators, the love of God for the congregation of Israel; it relates the history of the Jews from the Exodus to the Messiah; it is a consolation to afflicted Israel; it is an occult history; it represents the union of the divine soul with the earthly body, or of the material with the active intellect; it is the conversation of Solomon and Wisdom; it describes the love of Christ to his Church; it is historico-prophetic; it is Solomon's thanksgiving ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... 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 ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... to the steam-engine, was the most familiar of exhibits. For Adams's objects its value lay chiefly in its occult mechanism. Between the dynamo in the gallery of machines and the engine-house outside, the break of continuity amounted to abysmal fracture for a historian's objects. No more relation could he discover between ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... imagination with the most unbounded liberty, and discover themselves in the most glaring colours. In like manner, I am persuaded, there might be several useful discoveries made from a criticism of the fictions of the antient philosophy, concerning substances, and substantial form, and accidents, and occult qualities; which, however unreasonable and capricious, have a very intimate connexion with the ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... march of mind, in a good condition for taking castles, as far as not having a groat is a qualification for such exploits. She was also a glittering bait to divers young squires expectant (whose fathers were too well acquainted with the occult signification of mortgage), and even to one or two sprigs of nobility, who thought that the lining of a civic purse would superinduce a very passable factitious nap upon a thread-bare title. The young lady had received an expensive and complicated education, complete in all the elements ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... the shadowy walls. Tall glass cases there were, shelves and niches: where once, from the gallery above, I had seen the tubes and retorts, the jars of unfamiliar organisms, the books of unfamiliar lore, the impedimenta of the occult student and man of science—the visible evidences of Fu-Manchu's presence. Shelves—cases—niches—were bare. Of the complicated appliances unknown to civilized laboratories, wherewith he pursued his strange experiments, ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... any occult meaning in the lines, nor did they convey anything special to her; but they remained with her for the rest of the day, haunting her, in among her other thoughts, and forcing themselves upon her attention with the irritating persistency ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... Professor Paulsen has recently written some feeling lines about this over-professionalism, from the reign of which in Germany his own writings, which sin by being 'literary,' have suffered loss of credit. Philosophy, he says, has long assumed in Germany the character of being an esoteric and occult science. There is a genuine fear of popularity. Simplicity of statement is deemed synonymous with hollowness and shallowness. He recalls an old professor saying to him once: 'Yes, we philosophers, whenever we wish, can go so far that in a couple of sentences ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... "spavined," while to all outward observation it still retains its perfect form. With no enlargement perceptible to sight or touch the animal may yet be disabled by an occult spavin, an anchylosis in fact, which has resulted from a union of several of the bones of the joint, and it is only those who are able to realize the importance of its action to the perfect fulfillment of the function of locomotion by the hind leg who can comprehend the gravity of the only prognosis ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... alienate forever by dedicating it to a pretended religious purpose. The next, as coming on our list, though not so in time, was addressed again to the Senate concerning official reports made by the public soothsayers as interpreters of occult signs, as to whether certain portents had been sent by the gods to show that Cicero ought not to have back his house. Before this was made he had defended Sextius, who as Tribune had been peculiarly serviceable in assisting his return. ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... allowed to fall into abeyance, but was developed in direct ratio with his withdrawal from the world. An atavism from some remote Aryan ancestry inclined him, as in the case of so many Germans, to mysticism and the occult. It was a condition which had its compensations. That there were periods when he saw visions may be conjectured by the character of the last quartets. When they were written, Beethoven was in the shadow of death, on the border-land of the other world, and from that proximity he relates his experience. ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... high-falutin', which in such connection would have been so fatally easy). To sum up, though one at least of these "dreams before midnight" may quite possibly become a nightmare after it, I fancy that, to all lovers of the occult, the game will be found well ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various
... looked us over, as if, by same sort of occult intuition of woman, she were reading our souls. Then, instinctively almost, she turned to Kennedy. Kennedy seemed to recognize her need. Norton and I ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... remarked, one seemed to see the right side of the tapestry; out of doors in England one seemed to see the wrong side, which gave one no notion of the figure. The admission costs her historian a pang, but Henrietta, despairing of more occult things, was now paying much attention to the outer life. She had been studying it for two months at Venice, from which city she sent to the Interviewer a conscientious account of the gondolas, the Piazza, the ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... of the humors of the camp—a practical manifestation of the facetious spirit that had found literary expression in the topsy-turvy obituary notice from the pen of Hurdy-Gurdy's great humorist. Perhaps it had some occult personal signification impenetrable to understandings uninstructed in local traditions. A more charitable hypothesis is that it was owing to a misadventure on the part of Mr. Barney Bree, who, making the interment unassisted ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... and his thirst for knowledge of the occult sciences grew. He wished to know how to prolong life, to change base metals to gold, to do things at once by the power of ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... unless an immense compressing power should alter the nature of those operations. But compression alters the relation of evaporation only with regard to heat, or it changes the degree of heat which water may be made to sustain; consequently, we are to look for no occult quality in water acting upon bodies at the bottom of the deepest ocean, more than what can be observed in experiments which we have it in our power ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... ken, An ancient bard of simple mind. You, Sweet, his Mistress, Wife, and Muse, Were you for mortal woman meant? Your praises give a hundred clues To mythological intent! And, severing thus the truth from trope, In you the Commentators see Outlines occult of abstract scope, A future for philosophy! Your arm's on mine! these are the meads In which we pass our living days; There Avon runs, now hid with reeds, Now brightly brimming pebbly bays; Those are our children's songs that come With bells ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... enabled him to gratify to the utmost the passions which governed him—the passion of sensual indulgence and the blind force which impelled him to seek relief from physical satiety in the pursuit of that occult knowledge which he regarded as the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... incredulous Western world puts no faith in Mahatmas. To it a Mahatma is a kind of spiritual Mrs. Harris, giving an address in Thibet at which no letters are delivered. Either, it says, there is no such person, or he is a fraudulent scamp with no greater occult ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... his guards, met the excited crowd and ordered them to quit the precincts of the palace, or he would put them out by force. The abashed priest [182] thereupon withdrew with his companions, but from that day the occult power of the friars was put in motion to bring about the recall of General Blanco. In the meantime Rizal had been detained in the Spanish cruiser Castilla lying in the bay. Thence he was transferred to the mail-steamer ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... the consul laughingly, "you know that we Americans speak with a decided dialect of our own, and attach the same occult meaning to it. Yet, upon my word, I think that Lord Beverdale—or shall I say Lord Algernon?—would not only understand that American word 'guess' as you mean it, but would ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... existence had come to an abrupt end. Nowadays she spent almost all her time at Crome, cultivating a rather ill-defined malady. For consolation she dallied with New Thought and the Occult. Her passion for racing still possessed her, and Henry, who was a kind-hearted fellow at bottom, allowed her forty pounds a month betting money. Most of Priscilla's days were spent in casting the horoscopes ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... solid, the liquid, and the gaseous, we must add a fourth, the ethereal—the state of matter which Sir Oliver Lodge thinks borders on, or is identical with, what we call the spiritual, and which affords the key to all the occult phenomena of life ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... in money like pigs in mud, Till it seemed to have entered into his blood By some occult projection; And his cheeks, instead of a healthy hue, As yellow as any guinea grew, Making the common phrase seem ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... further expression he might have indicated his feelings it was 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 ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... tried again,—a page of Greek; he tried a theme occult,— A message and an errand,—every time the same result! Then Cyrus knew that somehow his machine had missed its aim; For though the works ran smoothly it was always just ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... had 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
... and he 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 used to call ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... Knowledge; and (next to what is Divine) truly so called; as far, at least, as Humane Nature extends towards the Knowledge of Nature, by enlarging her Empire beyond the Land of Spectres, Forms, Intentional Species, Vacuum, Occult Qualities, and other Inadequate Notions; which, by their Obstreperous and Noisy Disputes, affrighting, and (till of late) deterring Men from adventuring on further Discoveries, confin'd them in a lazy Acquiescence, and to be fed with Fantasms and fruitless Speculations, which signifie ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... type of philosophers and commanders will some time or other be needed, at the very idea of which everything that has existed in the way of occult, terrible and benevolent [!] beings might look pale and dwarfed. The image of such leaders hovers before our eyes.... The conditions which one would have partly to create and partly to utilize for their genesis ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... evade the occult meaning of the words, however. In the wearily dreamy manner which, when first he had seen her, had aroused Soames' respectful interest, she raised her thin hand to her hair, slowly pressing it back from her brow, and directed her big ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... by a force invisible, and warned, 'Thus far, and no farther!' To oppose this force or make any personal effort to rebel against it, is no part of my faith,—therefore at such moments I had always yielded instantly and obediently as I yielded now. I was not allowed to fathom the occult source of my happiness, but the happiness remained,—and when I retired to rest it was with more than ordinary gratitude that I said my usual brief prayer:—For the day that is past, I thank Thee, O God my Father! For the night that ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... curiosity. His was the instinct of the explorer, his feet were the feet of the Wandering Jew. He knew things behind closed doors by instinct; he was like a thought- reader in the sure touch of discovery; the Khedive looked upon him as occult almost and laughed in the face of Sadik the Mouffetish when he said some evil things of Dicky. Also, the Khedive told the Mouffetish that if any harm came to Dicky there would come harm to him. The Khedive loved to play one man off against another, and the death of Sadik or the death of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the greatest lion-tamer who ever lived, once told me that a man in love with a woman could not control lions; that when a man falls in love he loses that intangible, mysterious quality—call it mesmerism or whatever you like—the occult force that dominates beasts. And he said that the lions knew it, that they perceived it sometimes even before the man himself was aware that he ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... closer to the girl, and he brought a cloying odor of frangipani, bergamot and vervain. His nostrils quivered, his face had taken on an odd pinched look, for all that he smiled as over some occult jest. Graciosa was a little frightened by his bearing, which was both furtive ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... interview had to do with an affair of the heart; but after the man of magic had foretold the most favourable issues, and concocted a love-potion that was certain to help his visitor's cause, the conversation drifted on to occult subjects generally. ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... fraud—but it did not! It happened in the study of one of the most respected women in the city, a student who did not believe in psychic phenomena. Furthermore, my own hand was on the lid of the piano. I was so convinced of Mrs. Smiley's possession of some occult force that I at once wrote to the society, telling them that a study of her phases would, in my judgment, be the most important work its directors could engage upon. This is one of my crack stories, and I wouldn't believe it as related by any ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... greatest delight which the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... 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 wish themselves in a dancing-school, ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... design the complex character of a mythic, heroic, and Christian poem, and, at the same time, constitutes the unity of its parts. The ancients, whose representative types I introduce, knew and appreciated but two kinds of power, brute or physical, and spiritual, including all occult and supernatural efficacy, and strength of intellect and will. Virtue, triumphant by the aid of adventitious force, or relying upon unconquerable pride and disdain to resist it, was the highest reach of their dynamic conceptions. Moral power is properly a Christian idea. It ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... a surging vision of a great hall crowded with people. He saw no individuals, he was conscious of a froth of pink faces, of waving arms and garments, he felt the occult influence of a vast crowd pouring over him, buoying him up. There were balconies, galleries, great archways giving remoter perspectives, and everywhere people, a vast arena of people, densely packed and cheering. Across the nearer space lay the collapsed cable like a huge snake. It had been cut ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... little way from the traffic behind a screen of plane trees. Not much more than its parapet appears behind the foliage. By those offices, on fine evenings, I find one of our ancients, Captain Tom Bowline. Why he favours the road there I do not know. It would be a reasonable reason, but occult. The electric trams and motor buses annoy him. And not one of the young stokers and deck-hands just ashore and paid off, or else waiting at a likely corner for news of a ship, could possibly know the skipper and his honourable records. They do not know that once, in that office, ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... remarkable character. Most natives are extremely superstitious, and it is particularly true of those who have a belief in some form of God. While he would marvel at new things they did not occur to him as being the result of some new occult force. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... The occult and the imaginary have never appealed to me, and the moment I felt myself a man again, I hurried on to the stables to call up ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... if they are things of good, so much the better. We know of hypnotism, psychic force, spiritualism, thought reading, and other occult sciences which appear to produce nothing very grand as results for good, but who shall say there is not some "Guiding Good" which can (even against our wills) warn us, or sway our minds in a given direction or in some way influence our ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... exterior appearance through mirrors, and we soon make the necessary alterations to put our bodies in harmony with existing formalities. Then, why not study more seriously the mental images reflected from the mirror of the soul upon our minds through the occult processes within us? ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... SCIENCES" was first published at Antwerp in 4to. 1530; a book, upon the rarity of which bibliographers delight to expatiate. His "OCCULT PHILOSOPHY"—according to Bayle, in 1531 (at least, the Elector of Cologne had seen several printed leaves of it in this year), but according to Vogt and Bauer, in 1533.—There is no question about the ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... is to so manipulate the laws of nature as to prevent the Emperor outliving the Empress Dowager, and not allow the world to know that you have been trifling with occult forces. He must die a natural death, a death which is above suspicion. He must not die one day after the Empress Dowager as that would create talk. And he ought to die some time before her. The death fuse is one which often burns very much longer ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... series of books on Occultism, and appreciate the large patronage they have received from the reading public, for which we return our sincere thanks. We hope the near future will give us the work referred to by the author in his preface, as doubtless it will be a great revelation of Occult laws that govern our little Earth in its relation to our Sun and solar system, of which it forms a part, and give much light on those subjects that ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... from him the practice of magic 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
