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Sesame   Listen
noun
Sesame  n.  (Bot.) Either of two annual herbaceous plants of the genus Sesamum (Sesamum Indicum, and Sesamum orientale), from the seeds of which an oil is expressed; also, the small obovate, flattish seeds of these plants, sometimes used as food. See Benne.
Open Sesame, the magical command which opened the door of the robber's den in the Arabian Nights' tale of "The Forty Thieves;" hence, a magical password.
Sesame grass. (Bot.) Same as Gama grass.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sesame" Quotes from Famous Books



... "The open sesame—what could it have been? I do wonder what that remark could have been. But come; we will ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the fish that fried therein, and made them answer me in terms mysterious and tremendous yet. Nay, that animating and delectable feeling I cherish ever for such enchanted commodities as gold-dust and sandal-wood and sesame and cloth of gold and black slaves with scimitars—to whom do I owe it but this rare and delightful artist? 'O mes chers Mille et une Nuits!' says Fantasio, and he speaks in the name of all them that have lived the life ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... than any spirit lurking in the heart of your house—a potent, sleepless, fiendish thing; and far from wondering at all that has happened, I only marvel that worse did not befall. But I have the magic talisman, the 'open sesame.' I am safe enough even if I am mistaken. Though my fires are burning low, it will take more than your Grey Room to extinguish them. I hold the clue of the labyrinth, and shall pass safely in and out again. To-morrow I can tell you ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts

... opposite wall. The method of filling bone cavities devised by Mosetig-Moorhof, consists in disinfecting and drying the cavity by a current of hot air, and filling it with a mixture of powdered iodoform (60 parts) and oil of sesame and spermaceti (each 40 parts), which is fluid at a temperature of 112 F.; the soft parts are then brought together without drainage. As the cavity fills up with new bone the iodoform is gradually absorbed. Iodoform gives a dark shadow with the X-rays, so that the process of ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... another FAUVEL-GOURAUD? Would there be any more dancing? any more fashions? any more any thing? The true Mysteres de Paris nobody knows any thing about but the Parisians themselves, and they are too cunning to pronounce their open sesame loud enough to be heard by the rest of the world. How like gudgeons we all snapped at the bait of EUGENE SUE! But the Mysteries of Paris are written in a kind of Parisian Coptic, which none but the Parisian ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various

... punishment, making fun here on earth of the justice of men, and securing from God the pardon from eternal condemnation thru the simple means of invoking the name of a saint, or thru the medium of a Latin word which, acting as a sort of open sesame opens wide to the devotee the gates ...
— The Legacy of Ignorantism • T.H. Pardo de Tavera

... of his elders, but to Johnny's fancy an idea was kindled peculiarly his own! Here was a cavern like that of the "Forty Thieves" in the story book, and he was the "Ali Baba" who knew its secret! He was not obliged to say "Open Sesame," but he could say it if he liked, if he was showing ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte

... virtuous women. Moreover, they are to be seen in boxes at the theatre and the opera, and in almost every accessible place where wealthy and fashionable people congregate. In point of fact, through the potent influence of their more or less wealthy protector, they possess the open sesame to all places where admittance is not secured by vouchers, and in many instances those apparently insuperable barriers fall before ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe

... tell you earnestly and authoritatively (I know I am right in this) you must get into the habit of looking intensely at words, and assuring yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable—nay, letter by letter."—Ruskin: Sesame and Lilies. ...
— How to Study • George Fillmore Swain

... with the defiled oil of the heave-offering on a holiday. Rabbi Ishmael said, "they must not light with pitch dregs for the honor of the Sabbath." But the Sages allow all oils, "with sesame oil, with nut oil, with radish oil, with fish oil, with colocynth oil, with pitch dregs and naphtha." Rabbi Tarphon said, "they must only light ...
— Hebrew Literature

... speaks of the two queens, Semiramis and Nitocris, telling us of all the means taken by the latter to increase the prosperity and safety of her capital, and passing on to speak of the natural products of the country, the wheat, barley, millet, sesame, the vine, fig-tree and palm-tree. He winds up with a description of the costume of the Babylonians, and their customs, especially that of celebrating their marriages by the ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... has rid a man of the toothache is well entitled to command a part of his time. Item, two young Frenchmen made their way to our sublime presence in guerdon of a laudatory copy of French verses sent up the evening before, by way of "Open Sesame," I suppose. I have not read them, nor shall I. No man that ever wrote a line despised the pap of praise so heartily as I do. There is nothing I scorn more, except those who think the ordinary sort of praise or censure is matter of the least ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... said Mr. Linden, smiling. "I am like Ali Baba before the storehouse of hid treasure. Is this the 'Sesame' you are waiting for?" he added, raising her face and trying ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

... both antiquated institutions; the English is the more harmful on account of its legislative power, the French is the more pretentious. The House of Lords is the most open club in London, the payment of an entrance-fee in the shape of a check to a party fund being an all-sufficient sesame. In France, one must be born in the magic circle. The spirit of the Emigration of 1793 is not yet extinct. The nobles live in their own world (how expressive the word is, seeming to exclude all the rest of mankind), pining after an impossible restauration, alien to the present ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory

... Hill was Ashburnham House (Earl of Ashburnham), a plain square building in a courtyard. It was occupied by the Russian Embassy in 1851. Now Nos. 28 and 29 are the premises of the Sesame Club ...
— Mayfair, Belgravia, and Bayswater - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... tale which is clearly a cousin if not a parent of this in Kennedy's Fictions, 54 seq., containing the visit to the green hill (for which see "Childe Rowland"), a reference to nuts, and even the sesame rhyme. The prince is here a corpse who becomes revivified; the same story is in Campbell No. 13. The jealous stepmother is "universally human." (Cf. Koehler on ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)

... magic words which caused the cave door of the "forty thieves" to open of itself. "Shut Sesam[^e]!" were the words which caused it to shut. Sesame is a grain, and hence Cassim, when he forgot the word, cried, "Open, Wheat!" "Open, Rye!" "Open, Barley!" but the door obeyed no sound but "Open, Sesam[^e]!"—Arabian Nights ("Ali ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... own date. The art of injudicious reading, the art of miscellaneous reading which every normal man ought to cultivate, is a very fine and satisfactory art; for the best guide to books is a book itself. It clasps hands with a thousand other books. It has always seemed to me that "Sesame and Lilies" would not have been conceived by Ruskin if he had not heard well an echo of "The Following of Christ." There was a time when the lovers of Ruskin who wanted to read "The Stones of Venice" and the rest at leisure, ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan

... April afternoon the tea was neglected in the cups, and there was nothing of the usual mild gossip. The discussion involved Daren Lane, and when two of those social arbiters settled back in their chairs the open sesame of Middleville's select affairs had ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey

... were, under the rules, kindly permitted to reach and remain on the study-table of my own room while I needed them. The department of Scandinavian travel was, however, much more scantily represented than Russia. Long shall I have reason to remember with gratitude the generous "open sesame" and the rich privileges of this library, which, more than most things that enjoy the epithet, truly deserves ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton

... for one toston; fowls have advanced to two reals apiece, although the usual price is one real; while a hog costs four or five pesos, or six or eight for one of considerable size. Oil of agenxoli [sesame], cocoanuts, and butter, which formerly could be bought very cheaply, cannot now be obtained—although in this there is variation, as little or much comes to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various

... was welcomed with enthusiasm. The Arabs here had extensive plantations of sesame, dhurra, and cotton, and the nights were spent in watching them, to scare away the elephants, which, with extreme cunning, invaded the fields of dhurra at different points every night, and retreated ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker

... to take a passenger train to Luxemburg, and hang around the platform until the next military train pulls out for Belgium or France, hop aboard, and keep on going. In case of doubt utter the magic phrase, 'I am an American,' and flash the open sesame, the red seal of the United States of America—to which bearded Landsturm guards pay the tribute of regarding it as equally authoritative as the purple Prussian eagle stamped on a ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various

... to the water within the skin a delicious coolness. The Arabs usually prepare their tanned skins with an empyreumatical oil made from a variety of substances, the best of which is that from the sesame grain; this has a powerful smell, and renders the water so disagreeable that few Europeans could drink it. This oil is black, and much resembles tar in appearance; it has the effect of preserving the leather, and of rendering ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... steep hill, Which rose, with columned, windy temple crowned, A landmark to far seas. The enchanted cell Was clouded over in the gentle night Of a luxuriant foliage, and its door, Half-filled with rainbow hues of coloured glass, Opened into the bosom of the hill. Never to sesame of mine that door Gave up its sanctuary; but through the glass, Gazing with reverent curiosity, I saw a little chamber, round and high, Which but to see was to escape the heat, And bathe in coolness of the eye and brain; For all ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald

... I'm having one of my chaps taught. I'm paying for the lessons. I thought of learning myself—yes, really! Oh! It's a thing that'll revolutionize all business and secretarial work and so on—revolutionize it! And it's spreading. It'll be the Open Sesame to everything. Anybody that can write a hundred and twenty words a minute'll be able to walk into any situation he wants—straight into it! There's never been anything like it. Look! Here ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... which was a day and a night's sail from thence. Callicrates and Myrmecides are said to have made chariots that might be covered with the wings of a fly, and to have engraved verses of Homer on a sesame seed. But none ever discerned or discovered this diversity in us; nor have we perceived ourselves to be double, in one part always flowing, and in the other remaining the same from our birth even to our death. ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... marvellous astuteness in reading each other's motives, that I should imagine Estelle's ingenuity would furnish an open sesame to the locked chamber of this girl's heart, and supply some satisfactory explanation ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... subject cannot, I think, fail to prove interesting. Pliny mentions about thirty or forty oils as known to the ancients, of which only olive, sesame, rape seed and walnut oil—for except in one or two doubtful passages I find in this author no notice of linseed oil—appear to have been used in such quantities as to have had any serious importance in the carrying trade. At the present time, the new oils, linseed ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... once a poor but industrious oilman; he got a log of wood and carved out an oil mill and, borrowing some money as capital, he bought mustard and sesame seed and set to work to press it; as he had no bullock he had to turn the mill himself. He was so industrious that he soon began to prosper and was able to buy a bullock for his mill. By and bye he got so rich that he was able to buy some land and ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas

... appeals to those emotions. Consequently his criticism has been more popular than Matthew Arnold's. As an example of this freer, more varied critical style, let us cite the opening paragraphs of the lecture "Of Queens' Gardens"—in "Sesame and Lilies": ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody

... telephone, "Hello!" sent tingling over the wire a few million times daily was taken from Menlo Park by men installing telephones in different parts of the world, men who had just learned it at the laboratory, and thus made it a universal sesame for ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... which I first recognized the extreme rarity of finely-developed organic sight is expressed enough in the lecture on the Mystery of Life, added in the large edition of 'Sesame ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... one of the most calming of these orators. The lecturer spoke with such feeling—and such stereopticon slides—that smallpox, scarlet fever, measles, and diphtheria seemed the "open sesame" to bliss unutterable, and the source of these talismans rather to be sought for diligently than shunned. "Didst hear?" Leah asked Aaron as they went home. "For a redness on the skin one may stay in bed for ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly

... that a casket's hinge has broken Pries off a bolt, and lo! our souls are free; Each year some Open Sesame is spoken, And every decade drops ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... itself, and says "Come, jack-knife!" or "Come, jelly-roll!" or "Come, rain!" according to his particular desires of the particular moment. I think he really caught it from an illustration in The Arabian Nights, from the picture of Cassim grandiloquently proclaiming "Open Sesame!" He is an imaginative little beggar. "Mummy," he said to me the other night, "see all the moonlight that's been spilled on the grass!" But children are made that way. Even my sage little Poppsy, when a marigold-leaf ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer

... guests. Here will be at last that strange master of her fate, the bridegroom and his best man (paranymphos). Her father will offer sacrifice (probably a lamb), and after the sacrifice everybody will feast on the flesh of the victim; and also share a large flat cake of pounded sesame seeds roasted and mixed with honey. As the evening advances the wedding car will be outside the door. The mother hands the bride over to the groom, who leads her to the chariot, and he and the groomsman ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis

... to get rid of with words like pangenesis (Darwin). Words of Black (Mediterranean or Greek and Latin) origin, as Allen Upward has named them, always cover a multitude of ignorances. The glands of internal secretion, here, as in so many other dark places, provide the open sesame to certain long closed doors of biology. They offer themselves to us as the first definitely tangible agents which are known to keep the process of growth going, and undoubtedly initiate the marvelous unfolding of ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... exterior of our habitation had not prepared us for the comforts we found inside; and as for the first time we followed Giorgio and his brother-in-law up the rude and narrow stone staircase, which appeared to be scarped out of the very thickness of the wall—an open sesame from the former causing a strong iron studded door to fly back on its hinges, disclosed a handsome patis or court paved with black and white marble, along the sides of which were luxuriantly growing, and imparting a cooling freshness to the scene, the perfumed orange-tree, bearing at the same ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... into Hal's room purposely, but Mr. Benton was always before me. It was because you felt all this that the letter made you feel truly an opening path—your tearful talk by the old apple tree was the 'sesame' that opened the ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell

... confided to Timothy, and I then set off with the other letter to Mr Masterton, which was addressed to Lincoln's Inn. By reading the addresses of the several legal gentlemen, I found out that Mr Masterton was located on the first floor. I rang the bell, which had the effect of "Open, Sesame," as the door appeared to swing to admit me without any assistance. I entered an ante-room, and from thence found myself in the presence of Mr Masterton—a little old man, with spectacles on his nose, sitting at a table ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat

... intimate to my bucolic friends, that I know, more vitally by far than they, what is in Wordsworth, and what is not. Any man who chooses to live by his precepts will thankfully find in them a beauty and rightness, (exquisite rightness I called it, in "Sesame and Lilies,") which will preserve him alike from mean pleasure, vain hope, and guilty deed: so that he will neither mourn at the gate of the fields which with covetous spirit he sold, nor drink of the waters which with yet more covetous spirit he stole, nor devour the bread of the poor in secret, ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... of this sesame opened like magic the three immense iron doors through anterooms in charge of trusties, in prison garb of the material of blue overalls and caps shaped like a low fez. Inside, a "preso de confianza" serving as turnkey led the ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... courts that scalloped arches wreathed, Where fountains plashed in bowls of lapis lazuli. Through enigmatic doors voluptuous accents breathed, And having Youth I had their Open Sesame. ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger

... there is no doubt that they were a gorgeous looking party as they marched up Pennsylvania avenue wearing shining brasses, bright red sashes, buff gauntlets, and sabres glittering in their scabbards. Mr. Kellogg pronounced the "Open Sesame" which caused the doors of the White House to open and secured admission to the presence ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd

... the common lock of a door opening from the roof of an apartment house on the farthest corner of the block, found his way downstairs, tapped the door of the conciergerie, chanted that venerable Open Sesame of Paris, "Cordon, s'il vous plait!" and was made free of the street by a worthy guardian too sleepy to challenge the identity of ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... pocketbook—a dainty article in Russian leather—went to the oaken chest which he opened after what seemed some cabalistic manipulation, and the muttering of what seemed an "Open Sesame!" ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... specimens of calligraphy extant are probably the Terence of the fourth century and the Virgil of the fifth century, in the Vatican Library. Alas for those who have no open sesame to that collection! We shall never forget our disappointment upon entering the Vatican. We could not gaze even on the mouldy vellum or faded leather of old bindings, and saw nothing but stupid modern painted cases, bodies quite unworthy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various

... can read that man to the core. He is simple as a book. His composition is plain, straightforward, quite natural, uniform. There are no twists and turns in him. Once learn the key, and it discloses everything, like an open sesame. He has a gigantic intellect, a burning thirst for knowledge; one love, one hobby—science; and no moral instincts. He goes straight for his ends; and whatever comes in his way," she dug her little heel in the brown soil, "he tramples on it as ruthlessly ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... actress is sure to make trouble for us, Ford. You might be a little more considerate. Just as we are getting in with the Perritons. And their guest, Mrs. Conroth, was really very nice to mother this morning on the beach. She has the open sesame to all the society there is on this side of the Atlantic. It's really a wonderful chance ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper

... inventor) that burglars could not carry it away. The door only opened at the pleasure of those who knew its password. The letter-lock was a warden who kept its own secret and could not be bribed; the mysterious word was an ingenious realization of the "Open sesame!" in the Arabian Nights. But even this was as nothing. A man might discover the password; but unless he knew the lock's final secret, the ultima ratio of this gold-guarding dragon of mechanical science, it discharged a blunderbuss at ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... be remarked that the possession of certain physical gifts—such as the ability to wriggle one's ears or do the "splits"—is in itself no "open sesame" to lasting social success. "Slow and sure" is a good rule for the young man to follow, and although he may somewhat enviously watch his more brilliant colleagues as they gain momentary applause by their ability to throw their thumbs out of joint or squirt water through a ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart

... of course with the assistance of a large and competent staff. His proofs of capacity for a series of occupations that would have staggered a CRICHTON, was always attested by his old College testimonials, for SAUNDERS was of opinion that the courteous obiter dictum of a Professor was an Open Sesame to all the golden gates of the world. Meanwhile, he supported existence by teaching the elements of the classic languages, with which he had the most distant acquaintance, to little boys, at a Day School. But one of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various

... one take money from a merchant, and give the merchant a field tillable for corn or sesame and order him to plant corn or sesame in the field, and to harvest the crop; if the cultivator plant corn or sesame in the field, at the harvest the corn or sesame that is in the field shall belong to the owner of the field and he shall pay corn as rent, for the money ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... concocted of the floures," said Gerard, "quieteth the lunatick person, and the leaves eaten raw do engender good blood." Of all nectar-loving insects, bees alone know how to pronounce the "open sesame" of admission to the honey pots ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... winds having occasioned the sea to destroy a great part of it. This is the finest island in the world, and its king is called Sendernaz. The men and women are idolaters, and go entirely naked, except a small cloth before them. They grow no corn except rice; and they have plenty of oil of sesame, milk, flesh, palm wine, Brazil wood, the best rubies in the world, sapphires, topazes, amethysts, and other gems. The king of the island is said to have the finest ruby that ever was seen, as long as the hand, and as thick as a mans wrist, without spot ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr

... worry!" exclaimed Carley. "You can take your choice presently. You have the open sesame to ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey

... Pied piper. (Poem by Browning.) Blaisdell. Child life in tale and fable. Bellamy and Goodwin. Open Sesame, pt. 1. Browning. Pied piper of Hamelin; il. by Greenaway. Browning. Poems. Chisholm. Golden staircase. Lucas. Book of verses for children. Patmore. Children's garland from the best poets. White. Poetry for school readings. Whittier. Child life in ...
— Lists of Stories and Programs for Story Hours • Various

... to its open streets, but penetrating to all its galleries, salles, and cabinets: of every door which shut in an object worth seeing, of every museum, of every hall, sacred to art or science, he seemed to possess the "Open! Sesame." I never had a head for science, but an ignorant, blind, fond instinct inclined me to art. I liked to visit the picture-galleries, and I dearly liked to be left there alone. In company, a wretched idiosyncracy forbade ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... enabled them to adopt so low a scale of fees that many parents who had never dreamt of literacy for themselves were encouraged to try and secure for some at least of their children the benefit of this miraculous Open Sesame to every kind of worldly advancement. Much of the raw material pressed into secondary schools was quite unsuitable, and little or no attempt was made to sift it in the rough. Numbers therefore began to drop out somewhere on the way, disappointed of their more ambitious hopes and having ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... poetic word—mere mention of it would distress Mr. Yeats; but it is potent as "Sesame" to unlock the treasures of memory. And before the laggard Spring comes round again many of us will sigh for a whiff of yellow, acrid smoke, curling from a smoldering fire in the heart of the ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor

... manners of the English people. But somehow, one never recollects these taboo days, wherever one may be, till one's pulled up short by them in the course of one's travels. Now, what on earth am I to do? A box, it seems, is the Open, Sesame of the situation. Some mystic value is attached to it as a moral amulet. I don't believe that excellent Miss Blake would consent to take me in for a second night without the guarantee of a ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen

... the "open sesame" to Mrs Clyde's castle. I had sighed for it, striven for it, gained it at last; and, a fine mess I had made of ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson

... way of Sevres, Forsyth and I accompanying them as far as the Palace of St. Cloud, which we, proposed to see, though there were strict orders against its being visited generally. After much trouble we managed, through the "open sesame" of the King's pass, to gain access to the palace; but to our great disappointment we found that all the pictures had been cut from the frames and carried off to Paris, except one portrait, that of Queen Victoria, against whom the French were much incensed. All other works of art had been removed, ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 6 • P. H. Sheridan

... many pleasing recollections, that it never fails to extort another glass from the bottle which, having been gagged, was going to pass the night in the cellaret. But only say Halifax! and it is like "Open sesame!"—out flies the cork, and down goes a bumper to the ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... furnished. There were no superfluous draperies and few knick-knacks of any sort. There was, however, in each bedroom a little book shelf with about a dozen of the best and most suitable books—generally a copy of Ruskin's "Sesame and Lilies," of Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus," of Milton's "Paradise Lost"; also one or two books by the best writers of the present day. Works of E. V. Lucas were not forgotten in that collection, and Mrs. Ewing's "Jackanapes" was ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade

... overwhelmed in certain destruction living in the dominions of the Kuru king. Ye bulls among men, listen as we indicate the merits and demerits springing respectively from association with what is good and bad! As cloth, water, the ground, and sesame seeds are perfumed by association with flowers, even so are qualities ever the product of association. Verily association with fools produceth an illusion that entangleth the mind, as daily communion with the good and the wise leadeth ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

... I have read a few articles upon the subject, including one by Cardinal Newman. It is wonderful that so many people imagine that there is something miraculous in the oath. They seem to regard it as a kind of verbal fetich, a charm, an "open sesame" to be pronounced at the door of truth, a spell, a kind of moral thumbscrew, by means of which falsehood itself is compelled to ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... for a group of cronies to drop in at all hours of day and night. Louis was among those who came oftenest, and Sir Walter's sister writes: "He would frequently drop in to dinner with us, and of an evening he had the run of the smoking room. After ten p.m. the 'open sesame' to our door was a rattle on the letter box and Louis' fancy for the mysterious was whetted by this admittance by secret sign, and we liked his special rat-a-tat for it was the forerunner of an hour ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton

... Really, they needed no dower with their good looks, for they were all pretty. The Madison Avenue mansion gave them the open sesame into good society—choice society, in fact—and there some wealthy trio of unattached young men must see and fall ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe

... in grain it is so fruitful as to yield commonly two hundredfold, and when the production is greatest, even three hundredfold. The blade of the wheat plant and barley is often four fingers in breadth. As for millet and the sesame, I shall not say to what height they grow, though within my own knowledge; for I am not ignorant that what I have already written concerning the fruitfulness of Babylonia, must seem incredible to those who have never visited the country.... Palm trees grow in great numbers ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... the Three Graces to her Three per Cents? While her aeres!—oh Dick, it don't matter one pin How she touches the affections, so you touch the rents; And Love never looks half so pleased as when, bless him, he Sings to an old lady's purse "Open, Sesame." ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... man there are a multitude of others, equally gifted in some respect, but wanting that mysterious "Open Sesame" which would discover their hidden mental riches, arouse them from their accustomed inferiority to their best selves, and transform potentiality into accomplishment. So it comes about that most of us are gems that shine but to illumine the "dark ...
— Initiative Psychic Energy • Warren Hilton

... the other, and hastened towards the rock on which the marks he had noted terminated. "And now," he exclaimed, remembering the tale of the Arabian fisherman, which Faria had related to him, "now, open sesame!" ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... off his saddle-bag, which seemed to Ali Baba to be full of gold and silver from its weight. One, whom he took to be their captain, came under the tree in which Ali Baba was concealed; and making his way through some shrubs, pronounced these words: "Open, Sesame!" [Footnote: "Sesame" is a small grain.] As soon as the captain of the robbers had thus spoken, a door opened in the rock; and after he had made all his troop enter before him, he followed them, when the door shut ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various

... taxicab, a taxicab apparently being the open sesame. One might have gone afoot and have looked ever so much like a "good thing" and he would not have been admitted. But such is the simplicity of the sophistication of the keepers of such places that a motor car opens all locks ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve

... Ring could take Aladdin into a cave of wealth, and by speaking the words, "Open Sesame," Ali Baba was admitted into the cave that held the treasures of the forty thieves. But that is very little. I have just come from a cave in Virginia City, Nev., from ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren

... the grave one'll want something, I shouldn't be surprised!' Down here—away from the exigencies of affairs—his grandchildren, and the flowers, trees, birds of his little domain, to say nothing of sun and moon and stars above them, said, 'Open, sesame,' to him day and night. And sesame had opened—how much, perhaps, he did not know. He had always been responsive to what they had begun to call 'Nature,' genuinely, almost religiously responsive, though he had never lost his habit of calling a sunset a sunset ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... of Mugley seemed to be the open sesame to the door betwixt Terwilliger and success. Simultaneously with the entrance of the earl the solution of his problem flashed across the mind of the master of Bangletop, and his affronting demeanor, his preoccupation and all disappeared ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs

... her acquaintance, misconstrues shyness for pride—a masquerade which bashfulness sometimes plays; so two people, with volumes to say to each other, remain silent as fishes, until the kindly magician comes along, and, by the open sesame of an introduction, unlocks the treasure which has been so deftly hidden. A woman of fashion may enter an assembly of thinkers and find herself dreaded and shunned, until some kind word creates the entente cordiale. In the social entertainments of New ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood

... afternoons and Sundays he tramped the hills, or spent hours rowing on the river. His employer's villa was also always open to him—a privilege not granted to the others in the working force. The old tie of family was the sesame. Judge Breen's son was, both by blood and training, the social equal of any man, and although the distinguished engineer, being well born himself, seldom set store on such things, he recognized his obligation in Jack's case and sought the first ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith

... the mansion were literally riddled with secret chambers and passages. There was little fear of being run to earth with hidden exits everywhere. Wainscoting, solid brickwork, or stone hearth were equally accommodating, and would swallow up fugitives wholesale, and close over them, to "Open, Sesame!" again only at the ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea

... hand, I pass many days, together without eating anything. Sometimes people feed me with costly viands in profusion, sometimes with a small quantity, sometimes with even less, and sometimes I get no food whatever. I sometimes eat only a portion of a grain; sometimes the dry sesame cakes from which the oil has been pressed out, I sometimes eat rice and other food of the richest kind. Sometimes I sleep on an elevated bedstead of the best kind. Sometimes I sleep on the bare ground. Sometimes my bed is made within a fine palace or mansion. I am sometimes ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... Perhaps, in some remote unborn century, a more fortunate explorer may hit upon the "Open Sesame," and flood the world with gems. But, myself, I doubt it. Somehow, I seem to feel that the tens of millions of pounds' worth of jewels which lie in the three stone coffers will never shine round the neck of an earthly beauty. They and Foulata's bones will keep ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard

... value in disposing of curiosity that has become overweening or even morbid, but their value as preachments I much question. The kind of writing upon which the young girl's mind will be nourished in years to come is best represented by the lecture on "Queens' Gardens" in Ruskin's "Sesame and Lilies," though in that magnificent and immortal piece of literature there is nowhere any direct allusion to motherhood as the natural ideal for girlhood. Yet if only one girl in a hundred who read that lecture ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby

... knowledge of many birds, and so, in time, compass the entire realm of ornithology. If he knows a flower, from this known he may be so directed that he may become a master in the unknown field of botany. If he knows coal, this experience may be made the open sesame to the realms of geology. In short, all his experiences may be capitalized under the direction of a skillful teacher, and made to produce large dividends as ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson

... what kind of fish it was, but it was fried in oil of sesame and flavoured with a mixture of cinnamon and ginger, and the Professor did not appear to be making much progress with it. Ventimore himself would have infinitely preferred the original cod and oyster sauce, but that could not ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey

... spell was broken, Nina was the sesame which unlocked his powers of speech; and wiping the large drops ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes

... so now, but for this unexpected demand upon it. It was safe enough, he knew, in his daughter's room; and as for its having been opened, that was an impossibility; the padlock hung in front of it as usual, and it would have taken a man half a lifetime to have hit upon its open sesame by trial. He was justly proud of that letter lock, which was his own contrivance, invented when he was quite a young man, and had been perforce compelled to turn his attention to mechanics, and he considered it a marvel of skill. It was characteristic in him ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn

... their wives and daughters, have also the right to pay their personal respects to their queen. Those of more democratic professions, such as solicitors, merchants and mechanics, have not, as a rule, that right, though wealth and connection have recently proven an open sesame at the gates of St. James. Any person who has been presented at court may present a friend in his or her turn. A person wishing to be presented, must beg the favor from the friend or relative of the highest rank he ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young

... glanced suspiciously at him, as if she had something to hide. A chance word often is the "open sesame" to that cupboard where we keep our cherished skeleton. Colonel Gilbert saw the quick glance, and ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman

... coffee, bananas, sugarcane, cotton, rice, corn, tobacco, sesame, soya, beans; beef, veal, pork, poultry, ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... The Wisdom of the Egyptians Principles of Incubation Moisture and Evaporation Ventilation—Carbon Dioxide Turning Eggs Cooling Eggs Searching for the "Open Sesame" of Incubation The Box Type of Incubator in Actual ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings

... producing corn it is so good that it s as much as two-hundred-fold for the average, and when it bears at its best it produces three-hundred-fold. The leaves of the wheat and barley there grow to be full four fingers broad; and from millet and sesame seed how large a tree grows, I know myself but shall not record, being well aware that even what has already been said relating to the crops produced has been enough to cause disbelief in those who have not visited ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus

... uncertainly upon the outermost rim of the circle immediately surrounding society's innermost shrine, realized that the linking of the Manton name with the newer name of St. Ledger, would prove an open sesame to the half-closed doors ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... this country also supply Saker falcons of excellent flight, and plenty of Lanners likewise. Beasts and birds for the chase there are in great abundance. Good wheat is grown, and also barley without husk. They have no olive oil, but make oil from sesame, and also ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... would marry some lady of rank. He laughed heartily at the notion. It was also rumoured that he meant to return and take a place in the neighbourhood, stand for the county, and be one of the greatest men in South Wales. In short, the enchanter, the merlin, the open sesame, the omnipotent sorcerer gold was to work the miracles to which Howel had been so long looking forward. And the gossips were not far wrong. Gold is truly a famous master-key to all hearts ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale

... cup; 'tis the priest of Bacchus who invites you. But hasten, the guests have been waiting for you a long while. All is ready—couches, tables, cushions, chaplets, perfumes, dainties and courtesans to boot; biscuits, cakes, sesame-bread, tarts, lovely dancing women, the sweetest charm of the festivity. But come ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes

... this country was superior to anything that I had seen farther north; large quantities of sesame were grown and carefully harvested, the crop being gathered and arranged in oblong frames about twenty feet long by twelve high. These were inclined at an angle of about sixty—the pods of the sesame plants on one face, so that the frames resembled enormous brushes. ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... ancient inhabitants not only for the irrigation of their fields, but also as waterways for the transport of heavy materials. The recently published letters of Hammurabi and Abeshu' contain directions for the transportation of corn, dates, sesame seed, and wood, which were ordered to be brought in ships to Babylon, and the code of Hammurabi refers to the transportation by water of wool and oil. It is therefore clear that at this period considerable use was made of vessels of different size for conveying supplies ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall

... the course of the Euphrates, passing through luxuriant fields of wheat, barley and sesame yielding fruit two, and sometimes even three, hundred-fold. Slender date-palms covered with golden fruit were scattered in every direction over the fields, which were thoroughly irrigated by ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Work is the open-sesame of success. It is curious to see how uneasily some men will roam from one end of the earth to the other, trying to find an easy place, a place where work will not be needed or required. There is no such place. The higher the honor, the harder the work. The power ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown

... knew this occurrence would be an open sesame to that laboratory of Tom's. And it proved to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various

... to thank Larry for an open sesame to the doors of Sunnyside, however; for he has some distant acquaintance with the grand-nephew of Washington Irving who has inherited the quaint, delightful house with its red gables and extraordinarily intelligent-looking windows. Anybody is allowed to peep inside the gates ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)

... sorghum, rice, corn, sesame, cassava (tapioca), palm kernels; cattle, sheep, goats; forest and fishery ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... through dreary deserts. The black land, the Sawad, was then the green land of waving corn, where three crops were annually harvested and the average yield was two hundredfold of the seed sown. The wheat and barley, so Herodotus tells us, were a palm-breadth long in the blade, and millet and sesame grew like trees. And in these details the revered Father of Lies seems to have spoken less than the truth, for the statistics we get elsewhere more than bear out his accounts of its amazing fertility. From its wealth before his day had arisen the might ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson

... he fell, there lie unfinished plans By others misapplied, misunderstood; And doors are barred that wait the master-key— That wait his magic Open Sesame!— To that assertive power ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard

... banker's clerk or an insurance agent. On the battlefield his rank entitles him to such consideration only as is due to a captain. Here he may ignore colonels, may say to a brigadier, "Stop pushing." He has what all desire, the "Open Sesame" which clears the ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham

... the progenitor gravely assigned to Chatterton's relative, Mr Stephens, leather-breeches-maker of Salisbury. Evidence of all sorts was ever ready among the treasures in the Redcliff muniment room, the Blue-Coat boy's "Open Sesame!" ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... however, simple. The land is really rich. The ingredients are already here. Instead of being worthless, as was once supposed, this is a precious soil. The Aladdin's wand that unlocks all its treasures is the irrigating ditch; its "open sesame" is water; and the divinity who, at the call of man, bestows the priceless gift, is the Madre of the Sierras. A Roman conqueror once said that he had but to stamp upon the earth and legions would spring ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard



Words linked to "Sesame" :   sesame family, sesame oil, herb, open sesame, benni, herbaceous plant



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