"Occult" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a simple form of love, the result of the mutual impulse of two hearts and two souls. But there is also assuredly an atrocious form, that tortures one cruelly, the result of the occult blending of two unlike personalities who detest each other at the same time that they ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... there, now from crag, now from coppice, and now from moor, all over the sultry stillness of the clouded landscape? Have you listened among mountains to the voice of streams, till you heard them prophesying change? Have you so mastered the occult science of mists, as that you can foretell each proud or fair Emergency, and the hour when grove, precipice, or plain, shall in sudden revelation be clothed with the pomp of sunshine? Are all Bewick's birds, and beasts, and fishes visible to your eyes in the woods, wastes, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... such a revelation no longer existed, and I had no desire needlessly to persecute a man whose iniquities could, at all events, harm no one but himself. And still, knowing from experience his talent for occult diplomacy, I took the precaution (without even remotely implicating Miss Hildegard) to put Mr. Pfeifer on his guard. One evening, as we were sitting alone in his library enjoying a confidential smoke, I related to him, ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... this work is not the enunciation of any special philosophy or doctrine, but rather is to give to the students a statement of the Truth that will serve to reconcile the many bits of occult knowledge that they may have acquired, but which are apparently opposed to each other and which often serve to discourage and disgust the beginner in the study. Our intent is not to erect a new Temple ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates
... is advanced 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 principle ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... be cherished above all others, "the first to be saved in fire or flood." It was the only relic of her lost love with his last good-by, and prayers and blessings. It was her magic talisman, still connecting her in some occult way with the vanished one. It was her anchor of hope, still promising in some mysterious manner the final return ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... tongue. It is curious to notice about this period the uprise of two didactic poets, both writing on alchymy, the chemistry of that day, and neither displaying a spark of genius. These are John Norton and George Ripley, both renowned for learning and knowledge of their beloved occult sciences. Their poems, that by Norton, entitled 'The Ordinal,' and that by Ripley, entitled 'The Compound of Alchemie,' are dry and rugged treatises, done into indifferent verse. One rather fine fancy occurs in the first of these. It is that of an alchymist who projected a bridge ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... affairs—are precisely those which are of value to every individual citizen, and which 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 in from other ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... time—all in good time," said Marvin, with that faith in some occult power, seemingly the Government and Providence working in conjunction, to which parsons and many women confide their worldly affairs and sit with ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... 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, under ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... might have seemed sensible enough; but, that being impracticable, it was the merest futility. He had never made a will; it cost him too much anguish to give away his money even on paper. And now it was virtually necessary that he should do so, or else, perhaps, his wealth would, by some occult process, be seized upon by the crown—a power which he had been accustomed to regard in the abstract with an antagonistic feeling, as being the root of queen's taxes. To leave all to his wife, with some slight pension to Mrs. Tadman, seemed the most obvious course. He had ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... part of a belief in the occult sympathy of the animal world with humanity, which, indeed, I am by no ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... author's poetical conception of the character and costume of his subject. A writer might, with the same sinister, short-sighted shrewdness, be accused of Heathenism for talking of Flora and Ceres in a poem on the Seasons! What are produced as the exclusive badges and occult proofs of Catholic bigotry, are nothing but the adventitious ornaments and external symbols, the gross and sensible language, in a word, the poetry of Christianity in general. What indeed shews the frivolousness of the whole inference is that Deckar, who is asserted by our critic to have contributed ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... about spiritual communion with human beings. My wife, who is an enthusiastic student of electro-biology, is disposed to believe that Weatherley's mind, overweighted by the knowledge of his forgery, was in some occult manner, and unconsciously to himself, constrained to act upon my own senses. I prefer, however, simply to narrate the facts. I may or may not have my own theory about those facts. The reader is at perfect liberty to form one of his own if he so pleases. I may mention ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... when thought is terribly and comprehensively sudden: the rudimentary processes of reasoning, by analogy and syllogism, so slow and so laborious, turn to divination. We have an occult vision, immediate and complete, into the obscure manner of life, and crowd an infinity of discovery into a very few seconds. It was so with Philip Rainham now. Lightmark had scarcely closed the door, against which he now stood in a black silence, ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... 