... incense-burning, gong-banging, and other rites supposed to be propitiatory of the deity. He was also, however, greatly addicted to opium-smoking, and when under the influence of the drug, of which, as an old stager, he could consume great quantities without being stupefied, the idea of the occult power of the goddess, never absent from his mind, was turned completely upside down. When free from the fumes of opium nobody could have been more respectful to the Josses, but when intoxicated, and with the weather threatening, he openly ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... 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 that ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... of having wasted time on the magic of the first; but all those who actually deal with demons are destined to eternal fire with Jamnes and Mambres and Simon Magus. This means, as is the fact, that his occult philosophy did not actually enter upon black magic, but confined itself to the power of the stars, of numbers, etc. The fourth book, which appeared after the death of Agrippa, and really concerns dealing with evil spirits, is undoubtedly spurious. It is very difficult ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... may say to the contrary, we hold strongly to the opinion that likings and dislikings among men and women and children are the result of some profound occult cause which has nothing whatever to do with experience. No doubt experience may afterwards come in to modify or intensify the feelings, but it is not the originating cause. If you say it is, how are we to account for love at first sight? Beauty has nothing necessarily ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... words, until at length the growing volume dominated the whole room and mastered the manifestation of all that opposed it. For just as he understood the spiritual alchemy that can transmute evil forces by raising them into higher channels, so he knew from long study the occult use of sound, and its direct effect upon the plastic region wherein the powers of spiritual evil work their fell purposes. Harmony was restored first of all to his own soul, and thence to the room ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... must again refer you to the prize-fighter. But if you will pardon me, I think you have put the cart before the horse; for once having granted that personal power, happiness must ensue, and your health as a necessity follow. First cultivate this occult force, and we need submit to no physical laws; for inasmuch as the higher controls the lower, we are masters ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... informed her of this occult fact she laughed, "You know mighty well, Mouse, that you have a sneaking wish there were one Yankee stranger ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... wont to visit, but from which they always contentedly returned to their little provincial town. Whether there was some instinctive yearning, like the stirred sap of great forests, in their wholesome pioneer blood, or whether there was some occult fascination in the pretty town-crested hill itself, it was still certain that the richest inhabitants always preferred to live in Lakeville. Even the young, who left it to seek their fortune elsewhere, came back to enjoy their success under the sylvan vaults of ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... any one of a number of causes. It may be due to a lack of poetic appreciation on the part of the teacher, leading to poor judgment in selecting and presenting poetry. It may be due to the feeling that there is something occult and mysterious about poetry that puts it outside the range of common interests, or to the idea that the technique of verse must in some way be emphasized. The first step in using poetry successfully with ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... knowing Henchard's nature now she had feared that Farfrae's days as manager were numbered, so that the announcement gave her little surprise. Would Mr. Farfrae stay in Casterbridge despite his words and her father's dismissal? His occult breathings to her might be solvable by his course in ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... these penmen require any fresh inflation; for never has there been a race of professors in any art who have exceeded in solemnity and pretensions the practitioners in this simple and mechanical craft. I must leave to more ingenious investigators of human nature to reveal the occult cause which has operated such powerful delusions on these "Vive la Plume!" men, who have been generally observed to possess least intellectual ability in proportion to the excellence they have obtained in their own art. I suspect this maniacal vanity is peculiar to ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... place indicated. A curious feature about this was that there were but very few in whose hands the experiment would work, and hence the water discoverer was a person of some repute. I never myself witnessed the performance, but it was of common occurrence. [Footnote: The reader will remember the occult operations of Dousterswivel in the seventeenth chapter of Scott's Antiquary. "In truth, the German was now got to a little copse- thicket at some distance from the ruins, where he affected busily to search for such a wand as should suit the purpose of his mystery; and after cutting off ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... who enjoys a great reputation for her skill in the occult sciences, especially in alchemy. She is a woman of wit, very, rich, and sole mistress of her fortune; in short, knowing her will do you no harm. She longs to see you, for she pretends to know you, and says that you are not what you seem. She has entreated ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... none to explore Your winding labyrinths occult, None to delve your ore Of strange virtue, or do Your magical business, you Were there, never old nor new, Veined in the world and alive:— Before the Planets, Seven; Before ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... to the marvellous than many atheists, but I cannot help thinking that the stories of miracles, prophecies, charms, etc., are but distorted accounts of the extraordinary effects produced by certain latent forces, or, as was formerly said, by occult powers. Our science is still so brutal and unfair; our professors exhibit so much impertinence with so little knowledge; they deny so impudently facts which embarrass them, in order to protect the opinions which they champion,—that ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon |
