"Divination" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... word "prophecy" being so constantly, in ordinary use, restricted to "foretelling." Strictly, however, the term prophecy applies as much to outspeaking as to foretelling; and, even in the restricted sense of "divination," it is obvious that the essence of the prophetic operation does not lie in its backward or forward relation to the course of time, but in the fact that it is the apprehension of that which lies out of the sphere of immediate knowledge; the seeing of that which, ...
— On the Method of Zadig - Essay #1 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... their idols; nor do they hesitate to profane the temples, by smoking their pipes, and taking refreshments, and even by gambling, within the consecrated precincts. The priests are shameless impostors. They practise the mountebank sciences of astrology, divination, necromancy, and animal magnetism, and keep for sale a liquid, which, they pretend, will confer immortality ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... taken for the welfare of the people. But now, as Justine knew, the situation was changed; and Cicely would not be allowed to come to Hanaford until she herself had left it. The manifold threads of divination that she was perpetually throwing out in Amherst's presence told her, without word or sign on his part, that he also awaited Cicely's birthday as a determining date in their lives. He spoke confidently, and as a matter of course, of Mr. Langhope's bringing ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... of all human decrees and wisdom is to gratify the passions of the flesh at the expense of the spirit. The prophets and those who have stood nearest the fountain of universal knowledge used dreams with more frequency than any other mode of divination. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... Gifford was not the man or the minister to beat about the bush at such a solemn moment. "This boy has been tampering with that which will kill him unless he gets it taken off his conscience and out of his heart immediately." Now, this same divination into our pastoral cases is by far and away the most difficult part of a minister's work. It is easy and pleasant with a fluent tongue to get through our pulpit work; but to descend the pulpit stairs and deal with life, and with ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... of superstition were also weakened, for the important sciences of astrology, miracle, and divination, supported by the cell, have ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... and unaffectedly. It needed little divination on her part to guess what the words might have been. Even if she wished them spoken, she would not have them spoken too lightly, for she had heard his love speeches before, when they ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... young girl, scrutinizing not only the line and modelling of the body, but the expression of the face, the eyes, the shade and nature of the hair, reading her temperament with the lucidity of a phrenologist aided by the divination of a plastic artist who has had great experience of feminine humanity. The examination lasts many minutes, and finally, as if under the inspiring influence of the god of taste, Epinglard, in broken phrases, composes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... boy-Tages sprang out of the soil just previously turned over by the plough in the fields of Tarquinii, and communicated to Lucamones the doctrines of divination, by sacrifice, by flight of birds, and by observation of the lightning, a son of genius and grandson of ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... the words, 'And Samuel died.' Observing this, they concluded that their friend was dead. And it so happened that news was soon brought to them that Rabbi Samuel of Babylon had died." The Bath Kol seems to have been a sort of divination practised with the words of Scripture, like the Sortes Virgilianae among ...
— Hebrew Literature
... that both Mrs. Lambert and her daughter were profoundly in obedience if not in terror of this wild young evangel, and Kate, to test her divination, said, ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... difference in the color, they were, to all intents and purposes, the same hands—the same size, the same shape, the same texture of skin; no scar or mark on the hand of one to distinguish it from the hand of the other. By what mysterious process of divination had she succeeded in discovering ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... dross—apart from Oliver. Dear Sir James!—but he must learn to bear it—to admit that she stood alone, and must judge for herself. What possible bliss or reward could there ever be for her but just this: to be allowed to watch and suffer with Oliver—to bring him the invention, the patience, the healing divination of love? And if it were not to be hers, then what remained was to go down into the arena, where all that is ugliest and most piteous in life bleeds and gasps, and throw herself blindly into the fight. Perhaps some heavenly voice might ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... should make a man in the possession of his natural senses leave a warm town-house in January, and come to camp in 'owd Ben's' farm, was, indeed, past Hannah's divination. In reality, no sudden resolve could have been happier. Sandy was a hardy little fellow, and with the first breath of the moorland wind David felt a load, which had been growing too heavy to bear, lifting from his breast. His youth, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the moment—it seemed so to some of those who looked back upon it—was a singular test of character, or rather of woman's divination of character. Carmen instinctively flew to Jack and grasped and held his arm. She knew, without stopping to reason about it, that he would unhesitatingly imperil his life to save that of any woman. Whatever judgment is passed ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of the pretty, the old, the young, the coquettish, the virtuous woman opposite, or the caprices of the coxcomb, the inventions of the old bachelor, the color of the furniture, and the cat of the two pair front. Everything furnishes a hint, and becomes matter for divination. At the fourth story, a grisette, taken by surprise, finds herself—too late, like the chaste Susanne,—the prey of the delighted lorgnette of an aged clerk, who earns eighteen hundred francs a year, and who becomes criminal gratis. ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... of mind, had left on matters much more occult than the manufacture of yellow starch and skin lotions. "It was also rumoured,'' says Mr Sabatini, "that she amassed gold in another and less licit manner: that she dabbled in fortune-telling and the arts of divination.'' We shall see, as the story develops, that the rumour had some foundation. The inquiring mind of the late Dr Turner had led him into strange company, and his legacy to Anne included connexions more sombre than those in the extravagantly luxurious ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... most efficacious of these amulets was the first chapter of the Gospel of St. John. At this time the stars were unfavourable to them, and astrologers were reading their approaching ruin in the sky. Their late King, Henry V, when he was studying at Oxford, had learnt there the rules of divination by the stars. For his own special use he kept in his coffers two astrolabes, one of silver and one of gold. When his queen, Catherine of France, was about to be confined, he himself cast the horoscope of the expected child. And further, as there was a prophecy in England[975] which said ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... of divination by the Bible and key, is also to be found among the superstitions of our own country.—See Ellis' edition of Brand's ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... would be the most hopeless experiment you could make," said Mrs. Faith. "She loves you too much for it," she added, with the divination of her sex. Comforted a little by Mrs. Faith, I quickly abandoned this project; indeed, I soon abandoned every other which concerned itself with Helen, and yielded myself with a kind of desperate lethargy, if I may be allowed the expression, to the fate which separated me from ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... Etruscan, the son, it is said, of a genius, Jovialis, and grandson of Jupiter, who rose out of the ground as a man named Tarchon was ploughing near Tarquinii, and instructed the auspices in divination. Cf. Cic. ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... With the unerring divination which was the natural fruit of so many years of ceaseless conjecture, she instantly suspected the worst. All that busy conversation which her appearance had interrupted, all those smiles which her presence had seemed but to render broader and more hilarious, certainly concerned her. ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... Hellenes, if it be truly ye, whom by a king's ruthless command Jason is leading on the ship Argo in quest of the fleece. It is ye truly. Even yet my soul by its divination knows everything. Thanks I render to thee, O king, son of Leto, plunged in bitter affliction though I be. I beseech you by Zeus the god of suppliants, the sternest foe to sinful men, and for the sake of ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... flows from an eternal chain and continuance of causes. Of what value is this philosophy, which, like old women and illiterate men, attributes everything to fate? Then follows your [Greek: mantike], in Latin called divinatio, divination; which, if we would listen to you, would plunge us into such superstition that we should fall down and worship your inspectors into sacrifices, your augurs, your soothsayers, ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... of the syllables they pronounced, they followed their secret thoughts sentence by sentence; they might abruptly have continued their confidences aloud, without ceasing to understand each other. This sort of divination, this obstinacy of their memory in presenting to themselves without pause, the image of Camille, little by little drove them crazy. They thoroughly well perceived that they guessed the thoughts of one another, and that if they did not hold their tongues, the words would rise ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... mind as a glorified image of itself. Every phenomenon of nature, night and "rosy- fingered" dawn, earth and sun, winds, rivers, and seas, sleep and death,—all have been transformed into divine and conscious agents, to be propitiated by prayer, interpreted by divination, and comprehended by passions and desires identical with those which ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... Education The Diabolical Efficiency of Technical Education Flimsiness of Civilization Creative Evolution Voluntary Longevity The Early Evolutionists The Advent of the Neo-Lamarckians How Acquirements are Inherited The Miracle of Condensed Recapitulation Heredity an Old Story Discovery Anticipated by Divination Corrected Dates for the Discovery of Evolution Defying the Lightning: a Frustrated Experiment In Quest of the First Cause Paley's Watch The Irresistible Cry of Order, Order! The Moment and the Man The Brink of the Bottomless Pit Why Darwin Converted the Crowd How we ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... wide, till the mother died, and Cadmus went to Delphi—the place thought to be the centre of the earth—where Apollo had slain the serpent Python, and where he had a temple and cavern in which every question could be answered. Such places of divination were called oracles, and Cadmus was here told to cease from seeking his sister, and to follow a cow till she fell down with fatigue, and to build a city on that spot. The poor cow went till she came into Boeotia, and there fell. Cadmus meant to offer her up, and went to fetch water from a ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the simple carrying a root on my right side (a root, by the way, over which I walked every time I went into the woods) could possess any such magic power as he ascribed to it, and I was, therefore, not disposed to cumber my pocket with it. I had a positive aversion to all pretenders to "divination." It was beneath one of my intelligence to countenance such dealings with the devil, as this power implied. But, with all my learning—it was really precious little—Sandy was more than a match for me. "My book learning," he said, ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... 'As I believe that I see and feel Him.' But I, for my part, think that the intellect has a right to test what the soul only divines, and that it must be a real happiness to see this divination proved by well-founded arguments, and thus transformed to certainty. Did you ever hear of Plato, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... trafficking with spirits to a service of gods who were ideal heads of human communities, and friends of individual men. It was not a mere system, as the world has been accustomed to think, of astrology and of divination of other kinds. But when Babylon and Assyria ceased to be independent powers, and became provinces of Persia, Bel bowed down and Nebo stooped, not to rise again. The world of that day had no need of them. It had already attained in ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... the angel waits, and the eternal hosts proclaim peace on earth, good-will toward men, and summon us all to go and follow the shepherds and see—what? A little child cradled in a manger. The mountaineer, leaning on his gun by the rail-fence, looked through the driving snow with the lights of divination kindling in his eyes, seeing it all, feeling its meaning as never before. Christ came thus, he knew, for a purpose. He could have come in the chariots of the sun or on the wings of the wind. But He was ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... have been abomination, though they ate with Joseph; who was therefore regarded not as a foreigner, but as one of themselves: and when he sent and brought his brethren back, and charged them with taking his cup, he said, "Know ye not that a man like me practises divination?" thus assuming the Egyptian of high rank initiated into the Mysteries, and as such ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... that divination is not a sin. Divination is derived from something divine: and things that are divine pertain to holiness rather than to sin. Therefore it seems that divination is not ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... into existence, Prometheus determined to elevate their minds and improve their condition in every way; he therefore taught them astronomy, mathematics, the alphabet, how to cure diseases, and the art of divination. He created this race in such great numbers that the gods began to see the necessity of instituting certain fixed laws with regard to the sacrifices due to them, and the worship to which they considered themselves entitled from mankind in ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... Mrs. Burgoyne's history and of Manisty's, his mind trained in the subtleties of moral divination soon reconstructed the whole story. Clearly the American lady now staying with Mrs. Burgoyne—who had showed towards himself such a young and ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... month. Every white individual has one or more of them; even the tiny children with their ridiculous little sun helmets are followed everywhere by a tall, solemn, white-robed black. Their powers of divination approach the uncanny. About the time you begin to think of wanting something, and are making a first helpless survey of a boyless landscape, your own servant suddenly, mysteriously, and unobtrusively appears from nowhere. ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... reason why he should move till the stranger had passed by. The shape resolved itself into a woman's; she was looking on the ground, and walking slowly as if searching for something that had been lost, her course being precisely that of Mr. Melbury's gig. Fitzpiers by a sort of divination jumped to the idea that the figure was Grace's; her nearer approach made ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... The stars lie not; but we have here a work Wrought counter to the stars and destiny. The science is still honest: this false heart 10 Forces a lie on the truth-telling heaven. On a divine law divination rests; Where nature deviates from that law, and stumbles Out of her limits, there all science errs. True, I did not suspect! Were it superstition 15 Never by such suspicion t' have affronted The human form, O may that time ne'er come In which I shame me of the infirmity. The wildest savage ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... compute the time of the death of the son nearly as we do the appearance of the Redeemer on earth. They believe in a hell as we do, and burn lamps that God may light them in the right road in the other world: Yet do they use divination after a ridiculous manner. The country of Thibet produces several fruits of the same kinds with those grown in Europe, together with rice and wheat, and has abundance of cattle; but a great part of the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... came the time at which he felt that leave the world he must. 'It was on the 23d of April 1475,' says Villari; 'he was sitting with his lute and playing a sad melody; his mother, as if moved by a spirit of divination, turned suddenly round to him, and exclaimed mournfully, My son, that is a sign we are soon to part. He roused himself, and continued, but with a trembling hand, to touch the strings of the lute, without raising his eyes from the ground.' ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... ladies in other chariots, under awnings of purple or of yellow silk. Then came the brehons, the great judges of the land, and the chief bards of the high court of Tara, and the Druids, crowned with oak leaves, and carrying wands of divination in ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... Catalogue of Playing and other Cards in the British Museum, accompanied by a Concise General History of the Subject, and Remarks on Cards of Divination and of a Politico-Historical Character. By William Hughes Willshire, M.D. Printed by order of the Trustees, ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley
... the second act of the play a mysterious and solacing pleasure came to her. She enjoyed the words with which Enid questions the life of her richest and most powerful suitor. The mingled shrewdness, simplicity, and sweetness of this scene always filled her with a new sense of Douglass's power of divination. Indeed, she closed the play each night with a sense of being more deeply indebted to him as well as a feeling of having been near him. Once she saw a face strangely like his in the upper gallery, and the blood tingled round her heart, and she played the remainder of the act with ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... Divination by means of the intestines of animals is practised by the blacks in some parts of North Queensland. A young gin died suddenly on the lower Johnstone River. Immediately after, the young men of the camp went out hunting, bringing back a wallaby. The entrails were removed, and an old woman—the ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... recovered a great part of the booty. They cared nothing for Numitor's anger, but collected together many needy persons and slaves, and filled them with a rebellious spirit. While Romulus was absent at a sacrifice (for he was much addicted to sacrifices and divination), the herdsmen of Numitor fell in with Remus, accompanied by a small band, and fought with him. After many wounds had been received on both sides, Numitor's men conquered and took Remus alive. Remus was ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... did. For unclean spirits, crying with loud voice, came out of many that were possessed with them: and many taken with palsies, and that were lame, were healed" (Acts 8:6,7). "And it came to pass, as we went to prayer, a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination met us, which brought her masters much gain by soothsaying" (Acts 16:16). "And they came over unto the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gadarenes. And when he was come out of the ship, immediately there met him out of ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... and all his essential directness and intensity of aim. No man seemed less in a hurry, and yet no man achieved more in brief periods. He had certain practical instincts which served him excellently in his trade of tourist. He found his way in foreign cities by divination, his memory was excellent when once his attention had been at all cordially given, and he emerged from dialogues in foreign tongues, of which he had, formally, not understood a word, in full possession of the particular fact he ...
— The American • Henry James
... were sometimes embarrassing. Even Pottawattamies from Lake Michigan were prowling about Winslow's camp and silently killing his sentinels with arrows, while their "medicine men" remained at Ticonderoga practising sorcery and divination to aid the warriors or learn how it fared with them. Bougainville writes in his Journal on the fifteenth of October: "Yesterday the old Pottawattamies who have stayed here 'made medicine' to get news of their brethren. The ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... matter by heart, and each of us desired to possess it, that he might acquaint himself with what was therein. Now when we fell out there was in our company an old man by name Cohen Al-Abtan,[FN269] who had reared our sire and taught him divination and gramarye, and he said to us, 'Bring me the book.' So we gave it him and he continued, 'Ye are my son's sons, and it may not be that I should wrong any of you. So whoso is minded to have the volume, let him address himself to achieve the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... to convey to Madame d'Elphis was quite simple; in exchange for saying a very few words to Tom Pargeter,—words which would add greatly to the belief the millionaire already possessed in what he took to be her extraordinary gifts of divination,—the soothsayer would receive ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... quite sure "Old Mag," as she called herself, possessed no powers of divination, he knew she did have certain knowledge that he considered she had no moral right ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... stumps, and to the frivolous galahs, sweeping in a changeably-tinted cloud over the plain, or studding the trees of the pine-ridge like large pink and silver-grey blossoms, set off by the rich green of the foliage. But outside all possible research or divination lay the occult reason why my bosom's lord sat so lightly on his throne. This will be explained in its ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... proficient in all wickedness and godlessness; devilish men, who serve nobody but the Devil, that is, the spirit which in their language they call Menetto; under which title they comprehend everything that is subtle and crafty and beyond human skill and power. They have so much witchcraft, divination, sorcery and wicked arts, that they can hardly be held in by any bands or locks. They are as thievish and treacherous as they are tall; and in cruelty they are altogether inhuman, more than ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... especially of the most ancient, is much less advanced than that of the hieroglyphs. When documents in the old language, or at least written in the primitive ideographic characters, are attacked, the process is one of divination rather than of translation in the strict ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... Divination by the inspection of the entrails of victims, and the study of omens were considered by the Egyptians as important branches of learning. The soothsayers formed a respected order of the priesthood. From the mural paintings at Chichen, ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... is at this time only clearing his way, and he continues laboriously to clear it for some time afterwards. He is digging the shaft, guided by that instinct towards the mineral lode which was to him a rod of divination. 'Er riecht die Wahrheit,' said the lamented Kohlrausch, an eminent German, once in my hearing:—'He smells the truth.' His eyes are now steadily fixed on this wonderful voltaic current, and he must learn more of its mode ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... the worship of one God. He says: "Five thousand years ago the Chinese were monotheists—not henotheists, but monotheists"—though he adds that even then there was a constant struggle with nature-worship and divination.[140] ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... know him. She was, to do her justice, one of those "lion" finders who seek the animal for pleasure, not for the glory it brings them; she had the courage of her instincts—lion-entities were indispensable to her, but she trusted to divination to secure them; nobody could ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... DIVINATION BY THE BIBLE AND KEY.—This superstition is very prevalent amongst the peasantry of this and adjoining parishes. When any article is suspected to have been stolen, a Bible is procured; and opened at ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... are more addicted to divination by omens and lots. The latter is performed in the following simple manner. They cut a twig [68] from a fruit-tree, and divide it into small pieces, which, distinguished by certain marks, are thrown promiscuously upon a white garment. ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... suddenly and regarded Martin. Then, with a flash of divination, he saw the situation. The expression on his face ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... for a while. I ascertained the breadth of the original note by a part of the middle-crease which remained, filled out the torn part with blank paper, completed the divided words in the same character of manuscript, and endeavored to guess the remainder, but no clairvoyant power of divination came to my aid. I turned over the letters again, remarking the neatness with which the addresses had been cut off, and wondering why the man had not destroyed the letters and other memoranda entirely, if he wished to ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... alone— The wild Chaudiere's eternal jubilee Has such sweet divination in its tone, ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... abundance, but to the fineness of courtesy and consideration and tact, and to the sympathy that was real sympathy in that it was understanding. They did nothing they thought ought to be done for us, according to their standards, but they did what they divined we waited to be done for us, while their divination was most successful. It would be impossible to enumerate the hundreds of little acts of consideration they performed during the few days of our intercourse. Let it suffice for me to say that of all hospitality and entertainment I have known, in no case was ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... of a change became familiar to me in the course of time, and Mrs. Todd hardly noticed some plain proofs of divination one August morning when I said, without preface, that I had just seen the Beggs' best chaise go by, and that we should have to take the grocery. Mrs. Todd was alert in ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... owing all its speed now to the rower's good arm; for a very strong down tide was running against them. They crept up, close under the shore, the oars almost touching the rocks; but always, as if a spirit of divination were in her, the little boat turned its head from the threatened danger, edged in and out of the mimic bays and hollows in the shores, and kept its steady onward way. The scene was a fairy-land scene now. Earth, water, and air, were sparkling with freshness and light. The sunlight ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... Therefore, he argues, that all good and wise men should take example from the swans, who are considered sacred to Apollo, not without reason, but particularly because they seem to have received the gift of divination from him, by which, foreseeing how happy it is to die, they leave this world with singing and joy. Nor can any one doubt of this, unless it happens to us who think with care and anxiety about the soul (as is often the case with those who look earnestly at the setting sun), to lose the ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... about the house. Nothing came in nor out. Nothing happened. There were no lighted windows, nor had lights appeared and disappeared in any of the windows. Yet it was the central point of his consideration. He rallied to it each time after a divination of the state ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... had hinted at now possessed Ellen—body, mind, and soul. Disgraced, scorned by an Isbel! Yet loved by him! In that divination there flamed up a wild, fierce passion to hurt, to rend, to flay, to fling back upon him a stinging agony. Her thought flew upon her like whips. Pride of the Jorths! Pride of the old Texan blue blood! It lay dead at her feet, killed by the scornful words of the last of that family to whom ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... creators; it is intuition, not reasoning. . . . There is nothing more hazardous, more like fantasy, than this mode of thought when it is not checked by natural and good strong common sense. This common sense, which is a kind of natural divination, the stable equilibrium of an intellect always gravitating to the true, like the needle to the north pole, Bacon possesses in the highest degree. He has a preeminently ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... But Isabel's divination, however arrived at, was not at fault. In a few moments Don Luis lightly leaped the hedge, and without a moment's hesitation sought the shadow of the fig-tree. As he approached, Antonia looked at him with ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... regarded her seriously, as if with a certain divination of her worry. Someway, from the look in his eyes her confidence returned, she knew ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... fact that since abandoning her work-girl existence Clara had been constantly educating herself, not only by direct study of books, but through her association with people, her growth in experience. Where in the old days of rebellion she had only an instinct, a divination to guide her, there was now just enough of knowledge to give occupation to her developed intellect and taste. Far keener was her sense of the loss she had suffered than her former longing for what she knew only in dream. The ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... three things. First, that men mark when they hit, and never mark when they miss; as they do generally also of dreams. The second is, that probable conjectures, or obscure traditions, many times turn themselves into prophecies; while the nature of man, which coveteth divination, thinks it no peril to foretell that which indeed they do but collect. As that of Seneca's verse. For so much was then subject to demonstration, that the globe of the earth had great parts beyond the Atlantic, which mought be ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... the steps beneath the shadowing archway, Leigh caught a reflected glow of enthusiasm from his guide's prophetic gaze. He was stirred by an appreciation of the dream so grandly conceived, so imperfectly realized, by a divination of the long ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... like divination. A tutor I will never be again; never take a pupil after Henry and yourself; not again will I sit habitually at another man's table—no more be the appendage of a family. I am now a man of thirty; I have never been free since I was a boy of ten. I have such a thirst for freedom, such a deep passion ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... contributed by the Turanian Accadians, grew a system of magic and divination which had a most profound influence not only upon all the Eastern nations, including the Jews, but also upon the later peoples of the West. mediaeval magic and witchcraft were, in large part, an unchanged ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... hand, is a non-reflex movement of a voluntary muscle, executed in the waking state but not controlled by the ordinary waking consciousness. Phenomena of this kind play a large part in primitive ceremonies of divination (q.v.) and in our own day furnish much of the material of Psychical Research. At the lowest level we have vague movements of large groups of muscles, as in "bier-divination," where the murderer ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... drew near to the party round the fire, where the divination of the burning of nuts was going on, but not successfully, since no pair hitherto put in would keep together. However, the next contribution was a snail, which had been captured on the wall, and was solemnly set to crawl on the hearth by Dennet, "to see whether it would trace ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... xviii. 9—14) tells the Israelites from God, that "when they came into Canaan, they should not learn to do after, the abominations of the people thereof; and, particularly, that there should not be found among them any one that useth divination, or an observer of times, &c., or a consulter with familiar spirits, &c. For all, says he, "that do these things are an abomination to the Lord; and because of these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive these people out from before thee. For these ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... Adresteia and the land of Apaesus, with Pityeia, and the high mountain of Tereia—these were led by Adrestus and Amphius, whose breastplate was of linen. These were the sons of Merops of Percote, who excelled in all kinds of divination. He told them not to take part in the war, but they gave him no heed, for ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... could be made, unless the birds had approved of it. The king, enraged at this, and, as they say, mocking at his art, said, "Come, thou diviner, tell me, whether what I have in my mind can be done or not?" When Attus, having tried the matter by divination, affirmed that it certainly could, "Well, then," said he, "I was thinking that you should cut asunder this whetstone with a razor. Take it, then, and perform what thy birds portend can be done." Thereupon they say ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... times when Thomas—as well as the two others—seemed to possess the power of divination. And during the whole of the dinner his manner showed distinct apprehension. The meal concluded, even to the use of the finger-bowl, and all dishes disposed upon the tray, he hung about, puttering with the table, picking up crumbs and pins, dusting this article and that ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... in a written law, but that he frames a law best who takes care to make one thing understood from another. One may urge, too, that in opposition to a ratiocination of this sort, conjecture is no better than a divination, and that it would be a sign of a very stupid framer of laws not to be able to provide for everything which he ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... of the monastery was John Hylilas, better known, on account of his learning, as the Grammarian, and nicknamed Lecanomantis, the Basin-Diviner, because versed in the art of divination by means of a basin of polished brass. He belonged to a noble family of Armenian extraction, and became prominent during the reigns of Leo V., Michael II., and Theophilus as a determined iconoclast. His enemies ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... benches. Nor did we continue any long space in our silence at what was spoken; for Zeuxippus, taking his hint from what had been said, spake to us: Who will make up that of the discourse which is yet behind? For it hath not yet received its due conclusion; and this gentleman, by mentioning divination and providence, did in my opinion suggest as much to us; for these people boast that these very things contribute in no way to the providing of their lives with pleasure, serenity, and assurance; so that there ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... that young horse,' said Mahbub, 'I say that when a colt is born to be a polo-pony, closely following the ball without teaching—when such a colt knows the game by divination—then I say it is a great wrong to break that colt to ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... not true? doth not his passion speak Out of my divination? O my senses, Why lost you not your powers, and become Dull'd, if not deaded, with this spectacle? I know him, it is Sordido, the farmer, A boor, and brother to that swine ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... mankind have often found their way into popular speech, and their terms have remained there long after the rejection of the beliefs they embodied: as—lunatic, augury, divination, spell, exorcism: though, to be sure, such words may often be turned to good account, besides the interest of preserving their original sense. Language is a record as well ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... boar, and alluding to the prediction of a soothsayer in Gaul, who had told him that he would become emperor after having killed a boar (Vopiscus, in "Hist. Aug."). Diocletian, self-composed and strong-minded in other respects, was all his life an anxious believer in divination, which superstition led him probably to inflict summary punishment upon Aper with his own hands. He made his solemn entrance into Nicomedia in September, 284, which town he afterward ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... listen ter the fiddle,—ef ye hev enny call ter know." Mrs. Bedell replied to his unspoken thought, as if by divination. ...
— The Christmas Miracle - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... women who, like the Pythia in Apollo's temple at Delphi, were possessed with a spirit of divination or prophecy. The barbarous Latin form of the word was "Pythonissa" or "Phitonissa." See note 9 ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... Nor in their madness say: "Thou art no god, and therefore I will fear not; What if I disobey? Thou art but stone or clay." They hear not, but their worshippers impute Them faculties to suit The divination of the prayers they say; And Christ, who understands His children in all lands When from the dark their dying souls have cried, Shrines His great heart of love within the clod The savage calls his god ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... Lafitau's learned work on the savages of America for an account of the notions which prevail among them as to divination by dreams. Dillon tells us that he found no way so effectual of repressing the importunities of his New Zealand friends, in any case in which it was inconvenient to gratify them, as assuring them he had dreamed that the favour they requested would ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... came easily into Mrs. Vanderpool's life. There was little she knew of her duties, but little, too, that she could not learn with a deftness and divination almost startling. Her quietness, her quickness, her young strength, were like a soothing balm to the tired woman of fashion, and within a week she had sunk back ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... not an exact equivalent for the Russian phrase. "Podbliudni pessni," are literally "dish songs," or songs used with dishes (of water) during the "sviatki" or Holy Nights, which extend from Christmas to Twelfth Night, for purposes of divination. Reference will again be made to this superstitious practice, which is not confined to ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... spot which he used to frequent, they promulgated the story of the transformation of the Nymph. St. Augustin, speaking on this subject, says that Numa made use of the waters of that fountain in the divination which was performed by the aid of ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... Lady Cicely Munster, late Treherne; and when such friends as these are warm, it makes a physician the centre of an important clientele; but his best friend of all is his unflagging industry, and his truly wonderful diagnosis, which resembles divination. He has the ball at his feet, and above all, that without which worldly success soon palls, a happy home, a ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... criticism—without pedantry! Ideas are plentiful in this by turns incisive, brilliant, reflected, and spontaneous style, in which learning comes in to enhance and steady the flow of a lively and luxuriant imagination. To all the refinement and subtle divination common to Slavic genius, you ally the patient research and learned scruples which characterize the German explorer. You assume alternately the gait of the mole and of the eagle—and everything you do succeeds wonderfully, because amid your subterranean maneuvers and your airy ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... genius which has familiarized itself with all the relics of an ancient period can sometimes, by the force of its sympathetic divination, restore the missing notes in the "music of humanity," and reconstruct the fragments into a whole which will really bring the remote past nearer to us, and interpret it to our duller apprehension—this ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... successorship to Joseph Smith as the head of the Mormon church. The prophet's family defended vigorously the claim of his eldest son to be his successor.* Lee says that the prophet had bestowed the right of succession on his eldest son by divination, and that "it was then [after his father's death understood among the Saints that young Joseph was to succeed his father, and that right justly belonged to him," when he should be old enough. Lee says further that ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... of his security from further annoyance from Dodd. Wonderful complexity of female intellect! she was a little hurt at his ingratitude to her for a kindness he could not possibly have known. Miss Mayfield felt that in some way she was unjustly treated. How many of our miserable sex, incapable of divination, have been crushed under that unreasonable feminine reproof, ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... the office of Supreme Pontiff was constantly exercised by the emperors themselves. They knew and valued the advantages of religion, as it is connected with civil government. They encouraged the public festivals which humanize the manners of the people. They managed the arts of divination as a convenient instrument of policy; and they respected, as the firmest bond of society, the useful persuasion, that, either in this or in a future life, the crime of perjury is most assuredly punished by the avenging gods. [9] But whilst they acknowledged the general ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... from Babylon, having entirely forsaken idolatry, and being no longer favoured with the gift of prophecy, they gradually abandoned themselves, before the coming of our Saviour, to sorcery and divination. The Talmud, still regarded with a reverence bordering on idolatry, abounds with instructions for the due observance of superstitious rites. After their city and temple were destroyed, many Jewish impostors were highly esteemed for their pretended skill in magic; and under pretence of ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... surprised at the interrogations that followed; she did not understand what Mrs. Dusautoy was aiming at, in the close questioning, which to her amazement did not seem to offend, but rather to be gratifying by the curious divination of all sensations. It made Albinia feel as if she had been carrying on a deliberate system of torture, when she heard of a pain in the back, hardly ever ceasing, aggravated by sitting upright, growing severe with the least fatigue, and unless favoured by day, ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... her divination stirred a singular emotion, possibly a more turbulent emotion than Katie ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... look at the practical side of divination, it seems absurd to imagine that events in a man's past life and secrets known only to himself can be represented on the spur of the moment by a pack of cards which he shuffles and cuts for the fortune-teller to lay out in piles according to ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... of two kinds, according as it is done with or without a material instrument. The first kind is in full practice in China, where, like other rites of divination, it is probably ancient. It is called 'descending of the pencil,' and is especially used by the literary classes. When a Chinese wishes to consult a god in this way, he sends for a professional medium. Before the image of the god ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... her voice would become harsh, and her mockery lose phantasy and humour, when she spoke of what seemed to her scientific materialism. Once I saw this antagonism, guided by some kind of telepathic divination, take a form of brutal phantasy. I brought a very able Dublin woman to see her and this woman had a brother, a physiologist whose reputation, though known to specialists alone, was European; and, because of this brother, a family pride in everything scientific and modern. The Dublin woman ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... hide, if he were to have one, was at hand, and he meant to make the most of the chance. He bent lower and remained there until his breathing became regular and easy after his mighty effort, all his five senses and the sixth that was instinct or divination, ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the Canon of Holy Scripture was closed, and especially during the last three hundred years, may enable us to realize the significance of a most remarkable fact. Even in those early ages, when to all the nations surrounding Israel the heavenly bodies were objects for divination or idolatry, the attitude of the sacred writers toward them was perfect in its ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... traveled—true, against her will, but yet through scenes which she now remembered. And always there came up in her mind a question which she found no way to ask. It was Jeanne herself who, either by divination or by blunder, brought ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... she amended, "I should have to do so if Wallace Carpenter had not told me a little something about it. Sometimes I think you are not nearly poet enough for the life you are living. Why, you are wonderful, you men of the north, and you let us ordinary mortals who have not the gift of divination imagine you entirely occupied with how many pounds of iron chain you are going to need during the winter." She said these things lightly as one who speaks ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... that amongst the various tricks of ancient divination ventriloquism found a place; but I cannot give that direct evidence which MR. SANSOM asks for. I think it very likely that "the wizards that peep and mutter" (Isa. viii. 19.) were of this class; but it is not clear that the [Hebrew: 'obot]—the [Greek eggastrimuthoi] of the LXX.—were ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 45, Saturday, September 7, 1850 • Various
... time went by. Shih-yin was the first to fall ill, and his wife, Dame Feng, likewise, by dint of fretting for her daughter, was also prostrated with sickness. The doctor was, day after day, sent for, and the oracle consulted by means of divination. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... breakfast, he again set out, following the crest of the hill and going through the woods. As he approached Cormeilles, he saw in the distance, beyond a grove of oaks, the white walls of a pretty villa. His heart beat faster, and by a sort of divination he said within himself, "That must be it." He inquired; he had made no mistake. Five minutes later he stood before a railing, through which he saw a green lawn. At the entrance of the porter's lodge ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... mental poise; and she divined that the only help for that was certainty of Dorn's fate. She could bear the shock if only she could know positively. And leaning her face in her hands, with the warm wind blowing her hair and bringing the rustle of the wheat, she prayed for divination. ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... This vampire which is amongst us is of himself so strong in person as twenty men, he is of cunning more than mortal, for his cunning be the growth of ages, he have still the aids of necromancy, which is, as his etymology imply, the divination by the dead, and all the dead that he can come nigh to are for him at command; he is brute, and more than brute; he is devil in callous, and the heart of him is not; he can, within his range, direct ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... attend Congress, and that they would instruct them to go into a thorough investigation of the causes that have produced so many disagreeable effects in the army and country, in a word, that public abuses should be corrected. Without this it does not in my judgment require the spirit of divination to foretell the consequences of the present administration nor to how little purpose the States individually are framing constitutions, providing laws, and filling offices with the abilities of their ablest men. These, if ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... cases of intro-determination in a series of experiments in basin divination (lecanomancy) which I have carried on for several years. Lecanomancy resembles crystal gazing, except that the gazer looks into a basin of water. In the visions of my subject, Lea, typical forms were pictured, which always recurred. Regarded ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... celestial episodes, though his paradises are enormous panoramas replete with architectural beauties. His figures, as exemplified in Miltonic illustrations, are more conventional than Fuseli's and never naively original as are Blake's. Indeed, of Blake's mystic poetry and divination Martin betrays no trace. He is not so much the seer as the inventor of infernal harmonies. Satan reviewing his army of devils is truly magnificent in its depiction of the serried host armed for battle; behind glistens burning Tophet in ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... succeeded in reproducing internally, with such exactness, the habits and yearnings of Greek imagination as to provide us with an almost twin sister of the "Antigone" of Sophocles and of the goddesses of Phidias. This exact and demonstrated divination of bygone sentiments has, in our days, given a new life to history. There was almost complete ignorance of this in the last century; men of every race and of every epoch were represented as about alike, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... side we have intuition, divination, military strangeness, superhuman instinct, a flashing glance; something that gazes like the eagle and strikes like lightning, all the mysteries of a profound mind, associated with destiny; the river, the plain, the forest, and the hill summoned, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... pass, I know not;* but by ancient and modern example it is evident, that no great accident befalls a city or province, but it is presaged by divination, or prodigy, or astrology, or some way or other. I shall here set down ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... many that are appointed only to learning, yet all in childhood be instructed therein; and the more part do bestow in learning their spare hours. In the course of the stars and movings of the heavenly sphere they be expert, but for the deceitful divination thereof ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... Luke is, doubtless, the stray rook, and a fledgeling hath flown hither from a distant country. He must take her to his mate, or relinquish her and 'the ancient nest' to his brother. For my own part, I disregard such sayings. I have little faith in prophecy and divination. I know not what Eleanor Mowbray, for so she is called, can have to do with the tenure of the estates of Rookwood. But if Luke Rookwood, after he has lorded it for awhile in splendor, be cast forth again in ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... little sticks either singly or put together. Such sticks were in early times used by the northern nations for the purpose of ascertaining future events. The sticks were shaken up, and from the figures that they formed a kind of divination was derived. ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... just lost her third husband—by divorce—had received from Mr. Yahi-Bahi a glimpse into the future that was almost uncanny in its exactness. She had asked for a divination, and Mr. Yahi-Bahi had effected one by causing her to lay six ten-dollar pieces on the table arranged in the form of a mystic serpent. Over these he had bent and peered deeply, as if seeking to unravel their meaning, and finally ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... has fallen somewhat into disrepute, being principally used for purposes of divination, but its origin, and precise relation to our present playing-cards, are questions of considerable antiquarian interest. Were these cards the direct parents of our modern pack, or are they ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... you, O people, that I am not a Sovereign that deceives. I find that, in spite of my commands, many of my people revile the idols and treat divination as a trifle, and worship the Christians' God, and pray, and baptize, and sing—which things I abhor. They are unlawful. I detest them, and they are not to be done, saith Ranavalo-Manjaka. I will not suffer it. Those who dare to disobey my commands shall ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... of their sentiments and folklore, superstitions, symbolism, mysticism, use in protection, prevention, religion and divination, crystal gazing, birth-stones, lucky stones and ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz
... and rusty. What had happened when the well gave out that other time? Without doubt some practical person had come along and mended the leak, and then had come up and told the abbot he had discovered by divination that if the sinful bath were destroyed the well would flow again. The leak had befallen again now, and these children would have prayed, and processioned, and tolled their bells for heavenly succor till they all dried up and blew away, and no innocent of them all would ever ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Christendom.[1586] A clerk of Spiers wrote a treatise on her, entitled Sibylla Francica, divided into two parts. The first part was drawn up not later than July, 1429. The second is dated the 17th of September, the same year. This clerk believes that the Maid practised the art of divination by means of astrology. He had heard a French monk of the order of the Premonstratensians[1587] say that Jeanne delighted to study the heavens by night. He observes that all her prophecies concerned the kingdom ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... obtained insight into the true sense of the text. By subjecting the thought of the Holy Scriptures to a simple and entirely rational examination, he not seldom succeeds in determining it. Thus, as it were by divination, he lighted upon the meaning of numerous Biblical passages. A long list might be made of explanations misunderstood by his successors, and revived, consciously or unconsciously, by modern exegetes. An illustration in point is his explanation ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... be asked—what then do dreams portend? Do they admit of any rational interpretation? This branch of the art of divination, which was called formerly by the name of "Oneiromancy," has been practiced in all ages; and there is, perhaps, not a village in Great Britain, or on the great continent of Europe, India, or America, in which some fortune-telling ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... that some thought her dumb; deaf also you would often have supposed her; for Teufelsdroeckh, and Teufelsdroeckh only, would she serve or give heed to; and with him she seemed to communicate chiefly by signs; if it were not rather by some secret divination that she guessed all his wants, and supplied them. Assiduous old dame! she scoured, and sorted, and swept, in her kitchen, with the least possible violence to the ear; yet all was tight and right there: hot ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... be holden at nine o'clock of the same morning. None of them knew Mr. Sidney, or were known by him. It was arranged that he should meet them, Mr. Conway included, and exhibit his skill, and if he should convince them of his power of divination, he should discuss the genuineness of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... acquisition of the language that I was able after a few weeks to understand much of what was said to me, and to express myself in a vague, roundabout way. In the latter operation I was much assisted by a peculiar faculty of divination which the Russians possess in a high degree. If a foreigner succeeds in expressing about one-fourth of an idea, the Russian peasant can generally fill up the remaining three-fourths from ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... monk was a trifle vexed; but doubly observant now, he saw the man hasten to Demedes, and Demedes bend low in the saddle to receive a communication from him. The courier then hurried away through the Gate, while the chief returned to his place; but, instructed probably by some power of divination proceeding from sympathy and often from suspicion, one of the many psychological mysteries about which we keep promising ourselves a day of enlightenment, Sergius observed a change in the latter. He ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... because you're afraid to!" he said, and he went on with a sudden bitter divination: "You're reproaching yourself with what you had to do with all that; and you're trying to make up for it by doing and saying what you think mother would want you to, and you think I couldn't stand it if I got to thinking I might have done differently. Oh, I know! That's exactly what's ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... setting eyes on the soil, and the chiefs, people, and all, would believe them; for, as may be imagined, with men unenlightened, supernatural and imaginary predictions work with more force than substantial reasons. Their implement of divination, simple as it may appear, is a cow's or antelope's horn (Uganga), which they stuff with magic powder, also called Uganga. Stuck into the ground in front of the village, it is supposed to have sufficient power to ward off the attacks of ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... capital." The bride wore a dress of that peculiar sort of calico known as "furniture prints," without trimming or ornaments of any kind. Whether it was cut "bias" or with "gores," I'm sorry to say I do not know, dress-making being as much of an occult science to me as divination. Her hair was tightly bound up in a scarlet silk handkerchief, fastened in front with a little gilt button. As soon as the church service was concluded the altar was removed to the middle of the room, and the priest, donning a black silk gown which contrasted strangely ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... was not in the secret of the communications with Lord Derby, but the intrinsic probabilities of a case often give to the public a trick of divination. In the middle of December (1856) articles actually appeared in the prints of the day announcing that Mr. Gladstone would at the opening of the next session figure at the head of the opposition. The tories, they said, ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... calmly faced the light. Never could such a man as Nigel get so near to Mrs. Chepstow as Doctor Meyer Isaacson, even though Nigel should love her and Isaacson learn to hate her. At that moment Isaacson did not hate her, but he almost hated his divination of her, the "Kabala," he carried within him ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... solar deity. In Syria Hadad is hardly to be distinguished from a solar deity. The process of assimilation did not proceed so far in Babylonia and Assyria, but Shamash and Adad became in combination the gods of oracles and of divination in general. Whether the will of the gods is determined through the inspection of the liver of the sacrificial animal, through observing the action of oil bubbles in a basin of water or through the observation of the movements of the heavenly bodies, it is Shamash and Adad who, in the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... was not often that I was called upon to make use of my profession. But I was pleased to be of some service to this rich banker. He wished to consult me professionally, because he had heard from the truthful lips of rumour of the wonderful powers of divination given to the foreign medical man. What was his probable tenure of life? That was the problem. I gravely examined two of his pulses—every properly organised Chinaman has four hundred—and finding his heart where it should be in the centre of his body, with the ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... him, every thought, every heart-beat. He couldn't give it to her, my dear. No man could. I tell you I have lived to a great age, and I have known great people, and I have never seen the man yet who could give a woman all the love she wanted. Women seem to be born with a kind of divination—a second sight where love is concerned—they aren't content with the mere husk, and yet that is all that the ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... he is said to have been connected. His contemporaries at Crotona in South Italy, where he lived, looked upon him as a man peculiarly connected with the gods; and some of them even identified him with the Hyperborean Apollo. He himself is said to have laid claim to the gifts of divination and prophecy. The religious element was clearly predominant in his character. Grote says of him, "In his prominent vocation, analogous to that of Epimenides, Orpheus, or Melampus, he appears as the revealer of a mode of life calculated ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... absurd. After her wonderful divination about me, of course I couldn't help asking her a few questions as to how she developed the gift—and so on—and she told me the ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... but the influence of Etruria on Rome not only led to nothing but was in itself of a most superficial sort. Etruria must have had some literature, yet we search the history of Roman literature in vain for any traces of the influence of that literature on Rome, with the one exception of books on divination and the interpretation of lightning. We know too little of her manners and customs to be able to tell exactly how much they may have influenced Rome, and yet it is worth noting that the things which Roman writers actually ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... be observed in little folks at a very early age. With some children they are not very pronounced, and the child seems like hundreds of others without any particular inclination, artistic or otherwise. It is then that the teacher's powers of divination should be brought into play. Before any real progress can be made the nature of the child must be studied carefully. In the case of other children, the individuality is very marked at an early age. As a rule, the child with the marked individuality ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... contain the finest and most poetical philosophy. I think they owe it to their affiliation to the oldest philosophies. There are many disputable things in Edouard Schure, but what remains is the divination which made him climb through all doctrine to the infinitely distant Source ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous |