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 tariff ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... hear of the magical influence of poetry. The expression in general means nothing: but, applied to the writings of Milton, it is most appropriate. His poetry acts like 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 ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... No Master may leave our humanity while that which He started as a human school is still existing upon earth. Some have passed away, and would no longer be spoken of as Masters—the name given to Them in the occult world is different—but Those who have passed away have passed away because Their religions are dead: the Masters of ancient Egypt, of ancient Chaldea, have gone from this earth into the mighty company of Those who no longer bear the burden of the flesh. But the Masters of every ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... School affording Theorems and Axiomes irrefragable, and to be admitted without Dispute by impartial Judges; and so useful withal, as to exempt us from the necessity of having recourse, for want of the knowledg of causes, to that Sanctuary of the igorant [Transcriber's Note: ignorant], Occult Qualities; since, I say, this Domestick Notion of the Chymists is so much overvalued by them, I cannot think it unfit, they should be made sensible of their mistake; and be admonish'd to take in more fruitful and comprehensive ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... middle of the road is characteristic of the genuine tramp. There must be some occult reason for this peculiarity, since in a general way, it is far easier going on the margin. Perhaps it is because he commands a better view of either side, with a regard to the possible onslaught of dogs. There is something about a man with a pack on his back ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... that the real "Paracelsus" cannot be understood without considerable excursions into the occult sciences, and he is quite right as to the illumination these provide, in proportionate degree as they are acquired by the reader; as a matter of course they enlarge his horizon, and offer him clues to unsuspected labyrinths; ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... art of making gold, by almost the unanimous consent of the adepts." Dr. Webster says, "The orthography of this word has undergone changes through a mere ignorance of its origin, than which nothing can be more obvious. It is the Arabic kimia, the occult art or science, from kamai, to conceal. This was originally the art or science now called alchemy; the art of converting baser metals into gold." Webster says ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 211, November 12, 1853 • Various
... human skill, which seems scarce compatible with reverential dependence upon the power above? Try to rid my mind of it as I may, yet still these chemical practitioners with their tinctures, and fumes, and braziers, and occult incantations, seem to me like Pharaoh's vain sorcerers, trying to beat down the will of heaven. Day and night, in all charity, I intercede for them, that heaven may not, in its own language, be provoked ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... was considerable liberality on the part of the officials (all paid for), and both Raleigh and Percy had each a garden to cultivate and walk in, and a still-room or laboratory in which to study and perform their ' magic.' Hariot was the master of both in these occult sciences. The ' furnace ' and the ' still' were at first Raleigh's chief amusement and study. Assaying and transfusing metals, distilling simples and compounds, concocting medicines, and testing antidotes, with exercises in chemistry and alchemy, were the studies of both Raleigh and the Earl. ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... these occult narratives were full of serious meaning for me, and my thoughts were far more with the two seniors above than with the two exacting female juniors below. However, the time passed, and presently Tempest's "Come along, youngster," apprised me that the ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... mass of literature called the Tantras. These books have an evil significance in the ordinary English ear, but not quite rightly. The Tantras are very useful books, very valuable and instructive; all occult science is to be found in them. But they are divisible into three classes: those that deal with white magic, those that deal with black magic, and those that deal with what we may call grey magic, a mixture of the two. Now magic is the word which ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... Stark was known already in the camp as a man who did not go out of his way to make friends or to render an accounting of his deeds, so it was natural that when he made her a show of kindness Necia should treat him with less coldness than might have been expected. The man had exercised an occult influence upon her from the time she first saw him at Lee's cabin, but it was too vague for definite feeling, and she had been too strongly swayed by Poleon and her father in their attitude towards him to be conscious of it. Finding him now, however, in a gentle humor, ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... noticing the beauty of the scene. He was not only troubled, he was seriously embarrassed. The hint thrown out by his little brother about the Koshare had struck him; for it led to the inference that the child had knowledge of secret arts and occult practices of which even he, Okoya, although on the verge of manhood, had never received any intimation. Far more yet than this knowledge, which Shyuote might have obtained through mere accident, the hint at unpleasant ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... Fates they cannot avert in some figure occult, He foresaw in a moment each evil result Of the quarrel now imminent. There, face to face, 'Mid the ruins and tombs of a long-perish'd race, With, for witness, the stern Autumn Sky overhead, And beneath them, unnoticed, the graves, and the dead, Those two men had met, as it were on ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... Nature, and incapable of scientific verification in the modern sense, and the fabled manifestations of the same. He loses no opportunity of trying to peer behind the curtain, and of seeking—honestly enough—to formulate those various pseudo-sciences, politely called occult, which have now fallen into ridicule and disrepute with all except the charlatan and the dupe, who are always with us. Where he occupies in the De Subtilitate one page in considering those things which lie outside Nature—demons, ghosts, incantations, ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... a vast amount of heat and energy, Henri, seized by some occult and inexplicable emotion, burst without warning into loud and fitful weeping, the sound whereof resembled the yelling of a tortured savage,—and Babette, petrified at first by the appalling noise, presently gave way likewise, ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... of the Targums, that of Jonathan and the Yerushalmi, tell the same fanciful story about these stones, Aben Ezra and R. Shemuel ben Meir among others adopt the opposite and common-sense interpretation which assigns to the word in Gen. xxviii. ii, no such occult meaning. ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... detective agency, situated just off Broadway and Eighth Street, had a large office divided into several small offices. For some occult reason only one person could get in or out at a time, and this made confidential conversation a necessity rather than a matter of choice. The senior member of the firm was in when Von Barwig called. Be it understood at the beginning that this large, stout personage, who invariably ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... it to come any day. So each morning, after vainly proposing that they play truant, he would go away alleging important business, an appointment, or illness, just at the very moment when his companions were going to their classes. But by some occult, thaumaturgic art Tadeo passed the examinations, was beloved by the professors, and had before him ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... evening, my friends," the one Pash was saying, "a very remarkable lady—if I may use so democratic a term in the connection—to whom the limits of Time and Space are empty words, and before whose supreme Will the most portentous Forces of Occult Nature mutely confess themselves her attending slaves—" But at that moment the rolling drums of Kiang-ti's thunder drowned his words, although he subsequently raised his voice above it to entreat that any knives or other articles of a ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... Boxes and papers 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 to ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... question, "is there an existence after death," been approached with the most earnest hopes to solve as one of the greatest mysteries. Shelley devoted a vast amount of energy to the elucidation of this occult, yet overt, truth; and in one ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... for sixty; he studied Ross Courtney, and knew he would never do anything but kill animals all his life; and he studied the working of the Gezireh Palace Hotel, and saw a fortune rising out of it for the proprietors. But apart from these ordinary surface things, he studied other matters—"occult" peculiarities of temperament, "coincidences," strange occurrences generally. He could read the Egyptian hieroglyphs perfectly, and he understood the difference between "royal cartouche" scarabei and Birmingham-manufactured ones. He was never dull; he had plenty to do; and he took everything ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... 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 ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... concerned him was the occult tie between him and Miss Roots. Up to the day fixed for his departure he was drawn by an irresistible fascination to Miss Roots. His manner to her became marked by an extreme gentleness and sympathy. Of course it was impossible to believe that it was Miss Roots who ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... occult power controlled these savages? The fugitives looked without understanding, fearing lest the charm that enchained Kai-Koumou's tribe ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... 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 chapters of the oldest book ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... new photography to brain study. The relation of the new rays to thought rays is being eagerly discussed in what may be called the non-exact circles and journals; and all that numerous group of inquirers into the occult, the believers in clairvoyance, spiritualism, telepathy, and kindred orders of alleged phenomena, are confident of finding in the new force long-sought facts in proof of their claims. Professor Neusser ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... in these communities, the separation of the sexes is not merely intermittent; it has become chronic. The two elements of the population live separately." Durkheim proceeds to argue that the origin of the occult powers attributed to the feminine organism is to be found in primitive ideas concerning blood. Not only menstrual blood but any kind of blood is the object of such