"Amulet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the design on a clay tablet as a substitute for a personal signature, were also regarded as amulets, and this accounts for the frequency with which scenes of religious worship were introduced as designs on the cylinders. The ring is distinctly an amulet in Babylonia as elsewhere, and hence it is by no means improbable that the custom of carrying little inscribed tablets, discs, or knobs about the person as a protection against mischances preceded the use of such ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... the Prince's ball? We go together. Braid in thy hair our mother's pearls, and wear The amulet ingemmed with eastern stones; ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... the king's divine life and virtue was communicated by contact to the person touched and cured him of his ailment. The wearing of amulets where these consist of parts of the bodies of animals is based on the same belief. When a man wears on his person the claws of a tiger in an amulet, he thinks that the claws being the tiger's principal weapon of offence contain a concentrated part of his strength, and that the wearer of the claws will acquire some of this by contact. The Gonds carry the shoulder-bone of a tiger, or eat the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... habitual reticence of the ancient writers respecting the period of their boyhood—it is not easy to form a very vivid conception of the kind of education given to a Roman boy of good family up to the age of fifteen, when he laid aside the golden amulet and embroidered toga to assume a more independent ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... upon this arm behold I clasp This amulet. One dawn two murderers Despatched to kill thee, stealing to thy bed Were frightened by a snake which from beneath Thy pillow glided. From that serpent's skin I made this charm. Wear it, and thou shalt prosper; But lose it, look ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... Stone" was a small, cross-inscribed jet-black piece of slate or marble, approximately—2" or 3" x 1 1/2". Formerly it seems to have had a small silver cross inset and was in great demand locally as an amulet for cattle curing. It disappeared however, some fifty years or so since, but very probably it could still be recovered ...
— Lives of SS. Declan and Mochuda • Anonymous
... was Euterpe that Eve was to represent at the masquerade; and what ornament so fit and fanciful as this amulet of spring-time, whose charm commanded all that hour of freshness, fragrance, and dew, when the burdened heart of the dawn bubbles over with music? Yet the enticement was brief. Eve looked and longed, and then hurriedly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the earliest days of their attachment. The heart of Bolko was melted. In the intoxication of happiness he forgot his danger; and reposing on Emma's bosom, did not perceive that she untied his doublet, and heedfully but eagerly searched for the amulet. She was mistress of it before Bolko could suspect ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... wear an amulet, and have a spell of art-magic at my tongue's end, whereby, sir ancient, neither can a ghost see me, nor I see them. Come with us, Yeo, the Desmond-slayer, and we will shame the devil, or be shamed ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... results by some very easy process. I once wrote a sketch, never completed, in which I depicted a man of culture who, having lost an old manuscript book which he had regarded in a light, semi-incredulous manner as a fetish, or amulet, on which his luck depended, began to be seriously concerned, and awaking to the fact, deliberately cultivated his alarm as a psychological study, till he found himself, even with his eyes wide open as an observer in terrible ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... that day, that I lost this little amulet of mine—this priceless treasure, with the image of her beauty within, I have worn it for twenty years and more, I shall wear it until I die! I knew I lost it in that library, and used to assure myself ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... that Saturn and Mars are the baleful stars, and whosoever begins a work, or walks in the way, when either of these two is in the ascendant, will come to sorrow. Astrology naturally leads to amulets and charms. Amulets are divided into two classes, approved and disapproved. An approved amulet is "one that has cured three persons, or has been made by a man who has cured three ...
— Hebrew Literature
... shoot me a fancy shot Straight at the heart of yon prowling vidette; Ring me a ball in the glittering spot That shines on his breast like an amulet!" ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... beauteous, And still was called so by each subject duteous. Now whether Fatima was witch in earnest, Or only made believe, I can not say— But she profess'd to cure disease the sternest, By dint of magic amulet or lay; And, when all other skill in vain was shown, She deem'd it fitting time ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... had a preventive against all greenroom temptations, of which he was not in the least afraid; and as he spoke he looked in Theo's face, as if in those eyes lay the amulet which was to ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to my dear brother-in-law Bartja I commit the most precious jewel in my possession—this amulet of blue stone. My sister Tachot hung it round my neck as I kissed her on the last night before we parted; she told me it could bring to its wearer the sweet bliss of love. And then, Bartja, she wept! I do not know of whom she was thinking in that moment, but I hope I am acting according ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the hand of the Laird. The Bairds of Auchmeddan possessed another of these celebrated northern amulets. The Auchmeddan Stone is a ball of black-coloured flint, mounted with four strips of silver. A legend engraved on this silver setting—in letters probably of the last century—states that this "Amulet or charm belonged to the family of Baird of Auchmeddan from the year 1174." In the middle of the last century, this amulet passed as a family relic to the Frasers of Findrack, when an ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... instituted mysteries like those of Eleusis, from which his particular enemies the Christians and Epicureans were alike excluded as "profane,'' and celebrated a mystic marriage between himself and the moon. During the plague of A.D. 166 a verse from the oracle was used as an amulet and was inscribed over the doors of houses as a protection, and an oracle was sent, at Marcus Aurelius' request, by Alexander to the Roman army on the Danube during the war with the Marcomanni, declaring that victory would ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... was unlike what her stunned heart recollected of Alvan; but a hint that the baroness was behind it, and that a refusal would bring the baroness down on her with another piece of insolence, was effective. She dealt out the letters, arranged the presents, made up the books, pamphlets, trinkets, amulet coins, lock of black hair, and worn post-marked paper addressed in his hand to Clotilde von Rudiger, carefully; and half as souvenir, half with the forlorn yearning of the look of lovers when they break ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Tigre! Los Cosacos!" they yelled, scrambling out upon the