"Talisman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... influence is this word revolution, that it should thus, like a talisman of romance, keep inchained, as it were, the reasoning faculties of twenty millions of people! France is at this moment looking for the decision of its fate in the quarrels of two miserable clubs, composed of individuals who are either despised or detested. The ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... words sounded so funny, and the children acted and talked so much like two old ladies over a cup of tea, it was not human nature to keep from being amused; and, in fact, their comical prattle acted like a fairy talisman or distant music; it soothed her, and made her in a measure forget ...
— Little Mittens for The Little Darlings - Being the Second Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... established as a sort of neutral King of Jerusalem; but this project was disconcerted in consequence of his refusal to forsake the religion of his Prophet. [Footnote: This is the groundwork of the mysterious negotiations in the "Talisman" and of ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... them is added a fleur-de-lis on a blue ball, which I am persuaded was given to the family by the Great Duke, in consideration of this alliance; the Medicis, you know, bore such a badge at the top of their own arms. This discovery I made by a talisman, which Mr. Chute calls the Sortes Walpolianae, by which I find every thing I want, 'a pointe nomm'ee, whenever I dip for it. This discovery, indeed, is almost of that kind which I call Serendipity, a very expressive word, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... naturally confirmed by incised and sculptured images; for since they supposed a spirit to be present in every object whatever, this was much more the case with incised or sculptured figures of men and animals. In these figures the amulet, talisman, or gris-gris of savages especially consisted; portraits, however rude, of animals, monsters, of the human form as a whole or in parts, as in the universal phallic superstitions. The belief in spirits, resulting ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... strain of mourning in a song of innocence. She wore no ornaments save a ring, the love-gift of Bigot, which she never parted with, but wore with a morbid anticipation that its promises would one day be fulfilled. She clung to it as a talisman that would yet conjure away her sorrows; and it did! but alas! in a way little anticipated by the constant girl! A blast from hell was at hand to sweep away her young life, and with it all ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... were genuine, Themistocles often changed his plans, and he could see to it this scheme for arraying the war fleet was speedily altered. No real harm then would come to Hellas. And in his hand was the broken shekel,—the talisman to save him from destruction. Only when Democrates thought of Glaucon and Hermione he was fain to grit his teeth, while many times it returned to him, "They think it was Glaucon who has been twice now ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... A talisman may be described as an emblematical object or image, accredited with magical powers, by whose means its possessor is enabled to enlist the aid of supernatural beings. Frequently it is a precious stone, sometimes a piece of metal or parchment, whereon ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... glorious brotherhood the novels are! Think of the pure romance of "The Talisman"; the exquisite picture of Hebridean life in "The Pirate"; the splendid reproduction of Elizabethan England in "Kenilworth"; the rich humour of the "Legend of Montrose"; above all, bear in mind that in all that splendid ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... every cold-blooded, venomous thing, and even the frightful Curupita, half brute and half devil, that shared the forest with her, loved and worshipped Rima, and that mournful burden I carried, her ashes, was a talisman to save me. He has left me, the semi-human monster, uttering such wild, lamentable cries as he hurries away into the deeper, darker woods that horror changes to grief, and I, too, lament Rima for the first time: a ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... she had inclosed the cornelian ring she had given me during my illness and which I had returned on leaving Paris. I had a little gold box made to hold this ring and note, and I wore it near my heart as a talisman. Lafayette, who had been arrested in France by order of the Government, which was opposed to his expedition, soon came and joined us after escaping from prison. I had had time to make my preparations, and I sailed full of melancholy, ambition, ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... their sense of the qualities that distinguish the diamond above all gems, venerated it as a talisman against wild beasts, poison, and evil spirits, thus expressing the natural influence of what is so enduring, bright, and pure. Townshend, speaking of the effect of gems on one of his sleep-wakers, said, she loved the diamond so much that she would lean her forehead towards it, whenever ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... in this way they master us." That may be so,—but if it is so with any of you, it is quite your own fault. Your own fault, I say,—for there is no power, human or divine, that compels you to remain in ignorance. Each one of you has a master—talisman and key to all locked doors. No State education can do for you what you might do for yourselves, if you only had the WILL. It is your own choice entirely if you elect to live in subjection to the earth, instead of placing the earth under ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... adaptation from the French play "Abbe de l'Epee" of J. N. Bouilly, in 1802, in which the founder of the first school for the deaf and his pupils are touchingly portrayed. Feigned characters are also found, as Scott's mute in "The Talisman"; in Moliere's "Le Medecin malgre Lui"; Jonson's "Epicoene"; and John Poole's "Deaf as a Post". Defoe has a character, Duncan Campbell, which is possibly based on one from real life, being referred to by Addison in the Spectator and the Tatler. On the subject ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... visionary being had become Comte Wenceslas Steinbock, the dream had a certificate of birth, the wraith had solidified into a young man of thirty. The seal she held in her hand—a sort of Annunciation in which genius shone like an immanent light—had the powers of a talisman. Hortense felt such a surge of happiness, that she almost doubted whether the tale were true; there was a ferment in her blood, and she laughed ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... ingredient in the fascination that books which I considered interesting had for me. My earliest fairy tales were not those unexciting stories in which the good genius appears at the beginning of the book, endowing the hero with such an invincible talisman that suspense is banished from the reader's mind, too well enabled to foresee the triumph at the end; but stories of long, painful quests after hidden treasure,—mysterious enchantments thrown around certain persons by witch or wizard, drawing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... rushed over to the Commune office, and, seizing a pencil and paper, began to write. At the top of the page she wrote, "Dearest Mother"—"just to make myself think it's a letter," she thought. But the words worked like a magic talisman, for the pencil traveled busily and by ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... Nevertheless, I promised and I should like to keep my promise. What I have tried to do, in order to place life before you in a more favourable light, would seem purposeless, if your confidence feels the lack of this talisman to which you attach so great a value. We must not laugh at these little superstitions. They are often the ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... and the ink both look too old for that. The words seem to be Latin; bad Latin, too, I should say. I think it is what the natives call an 'anting-anting;' that is a charm of some kind. Evidently this one did not save the life of the man who wore it. Probably it is a very famous talisman, else they would not have run such a risk to ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... soon as the Persians renounce the superstition that the daily contemplation of a turquoise is a talisman against the "evil eye" (K. Ritter, Erdkunde, VIII, 327), that precious stone will lose much of its value. On the other hand, the amulets of antiquity, although they have long lost the quality of goods ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... French walking through the Place Vendome to-day, attended only by one person. He was recognised, and cheered, and returned the salutation very graciously. And there stood the column erected to commemorate the victories of one now sleeping in a foreign grave; one whose very name was once the talisman that excited all Parisian hearts ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... repute to be an honorable and loyal gentleman, who could be, as he believed, relied upon, if he credited the letter, to keep it as a secret between himself and his royal master. It was a bold hazard, although the letter was weighted with the talisman of a name that must needs recall an ancient friendship. Would that letter be answered? Would that favor be granted? Would ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... a crucifix. A crucifix may become a mere talisman, and so supplant the Lord. I may wear the thing and have no fellowship with the Person. And so may it be with the Lord's Supper. I may come to regard it as a magic feast, which makes me immune from punishment, but not immune from ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... that should unlock the treasure—this, that had from the first hung over us, the one uncleansed spot in Lantrig: this was the talisman—this grimy thing lying in my hand. The spiders had been jealous ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Allah, or at least one of the ninety and nine mystical names, was engraved. When he chose to use this ring, all the spirits of air, the spirits of earth, the spirits of water and the spirits of fire were obliged to obey him. The name of such a ring is usually "Talisman." ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... I think I have found a talisman at last to cast out that 'dumb devil.' I heard you wishing for a watch the other day. Now, as devils belong to eternity, and have no business with time, of course the sight of this little time-keeper must ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... them talismanic figures, I would answer for the good effects of the experiment. Naude, indeed, has utterly ridiculed the occult virtues of talismans, in his defence of Virgil, accused of being a magician: the poet, it seems, cast into a well a talisman of a horse-leech, graven on a plate of gold, to drive away the great number of horse-leeches which infested Naples. Naude positively denies that talismans ever possessed any such occult virtues: Gaffarel regrets that so judicious a man as Naude should have gone ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... know, I'm sure. Perhaps it's only fancy." "Yes, only fancy and romance, of course. What's that book, now—the name of that book, I mean, that you had your head in all yesterday?" "The Talisman, Uncle. Oh, if this should turn out to be a talisman, how enchanting it would be!" "Yes, The Talisman: ah, well, you're welcome to it, whatever it is: I must be off about my business. Is all well in the house? Does it suit you? Any complaints from the servants' hall?" "No, indeed, nothing could be more charming. ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... like the bird in the story,[2] That flitted from tree to tree With the talisman's glittering glory— Has Hope been that bird to thee? On branch after branch alighting, The gem did she still display, And, when nearest and most inviting. Then ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... way we passed parties of soldiers and Cossacks hurrying to their posts, who eyed us suspiciously, but on seeing me at the head in the uniform of a British officer, ejaculated loudly to their command the magic word "Anglisky," until like a talisman the word passed from sentry to sentry and street to street, and "Anglisky" became the password which held the whole town for law and order. We passed towards the admiral's house without challenge until the Cossack and Serbian guard at the actual entrance ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... received also the intensest love of that individual. It was thus with Fastrada, for no sooner did she place the ring on her finger than the attachment of Charlemagne, great before, no longer knew any bounds. In fact his love was more like madness than any sane passion. But though this talisman had full power over love, it had no power over death; and the mighty monarch was soon to experience that nothing may ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... and know how to compensate themselves in other quarters for the indifference of their husbands. We are not speaking here of a common marriage, but of the betrothal of a prince. You do not marry your heart, but your hand. Truly such a marriage-ceremony is a protecting talisman, that may be held up to other women as an iron shield upon which, all their egotistical wishes, all their extravagant demands must rebound. Moreover, a married man is entirely sans consequence for all unmarried women, and if they should love such a one, the happy ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... what his magic talisman? Like every artist worth consideration, he had no recipe. If his exotic choice of subject was often his strength, it was often his weakness; if his insensitiveness carried him through, at times, to victory, it brought him, at times, to defeat. I do not think that he has that ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... post, as was the usual fashion of the period, without any adventure save one or two queries, which the talisman of his passport sufficiently answered, reached the borders of Scotland. Here he heard the tidings of the decisive battle of Culloden. It was no more than he had long expected, though the success at Falkirk had thrown a faint and setting gleam over the arms of the Chevalier. Yet ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... which, in truth, had nothing in it to recommend it specially to a lover's notice. "Horrid old thing!" had been Lily's own verdict respecting the frock, even before that day. But she had hallowed it in his eyes, and he would have been only too happy to have worn a shred of it near his heart, as a talisman. How wonderful in its nature is that passion of which men speak when they acknowledge to themselves that they are in love. Of all things, it is, under one condition, the most foul, and under another, the most fair. As that condition is, a man shows himself either as a beast ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... thought: gradually glide into American cookery, clams, canvas-backed ducks, what is that dish with a queer name—Jumbo? I don't feel as if it were Jumbo. Squambo? Terapin soup? It sounds rather like the Hebrew for a talisman, or an angel of some sort. However, they are talking about cookery now, and wines. Is there not an American wine called Catawampus? The Mad Doctor has his eye on me; he seems interested. I thought I heard him murmur Aspasia, or Aphasia, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892 • Various
... an end to these blandishments, Alaire undertook to return the general's ring, with the pretense that she considered it no more than a talisman loaned her for the time being. But it was a task to make Longorio accept it. He was shocked, offended, hurt; he declared the ring to be of no value; it was no more than a trifling evidence of his esteem. ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... evolutionists have enriched the idea of happiness by quietly slipping in many ends which really belong to the idea of the 'good.' As the term 'gravitation' was the magic word of the eighteenth century, so the word 'evolution' is the talisman of the present age. It must be admitted that it is a sublime and fruitful idea. It explains much in nature and history which the old static notion failed to account for. It has a great deal to teach us even in the spiritual sphere. But when applied to life as a whole, and when ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... often I've laid in bed and longed that it was all mine. Then I would count it—count it again and again—watch over it, not as I do now as a mere deposit in my charge, but as a mother would watch and smile upon her first-born child. There is a talisman in that word mine, that not approaching death can wean from life. It is our natures, child—say, then, is all ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... root, or dwelt upon the fox-grape's swinging curtain, he would have said, if questioned, that life in the woods and in an Indian country taught a man the use of his eyes. "Love of Nature" was a phrase at which he would have looked blank, and a talisman which he did not know he possessed, and it may be doubted if he could have defined the word "Romance." He whistled as he rode, and presently, the sun rising higher and the clear wind blowing with force, ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... Ah, how my heart quails at that single word! Thee, Felix, I o'ercame within my cell, Laughed at thy threats if death and torture fell; Yet hast thou still one arm to rouse my fears, The rest I scorn, but dread thy daughter's tears! One only talisman remains; great God, 'tis mine, Sufficient for my every need His strength divine! O thou, dear saint, thy scars all healed, white-robed, in glory crowned, Plead that I too may victory win, thou who hast victory ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... had once received a retaining fee on behalf of Paganism, in the mysterious Ancile, supposed to have fallen from heaven, but she actually preserved this bribe amongst her rarest jewels. She possessed a palladium, such a national amulet or talisman as many Grecian or Asiatic cities had once possessed—a fatal guarantee to the prosperity of the state. Even the Sibylline books, whatever ravages they might be supposed by the intelligent to have sustained in a lapse of centuries, were popularly believed, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... because he was so absolutely sure of his own value; Amabel was assured because, in her own eyes, she was valueless; this young man seemed to be without self-reference or self-effacement; but he was quite self-assured. Had he some mental talisman by which he accurately gauged all values, his own included? He seemed at once so oddly above yet of the world. She pulled herself together to remember that he was, only, nineteen, and that she had had motives in coming, and that if these motives had been ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... holy cross That talisman divine Shall shield from loss and harm. Her faithful knight and mine. "O Christ, bid thou the storm to cease And fill our hearts with joy ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
... morning of the 7th of July, as I was about to depart, my landlord, with a great deal of diffidence, begged me to give him a lock of my hair. He had been told, he said, that white men's hair made a saphic (talisman) that would give the possessor all the knowledge of the white man. I had never before heard of so simple a mode of education, but I at once complied with the request; and my landlord's thirst for learning ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... content to delve and toil comparatively unknown, that from its obscure and seemingly worthless results others may derive pleasure, and even build up great fortunes, and change the very face of cities and lands, by the practical use of some stray talisman which the poor student has invented in his laboratory; - this is the spirit which is abroad among our scientific men, to a greater degree than it ever has been among any body of men for many a century past; and might ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... "A talisman given me by my dear mother," said the Touranian, "with which castles and cities are built and demolished, a hammer to coin money, a remedy for every ill, a traveller's staff always ready to be tried, and ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... well known as a philanthropist that his name was a magic talisman for us," said Maud. "Moreover, our enterprise commands the sympathy of everyone. We had numerous ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... scarabaeus by the Egyptians was as an amulet and talisman, both for the living and the dead; and for that reason, images, symbols or words; supposed to be agreeable to the deity, or to the evil spirit sought to be conciliated; were incised, or engraved in intaglio, upon ...
— Scarabs • Isaac Myer
... Was it not all a dream of his own creation, while his eye had been fixed in abstraction on that bright and flowing river? But then there was Henrietta's letter. He might be enchanted, but that was the talisman. ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... priceless charm which will secure to us all these desirable gifts is within our reach. It is the charm of a sunny temper, a talisman more potent than station, more precious than gold, more to be desired than fine rubies. It is an aroma, whose fragrance fills the air ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... had placed a small chain with a golden cross around our child's neck just after it was born; in my hurry I had forgotten to put this talisman on the strange child; I first denied, then confessed, everything. Instead of heaping reproaches on me, she acquiesced in the fraud. The next day my father-in-law came; Naya's daughter was baptized under the name of Valentine de Villefort, and on the bed of the ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... casts it aside, with a sense of making it vain, like chaff in the wind;—to the shout of Achilles, she adds her own voice of storm in heaven—but in all cases the moral power is still the principal one—most beautifully in that seizing of Achilles by the hair, which was the talisman of his life (because he had vowed it to the Sperchius if he returned in safety), and which, in giving at Patroclus' tomb, he, knowingly, yields up the hope of return to his country, and signifies that he will die with ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... domestic animal is admitted among them. This guardian experience I had gained early; this guardian experience had sternly and strictly guided me straight along my own poor narrow path, without once letting me stray aside, to the right hand or to the left. And now I and my trusty talisman were parted for the first time. Yes, my hardly-earned self-control was as completely lost to me as if I had never possessed it; lost to me, as it is lost every day to other men, in other critical situations, where women are concerned. I know, now, that I should have questioned ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... she feared the very worst: His Grace was an enduring, married man, And was not likely all at once to burst Into a scene, and swell the clients' clan Of Doctors' Commons; but she dreaded first The magic of her Grace's talisman, And next a quarrel (as he seemed to fret) With Lord ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... of The Lost Talisman, my good tillicum, the late Chief Capilano, began the story with the almost amazing question, Had I ever heard of Napoleon Bonaparte? It was some moments before I just caught the name, for his English, always quaint and beautiful, was at times a little halting; but when he said by way of explanation, ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... armed with an illegal commission, undertaking an enterprise which he has since said was perilous, which proved to be perilous, and in which, as he has told us himself, the existence of the British empire in India was involved. The talisman, (your Lordships will remember his use of the word,) that charm which kept all India in order, which kept mighty and warlike nations under the government of a few Englishmen, would, I verily believe, have been broken ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a mother not love her dead infant? a man his lost mistress? with the fond wife nestling at his side,—yes, with twenty children smiling round her knee. No doubt, as the old soldier held the girl's hand in his, the little talisman led him back to Hades, and he ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... finger. Chance revealed to him that this ring rendered its wearer invisible: he set out for the court in quest of adventures, seduced the queen, murdered the king and seized his crown, accomplishing all this by virtue of his talisman.* ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... whole of France (Proper), Napoleon's name was still an unfailing talisman, appealing as it did to the two strongest instincts of the Celt, the clinging to the soil and the passion for heroic enterprise. Thus it came about that the peasantry gave up their sons to be "food for cannon" with the same docility that was shown by soldiers who sank death-stricken ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... outright. "You suppose yourself to be a perfect mystery, no doubt," she replied. "But do not I know you—have not I known you long—as the holder of the talisman, the owner of the mysterious cabinet ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... secret token from his bosom, he handed it to Kursheed's envoy, saying, "Go, show this to Selim, and you will convert a dragon into a lamb." And in fact, at sight of the talisman, Selim prostrated himself, extinguished the match, and fell, stabbed to the heart. At the same time the garrison withdrew, the Imperial standard displayed its blazonry, and the lake castle was occupied by the troops of the Seraskier, who rent ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... deserve much for having so bravely fought the nine false suns. As a reward you shall have the Palace of the Sun. Thus the yin and the yang will be united in marriage." This said, Tung-hua Ti-chuen ordered his servants to bring a red Chinese sarsaparilla cake, with a lunar talisman. ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... talisman in sapphire, with many Eastern characters; I was told it had been an heirloom in the family of the child, and was put about his neck at the birth, by the hands ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... Heart of Mid-Lothian. The Bride of Lammermoor; and A Legend of Montrose. *Ivanhoe. The Monastery. The Abbott. Kenilworth. The Pirate. The Fortunes of Nigel. Peveril of the Peak. Quentin Durward. St. Ronan's Well. Redgauntlet. The Betrothed; and The Talisman. Woodstock. The Fair Maid of Perth. Anne of Geierstein. Count Robert of Paris; and Castle Dangerous. Chronicles ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... talisman that will insure you a welcome from him—a letter from the woman he loves. Come, yes ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... mention of Tanaka's name acted as a talisman of mirth. Tanaka was the Japanese guide who had fixed himself on to their company remora-like, with a fine flair for ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... man's modes of activity may lead to moral relaxation, what we do not make our one thing needful we may come to treat not [184] enough as if it were needful, though it is indeed very needful and at the same time very hard. Still, what side in us has not its dangers, and which of our impulses can be a talisman to give us perfection outright, and not merely a help to bring us towards it? Has not Hebraism, as we have shown, its dangers as well as Hellenism; and have we used so excessively the tendencies in ourselves to which ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... London pavements. On arriving in England, he gave a casual glance at the metropolis and demanded to be directed to a synagogue wherein to shake himself after the journey. His devotions over, he tracked out Mr. Kosminski, whose address on a much-creased bit of paper had been his talisman of hope during the voyage. In his native town, where the Jews groaned beneath divers and sore oppressions, the fame of Kosminski, the pioneer, the Croesus, was a legend. Mr. Kosminski was prepared for these contingencies. He went to his bedroom, dragged out a heavy wooden chest from under the bed, ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... constantly present to our minds, and to render all our conceptions of him more distinct, lively, and intelligent. The title of Christian is a reproach to us, if we estrange ourselves from Him after whom we are denominated. The name of Jesus is not to be to us like the Allah of the Mahometans, a talisman or an amulet to be worn on the arm, as an external badge merely and symbol of our profession, and to preserve us from evil by some mysterious and unintelligible potency; but it is to be engraven deeply on the heart, there written by the finger ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... Madam," replied she, "if he could get from under the helmet, he will find ways of eluding your father's anger. I do not doubt but he has some talisman or other about him." ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... given at his particular request. And now who should come dropping in, ex machina, but Dr. Japp, like the disguised prince who is to bring down the curtain upon peace and happiness in the last act; for he carried in his pocket, not a horn or a talisman, but a publisher. Even the ruthlessness of a united family recoiled before the extreme measure of inflicting on our guest the mutilated members of "The Sea Cook"; at the same time, we would by no means stop our readings; and accordingly the tale was begun again at the beginning, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... entirety for a holiday; and the best I can do is to catch the steamer on Saturday night, August 19. Salmon, so late as this, are not always to be reckoned upon, and the best part of the sea trout run might be over before I reach my destination. Certain data with the talisman "Brevkort Gra Norge" had come to hand during that tropical fortnight under which London experienced a wondrous spell of melting moments. They were cheery messages of good sport and rosy prospects upon the salmon and sea trout rivers of Norway, all sound ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... the Chief of the powerful Sioux nation and presented with the pipe of peace, a talisman which secured to him the protection of the allied tribes; he ascended the Mississippi, passing the mouths of the Chippeway and St. Peter, important tributaries of that great river. But beyond the confluence of the St. Peter with the Mississippi as ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... conception in the poet's imagination. [Greek: Pa/nta kathara tois katharois], and the allegory is an old one whereby virtue appears as the tamer of the beasts of the wild. It is, however, to those alone who are innocent of evil that belongs the faery talisman. The virtue, knowing of itself and of the world, may be held a surer defence, but it is by comparison a gross and earthly buckler, with less of the glamour of romance reflected from its aegis-mirror. Somehow ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... is our defence against being led away by the gauds and shows of earth's vulgar attractions, or being terrified by the poor terrors of its enmity. Go with that talisman in your hand, 'The Lord liveth, before whom I stand,' and everything else dwindles down into nothingness, and you are a free man, master and lord of all things, because you are God's servants, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Diogenes," said the philosopher; "thou art like the genii who attended on the Eastern talisman; I have but to intimate my will to thee, and ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... governess, she should first take a firm resolution not to be too soon daunted by difficulties, too soon disgusted by disagreeables; and if she has a high spirit, sensitive feelings, she should tutor the one to submit, the other to endure, for the sake of those at home. That is the governess's best talisman of patience, it is the best balm for wounded susceptibility. When tried hard she must say, "I will be patient, not out of servility, but because I love my parents, and wish through my perseverance, diligence, and success, to repay ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... drifted into this quiet nook; where, with little to disturb them, except the periodical terrors of a Presidential election, they one and all acquired a new lease of existence. Though by no means less liable than their fellow-men to age and infirmity, they had evidently some talisman or other that kept death at bay. Two or three of their number, as I was assured, being gouty and rheumatic, or perhaps bedridden, never dreamed of making their appearance at the Custom-House, during a large part of the year; but, after a torpid winter, would creep ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... or conjectured no such wondrous offerings as were here gathered, collected, and presented for the patronage of this heir of all the ages, between the gay-hued covers of the great Sears-Roebuck Semiannual Mail-Order Catalogue. Its happy possessor need but cross the talisman with the ready magic of a postal money order and the swift genii of transportation would attend, servile to his call, to deliver the commanded ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... disappointment if I cannot roll this stone away! One generation further might be nothing, but it is my present object of desire, and we are so near it! There is a man in the same parish called Constantine; if I could only trace to him, I could take you far afield by that one talisman of the strange Christian name of Constantine. But no such luck! And I kind of fear we shall stick ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... but to finish it was like dropping a talisman, and her face clouded. A sudden draught blew her hair about, and from within, Mr. Treffry's cough mingled with the soughing of the wind; the sky was fast blackening. She went indoors, took a pen and began ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... happen to the man who presumed to buy an odalisk who had been expelled from the harem of the Sultan. Anyone daring to do such a thing might just as well chalk up the names of the four avenging angels on the walls of his house, or trample on his talisman with his slippers straight away. It was not the act of a wise man to pick up a flower which the Sultan had thrown away in order to inhale ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... felt a certain regret at the thought of leaving Alsace. Perhaps his memory of the Leteurs had something to do with this. Perhaps he had just the boyish feeling that it would change their luck. And he knew that over there he would be truly in the enemy's country, with the magic of his little talisman ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... lived and died without an equal. The virtues of the ruler and of the hero, prudence, justice, firmness, and courage, are strikingly prominent features in his character; but he wanted the gentler virtues of the man, which adorn the hero, and make the ruler beloved. Terror was the talisman with which he worked; extreme in his punishments as in his rewards, he knew how to keep alive the zeal of his followers, while no general of ancient or modern times could boast of being obeyed with equal alacrity. Submission to ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... pleasures, so-called, which I could not enjoy, and scenes in which I felt shame to be an actor. Perhaps I was mainly indebted to the passion I had conceived for the beautiful Catherine, which acted as a secret talisman in securing me from the contaminating influences to which, in my new position, I was often exposed. In the hope of meeting again the fair creature whose image filled my soul, I had frequented theatres, operas, and mixed much in society, ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... I say it," said Captain Clutterbuck, "that 'The Betrothed' is heavy enough to break down the chair of John of Gaunt, or Cador-Edris itself. I must add, however, that, in my poor mind, 'The Talisman' goes more trippingly off." [Footnote: This was an opinion universally entertained among the friends ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... such the talisman of Caesar's name, But Caesar had, in place of empty fame. The unresting soul, the resolution high That shuts out every thought but victory. Whate'er his goal, nor mercy nor dismay He owned, but drew the sword ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... happiness went, the happiest hours of the boy's education were passed in summer lying on a musty heap of Congressional Documents in the old farmhouse at Quincy, reading "Quentin Durward," "Ivanhoe," and " The Talisman," and raiding the garden at intervals for peaches and pears. On the whole he ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... about it all was," he went on, "that I carried that white feather with me. I had a feeling, somehow, that it would serve as a talisman. And, perhaps, it did. Anyhow, I lived through the experience. One thing I know for a certainty. While my memory of the white feather lasted, I could never be a coward ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... for it,' muttered he, with a shudder and a sardonic grin, and he looked for a moment something like that fine image of the Wandering Jew, given us by Gustave Doree, the talisman of his curse dissolved, and he smiling cynically in the terrible light of ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... will be difficult. And if you pronounce my name, if you discover your talisman, it will lose all ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... this always on her hand," said Cordis. "It will serve to test the truth of the fire she strives to kindle; for if it be not true wood, this heart will grow cold, the throb cease, the glow become dim. The talisman may, will, save her, unless in the madness of joy she forget to ask its aid, or the Spark flashing upon its surface seems to create anew the fire within, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... scarcely be an indifferent spectator, when the great General demanded a white ribbon from her friend's dress as a favor, and afterward wrote to her that he had worn it in every battle, and that it had been the talisman that led him on to victory. Nor is it probable that Madame de Montmorency and Madame de Chateaubriand, unloved wives, saw without a pang another woman possess the influence which they exerted in vain. But, if they suffered, it was in secret; and, moreover, they did justice ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... recitative, that it is 'three-quarters past eleven and nu-bla-do!' approaches me, and in a mysterious whisper enquires whether I carry 'contradanos,' or charms against evil, about my person. Finding that I do not possess such articles, the watchman recommends me to apply without delay for a talisman or two. Raw mustard, powdered glass, and sulphur, he says, are highly effectual as charms. At that very moment Mateo's pockets are full of these safeguards, and when threatened with any danger, he has only to sprinkle around him some of the ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... and backed Dante's quarrel, and, indeed, the company never served together as a company after that day. But the name was just then very pleasing to Florentine ears, because of the little triumph over the Aretines, and so the name of the company served me as a talisman to squeeze me through the press to the front, and so to place myself by ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... by its name, which at once confers on such oratory the stamp of unapproachable eloquence. It must be confessed, however, that in many instances "Blarney" conveys doubts of the speaker's sincerity, as well as admiration for his capacity. To see this talisman would be with me, on another occasion, an object of deep anxiety and most eager curiosity. But I was compelled to forego the pleasure, by the fact that a police-barrack loomed in its immediate vicinity, and at the other side was ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... stands by the door in the yard, sooner they lets me I should come right up by Teacher's room. You could to look on it." And, after unfolding countless layers of paper and of cheese-cloth handkerchief, she exhibited her talisman. It was an ordinary visiting card with a line of writing under its neatly engraved "Miss Constance Bailey," and Yetta regarded ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... once. He had a talisman and that talisman was the name of Roylston. He did not know why it was so, but it was a wonderful talisman nevertheless, because it was going to save his life for the time being, at least. He glanced at the generals, ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... habitual injustice done to their budding minds, their sensitive hearts, their craving souls, in higher, deeper, holier things than even cash could buy. "Home affections"—this was the magic phrase inscribed upon the talisman they stole from that graceless youth; and the loss of home affections is scantily counterbalanced at the best by a critical acquaintance with 'Dawes's Canons,' and 'Bos on Ellipses,' in his ardent spring of life, and ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... just then the name Grace Noir was a sort of talisman opening to the young man's vision the interior of wonderful treasure- caves; it was like crying "Sesame!" to the very rocks, for though he was not in love with Gregory's secretary, he fancied the day of fate was not ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... hope again, to love again, to live again, and be grateful to David, who had betrayed him, and Mildred, who had deserted him—to this end! Oh, never to have lost the honourable claim to woo such loveliness as this and win such purity, and wear both as a talisman upon his heart for ever! He drew breath heavily as he looked at the girl, transformed and glowing under the touch she loved, shining from within like some frail, transparent alabaster lamp with the light that he had helped to rekindle. And as his great chest expanded with deep draughts of the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the stifling heat of the room, Mme. Fauvel had sought a little fresh air in the grand picture-gallery, which, thanks to the talisman called gold, was now transformed into a fairy-like garden, filled with orange-trees, japonicas, ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... killed them. They fly from me like sheep. Yet, if I lead, they follow. They think, because I have conquered them, that I am invincible, invulnerable, immortal. They cringe before me as if I were a god. They would offer me human sacrifice if I would have it. I am their talisman, their mascot, their safeguard from defeat, their luck—a dead man, Herne, a dead man! Can't you see the ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... thoughts were predetermined—inevitable! I knew it, but I could not shake it off, nor put my finger on any reason why I should shake it off and call a halt to the strange, wordless, silent following of Jake and his eerie talisman. ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... wholly,—sure that the knowledge would give no pain when I should tell it, as I am trying to tell it now. This little shoe has been my comforter through this long year, and I have kept it as other lovers keep their fairer favors. It has been a talisman more eloquent to me than flower or ring; for, when I saw how worn it was, I always thought of the willing feet that came and went for others' comfort all day long; when I saw the little bow you tied, I always thought of the hands so diligent ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... to mention, his sprightly and sometimes malicious gossip, invest his period with a reality which the greatest of fiction-writers has failed to rival. Gerald lived in the days of chivalry, days which have been crowned with a halo of deathless romance by the author of "Ivanhoe" and the "Talisman." He knew and was intimate with all the great actors of the time. He had lived in the Paris of St. Louis and Philip Augustus, and was never tired of exalting the House of Capet over the tyrannical and bloodthirsty House of Anjou. He had ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... to claim a victim. He went with her, enticed the dragon to drink sake from pots set out on the shore, and then he slew the monster. From the end of his tail he took out a sword, which is supposed to be the Mikado's state sword. He married the maiden, and with her got a jewel or talisman which is preserved with the regalia. A third thing of price so preserved is ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... yellow, archery-sleeved jacket, ornamented with rampant dragons, and lined with fur from the ribs of the silver fox; and was clasped with a dark sash, embroidered with different-coloured butterflies and birds. Round his neck was hung an amulet, consisting of a clasp of longevity, a talisman of recorded name, and, in addition to these, the precious jade which he had had in his mouth at the time of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... there is no tenderness like that of a man for the woman he loves when she is tired or troubled, and the man who has learned simply to love a woman at crucial moments, and to postpone the inevitable idiotic questioning till a more auspicious time, has in his hands the talisman of domestic felicity. ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... the wisdom of these two she gave them the following tasks: One was bidden to construct on the mainland an aqueduct and a water-wheel to bring water from the mountains into Cadiz. The other was to produce a talisman which should save the island of Cadiz from invasion by Berbers or any other of the fierce tribes of Africa, by whom ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... the last funeral pyre of the ultimate Phoenix, and laughed to scorn the gigantic, gold-grubbing pismires of Pliny; the Roc, the Valley of Diamonds, the mountain island of Loadstone, the potentiality of the Talisman, the miraculous virtues of certain drugs, and countless other fables, were accepted and believed by all the nations of the West. One of those drugs, seldom brought to Europe on account of its great demand among the rulers of the East, and its extreme rarity, was a nut of alleged ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... been advised of his coming, and he had written a note over-night to say when he would call. The name of Ratliffe Parmenter was a talisman to conjure with in all the business circles of the world, and so Lennard found Mr Barlow himself waiting for him ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... only wrecks of its former self behind. The demonstration of June 13 was, above all, a demonstration of the National Guards. True, they had not carried their arms, but they had carried their uniforms against the Army—and the talisman lay just in these uniforms. The Army then learned that this uniform was but a woolen rag, like any other. The spell was broken. In the June days of 1848, bourgeoisie and small traders were united as National Guard with the Army against the proletariat; on June 13, 1849, the bourgeoisie had the ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... the meat. A little later she found a shattered dugout. Its outrigger was gone, but she was hopeful, and, before the day was out, she found the outrigger. Every find was an augury. The pearl was a talisman. Late in the afternoon she saw a wooden box floating low in the water. When she dragged it out on the beach its contents rattled, and inside she found ten tins of salmon. She opened one by hammering it on the canoe. When a leak was ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... from a drawer within it a small flat piece of gold, graven with mystic characters, and having a slender chain of the same metal attached to it. Throwing the chain over Richard's neck, she said, "Place this talisman, which is of sovereign virtue, near your heart, and no witchcraft shall have power over you. But be careful that you are not by any artifice deprived of it, for the old hag will soon discover that you possess some charm to protect you against her spells. You are impatient to be gone, but I ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... colonists was brought from Atlantis, and some time during the ten thousand years that led up to the second catastrophe, the two great Pyramids of Gizeh were built, partly to provide permanent Halls of Initiation, but also to act as treasure-house and shrine for some great talisman of power during the submergence which the Initiates knew to be impending. Map No. 3 shows Egypt at that date as under water. It remained so for a considerable period, but on its re-emergence it was again peopled ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... submission, and I have now got accustomed to his presence, and if clothes and jewels could content me, I have them in plenty. Every tenth day, for five and twenty years, I have received a visit from him, but in case I should need his help at any other time, I have only to touch a talisman that stands at the entrance of my chamber. It wants still five days to his next visit, and I hope that during that time you will do me the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... the Crown of Wild Olives he answers his critics by saying he has used the Book for some forty years. "My endeavor has been uniformly to make men read it more deeply than they do; trust it, not in their own favorite verses only, but in the sum of it all; treat it not as a fetish or a talisman which they are to be saved by daily repetition of, but as a Captain's order, to be held and obeyed at their peril." In the introduction to the Seven Lamps of Architecture he urges that we are in no danger of too much use of the Bible. "We use it most reverently when most habitually." Many ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... as much. He was adjudged to be delightful, cordial, "and not a bit stuck-up, not spoiled at all, you know." To appear this was the talisman with which he banteringly ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... said the interpreter, throwing a pinch into a glass. When Cheschapah saw the water effervesce, he folded his newspaper with the salt into a tight lump, stuck the talisman into his clothes, and departed, leaving Mr. Kinney well content. He was doing his best to nourish the sinews of war, for business in the country ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... Thenceforth he ranged over a wide region in time and space; Elizabethan England ("Kenilworth"), the France and Switzerland of Louis XI. and Charles the Bold ("Quentin Durward" and "Anne of Geierstein"), Constantinople and Syria ("Count Robert of Paris," "The Betrothed," and "The Talisman") in the age of the Crusades. The fortunes of the Stuarts, interested him specially and engaged him in "Woodstock," "The Fortunes of Nigel," "The Monastery," and its sequel, "The Abbot." He seems to have had, in the words of Mr. R. H. Hutton, "something very like personal experience ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... glancing at it swiftly, and finding it in order, the architect whipped it under his doublet. "Aha! you cannot outwit me," shrieked the fiend; but as he was laying hands upon the architect the young man brought forth the talisman he carried. "A priest has told you of this, for no one else would have thought of it," cried the Devil, breathing flame from his nostrils. But his wrath availed him naught; he was forced to retreat before the sacred relic, yet as he stepped backward he uttered a deadly curse. ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... sneezed the old man, but he did not wake, and the shock made the bronze ring jump out of his mouth. Quick as thought the lame mouse snatched up the precious talisman and carried it off to ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... honest man produce unnumbered means of augmenting the sum of his happiness; but before man covets wealth it is proper he should know how to employ it; money is only a token, a representative of happiness; to enjoy it is so to use it as to make others happy: this is the great secret, this is the talisman, this is the reality. Money, according to the compact of man, procures for him all those benefits he can desire; there is only one, which it will not procure, that is, the knowledge how to apply it properly. For man to have money, without ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... a talisman, implies you will have pleasant companions and enjoy favors from the rich. For a young woman to dream her lover gives her one, denotes she will obtain her ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... wherever cast, and to the poor waif I cherished I owed this immeasurable good. Had Mrs. Clayton anticipated him with her infallible besom—that housewifely detective, that drags more secrets to light than ever did paid policeman—I should never have grasped this talisman of love and hope, never have waked up as I did wake up from that hour to the endurance which immortalizes endeavor, and renders ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... pays"—and no one now questions that—"the whole Western country of rich soil, which asks but a drink now and then, will be turned into a Garden of Eden." (Maxwell's Talisman.) ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... all cases with satisfaction to one's self is simply impossible, and to do it in all cases with satisfaction to unlucky competing exhibitors is not to be expected. If I could do the first and feel sure that the talisman had been wisely selected, it would be easy to disregard complaints, if any, which ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... first directed the others to go into the waiting-room. "That young man will not stir from his seat, nor will he even look out of the window," added Manasseh, with as much confidence as if he had acquired a talisman which enabled him ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... by his mother on the late cruise of the steamer, and it was a sort of talisman with him, which he had often displayed in foreign lands. He found a pole on the deck, to which he attached the emblem of his whole country, and displayed it at the bow of the tug. He hoped that his father or the captain might see it, and recognize it as the one he ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... Angelica, accordingly, watching her opportunity and aided by her ring, slipped into the castle unseen, when the door was opened to admit a new victim. Here she speedily disenchanted Orlando and the rest by a touch of her talisman. But Florismart was not there. He had been given up to Falerina, a more powerful enchantress, and was still in durance. Angelica conjured the rescued captives to assist her in the recovery of her kingdom, and ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... them more than a passing look, she carried them over to the western window, and placed them in a good light. Then she drew up the chair in which she had been sitting; took the little brass bear in her left hand, as a talisman to help her through what lay before her; turned the second picture with its face to the easel; and sat down to the ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... ravished from your sight To Allah therefore rather I impute, In sign that he will let no foreign rite Of superstition his pure place pollute: Spells and enchantments may Ismeno suit, Leave him to use such weapons at his will; But shall we warriors by a wand dispute? No! no! our talisman, our hope, our skill, Lie in our swords alone, and ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... to call on you suddenly; you may get some strange message by some queer messenger. Look at this ring. Will you know it? A brown stone marked with Greek characters. It's debased Greek. The stone was dug up near Smyrna, where it had lain for fourteen hundred years. It's a talisman. You'll listen to anyone who brings you this ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... collision with his first vigorous revival of the past, he was beginning to settle down to face it, helped by the talisman of his love for Rosalind, whom it was his first duty to shield from whatever it should prove to hold of possible injury to her. That happy hour of the dying sunset in the shorn cornfields, with her and Sally and the sky above and the sea beyond, had gone far to soothe the perturbation ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... shouted that he was placed in their hands by Saladin himself for conduct to the governor. As the emir was as sharp and as ruthless with his own people as with the prisoners who fell into his hands, the name acted as a talisman, and Cuthbert and his escort rode forward without molestation until they reached ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... make life a joy. From the first, her eyes seem to have been attracted to the seven stars of the Plough from the fact, as recorded in the hieroglyphics in her tomb, that at her birth a great aerolite fell, from whose heart was finally extracted that Jewel of Seven Stars which she regarded as the talisman of her life. It seems to have so far ruled her destiny that all her thought and care circled round it. The Magic Coffer, so wondrously wrought with seven sides, we learn from the same source, came from the aerolite. Seven was to ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... succeeded. Mankind love being cheated; and what the charlatanism of necromancy effected a thousand years ago, was now effected by the charlatanism of genius. If I had seen the Prussian troops only at Potsdam, I should probably have mistaken the truncheon for a talisman, like the rest of the world. But the field suffers no mystification. I had seen that the true secret of this great tactician, for such unquestionably he was, consisted in his rejecting the superfluities and retaining the substance; in reducing tactics to the ready ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... unfailing talisman and charm used for keeping all things in their places. Everybody was dressed for a Fancy Ball that was never to leave off. From the Palace of the Tuileries, through Monseigneur and the whole Court, through the Chambers, the Tribunals of Justice, and all society (except the scarecrows), the Fancy ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various |