feelings among savage and barbarous peoples. All sorts of precautions must be observed with ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... where we were, and to return home by torchlight. The conversation at table was lively. The prince could not forbear relating his adventure of the key, which excited general astonishment. A warm dispute on the subject presently took place. Most of the company positively maintained that the pretended occult sciences were nothing better than juggling tricks. The French abbe, who had drank rather too much wine, challenged the whole tribe of ghosts, the English lord uttered blasphemies, and the musician made a cross to exorcise the devil. Some few of the company, amongst whom was the prince, contended ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... occult powers make the guests, both men and women, realise that the beautiful Princess is someone with very special gifts, which one or two of them would like to learn more about. But in the very process ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... 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 ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... droll to see how this "meek and gentle" fellow met blackbird impudence. If one of the sable gentry came down too near a dove, the latter gave a little hop and rustled his feathers, but did not move one step away. For some occult reason the blackbird seemed to respect this mild protest, and did not ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... of Phillida and Ethan Vere seemed to her more moving and wonderful than any story she could tell me. I was amazed and humbled to find that she rated my ability to make music as a lofty art among the occult sciences. ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... when parting with his Boy too often pays off arrears of charity in his certificate; and besides, the prudent Boy always has his papers read to him and eliminates anything detrimental to his interests. But there must be marks by which, if you were to study them closely, you might distinguish the occult qualities of Boys and divide them into genera and orders. The subject only wants its Linnaeus. If ever I gird myself for my magnum opus, I am determined it shall be a "Compendious Guide to ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... They were made so that the Finn MacCool, the champion of the giants, could take a running jump over to Scotland and he going deer-hunting in the forests of Argyll. So the country folk said, but wee Shane thought different, knew different. The Druids had made it for their own occult designs, the Druids, that terrible, powerful clan with their magic batons, and their sinister cursing-stones, and their long, ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... during his work on the Mass, as we have seen. It was never thenceforth allowed to fall into abeyance, but was developed in direct ratio with his withdrawal from the world. An atavism from some remote Aryan ancestry inclined him, as in the case of so many Germans, to mysticism and the occult. It was a condition which had its compensations. That there were periods when he saw visions may be conjectured by the character of the last quartets. When they were written, Beethoven was in the ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... who thought with him savagely repelled this movement towards a national unity which would embrace all classes and creeds to the forgetfulness of past wrongs, animosities and deep divisions. It seemed to have got into their minds that the appearance of the Irish Reform Association covered some occult plot between Lord Dunraven, Mr Wyndham, Sir Antony MacDonnell and Mr O'Brien. Mr Davitt declared that "No party or leader can consent to accept the Dunraven substitute without betraying a national trust." Others of lesser note denounced the new movement and its ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... to frame, and strengthen you to obey, just laws of trade, there is no hope left for you. No political constitution can ennoble knaves; no privileges can assist them; no possessions enrich them. Their gains are occult curses; comfortless loss their truest blessing; failure and pain Nature's only mercy to them. Look to it, therefore, first that you get some wholesome honesty for the foundation of all things. Without the resolution in your hearts to do good work, so long as your right hands have motion in them; ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... a question, and although people were shy of alluding to Rebecca, she yet seemed to know, in some occult and ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... science or the Vedas or Persian, our admiration for him went on increasing, and my kinsman, a theosophist, was firmly convinced that our fellow-passenger must have been supernaturally inspired by some strange "magnetism" or "occult power," by an "astral body" or something of that kind. He listened to the tritest saying that fell from the lips of our extraordinary companion with devotional rapture, and secretly took down notes of his conversation. I fancy that the extraordinary man saw this, and was ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... sightless, like somnambulists. Only mechanically they kept the trail, and why they did so they could not have told. No coherent thoughts passed through their brains. But always the trees, frost-rimed, drifted past like phantoms; always the occult influences of the North loomed large on their horizon like mirages, dwindled in the actuality, but threatened again in the bigness of mystery when they had passed. The North was near, threatening, driving ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... narrowed within the limits of half-blinded men. And in such a subject as we are to study to-day, certain grooves have been made, certain ruts as it were, in which the human mind is running, and I know that in laying before you the occult truth, I must needs, at some points, come into clash with details of a tradition that is rather repeated by memory than either understood or the truths beneath it grasped. Pardon me then, my brothers, ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... a long while between the two worlds, it was thought, but the real spring was coming on, and all nature was reviving. She had never quite wanted to die, so at the lowest ebb she seemed to will herself back to life by some occult power. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... The French lawyer is simply a man extensively acquainted with the statutes of his country; but the English or American lawyer resembles the hierophants of Egypt, for, like them, he is the sole interpreter of an occult science. ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... a most good-natured man, but of melancholy temperament, pottering, and timid, with a bent for everything mysterious and occult.... A half-whispered ah! was his habitual exclamation; he even died with this exclamation on his lips, two years after ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... the sailor's confidence in the tutelary deity of his island was absolute, and, certainly, the occult power, manifested until now in so many inexplicable ways, appeared to be unlimited; but also it knew how to escape the colonists' most minute researches, for, in spite of all their efforts, in spite of the more than zeal,—the obstinacy,— with which they carried on their ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... poor, and laden with debt' ('eran muy pobres y estaban cargados de deudas'): 'Coleccion de los articulos de la Esperanza, sobre la Historia del Reinado de Carlos III.', p. 435. Madrid, 1859. *3* They were expressly proclaimed to be 'ocultas y reservadas'. Carlos III., in defence of his 'occult' and 'reserved' reasons, said, 'mis razones, solo Dios y yo debemos conocerlas' ('Reinado de Carlos III.', vol. iii., p. 120. Ferrer del Rio, Madrid, 1856). No doubt Carlos III. satisfied his conscience with this dictum, but it is permissible ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... hangs about it, with 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 ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... know' or suspect. To begin, then, of what sort is the mystery—physical, mental, moral, historical, scientific, occult? Any kind of hint will ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... disgrace. She never felt quite sure, in herself, whether she were wrong, or whether the others were wrong. She had not done her lessons: well, she did not see any reason why she should do her lessons, if she did not want to. Was there some occult reason why she should? Were these people, schoolmistresses, representatives of some mystic Right, some Higher Good? They seemed to think so themselves. But she could not for her life see why a woman should bully and insult her because she did not know thirty lines of ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... but wouldn't it be possible, Godfrey, to explain all this by hypnosis, or occult influence, or something ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... are accustomed to make by night in summer. There are several kinds of fish in it, different both to the taste and the sight from those elsewhere. It is divided into two parts by the river Jordan. Now Panium is thought to be the fountain of Jordan, but in reality it is carried thither after an occult manner from the place called Phiala: this place lies as you go up to Trachonitis, and is a hundred and twenty furlongs from Cesarea, and is not far out of the road on the right hand; and indeed it hath its name of Phiala [vial or bowl] very justly, from the roundness of its circumference, ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... very low level; small joy either for the maker or the user. Pure art, a fine-spun specialty, a process carried on by an elect few who openly despise the unappreciative many. Art has become an occult profession requiring a long special education even to enjoy, and evolving a jargon of criticism which becomes more ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... 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
... would willingly do any kind action that did not seriously interfere with his comfort, or make too heavy a draft upon his pocket. His self-indulgence, which was quite blameless, unless surfeit is a fault, was the basis of an interest in occult themes, which was the means of even higher diversion to Minver. He liked to have Rulledge approach Wanhope from this side, in the invincible persuasion that the psychologist would be interested in these themes by the law of his science, though ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... mine in Mexico is known by the picturesque and mysterious name of The Four Fingers. It originally belonged to an Aztec tribe, and its location is known to one surviving descendant—a man possessing wonderful occult power. Should any person unlawfully discover its whereabouts, four of his fingers are mysteriously removed, and one by one returned to him. The appearance of the final fourth betokens his swift and ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... also an honorific term mikag['e], applied to divinities and emperors, which signifies "august aspect," "sacred presence," etc.... No literal rendering can suggest the effect, in the fifth line, of the latter reading. Kag['e] signifies "shadow," "aspect," and "power"—especially occult power; the honorific prefix mi, attached to names and attributes of divinities, may ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... range included historical treatises concerning his favorite Pirates (Quaker though he was); fiction, with the same Pirates as principals; Americanized version of Old World fairy tales; boy stories of the Middle Ages, still best sellers to growing lads; stories of the occult, such as In Tenebras and To the Soil of the Earth, which, if newly published, would be hailed as contributions to our ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... second apparition rose from behind the rock at the back of the cavern, the first figure, which I had believed up to now really to be the negro cook's ghost or spirit, permitted for some occult purpose or other to revisit the earth, also jumped up out of the corner, ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... that, to produce effect at the moment, there is hardly any crime so dark or desperate of which, in the excitement of thus acting upon the imaginations of others, he would not have hinted that he had been guilty; and it has sometimes occurred to me that the occult cause of his lady's separation from him, round which herself and her legal adviser have thrown such formidable mystery, may have been nothing more, after all, than some imposture of this kind, some dimly hinted ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... is, Mr Cobden, it cannot be denied, fills for the present a large space in the public eye; and so he will continue to fill until occult party supports are withdrawn, and, having served the turn, he is left to the natural operation of the principles of gravitation, and to sink to the nothingness from which he has been forced up by the political ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... who drove me here," continued the father, "told me a curious story. It seems that Mr. Crisp here has toiled and moiled for many years, keeping you in comparative luxury and idleness. Not a word, sir. It's an open secret. For some occult reason he likes to pay this price for your company. Having supported you so long, I presume he is prepared to support you ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... point out—surprising though the necessity be—that, if the biometrical conclusion be valid, what it demonstrates must surely be not the occult working of certain changes in the germ-plasm, for instance, of a father, because a certain number of his germ-cells, after separation from his body, have gone to form new individuals (changes which ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... was no longer talking at random, but slowly, with his eyes on the collar he held in his hand, like a scholar in his closet, perusing the occult ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... This had not occurred to her before. But love is not to be turned from its object by trifles. She was all that we have more than once described her to be; but she was not a meta-physician or a philosopher, capable of comprehending and explaining occult mysteries. Enough for her if she loved Miles and Miles loved her, and then, even if he did not deserve her love, she would remain true—secretly but unalterably true—to him as the needle is to ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... the invading hordes of the Persian. We can see how it came to be cultivated among the mercenaries and professional soldiers of Pyrrhus and Hannibal. But what was the motive power in the case of Rome? Dismissing the notion of occult qualities of race, we look for a rational explanation in the circumstances of the plain which was the cradle of the ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... hold of magic on the minds of men is shown by the fact that it has persisted up to the present day. Its basis is a belief in occult powers and the conviction that man may attain to mastery over them. Certain forms of this belief, called theosophical, are held by many at the present day; it is supposed that men are capable of transcending the ordinary limitations of humanity. In general, ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... appeared at Windygates on the heels of the returning servant. Among the long list of human weaknesses, a passion for poultry seems to have its practical advantages (in the shape of eggs) as compared with the more occult frenzies for collecting snuff-boxes and fiddles, and amassing autographs and old postage-stamps. When the mistress of Craig Fernie was duly announced to the mistress of Windygates, Lady Lundie developed a sense of humor for the first time in her life. Her ladyship ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... of newspaper editors are not catalogued in print at Paris, as in America; but their influence being more occult, is not the less powerful, and it is this feeling that leads people to pay more attention to this or that leading article than to mere news. The announcement of a treaty having been concluded between certain powers of Europe, may not lower the funds; but if an influential ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... are the occult cabalistical books, full of darkness and quirks and queer terms, in which is hidden away, somewhere, a rule or twist or turn that will help the wrong side ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... and quite involuntary habit of getting French prizes. They were the only ones he ever got and he never tried to get them. But though the thing was quite mysterious to him, and though he made every effort to avoid it, it went on, being evidently a part of some occult natural law. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... with himself. Her energy increased with the difficulties of life; she had all the secret heroism necessary to her position; religion inspired her with those desires which support the angel appointed to protect a Christian soul—occult poesy, allegorical ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... understood of the proceedings or of the scope 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
... 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 spirit of the Roman ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... foiled, as Burke put it, because the turnspit in the king's kitchen was a member of parliament. Such sinecures and the pensions on the civil list or the Irish establishment provided the funds by which the king could build up a personal influence, which was yet occult, irresponsible, and corrupt. The measure passed by Burke in 1782[2] made a beginning in the ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... great variety of salutary medicaments into Europe. The Spanish Arabs, in particular, are commended by Sprengel above their brethren for their observations on the practice of medicine. [41] But whatever real knowledge they possessed was corrupted by their inveterate propensity for mystical and occult science. They too often exhausted both health and fortune in fruitless researches after the elixir of life and the philosopher's stone. Their medical prescriptions were regulated by the aspect of the stars. Their physics ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... their influence on human and terrestrial affairs, was through long usage firmly established in the public mind. Indeed, at this time, astronomy was regarded as a handmaid to astrology; for, with the aid of astronomical calculation, the professors of this occult science were enabled to predict the positions of the planets, and by this means practised their art with an apparent ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... griffins, the nightmare brood carved on the capitals, porches, and pulpits of pre-Franciscan churches, are surely not, as orthodox antiquarians assure us, mere fanciful symbols of the Church's vigilance and virtues: they express too well the far-spread occult Manichean spirit, the belief in ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... Grammont, the greatest lion-tamer who ever lived, once told me that a man in love with a woman could not control lions; that when a man falls in love he loses that intangible, mysterious quality—call it mesmerism or whatever you like—the occult force that dominates beasts. And he said that the lions knew it, that they perceived it sometimes even before the man himself was aware that he ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... own gift, and if others satisfy our craving for destruction and beauty, and yet others our longing for simplification and rational form, the suggestions he brings of mystery and passion, of secret despairs and occult ecstasies, of strange renunciations and stranger triumphs, are such as must quicken our sense of the whole weird game. Looking back over these astonishing books, it is curious to note the impression left of Dostoievsky's feeling for "Nature." No writer one has met with has less ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... finding the winds, birds, quadrupeds, and other assumed agencies of distribution improbable, he seeks, with Dr. Dwight, for "the seeds of an ancient vegetation," and, finding none by actual observation, concludes that nature has some occult, and thoroughly surreptitious, method of hiding them away, even in soils below the last glacial drift, where no microscope can possibly reach them. As the accounts of seeds taken from the mummy-cases of Egypt may answer the purposes of those seeking to palm ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... the revolutionary spirit as vehement as Burke's. This was Joseph de Maistre, one of the most learned, witty, and acute of all reactionary philosophers. De Maistre wrote a book on the Generative Principle of Political Constitutions. He could only find this principle in the operation of occult and supernatural forces, producing the half-divine legislators who figure mysteriously in the early history of nations. Hence he held, and with astonishing ingenuity enforced, the doctrine that nothing else could deliver Europe from the Satanic forces of revolution—he used the word ...
— Burke • John Morley
... said. "I thought so. More of the occult, I suppose. But I really wished to speak to ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... 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, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... on one side and incredulity on the other that I felt more satisfaction in listening to you than I have ever done when this subject has been the theme. That so many thousands of educated and intelligent people should yield their belief to so bold a delusion as this must be, if there be no occult cause at work, is inconceivable. By occult cause I mean, of course, nothing at all analogous to hidden trickery, but to the interference of some power with which the earth has been hitherto unacquainted. If it were not taking too great a liberty, I would ask you to call upon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... aughts," replied Sancho; and shaking his fingers he washed his whole hand in the river along which the boat was quietly gliding in midstream, not moved by any occult intelligence or invisible enchanter, but simply by the current, just there ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... to recover the lost property, and retrieve the honor of Munster, which he considered tarnished by his master having been duped by a stripling; when one morning a hand-bill was found in the area, intimating the residence in Town, pro bono publico, of a celebrated professor of the Occult Sciences; to whom was given the sublime art of divination, and who, by astrological and intuitive knowledge, would discover lost or stolen property, with infallible precision. Thady, whose credulity was of no inferior order, elate with the idea of consummating his wishes, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan |
