"Occult" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their purest state, these chemicals are not harmless, as is so generally believed. It is a very prevalent idea that when soda is neutralized by an acid, both chemical compounds are in some way destroyed or vaporized in the process, and in some occult manner escape from the bread during the process of baking. This is altogether an error. The alkali and acid neutralize each other chemically, but they do not destroy each other. Their union forms a salt, exactly the same as the Rochelle salts of medicine, ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... historians, travellers, mathematicians, poets, and astrologers of Oriental breeding. At his command Ptolemy's Optics were translated into Latin from the Arabic. The prophecies of the Erythrean Sibyl were rendered accessible in the same way. His respect for the occult sciences was proved by his disinterring the bones of Virgil from their resting-place at Posilippo, and placing them in the Castel dell' Uovo in order that he might have access through necromancy to the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... were also found, with Arabic characters written upon them; and in the box which they first took up was a powder similar to that which Mynheer Poots had given to Amine. There were many articles and writings, which made it appear that the old man had dabbled in the occult sciences, as they were practised at that period, and those they hastened ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... room, for another quarter of an hour, would be impossible, on such tenterhooks was he. To stay—for what? Only to listen to more slanderous hints, of the kind he had heard before. As it was, he did not believe he could face her frankly, should she still come. He felt as if, in some occult way, he had assisted at a tampering with ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... made up of the little homely things which might happen to anybody and distinguished by their pleasant atmosphere have been Miss COLE's speciality in the past; this time she has, without abating a jot of her pleasantness, added a touch of the occult in the shape of an old black-letter volume which infects everyone who gets possession of it with a mildly insane determination to keep it. An honourable man steals it and a nice woman smacks her baby for holding it, so you can see how really baleful its influence ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... few years ago Mr. Smithson's city operations had been on a very extensive scale: It was in the rise and fall of commodities rather than of stocks and shares that Horace Smithson had made his money. He had exercised occult influences upon the trade of the great city, of the world itself, whereof that city is in a manner the keystone. Iron had risen or fallen at his beck. At the breath of his nostrils cochineal had gone up in the market at an almost magical rate, as if the whole civilised world had become ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... from Numa to our present Prime Minister, has had his Sibyl of the fountain. A score of deputies visit Valerie; she is acquiring considerable influence; and now that she is about to be established in a charming house, with a carriage, she will be one of the occult rulers ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... it was that Mr. Hepplewhite discovered why he had been haunted by that mysterious feeling of guilt; for by some occult and subtle method of suggestion on the part of Mr. Tutt, the case, instead of being a trial of Schmidt, resolved itself into an attack upon Mr. Hepplewhite and his retainers and upon the corrupt minions of the law who had violated every principle of justice, decency and morality ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... fact would be an insult)—as fraudulent as a subscription of 99l. 19s. (where it would be clear that some man had pocketed a shilling)—and as contrary to all Natural History as that twenty-seven tailors should make either more men or fewer than the cube root of that number. What is the occult law of the Constable press, which compels it into these three-headed births, might be difficult to explain: Mr. Kant himself[2] with all his subtlety could never make up his mind why no man thinks of presenting a lady with a service of 23 cups and saucers, ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... left me also standing and looking upward at a faint wreath of cloud, tinged in rosiness, which floated almost in the zenith. I was then about eleven years old, precocious for my years and gifted with a sympathy for occult and difficult subjects that became only intensified through the peculiar concentrated companionship I had from day to day, and month to month ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... if antiquity can consecrate some follies, they are of very ancient date. They were classed, among the Hebrews, among the cabalistic sciences; they pretended to discover occult qualities in proper names; it was an oriental practice; and was caught by the Greeks. Plato had strange notions of the influence of Anagrams when drawn out of persons' names; and the later Platonists are full of the mysteries of the anagrammatic virtues of names. The chimerical associations of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... to test a man on the Indian frontier, and Winn had had his eye on Lionel Drummond for two years. He was a cool-headed, reliable boy, and in some occult and wholly unexpressed way Winn was conscious that he was strongly drawn to him. Winn offered him the job, and even consented, when he was on leave, to visit the Drummonds and talk the matter over with the boy's parents. It was then that he discovered that ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... authors, roll their "r's"; and if their names are pseudonyms, so much the greater proof that some occult instinct makes them elect for that virile letter. Who are our leading actors and actor-managers? The double-r's: Henry Irving, Herbert Beerbohm Tree (two pairs), Forbes-Robertson, George Alexander, Arthur ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... she?" I inquired. "Come—you need not be afraid of me. I have come here solely because the occult has always interested me. Who was Jane, and why should her ghost haunt ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... to the very moment when it penetrated our subterraneous laboratories to enlighten our PREPARERS, to establish principles, to create methods and to unveil causes which had remained occult. ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... room one evening when his watch was done sauntered Con. His professional curiosity had been stirred by these occult bartenders at whose bar none drank, and who daily drew upon Kenealy's store of liquors to follow ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... friend whose hobby (besides reading fantasy) was the occult, who volunteered to entertain me with automatic writing and the ouija-board. Now, I share Lovecraft's scepticism towards the supernatural, regarding it as at best a means of amusement. When the question arose of what spirits we should try to lure ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... requested me to build her a new kitchen. The house erected by us, when we first came to live upon the vineyard, contained a very conveniently arranged kitchen; but for some occult reason my wife wanted a kitchen in the back yard, apart from the dwelling-house, after the usual Southern fashion. Of course I ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... its confidence in short cuts and odd byways to knowledge. To him philosophy was to be something giving strange swiftness and double sight, divining the sources of springs beneath the earth or of expression beneath the human countenance, clairvoyant of occult gifts in common or uncommon things, in the reed at the brook-side, or the star which draws near to us but once in a century. How, in this way, the clear purpose was overclouded, the fine chaser's hand perplexed, we but dimly see; the mystery which at no point quite lifts from Leonardo's life is ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... permanent, though its interactions with matter are discontinuous and temporary; and I conjecture that it is subject to a law of evolution—that a linear advance is open to it—whether it be in its phenomenal or in its occult state. ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... of the society nobody could fathom. She sat, during the meetings, bolt upright, with folded arms, as if she were in school, her bright, beady eyes fixed unblinkingly upon Mrs. Arnold, whom she seemed to regard as a species of priestess in charge of occult mysteries. ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... offered to lend the Prince of Wales, L20,000 to induce him to grant the interview of which she was so desirous, although in other letters she begged for pecuniary assistance, and represented herself to be in great distress. The letters were also full of astrology; she spoke of her "occult studies;" and she further believed in ghosts. The manifesto to Poland also pointed to the same conclusion as to her state of mind. A person of such an erratic character, he said, was very likely to concoct such a story, and the story would naturally ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... common man plainly has no slightest material interest in the nationality or the place of residence of those who conduct this traffic; though all the facts go to say that in some puzzle-headed way the common man commonly persuades himself that it does make some occult sort of difference to him; so that he is commonly willing to pay something substantial toward subsidising businessmen of his own nationality, in the way of a protective ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... law of wills and causes The law of inerrancy Hostility to the revision of King James's translation of the Bible The law of unity Working of these laws seen in the great rabbinical schools The law of allegorical interpretation Philo Judaeus Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria Occult significance of numbers Origen Hilary of Poitiers and Jerome Augustine Gregory the Great Vain attempts to check the flood of allegorical interpretations Bede.—Savonarola Methods of modern criticism for the first time employed by Lorenzo Valla Erasmus Influence of the Reformation on ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... horn—have so little identity of tone, when they act on the same matter, the constituent gases of the air? Their differences proceed from some displacement of those constituents, from the way they act on the elements which are their affinity and which they return, modified by some occult and unknown process. If we knew what the process was, science and art would both be gainers. Whatever extends science ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... are, in short, as devoid of actual foundation as are the modern beliefs in the venomous properties of the toad, or the ancient beliefs in the occult and mystic powers of various parts of its frame when used in incantations. Shakespeare, whilst attributing to the toad venomous qualities, has yet immortalized it in his famous simile by crediting it with ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... of any weight has questioned him as to his devotion to these two persons, his replies have shown so complete an absence of ideas and of sense of his own interests, that there obviously must be some occult cause at work to which the petitioner begs to direct the eye of justice, inasmuch as it is impossible but that this cause should be criminal, malignant, and wrongful, or else of a nature to come under medical jurisdiction; unless this influence is of the kind ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... talk over the rot with that little white thing down at the Brier Bush," Raymond declared one night to that self of his that stood off on inspection; "what's the harm? She's got the occult bug, and I'm keen about it just now. No one will be the worse for me having the talk—she's all right and that veil of hers leaves us a lot freer to speak out than face to face would." And then Raymond switched on the lights ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... are necessary for the purpose of exhibiting distinctly some phases in the life of this dangerous and implacable woman who, by her affiliation with the Order of Jesuits, had acquired an occult and formidable power. For there is something even more menacing than a Jesuit: it is a Jesuits; and, when one has seen certain circles, it becomes evident that there exist, unhappily, many of those affiliated, who, more or less, uniformly dress (for the lay members of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... into a single will. He saw that Man is greater than men. He concluded that society ought to belong wholly to those distinguished beings who, to natural intelligence, acquired wisdom, and fortune, add a fanaticism hot enough to fuse into one casting these different forces. That done, their occult power, vast in action and in intensity, against which the social order would be helpless, would cast down all obstacles, blast all other wills, and give to each the devilish power of all. This world apart within ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... appeared the first number of a magazine called The Dark Blue. It was published in London, but was understood to represent in some occult way the thought and life of Young Oxford, and its contributors were mainly Oxford men. The first number contained an amazing ditty called "The Sun of my Songs." It was dark, and mystic, and transcendental, and unintelligible. It dealt extensively in ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... its Sanscrit origin. The truth is that an incredulous Western world puts no faith in Mahatmas. To it a Mahatma is a kind of spiritual Mrs. Harris, giving an address in Thibet at which no letters are delivered. Either, it says, there is no such person, or he is a fraudulent scamp with no greater occult powers—well, than ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... name of "history" (the folly of the "greatest number" is only its last form)—for that purpose a new type of philosopher and commander will some time or other be needed, at the very idea of which everything that has existed in the way of occult, terrible, and benevolent beings might look pale and dwarfed. The image of such leaders hovers before OUR eyes:—is it lawful for me to say it aloud, ye free spirits? The conditions which one would ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... upon one wheel round a shoulder of the banks and dashed out upon a rolling plain, across which the trail snaked to other farther hills that lay dim and low, a wavy line of blue, upon the horizon—the hills in whose heart Kuttarpur itself lay occult. And, by the roadside, in a compound fenced with camel-thorn, sat an aged and indigent dak-bungalow, marking the end of the first stage, the beginning ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... precipitates were suddenly called into existence; flames were disengaged without any adequate cause; explosions took place spontaneously. So much that was unexpected and unaccountable justified the title of "the occult science," "the black art." From being isolated marvels unconnected with one another, these facts had been united. The Chaldee notions of a soul of the world, and of indwelling spirits, had furnished a thread on which ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... seven, so we'll make ourselves into a society. We'll have a star with seven rays for our secret sign. It has a nice occult kind of smack about it. When we chalk that mark upon anybody's desk, it means we've got to reform her, whether she likes it ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... with which people are normally in contact. And apart from these specially favoured persons, the wide vogue of the belief in good and evil portents, in lucky and unlucky days, the attraction of the "occult" in fiction and in fact, all serve as evidence that belief in the supernatural is still a force with which one ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... cellar and found a bottle of Uncle Ebeneezer's old port, which, for some occult reason, had hitherto escaped. Mrs. Smithers, moved to joyful song, did herself proud in the matter of fried chicken and flaky biscuit. Dorothy had taken all the leaves out of the table, so that now it was cosily set for four, and placed a battered old brass candlestick, ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... herself for a moment; then suddenly looked aghast at the rifle, and with some occult and hideous ...
— His "Day In Court" - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... herself suggest to a person who was slow in making a reply. One of them was, "You will know everything perfectly when the right time comes." Mr. H. said, "My wife never could have imagined all this; there must have been some occult communication between her and Mrs. Thaxter. Neither do I think she ever heard before of John Laighton." Mrs. Thaxter evidently was satisfied that she had received messages from her father, who had been dead about two years; and though the ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... believe that the sage, who by his astrological knowledge is brought into relation with the celestial powers, can affect nature, alter the course of phenomena, and work miracles. The Kabbala forms part of the history of the marvelous and of occult science rather than of the history of philosophy. Nevertheless men of real learning were initiated and were infatuated, among them the marvelous Pico della Mirandola, Reuchlin, not less remarkable as humanist and Hebraist, who would have run grave risk at the hands of the Inquisition ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... majority of scientists, the problems of spirit intercourse have proved sufficiently attractive to stimulate a vast amount of experimentation and theorizing. The study of mediumship has necessarily become the study of consciousness and the occult powers of the human mind. In the centre a handful of fearless scientists: Crookes, Wallace, Richet, Flammarion, Morselli, Baraduc, Myers, Lombroso, Lodge, and Barrett; in the inner circle a number of academic investigators, ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... united the crowns of Leon and Castile, and attracted to his court many of the philosophers and learned men of the East. He was a poet closely connected with the Provencal troubadours of his time, and so skilled in astronomy and the occult sciences that his fame spread throughout Europe. He had more political, philosophical, and elegant learning than any man of his age, and made further advances in some of the exact sciences. At one period his consideration ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... successful rebellion, and is said to have reigned over all Egypt for six years. He got a name for wisdom and justice, but he could not alter that condition of affairs which had been gradually brought about by the slow working of various more or less occult causes, whereby Ethiopia had increased and Egypt diminished in power, their relative strength, as compared with former times, having become inverted. Ethiopia, being now the stronger, was sure to reassert herself, and did so in Bek-en-ranf's seventh year. ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... pomegranate is full of seeds—was positive that something had happened of importance, or no less positive that something of importance was going to happen, or that something of importance was actually happening. In some occult manner it had leaked out that a number of the youths of Florence were absent from their dwellings. It gradually became known that all those that were thus absent were members of the same party, and that party the one which was held in no great affection ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... power of reason is no occult power: it is simply the capacity for finding and establishing systems of means for the attainment of ends; or it may be defined as the power of acquiring experience and of self-applying this experience in ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... Many have the regular prophetic gift; practically every one of them foresaw the assassination of McKinley. Most of them, however, are gifted in curing diseases. The typical letter reads as follows: "There is a young man living here who seems to be endowed with a wonderful occult power by the use of which he is able to diagnose almost any human ailment. He goes into a trance, and while in this condition the name of the subject is given him, and then without any further questions he ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... to say that I use the term Mystic, as applied to the larger portion of this volume, in its technical sense to signify my own initiation into some of the more occult phases of metropolitan existence. It is only to the Spiritualistic, or concluding portion of my work, that the word applies in its ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... heredity must be occult and complex. The offspring of a rebellious and disobedient child, is certainly entitled to no filial instincts; and some day the strain will tell, and you will overwhelm your mother with ingratitude, black as that ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them. The waving of the boughs in the storm, is new to me and old. It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. Its effect is like that of a higher thought ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... force or of peace, so must the true reflection of it in the labour of the landscape gardener create not merely an impression of beauty, but a mood in the soul. The grand old landscape gardeners, those Buddhist monks who first introduced the art into Japan, and subsequently developed it into an almost occult science, carried their theory yet farther than this. They held it possible to express moral lessons in the design of a garden, and abstract ideas, such as Chastity, Faith, Piety, Content, Calm, and Connubial Bliss. Therefore were gardens contrived according to the ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... now Comtesse de Rudolstadt, continues her European tour. She reaches Berlin, and we find her at the Court of Frederick II. We now have Voltaire, La Mettrie, the Sans-Souci suppers, Cagliostro, Saint-Germain and the occult sciences. Frederick II sends Consuelo to prison. There appears to be no reason for this, unless it be that in order to escape she must first have been imprisoned. Some mysterious rescuers take a great interest in ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... dreary laboratory were to a certain extent salutary; he was conscious of being involved in an affair not altogether reputable, and for many years afterwards he clung bravely to the commonplace, and rejected all occasions of occult investigation. Indeed, on some homeopathic principle, he for some time attended the seances of distinguished mediums, hoping that the clumsy tricks of these gentlemen would make him altogether disgusted with mysticism of every kind, but ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... remarked casually, "I have been doing 'What is Wrong' all this morning." And one minister of religion moved quite sharply in his chair when I told him (as he understood it) that I had to run upstairs and do what was wrong, but should be down again in a minute. Exactly of what occult vice they silently accused me I cannot conjecture, but I know of what I accuse myself; and that is, of having written a very shapeless and inadequate book, and one quite unworthy to be dedicated to you. As far as literature goes, this book is what is ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... few softly spoken words, and John walked forward, but he could not forget how singularly the empty loom had appealed to him on that last morning he had walked through the mill with Greenwood. There are strange coincidences and links in events of which we know nothing at all—occult, untraceable altogether, material, yet having distinct influences not over matter but over some ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... an occult force which was exercised to great advantage by my people. This force eliminates both distance and obstruction and exposes to view the object sought even if it is located on the opposite side of the globe. Any mind, if sufficiently strong, can contract ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... banished his effigy in a paper junk, launched on the river at night, in flame. A geomancer proclaimed that a bamboo grove behind the town formed an angle most correct, germane, and pleasant to the Azure Dragon and the White Tiger, whose occult currents, male and female, run throughout Nature. For any or all of these reasons, the town was delivered. The pestilence vanished, as though it had come but to grant Monsieur Jolivet his silence, and to ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... at all, so fur as we could see. What material wrought out of the Occult World wuz piled up ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... plants. So that I know not where we can hope to find any absolute distinction between animals and plants, unless we return to their mode of nutrition, and inquire whether certain differences of a more occult character than those imagined to exist by Cuvier, and which certainly hold good for the vast majority of animals and plants, ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... as completely as would have been the case if he were invested with a power to charm in some occult way. Moreover, every trace of his amiable, confiding smile was gone. His gaze was hard and cold and gleaming. His face was drawn into grim lines. When he spoke he talked smoothly, rapidly, and with an edge to his words which convinced his listener ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... say to the contrary, we hold strongly to the opinion that likings and dislikings among men and women and children are the result of some profound occult cause which has nothing whatever to do with experience. No doubt experience may afterwards come in to modify or intensify the feelings, but it is not the originating cause. If you say it is, how are we to account for love at first sight? Beauty has nothing necessarily to do with it, for men fall ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... would like to hold the magic wand giving that command over laughter and tears which is declared to be the highest achievement of imaginative literature. Only, to be a great magician one must surrender oneself to occult and irresponsible powers, either outside or within one's breast. We have all heard of simple men selling their souls for love or power to some grotesque devil. The most ordinary intelligence can perceive without much reflection that anything of the sort is bound to be a fool's bargain. I don't ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... For some occult reason the word "cheese" always excites Parliamentary merriment. Mr. GEORGE ROBERTS'S announcement that the Board of Trade had made arrangements by which a quantity of this commodity would be available for public use next week was greeted with the customary laughter. Upon Army requirements, he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... him until he was out of sight; for some occult reason, not comprehensible even to her, she felt interested in the old man, although she had never spoken to him; but he looked old and ill and lonely; three decided claims on Olivia's bountiful and ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... yet another excuse for processions: the Serapeum was a rival attraction to the temple of the Heavenly Maiden. If we may trust Tertullian, the Africans swore only by Serapis. Possibly Mithras had also worshippers in Carthage. Anyhow, the occult religions were fully represented there. Miracle-working was becoming more and more the basis even of paganism. Never had the soothsayers been more flourishing. Everybody, in secret, pried into the entrails of the sacrificial victims, ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... his beard worn like a collar and with an Italian accent mounted a stone post at the door of a liquor-seller in the Marche Lenoir, and read aloud a singular document, which seemed to emanate from an occult power. Groups formed around ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... to say whether or not I made a promise to Gordon Orme, or to say whether or not things mediaeval or occult belong with us to-day. Neither do I expect many to believe the strange truth about Gordon Orme. I only say it is hard to deny those ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... to answer them. Science had named the starry hosts, and computed their movements with wonderful skill; but what could it teach her of their origin and destiny? Absolutely nothing. And how stood her investigations in the more occult departments of psychology and ontology? An honest seeker of truth, what had these years of inquiry and speculation accomplished? Let her answer as, with face bowed on her palms, her eyes roved over ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... city of the sun, because there the worship of the sun had its chief centre and its most sacred shrines. It was the seat of the most ancient university in the world, to which youthful students came from all parts of the world, to learn the occult wisdom which the priests of On alone could teach. Thales, Solon, Eudoxus, Pythagoras, and Plato, all studied there, perhaps Moses too. It was also the birthplace of the sacred literature of Egypt, where were written on papyrus leaves the original ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... understanding palmistry, but I saw in her hand a queer little mark that Cheiro had explained to us from a chart. I took her hand in mine and all the conversation ceased to hear the pearls of wisdom which were about to drop from my lips. The duchesse was very much interested in the occult and known to be given to table tipping and the invocation ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... feature. Even those who never in the racing of horses felt any concern could not help but take in the outcome of this one a curious interest. The audacity of the prophecy, the very absurdity of it, presupposing, as it did, occult power, was in itself amusing. And when the curtain rose on the Suburban it was evident that to thousands what the Man Who Could Not Lose had foretold was a serious and ...
— The Man Who Could Not Lose • Richard Harding Davis
... Sphinx was simply a colossal magnet. Under the influence of that magnet the iron bands of the Halbrane's boat had been torn out and projected as though by the action of a catapult. This was the occult force that had irresistibly attracted everything made of iron on the Paracuta. And the boat itself would have shared the fate of the Halbrane's boat had a single bit of that metal been employed in its construction. Was it, then, the proximity of the magnetic ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... least I used to invite him to come, but he was dreamy like you and constantly mistook the date. He helped me enormously, and I miss him.... Well, the truest charity should be anything but formal, I think, and I saw at a glance that your case was exceptional, and that you also were Occult——" ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... that for some occult reason (which I have entirely forgotten) I trusted fervently that a Hungarian or Polish name might be given after the satisfactory "Yes" had been spelt out, but, alas! nothing ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... always had its hidden spring in a desire for the marvelous. The search for the philosopher's stone has done as much for chemistry as the legend of the elixir of life for exploration and geographical discovery. From the excitements of these suggestions of the occult, the world settled down into a reasonable understanding of the facts of which they were but the enlarged ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... all respect for French intelligence, denied the conclusiveness of French generalisations, which ascribed to women universal occult dominion, and traced all great ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Faith. Supernormal, not Supernatural. Supernormal, not Abnormal. The Prevailing Ignorance. Prejudice Against the Unusual. Great Changes Impending. The Naturalness of Occult Powers. The World of Vibrations. Super-sensible Vibrations. Unseen Worlds. Interpenetrating Planes and Worlds. Manifold Planes of Existence. Planes and Vibrations. The Higher Senses of Man. The World of Sensation. A Senseless World. The Elemental Sense. The Raw Material of Thought. The Evolution ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... of that occult rot, I don't doubt," groaned Roger. "Charley, stay till the fellows ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... highly probable that Anne Turner made coin out of the notes which her late husband, so inquisitive of mind, had left on matters much more occult than the manufacture of yellow starch and skin lotions. "It was also rumoured,'' says Mr Sabatini, "that she amassed gold in another and less licit manner: that she dabbled in fortune-telling and the arts ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... flying rags and tatters of a storm, and Valentin regarded it with a wistfulness unusual in such scientific natures as his. Perhaps such scientific natures have some psychic prevision of the most tremendous problem of their lives. From any such occult mood, at least, he quickly recovered, for he knew he was late, and that his guests had already begun to arrive. A glance at his drawing-room when he entered it was enough to make certain that his principal guest was not there, at any rate. He saw all the other pillars ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... given night she and the bewitched householder, together with his wife and four or five trusty friends with drawn swords, shut themselves up in a room, and commenced their mysterious ceremonial. There was the boiling of occult herbs; the roasting of a beeve's heart stuck full of nails and pins; the reading of certain passages from the family Bible; a mighty gesticulating with the swords, which were first thrust up the chimney to prevent the Black Witch ...
— Witchcraft and Devil Lore in the Channel Islands • John Linwood Pitts
... few moments the woman sat silent, scarcely daring to breathe in that artificial attitude. And then, whether from some occult sympathy in the touch, or God best knows what, a sudden fancy began to thrill her. She began by remembering an old pain that she had forgotten, an old horror that she had resolutely put away all these years. She recalled days of sickness ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... country of the ancient world had its peculiar Mysteries, dedicated to the occult worship of some especial and favorite god, and to the inculcation of a secret doctrine, very different from that which was taught in the public ceremonial of devotion. Thus in Persia the Mysteries were dedicated to Mithras, or the Sun; in Egypt, to Isis and Osiris; in Greece, ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... diversion, the boys, for they were boys at heart, although men in stature, set out to hunt a house; and were successful in finding one that suited their notions. Very soon it was furnished in Oriental style, and an inner room was fitted up with various occult instruments, calculated to inspire the minds of the vulgar with a wholesome dread. It was agreed that Barrington should make very little change in his wardrobe, and merely dye his hair and whiskers, and add a richer ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... met up frequent with that form of horned toad? Thar's nothin' you can lodge ag'inst 'em, nothin' at which a vig'lance committee can rope an' fasten; they're honest, well meanin', even gen'rous; an' yet thar they be, upholstered by nacher in some occult way with about the same chance of bein' pop'lar as a wet dog. Speakin' for myse'f, I feels sorry for these yere onforchoonate mavericks, condemned as they be at birth to go pirootin' from the cradle to the grave, meetin' everywhar ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... would most import us to know. We have his recorded convictions on those questions which knock for answer at every heart,—on life and death, on love, on wealth and poverty, on the prizes of life and the ways whereby we come at them; on the characters of men, and the influences, occult and open, which affect their fortunes; and on those mysterious and demoniacal powers which defy our science and which yet interweave their malice and their gift in our brightest hours. Who ever read the volume of the Sonnets without finding that the poet had there revealed, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... occult to mortal eyes, Dorm on the herb with none to supervise, Carp the suave berries from the crescent vine, And bibe the flow ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... a great deal easier and pleasanter to believe in people," replied Mrs. Nimick, in a tone full of occult allusion, "and, of course, we all knew that Mr. Fleetwood would have a ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... reason, Mr. Samuel had decided to accept her claim; and that for some reason equally occult he meant to give the clergyman no choice but to ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... illness had ever been known in the district, and since it had not only baffled Mooty's skill, but had irreverently seized him—the only physician of credit and renown—its cause must be supernatural. Thus did he reason, as he began occult investigations. Jack and Rosey lay in their camp passively dying. Mooty prowled about, the sleeves of a discarded shirt tied under his distended jaws. No physical origin for the mysterious disease was found during the two days he devoted ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... she said, in astonishment. "Sara Lloyd, I mean, but I was dreaming, Sara dear. What is it?" and she sat up not a little disturbed, for Sara's name alone sufficed to arouse the latent fear of the "hysbis" or occult, always lurking ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... utterances. Whenever a fallen log or jutting bowlder gave us a chance to rest our load without the prospect of too much work in hoisting it again, we would set the canoe down, and that moment his lips would close. There seemed to be some occult connection between the motion of our walking and the activity of ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... and lighted by electricity. Mr. Bond ushered his visitors inside, closed the door, pressed a button, and immediately they shot aloft, landing ultimately in a kiosk in Count Sutri's garden at the top of the cliff. Feeling as if a magician had used occult means to transport them back to safety, the girls gazed round highly delighted to find themselves out of the cove. Their host, to whom they hastily confided some details of how they had penetrated into his premises, fetched a ladder, and by its ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... can't grasp it," said the doctor. "What were the scraps of a few Homeric handfuls compared to this? The whole Trojan war might be fought around a Verdun fort and a newspaper correspondent would give it no more than a sentence. I am not in the confidence of the occult powers"—the doctor threw Gertrude a twinkle—"but I have a hunch that the fate of the whole war hangs on the issue of Verdun. As Susan and Joffre say, it has no real military significance; but it has the tremendous significance of an Idea. If ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... trade than either of the firm would have imagined possible. For the past month the business had been comfortably accommodated in its enlarged quarters, and the two new floors were already habituated to the occult processes which competition and a minutely graded scale of prices impose upon even the most righteous of the trade. It is but fair to say, however, that Marshall & Belden always saw that their sugar was as saccharine as a specified price would ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... Alighierius, S. T. D.! Dante seems to imply that he began to devote himself to Philosophy and Theology shortly after Beatrice's death. (Convito, Tr. II. c. 13.) He compares himself to one who, "seeking silver, should, without meaning it, find gold, which an occult cause presents to him, not perhaps without the divine command." Here again apparently is an allusion to his having found Wisdom while he sought Learning. He had thought to find God in the beauty of his works, he learned to ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... so occult as to justify a doubt upon that subject; and moreover, Salome, lack of astuteness is far from being your greatest defect. My motive should eloquently plead pardon for my candor, if I venture to tell you that your frequent affectation ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... an incantation. Its merit lies less in its obvious meaning than in its occult power. There would seem, at first sight, to be no more in his words than in other words. But they are words of enchantment. No sooner are they pronounced, than the past is present and the distant near. New forms of beauty start at once into existence, and all the burial places ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... attended communion in spite of his unhappy memories of that sacrament, and was present at a Synod of the Herrnhut Community to which Fraeulein von Klettenberg belonged. Bound up with the Fraeulein's religion was a curious interest in the occult powers of nature from the point of view of their relation to the human body. It is with evident irony that Goethe relates how in his own case the efficacy of these occult powers was tried. Among the members of the religious community was a mysterious ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... uninjured by a postal smudge, looked familiar enough, and both envelop and paper resembled those which had brought her other communications from "The Firefly." But the text was magic, rank necromancy. No wizard who ever dealt in black letter treatises could have devised a more convincing proof of his occult powers than this straightforward offer made by the editor of "The Firefly." Four articles of five thousand words each,—tickets and 100 pounds awaiting her at a bank,—go to the Maloja-Kulm Hotel; leave London at the earliest possible date; please send photographs and suggestions ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... which, however, did not express what she felt: they rather gave the idea of storing up impressions to be re-acted upon by some interior power. She had a delicate complexion, a great deal of soft, black hair compactly dressed, and a neat figure. Her disposition was dreamy and self-willed; occult studies fascinated her, and she was passionately fond of moonlight. She was simply dressed in a white muslin frock, with a black ribbon around her slim waist; but the ribbon was clasped by a buckle of heavily chased gold, and her fingers had many rings on them, and looked—a ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... on the supposition that one mind could command an unlimited direction over any given number of limbs, provided they were all connected by joint and sinew. But suppose, through some occult and inconceivable means, these limbs were dis-associated, as to all material connexion; suppose, for instance, one mind with unlimited authority, governed the operations of two separate persons, would not this substantially, be only one person, seeing the directing ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... is the time for you to apply to yourself your magnetic maxims. Esperance is one of those creatures who are only born once in a hundred years or so; some come as preservers, like Joan of Arc; others serve as instruments of vengeance of some occult power" (Sardou was an ardent believer in the occult). "Your child is a force of nature, and nothing can prevent her destiny. The fact that you have seen her brilliant development in spite of the grey environment of her first sixteen years, should convince you of the uselessness of your protests ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... nation one sensible man who is exempt from this fancy, or who has soared above the effects of this fascination, these sympathies and antipathies—this natural magic? And besides, who can explain to us clearly and distinctly what these grand terms signify, and the manner of these operations so occult and so mysterious? It is trying to explain a thing which is obscure and doubtful, by another still more ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... rather remarkably handsome, when you considered how frequently his love-affairs had left disastrous souvenirs: yes, for a man in middle life so often patched up by quack doctors, Ormskirk looked wholesome enough, said Mr. Bulmer. He may have had his occult purposes, this poor cousin, but of Ormskirk he undoubtedly spoke with engaging candor. Here was no parasite cringingly praising his patron to the skies. The Duke's career was touched on, with its grimy passages no whit extenuated: before Dettingen ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... her body; refused to see the approach of corruption, which spares not youth or loveliness; seemed, in short, to have lost all count of the passage of time in his grief for the beloved Fastrada. At length he was approached by Turpin, Archbishop of Rheims, who had learnt, by occult means, the reason for the Emperor's strange infatuation. Going up to the dead Empress, he withdrew from her mouth a large diamond. At the same moment Charlemagne regained his senses, made arrangements for the burial of his wife, and left for ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... that staggered belief. The feat required thought: it required a faith so childlike as to verge on the imbecile. Conversation during deals had an awkward tendency towards discussion of the coal strike. As often as it drifted there the subject was changed very abruptly, just as if there was some occult reason for not speaking of so natural a topic. It concerned everybody, but it was rightly felt to concern ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... merely by outward act, but also by change of countenance; and doctors can tell some passions of the soul by the mere pulse. Much more then can angels, or even demons, the more deeply they penetrate those occult bodily modifications. Hence Augustine says (De divin. daemon.) that demons "sometimes with the greatest faculty learn man's dispositions, not only when expressed by speech, but even when conceived in thought, when the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... Not indeed that these penmen require any fresh inflation; for never has there been a race of professors in any art who have exceeded in solemnity and pretensions the practitioners in this simple and mechanical craft. I must leave to more ingenious investigators of human nature to reveal the occult cause which has operated such powerful delusions on these "Vive la Plume!" men, who have been generally observed to possess least intellectual ability in proportion to the excellence they have obtained in their own art. I suspect this maniacal vanity is peculiar to the writing-masters ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... form and the haunting mystery of the expression, and he felt for a moment as though he had been permitted to peer into the cabalistic darkness of an awful mystery, though he failed wholly to perceive its occult significance—if significance there ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... keen beyond words to express in their intuitive knowledge of human nature and the differentiation between man nature and woman nature. They are capable of using the outward and apparent motives of humanity for an effect, and secretly of plying the subtlest and most occult. ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... are taught day by day everywhere—to the lads in school and college and to the men in their occupations of life. Such qualities a community fit to govern itself must abundantly possess. There is nothing occult in the science of government. The administration in behalf of the people of the organization which they have ordered is nothing foreign to their own knowledge. They have ceased to consider themselves unfit for self-rule: they no longer think of calling ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... snake-charmer is the best known and most widely spread of them all. By occupation he is a professor of three occult sciences. First, he is a juggler, and in this art he has some skill. His masterpiece is the famous mango trick, which consists in making a miniature mango tree grow up in a few minutes, and even blossom and bear fruit, out of some bare spot which he ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... instances there co-exists an obvious cause for supporting-leg-lameness and an occult cause—a nail puncture. Where such complications are met, the practitioner is not necessarily guilty of neglect or carelessness when the nail puncture is not discovered at once, nevertheless, an examination is not complete until practically every possible cause of lameness has been located ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... everything connected with illumination, that the entire charge of the lighting of the house was left in his hands,—even to that of its stores of wax and tallow and oil; and great was the pleasure he derived, not only from the trust reposed in him, but from other more occult sources connected with the ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... out in full flood, sometimes trickling in painful drops, at the unknown will of the unseen hand which controls the flow? Is the 'law of the Spirit of life' at all revealed to us; or are the reasons occult, if there be any reasons at all other than a mere will that it shall be so? Surely, whilst we never can know all the depths of His counsels and all the solemn concourse of reasons which, to speak in man's language, determine the energy of His manifested ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... of “the twelve” enabled me to bear my part (of course a very humble one) in a conversation relative to occult science. Milnes once spread a report, that every gang of gipsies was found upon inquiry to have come last from a place to the westward, and to be about to make the next move in an eastern direction; either therefore they where to ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... of occult wisdom—had long since foretold this year as the first of the epoch of regeneration, and ever since the shrill ram's horn had heralded its birth, the souls of Sabbatai Zevi's disciples had been tense ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Little Ann. As it was, she kept them both, and in the course of three months the girl was Little Ann to almost every one in the house. Her normalness took the form of an instinct which amounted to genius for seeing what people ought to have, and in some occult way filling in bare or ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... gownsmen. A man may be famous in the Honour-lists and entirely unknown to the undergraduates: who elect kings and chieftains of their own, whom they admire and obey, as negro-gangs have private black sovereigns in their own body, to whom they pay an occult obedience, besides that which they publicly profess for their owners and drivers. Among the young ones Pen became famous and popular: not that he did much, but there was a general determination that he could do a great deal if he chose. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... separated by marks of race. She had tumbled up from childhood among native servants, who were almost her sole companions, and who had taught her curious things. She knew their stories and songs, and believed in more of their occult beliefs ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... unchastised. The Furies,[121] they said, are attendants on justice, and if the sun in heaven should transgress his path, they would punish him. The poets related that stone walls, and iron swords, and leathern thongs had an occult sympathy with the wrongs of their owners; that the belt which Ajax gave Hector[122] dragged the Trojan hero over the field at the wheels of the car of Achilles, and the sword which Hector gave Ajax was that on whose point ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... opera refined and extended the illusion that she had been transported out of the world by some occult agency. The wonderful creature that had taken her up out of her abandoned misery before the sordid shop-shutter appeared now in a fairy costume glittering with jewels. And the gnomes, the monsters and goblins appearing about her ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post |