road, bleeding, falling, praying, and kissing whatever greasy amulet or virgin's picture ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... city of Brahma". In Teutonic mythology the heavens revolve round the Polar Star, which is called "Veraldar nagli",[362] the "world spike"; while the earth is sustained by the "world tree". The "ded" amulet of Egypt symbolized the backbone of Osiris as a world god: "ded" means "firm", "established";[363] while at burial ceremonies the coffin was set up on end, inside the tomb, "on a small sandhill intended to represent the Mountain of the West—the realm of the ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... the Lake giveth Sir Percival a charm] Then the lady said: "Wait a little, I have something for thee." Therewith she took from her neck a small golden amulet pendant from a silken cord very fine and thin. And she said: "Wear this for it will protect thee from all evil enchantments." Therewith saying, she hung the amulet about the neck of Sir Percival, and Sir Percival gave her thanks beyond measure ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... existence into thought and study," the stranger replied; "and yet they have not even supported me. I am not to be gulled by a sermon worthy of Swedenborg, nor by your Oriental amulet, nor yet by your charitable endeavors to keep me in a world wherein existence is no longer possible for me.... Let me see now," he added, clutching the talisman convulsively, as he looked at the old man, "I wish for a royal banquet, a carouse worthy of this century, which, it is said, ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... Mangoons practice Shamanism in its general features, and have a few customs peculiar to themselves. At a Goldee village I saw a man wearing a wooden representation of an arm, and learned that it is the practice to wear amulets to cure disease, the amulet being shaped like the part affected. A lame person carries a small leg of wood, an individual suffering from dyspepsia a little stomach, and so on through a variety of disorders. A hypochondriac who thought himself afflicted all ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... of bad luck. I remember, when I was a kid, I never played hooky without first hunting up my four-leaved amulet. If I got a licking when I returned home, why, I consoled myself with the thought, that it might have been ten times ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... friends. This lady had a large agate bead with a wire through it, which had been taken out of a barrow, and lay always in her work-box. Lord Byron asking one day what it was, she told him that it had been given her as an amulet, and the charm was, that as long as she had this bead in her possession, she should never be in love. "Then give it to me," he cried, eagerly, "for that's just the thing I want." The young lady refused;—but it was not long before the bead disappeared. She ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... in the village until the next morning. I had in the mean while wrote a prayer (Grisgris) or amulet, to a man who gave me a bullock, which I carried to Wassaba; I slept there. Next morning I had the bullock killed. The next day Iaque, Chiaman's brother, sent me word to wait there for him. I immediately sent my family and things by another road, and waited for Iaque. He came and presented ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... walked about, picking up fragments of the ore, which they put into their skin wallets. It was evident that the greater part of the ore had been removed, yet every man of the expedition was able to secure a piece which he looked upon as a kind of amulet to bring him good fortune. There was a little fuel obtainable where they camped for the night, and the weary, haggard men went to sleep feeling in better spirits than ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... "Lord!" Another thumbs a book, as if it were an omnipotent amulet. Another meditates on some mystic theme, as if musing were a resistless spell of silent exorcism and invocation. Another pierces himself with red hot irons, as if voluntary pain endured now could accumulate merit for him and buy ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... against the torture." [Footnote: It was believed that when witches endured torture with unusual patience, or even slept during the operation, which, strange to say, frequently occured, the devil had gifted them with insensibility to pain by means of an amulet which they concealed in some secret part of their persons.—Zedler's Universal Lexicon, vol. xliv., art, "Torture."] Hereupon this hell-hound went on to speak to my poor child, without heeding me, save that he laughed in my face: "Look here! when thou hast thus been well shorn, ho, ho, ho! ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... claws were dedicated as a trophy to be worn around the neck as a talisman. Not only are the claws prized by the Arabs, but the moustache of the lion is carefully preserved and sewn in a leather envelope, to be worn as an amulet; such a charm is supposed to protect the wearer from the attacks of ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... a hut on the outskirts of the village squatted a wizened man with a tuft of grey beard upon his chin. He was clad in a loin-cloth fairly clean, and about his neck was suspended by a twisted fibre an amulet wrapped in banana leaves containing the gall and toenail of an enemy slain by a virgin warrior, a specific against black magic whose powerful properties were proven by the undisputed influence and wealth of ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... sister and brother, and himself. His father and brother did business with the English ships, but he was a teacher and reader in the synagogue. There had been in their family a very sacred heirloom in the form of an amulet or charm. Their forefathers had believed that it came from Jerusalem before their nation lost the holy city; but he himself did not think that this could be true; he only knew that it was ancient, and possessed very valuable properties as a talisman to those who knew how to use it. About ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... do you know, while I carried it I said to myself at the same time every hour: 'No, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, you may yet not be a thief.' Why? Because I might go next day and pay back that fifteen hundred to Katya. And only yesterday I made up my mind to tear my amulet off my neck, on my way from Fenya's to Perhotin. I hadn't been able till that moment to bring myself to it. And it was only when I tore it off that I became a downright thief, a thief and a dishonest man for the rest of my life. Why? Because, with that I destroyed, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the Persian tale, in which Sohrab wears a bracelet or amulet on his arm. Arnold's work gives a more ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... sun as a circle or wheel, and an old Roman god, Summanus, probably a sun-god, later assimilated to Juppiter, had as his emblem a wheel. The Celts had the same symbolism, and used the wheel symbol as an amulet,[78] while at the midsummer festivals blazing wheels, symbolising the sun, were rolled down a slope. Possibly the god carries a thunderbolt because the Celts, like other races, believed that lightning was a spark from ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... thine own tears thy song must tears beget, Singer! Magic mirror thou hast none Except thy manifest heart; and save thine own Anguish or ardour, else no amulet. ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... all things, that whatsoever happens, it is his purpose, will flock round any soothsayer who professes to see into the future and do the most absurd things conceivable to keep off the evil eye. The eye of Horus is still their favourite amulet. ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... "Did you bring an amulet with you from the provinces?"—It was Blondet who made this inquiry some few days later, when he called at eleven o'clock in the morning and found that Lucien was not yet risen.—"His good looks are making ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... protector. If the Manitou continue useless, this threat is fulfilled. Fasting and dreaming are again resorted to in the same manner as before, and the vision of another Manitou is obtained. The former representation is then, as much as possible, effaced, and the figure of the newly-adopted amulet painted in its place. All the veneration and confidence forfeited by the first Manitou is ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... party-colored robes about him, tightens the turban head, and draws calmly at his water-pipe while a bevy of Hindu and Tamil women bargain for a new stud for their noses, a showy amulet, or a ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... and the charming thing is that they deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth, which is simply that, unless they give up eating and drinking and wenching and idling, neither drug nor cautery nor spell nor amulet nor any other ...
— The Republic • Plato
... The amulet that charms away disquiet lies here. Still thine eager desires, arm thyself against feverish hopes, and shivering fears, and certain disappointment, and cynical contempt of all things; make sure of fulfilled wishes and abiding joys. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Elkman house in her rounds, and, bent under her sack, knocked at the familiar door. It was lunch-time, and unfamiliar culinary smells seemed wafted along the passage. Her morbid imagination scented bacon. The orthodox amulet on the doorpost did not comfort her; it had been left there, forgotten, a mute ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... never amulet like a grain of wit in a purse under thy cap.' Good Captain, the saying is not worse of having proceeded from a Persian. I told my followers we were likely at any moment to be overtaken by a force too strong for us to fight; but instead of running away, we must meet them ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... very much against his own interest, had made him a good Church of England Protestant, made him also intensely attached to the doctrine of fixed succession under closer and clearer limitations than exist even in England. For a thousand years this one plain rule had been the amulet for liberating France (else so constitutionally disposed to war) from the bloodiest of intestine contests. The man's career was pretty nearly concurrent as to its two limits with that of our own Shakespeare. Both he and Shakespeare were patronized, or, at least, countenanced by James the ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... pious sermons? Is he about to shave his head and put a rope round his waist? My faith, that is not like that fellow Calabressa!' You are right, my friend. I describe the creation of the devotee; it is a piece of poetry, as one might say. But your devotee must have his amulet; is it not so? This is the meaning and prayer of my letter to you. The bearer of it was willing to do us a great service; perhaps—if one must confess it—he believed it was on behalf of the beautiful Natalushka and her father ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... Nichiren for example, and even among the rationalistic Confucians, there are fetich-worshippers. Rare is the Japanese farmer, laborer, mechanic, ward-man, or hei-min of any trade who does not wear amulet, charm or other object which he regards with more or less of reverence as having relation to the powers that help or harm.[17] In most of the Buddhist temples these amulets are sold for the benefit of the priests or of the shrine or ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... I made myself very attentive to the duenna; in the second place, the old lady is devout, and you know Ireland is the land of saints, and I presented her with an amulet containing a paring of the nail of ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... decorated the necks of the emirs of that nomadic tribe. These appendages were not used merely by way of ornament, but originally as talismans, or amulets, against sickness, danger, and every species of calamity to which the desert was liable. The particular form of the amulet is to be explained out of the primitive religion, which prevailed in Arabia up to the rise of Mahometanism, in the seventh century of Christianity, viz. the Sabean religion, or worship of the heavenly host—sun, moon, and stars, the most natural of all ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... Bandokolo—"and will see Bimbane. Take notice, and you will see that on the thumb of her right hand she wears a ring in which is set a wonderful stone that shines like the sun at eventide. That stone is a magic stone, a potent amulet, by virtue of which she is able to do many marvellous things, and, among others, to win the hearts of men. Some think that it is the possession of that stone which enables her to prolong her life indefinitely. If it were taken from her, and ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... lady ceased: she shed Pure scent and grain upon his head. And that prized herb whose sovereign power Preserves from dark misfortune's hour, Upon the hero's arm she set, To be his faithful amulet. While holy texts she murmured low, And spoke glad words though crushed by woe, Concealing with obedient tongue The pangs with which her heart was wrung. She bent, she kissed his brow, she pressed Her darling to her troubled breast: "Firm in thy purpose, go," she cried, "Go Rama, and may bliss betide. ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... is penned, whose luminous eyes, Brightly expressive as the twins of Leda, Shall find her own sweet name, that, nestling lies Upon the page, enwrapped from every reader. Search narrowly the lines!—they hold a treasure Divine—a talisman—an amulet That must be worn at heart. Search well the measure— The words—the syllables! Do not forget The trivialest point, or you may lose your labor! And yet there is in this no Gordian knot Which one might not undo without a sabre, If one could merely ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... how the Empress heaped Lady Ma with costly jewels and silken brocades and taels of silver beyond measuring—how she placed on her breast the amulet of jade that had guarded herself from all evil influences, how she called the ancestral spirits to witness that she would provide for the Lady Ma's remotest descendants if she lost her life in this ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... cowardly and atrocious act of committing murders with bombs not only meets with your approval, but you hail the advent of the bomb into India as if something had come to India for its good." The bomb was extolled in these articles as "a kind of witchcraft, a charm, an amulet," and the Kesari delighted in showing that neither the "supervision of the police" nor "swarms of detectives" could stop "these simple playful sports of science," Whilst professing to deprecate such methods, it threw the responsibility upon Government, which allowed "keen disappointment ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... so? Very well, then," she replied, almost without pause, and putting her hands to her left ear. "We will have nothing to do with any of them. I have here what is much surer and better—the amulet which was given to some of our people—I cannot tell when, it was so far back—by a Persian magician. See, the inscription ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... not by incantation at all. What he did was to encircle our city with an amulet of ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... specimen of a spell that was used in connection with an amulet may be quoted Chapter 156. The amulet was the tet, which represented a portion of the body of Isis. The spell reads: "The blood of Isis, the power of Isis, the words of power of Isis shall be strong to protect this mighty one (i.e. the mummy), and to guard ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... black velvet, and would refresh herself with the sight of her absent friend. When her miniature by Daffinger was sent him, he was stupefied all day with joy; and he always carried it about with him, considering it an amulet ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... Read my letter once and again. Preserve it as a sacred deposit. Lay it under your pillow. Meditate upon it fasting. Commit it to memory, and repeat the scattered parcels of it, as Caesar is said to have done the Greek alphabet, to cool your rising choler. Be this the amulet to preserve you from danger! Be this the chart by which to steer the little skiff of your political system safe into the port ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... Bible in his hand as if it were some amulet charmed by the touch of a superior being; but when he strove to read it, his thoughts wandered, and he shut it, troubled and unsatisfied. Yet there were within him yearnings and cravings, wants never felt before, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... also, Sahib, a little along the road, and I will sell thee a charm—an amulet that shall make thee King ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling
... Thus freighted, by winds wafted over the Main! There were stuffs, and brocades, and rich laces and blonde; There were Damascene blades, and thy silks Trebisond; There was armor from Milan, both cuirass and helm, Abelards, Eloisas, and Father Anselm: There were jewels, and gold, and the amulet's power, A hero to spout, and to rant by the hour; A lady to love, and be loved, and to faint, As a matter of course, turning pale through her paint! There were clowns who the grave-digger clown could outvie, And princes who on the stage strutted so ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... cannot take. I thought it was a ring from the bazaar to go with thy dress of fantasy. Behold, it is an amulet of the heart, of—nay, I cannot tell thus quickly of what dynasty—with words of power engraved upon it which ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... amulet.) May your medicine preserve him. And, as for me, Chisera, I wish I could persuade the tribesmen to look as favorably ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin
... great Monarch. This amulet, known as "The Invincible," was given to the boy by the divine son of Marichi, soon after his birth, when the natal ceremony was performed. Its peculiar virtue is, that when it falls on the ground, no one excepting the father or mother of the ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... memory, I give thee this gold chain" (flinging on his arm one of considerable value). "If I go not brave myself, those whom I trust have ever the means to ruffle it with the best. But when such chains as these bind not the tongue from wagging too freely, my gossip, L'Hermite, hath an amulet for the throat, which never fails to work a certain cure. And now attend.—No man, save Oliver or I myself, enters here this evening; but ladies will come hither, perhaps from the one extremity of the hall, perhaps from ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... a look half of awe, half of doubt, at the lofty pretensions of her mistress, and returned with old Miriam, keeping, however, prudently behind her, in order to test as little as possible the power of her own amulet by avoiding the basilisk eye which had ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... I gave her an amulet which secures mutuality. In Paphos, on the island of Cyprus, is a temple, O lord, in which is preserved a zone of Venus. I gave her two threads from that zone, ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... came to the conclusion that nobody could have been near him, he made up his mind that it was some malevolent stroke of the devil and he consulted a priest who agreed with him in his belief, and gave him an amulet to wear. A series of similar attacks occurred and puzzled as to whether there was some diabolical agency at work, or whether he was the victim of some conspiracy, he emigrated to America; for several months he had ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... very numerous and powerful tribe. We had no sooner got into a dark and lonely part of the first wood, than he made a sign for us to stop, and taking hold of a hollow piece of bamboo, that hung as an amulet round his neck, whistled very loud three times. I confess I was somewhat startled, thinking it was a signal for some of his companions to come and attack us; but he assured me that it was done merely with a view to ascertain what success we were likely to ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... our amulet Of precious names we thread, and soft and low We crave for each beloved, or near or far, ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... incantations over it, and then they all grasped at it, exclaiming, "Thus we pull Buckra to pieces!" He gave them parched corn and ground-nuts to be eaten as internal safeguards on the day before the outbreak, and a consecrated cullah, or crab's claw, to be carried in the mouth by each, as an amulet. These rather questionable means secured him a power which was very unquestionable; the witnesses examined in his presence all showed dread of his conjurations, and referred to him indirectly, with a kind of awe, as "the little ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... condition, then presses the painful organs of the patient, sucks at various parts of his body until he finally produces some little bone or piece of meat which until then he kept hidden in his mouth. The disease disappears, and the extracted bone is used as an amulet which secures good harvests. Other Indians had their piachas. They were selected from among the boys of about ten years old and were then sent to lonely forests where they had to live for years upon plants and water without ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... in that lone chamber, And o'er her silken ottoman Are thrown the fragrant beads of amber, O'er which her fairy fingers ran;[156] Near these, with emerald rays beset,[157] (How could she thus that gem forget?) 550 Her mother's sainted amulet,[158] Whereon engraved the Koorsee text, Could smooth this life, and win the next; And by her Comboloio[159] lies A Koran of illumined dyes; And many a bright emblazoned rhyme By Persian scribes redeemed from Time; And o'er those scrolls, not oft so mute, Reclines ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... had been discovered at the Exchequer. The pill-box supposed to enclose these costly gems being solemnly opened, it was found to contain nothing but an antique pair of false promises, set in copper, once the property of Sir Francis Burdett; and a bloodstone amulet, ascertained to have belonged to the Duke of Wellington. The box was singularly enough tied with red official tape, and sealed with treasury wax, the motto on the seal being "Requiscat ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... intelligent. The title of Christian is a reproach to us, if we estrange ourselves from Him after whom we are denominated. The name of Jesus is not to be to us like the Allah of the Mahometans, a talisman or an amulet to be worn on the arm, as an external badge merely and symbol of our profession, and to preserve us from evil by some mysterious and unintelligible potency; but it is to be engraven deeply on the heart, there written by the finger of God himself in everlasting characters. It ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... 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 ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... in silence. That golden shield set with precious stones, besides its great value in money, had moreover the virtue of an amulet; hence ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... all her life like a faithful kobold or brownie, an unquestioning servant of all her gentle biddings. She dared tell him anything without diffidence or shamefacedness; and she felt that in this trial of her life he might have in his sea-receptacle some odd old amulet or spell that should be of power to help her. Instinctively she avoided the house, lest Sally should see and fly out and seize her. She took a narrow path through the cedars down to the little boat ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... but for the most part of a somewhat theatrical kind, imitations of Francis and Dominic or of their earlier imitators. In Pascal they are original, and have all their seriousness. Que je n'en sois [80] jamais separe—pas separe eternellement, he repeats, or makes that strange sort of MS. amulet, of which his sister tells us, repeat for him. Cast me not away from Thy presence; and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me. It is table rase he is trying to make of himself, that He might reign there absolutely alone, who, however, as he ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... back of his beast as it knelt, and, turning round to me, cried, "Come thou also, Sahib, a little along the road, and I will sell thee a charm—an amulet that shall make ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... patron saint and protector. Frequently the village barber acts in the place of a priest and puts on the sacred thread. A similar thread placed around the neck of a child, and often around its waist by the midwife immediately after birth, is intended as an amulet or charm to protect from disease and danger. It is usually a strand of silk which has been blessed by some holy man or sanctified by being placed around the neck of an ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... red men of historic times. For their encampments and towns these peoples seem to have preferred the more sheltered ground along the smaller streams; but, when they fared abroad to hunt, to trade, to wage war, to seek new, material for pipe and amulet, they followed in the main the ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... his own destruction? To wish to die in mortal sin! A spirit of darkness must have taken possession of him. Then he invokes St. George no longer every morning and evening? He prays no more,—he no longer carries on his heart the holy amulet I gave him. Ah! why did I fall asleep yesterday evening? What beautiful things I would have said to him! I would have commenced by representing ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... possibly coexist with a mere acquiescence of the understanding in certain facts recorded by the Evangelists. But did John, or Paul, or Martin Luther, ever flatter this barren belief with the name of saving faith? No. Little ones! Be not deceived. Wear at your bosoms that precious amulet against all the spells of antichrist, the 20th verse of the 2nd chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Galatians:—'I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless, I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life, which I now live in the ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... ten years younger he would have taken his chance with Akela had he met the wolf in the woods, but a wolf who obeyed the orders of this boy who had private wars with man-eating tigers was not a common animal. It was sorcery, magic of the worst kind, thought Buldeo, and he wondered whether the amulet round his neck would protect him. He lay as still as still, expecting every minute to see Mowgli turn into a ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... pleasure. She was therefore quite beside herself to see him in this lamentable condition, and wanted to run off to the neighbouring monastery to fetch her father confessor, that he might come and fight against the adverse power of the disease with consecrated candles or some powerful amulet or other. On the other hand, her son thought it would be almost better to see about getting an experienced physician at once, and off he ran there and then to the Spanish Square, where he knew the ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... cookery books we can call to mind is entitled "The Experienced English Housekeeper," by Elizabeth Raffald. The book, which was published in 1775, is dedicated to the Hon. Lady Elizabeth Warburton, whom the authoress formerly served. as housekeeper. The recipe is entitled "To make an amulet." The book states, "Put a quarter of a pound of butter into a frying-pan, break six eggs"; Francatelli also gives four ounces of butter to ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne
... their contents—toy-shops, shops for smoking apparatus, and shops for the sale of ornamental hair-pins predominating. Nearer the gate are booths for the sale of rosaries for prayer, sleeve and bosom idols of brass and wood in small shrines, amulet bags, representations of the jolly-looking Daikoku, the god of wealth, the most popular of the household gods of Japan, shrines, memorial tablets, cheap ex votos, sacred bells, candlesticks, and incense-burners, and all the endless and ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... by our fathers when I was nine and she was eight, had not much chance of offspring by her; and, indeed, it was in the bearing of our first child—a still-born boy—that she died, despite the old family amulet originally imported from Metz and made by Rabbi Eibeschuetz. When, after her death, it was opened by a suspicious partisan of Emden, sure enough it contained a heretical inscription: "In the name of the God of Israel, who dwelleth in the adornment of His might, and in the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... an amulet made, which has virtue to keep you two always friends. You can never quarrel so long as ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... mistress, my amulet! I will give thee this jewel, Switha, if thou wilt permit me to ...
— Dramatic Reader for Lower Grades • Florence Holbrook
... precaution taken by the architects to ensure the safety of all these riches from robbers, and were convinced that magic had added to such safeguards the more effective protection of talismans and genii. There was no pyramid so insignificant that it had not its mysterious protectors, associated with some amulet—in most cases with a statue, animated by the double of the founder. The Arabs of to-day are still well acquainted with these protectors, and possess a traditional respect for them. The great pyramid concealed ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... to be the largest in the world. Miss Levison had read of this jewel as one of the most valuable among precious stones. She had heard also, what evidently the young marquis did not think worth while to tell her in connection with its history, namely, that it had been held as an amulet of such power that it was believed the ducal house of Hereward would never be without a male heir as long as it possessed that priceless ruby heart. Miss Levison supposed this to be the reason why it had been preserved by the old duke from the total wreck of his fortune. And the marquis had ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... tinge of what some call superstition, and she began to look upon her strange acquisition as a kind of amulet. Its suggestions betrayed themselves in one of her first movements. Nothing could be soberer than the cut of the dresses which the propriety of the severe household had established as the rule of her costume. But the girl was no sooner out of bed than a passion came over ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... refused to surrender. Directions were given for putting the whole to the sword, and in obedience thereto the heads of all were cut off, excepting of eight persons, who, by the efficacy of a diabolical charm, consisting of a jewel or amulet introduced into the right arm between the skin and the flesh, were rendered secure from the effects of iron, either to kill or to wound. Upon this discovery being made, they were beaten with a heavy wooden club, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... Clothes, clothes! What are clothes! See, now: you are the Queen of Sheba's old slave. Your large black feet and legs are bare, a glittering amulet swings between your withered breasts of an old African, you wear heavy bracelets and anklets, around your lean flanks is a little, thin striped apron, and you hold in your hand the great fan of peacock feathers! Magnificent! You are the queen's ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... for his head, and a lawn kerchief to keep the wind from his delicate throat. Last, but by no means least, was the dear old mother's greatest treasure, a tooth of St. Martin, which she firmly believed would keep her son's heart pure and free from sin. Of that amulet Max did ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... Akeru gods of the earth have made me to come into being, and they have made me strong for my moment [of coming forth]. I hide with the god Aba-aaiu who will walk behind me, and my members shall germinate, and my khu shall be as an amulet for my body and as one who watcheth [to protect] my soul and to defend it and to converse therewith; and the company of the gods shall ...
— Egyptian Literature
... return to Charley. When he got back to town, he felt that he had lost his amulet; his charm had gone from him, and he had nothing now left whereby to save himself from ruin and destruction. He was utterly flung over by the Woodwards; that now was to him an undoubted fact. When Mrs. Woodward told him that he was never again to see Katie, that was, of course, tantamount ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... if you would convince yourself. The concrete evidence alone is enough. On the breasts or the wrists of your women, and in every man's pocket you see a G'il amulet, a watch, to remind them of time every hour. What other god was ever so faithfully worshipped? In every hut in the land you will find his altar, and in your large huts you will find one in every principal room. No matter how free and unconventional ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... recommended a piece of sail from a wrecked vessel, worn round the arm for seven weeks.[30] For colic, he recommended the heart of a lark attached to the right thigh, and for pain in the kidneys an amulet depicting Hercules overcoming a lion. To exorcise gout, he used incantations, these being either oral or written on a thin sheet of gold during the waning of the moon. Writing a suitable inscription on an olive leaf, gathered before sunrise, was his specific for ague. Alexander appears at ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... mistake co-existent phenomena for cause and effect: as when a man, wearing an amulet and escaping shipwreck, regards the amulet as the cause of his escape. To prove his point, he must either get again into exactly the same circumstances without his amulet, and be drowned—according to the method of Difference; or, ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... "Love is the greatest Amulet that makes this world a garden: and 'Hope comes to all' outwears the accidents of life; and reaches with tremulous hands beyond the grave ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... of the queue, hung a string of four large pearls, with pendants of gold, representing the eight precious things. On his person, he wore a long silvery-red coat, more or less old, bestrewn with embroidery of flowers. He had still round his neck the necklet, precious gem, amulet of Recorded Name, philacteries, and other ornaments. Below were partly visible a fir-cone coloured brocaded silk pair of trousers, socks spotted with black designs, with ornamented edges, and a pair ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... hers. My poems, my ambition, my hours of labor, all were hers only! I knew now that no time could change the love which had so changed me, or dim the sweet remembrance of that face which I carried for ever at my heart like an amulet. Other women might be fair, but my eyes never sought them; other voices might be sweet, but my ear never listened to them; other hands might be soft, but my lips never pressed them. She was the only woman in all my world—the only star in all my night—the one Eve of my ruined Paradise. ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... newspaper line. Sometime during the year 1840 or 1841, he started a paper called 'The Experiment,' which was edited by James O. Adams, then a student in college. This paper was subsequently issued in quarto form and called 'The Amulet.' ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... down turned, and said 'If thy name be written hereon, it is needless, for a name is already engraved on my heart.' The Hajji said: 'And on mine also is a name engraved; but there is no name on the amulet.' The Hajji stooped to our Sahib's feet, but our Sahib raised and embraced him, and the Hajji covered his mouth with his shoulder-cloth, because it worked, and ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... efforts of Egyptians were directed to the acquisition of a portion of this magical power, which would protect their souls and bodies and their houses and cattle, and other property, each day and each night throughout the year. When a man cared for the protection of himself only he wore an amulet of some kind, in which the fluid of life was localized. When he wished to protect his house against invasion by venomous reptiles he placed statues containing the fluid of life in niches in the walls of various ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... to search thoroughly. He did it. The man whose turn was next ahead of mine was a Russian priest, whose long black cloak did not save him from painstaking suspicion. He was still indignantly refusing to take down his pants and prove that the hard lump on his thigh was really an amulet against sciatica, when the car came ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... If a young maiden drink, on going to bed, a pint of cold spring-water, in which is beat up an amulet, composed of the yolk of a pullet's egg, the legs of a spider, and the skin of an eel pounded, her future destiny will be revealed to her in a dream. This charm fails of its effect if tried any other day ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... their phenomena, but has resulted from a fancied relation between those objects and the human being. The charm or the amulet—some object whose presence has been observed to cure diseases, or bring good-luck—grows up into a god; a strong desire at once leading the man to pray to his amulet, and also to attribute to it the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... young opossums, to these little excrescences. "Witch-marks" were good evidence that a young woman was one of the Devil's wet-nurses;—I should like to have seen you make fun of them in those days!—Then she had a brooch in her bodice, that might have been taken for some devilish amulet or other; and she wore a ring upon one of her fingers, with a red stone in it, that flamed as if the painter had dipped his pencil in fire;—who knows but that it was given her by a midnight suitor fresh from that fierce element, and licensed for a season to leave his couch of flame to tempt the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... its outside appearance he knew he must be in one of the rear rooms, and if Chip was not behind the curtain he must be in an upper story. While he was thus occupied the fortune-teller had finished her incantations, and, taking from a drawer a small amulet sewed in oil skin, handed it ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... term used by the Romans for any boss or stud, such as those on doors, sword-belts, shields and boxes. It was applied, however, more particularly to an ornament, generally of gold, a round or heart-shaped box containing an amulet, worn suspended from the neck by children of noble birth until they assumed the toga virilis, when it was hung up and dedicated to the household gods. The custom of wearing the bulla, which was ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... charm, incantation, exorcism, weird, cabala^, exsufflation^, cantrap^, runes, abracadabra, open sesame, countercharm^, Ephesian letters, bell book and candle, Mumbo Jumbo, evil eye, fee-faw- fum. talisman, amulet, periapt^, telesm^, phylactery, philter; fetich, fetish; agnus Dei [Lat.], lamb of God; furcula^, madstone^; mascot, mascotte^; merrythought^; Om, Aum^; scarab, scarabaeus^; sudarium^, triskelion, veronica, wishbone; swastika, fylfot^, gammadion^. wand, caduceus, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the Dracu[16] himself. Have you ever tried to make him kiss the amulet on which is the image of St. George and ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... knelt down and undressed Thais. The child was quite naked; round her neck was an amulet. The Pontiff plunged her three times into the baptismal font. The acolytes brought the oil, with which Vivantius anointed the catechumen, and the salt, a morsel of which he placed on her tongue. Then, having dried that body which was destined, after many trials, to life immortal, ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... the derivation of the English word "amulet" has taxed the ingenuity of etymologists, and its origin is admittedly obscure. According to some authorities, the Latin amuletum was derived from amoliri, to avert or repel; but the greater weight of evidence points to the Arabic verb hamala, meaning "to carry." The ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... and disease spirits. 2. Herbal charms. 3. Charms for transferring disease. 4. Amulet charms. 5. ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... angelica, camphor, and other drugs. He likewise chewed a small piece of Virginian snake-root, or zedoary, if he approached any place supposed to be infected. A dried toad was suspended round his neck, as an amulet of sovereign virtue. Every nostrum sold by the quacks in the streets tempted him; and a few days before, he had expended his last crown in the purchase of a bottle of plague-water. Being of a superstitious nature, he placed full faith in all the predictions of the ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... gruel and light soup. It was also required of him that he should partake of their exercise of constantly ascending an endless flight of stairs; and, lest his legs, unused to such exertion, should be weakened by it, that he should wear upon one ankle an amulet or charm of iron. These conditions being arranged, he was removed one evening to his new abode, and enjoyed, in common with nine other gentlemen, and two ladies, the privilege of being taken to his place of retirement in one ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... thunder-bolt at Skanda. It pierced him on the right side; and, O great king, it passed through the body of that high-souled being. And from being struck with the thunder-bolt, there arose from Skanda's body another being—a youth with a club in hand, and adorned with a celestial amulet. And because he was born on account of the piercing of the thunder-bolt, he was named Visakha. And Indra, when he beheld that another person looking like the fierce destroying Fire-god had come into ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Yussuf is superstitious; he told me how someone down the river cured his cattle with water poured over a Mushaf (a copy of the Koran), and has hinted at writing out a chapter for me to wear as a hegab (an amulet for my health). He is interested in the antiquities and in M. de Rouge's work, and is quite up to the connection between Ancient Egypt and the books of Moses, exaggerating the importance of Seyidna ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... his residence with Mr. Gillman that I knew Coleridge. He had arranged to write for "The Amulet"; and circumstances warranted my often seeing him,—a privilege of which I gladly availed myself. In this home at Highgate, where all even of his whims were studied with affectionate and attentive care, he preferred the quiet of home influences to the excitements of society; and although ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... high dispensations. The whitewashed walls; the little pews where well-known figures entered with a subdued rustling, and where first one well-known voice and then another, pitched in a peculiar key of petition, uttered phrases at once occult and familiar, like the amulet worn on the heart; the pulpit where the minister delivered unquestioned doctrine, and swayed to and fro, and handled the book in a long accustomed manner; the very pauses between the couplets of the hymn, as it was given out, and the recurrent ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... when he said, 'All things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are called according to His purpose.' If I make God my Refuge, I shall get something a great deal better than escape from outward sorrow—namely, an amulet which will turn the outward sorrow into joy. The bitter water will still be given me to drink, but it will be filtered water, out of which God will strain all the poison, though He leaves plenty of the bitterness in it; for bitterness is a tonic. The evil that is in the evil will be taken ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... de Jacobin etait une espece d'amulette, dont les inities etaient jaloux, et qui frappoit de prestiges ceux qui ne l'etaient pas—"The Jacobin diploma was a kind of amulet, which the initiated were jealous of preserving, and which struck as it were with witchcraft, those who ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... distant on the ocean, in hours of danger, I think of it with tenderness, and see it in the place where it has lain for years, in the little bureau, never opened, mixed in with broken toys; and should it disappear I would feel as if I had lost an amulet that could not ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... satisfy the most exacting of physic swallowers. Then the negro sacrificed a cock in the royal presence, and performed an incantation in the most approved African fashion, and we made the creature's claws and comb into an amulet, which I requested the queen to ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... and poverty, such an inborn mental superiority to low and uncomfortable circumstances, that he rose without effort into a region encompassed with felicities, untroubled by a care or sorrow. He always reminded me of that favorite child of the genii who carried an amulet in his bosom by which all the gold and jewels of the Sultan's halls were no sooner beheld than they became his own. If he sat down companionless to a solitary chop, his imagination transformed it straightway into a fine shoulder of mutton. When he looked out of his dingy old ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... this Illinois piece as ancient nor old (observing the usual distinction), nor yet recent; because the tooth of time is plainly visible.' He could suggest nothing to clear up the mystery. Professor J. P. Lesley thought it might be an astrological amulet. He detected upon it the signs of Pisces and Leo. He read the date 1572. He said, 'The piece was placed there as a practical joke.' He thought it might be Hispano-American or French-American in origin. the suggestion of 'a practical joke' ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... know where to stop. In showing my treasure I may withhold a gem or two—a curious, unbought graven stone—an amulet of whose mystic glitter I rarely permit even ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... away, my father, Leila left me a leaf of cypress on which certain characters which I cannot decipher had been traced with the point of a style. It seems to be a kind of amulet." ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... her pure from all danger? Bah! you will never guess! It was partly because, if example corrupts, it as often deters, but principally because she loved. A girl who loves one man purely has about her an amulet which defies the advances of the profligate. There was a handsome young Italian, an artist, who frequented the house—he was the man. I had to choose, then, between mother and daughter: I ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... fear. Many mingled foreign practices with their native religion. It was to no purpose that they did not adore the stars; if a constellation were fatal or helpful, sacrifices were offered to it; an unknown amulet found by chance at a moment of peril became a divinity; or it might be a name and nothing more, which would be repeated without any attempt to understand its meaning. But after pillaging temples, and seeing numbers of nations and slaughters, many ultimately ceased to believe in anything ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... tattooed. Not like Marquesans, but like some white sailors, he had certain marks on him. Grandfather saved these marks, and wore them as a tiki, or amulet, until he died, when he gave it to me. He had preserved the skin so that it did ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien |
