"Esoteric" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that art will no longer be an art of instinct, of ignorance which is hopeful to learn and strives to see; since ignorance is now no longer hopeful. In this and in many other ways it may differ from the past art, but in one thing it must needs be like it; it will not be an esoteric mystery shared by a little band of superior beings; it will be no more hierarchical than the art of past time was, but like it will be a gift of the people to the people, a thing which everybody can understand, and every one ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... Madison admitted, "but your government is certain that you can do this new work for them—in fact, that you are one of the few men prepared to locate this esoteric—that is, this odd aberration since I understand you often have to deal with it in analyzing the past. Doctor, we want you to find us ...
— Measure for a Loner • James Judson Harmon
... in order to find out why Godfrey was so convinced as to the teachings of the Bible. She was not old or mellowed enough to understand that the real reason must be discovered, not in the letter but in the spirit, that is in the esoteric meaning of the sayings as to receiving the Kingdom of Heaven like a child and the necessity of being born again. Therefore with a fierce intensity, thrusting aside the spirit and its promptings which perhaps are shadows of the only real truths, she wrestled with the letter. She read the Divines, ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... perversions are the heretical movements of the second century. They varied in every degree of departure from the generally accepted Christian tradition. Some, like the earlier Gnostics ( 21), and even the greater Gnostic systems ( 22), at least in their esoteric teaching, show that their principal inspiration was other than Christian; others, as the Gnosticism of Marcion ( 23) and the enthusiastic sect of the Montanists ( 25), seem to have built largely upon exaggerated Christian tenets, contained, indeed, in the ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... flocked around him. From these walks the name of Peripatetic was given to the School which he subsequently established. Like several others of the Greek philosophers, he had a select body of pupils, to whom he delivered his esoteric doctrines; and a larger, more promiscuous, and less accomplished company, to whom he delivered his exoteric lectures on less abstruse subjects. When he had resided thirteen years at Athens, he found ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... its silver chant: "Give way, all mobs! Yield! Retire! Abdicate!—Bow down-n-n-n-n! Make way for the Mob of Mobs, the irresistible, imperial, superior super-mob! Hearken to the Lord High Chief Commanding Dragon of the Esoteric Cohorts, the Exalted Immortal Grand Imperial Kleagle of ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... his most ardent admirer on the spot. Lucius Brady was a long-haired Irishman of letters, bard and bookworm, rebel and reviewer; in his ample leisure he was also the most enthusiastic criminologist in London. And as President of an exceedingly esoteric Society for the Cultivation of Criminals, even from London did he come for a prearranged series of interviews with the last and the most ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... estimation of primitive peoples is the cause that has prevailed on us to dwell so long on this point. That the cause of this want of prestige among savages is the lack of concentration in masses, not any esoteric peculiarity, is proved by the profound psychological appreciation of the distances created by nature, and still more by the expansion of tribal life into a barbarian one. The tenfold increase of the number of a tribe renders difficult a logical, ethical, or aesthetic selection of ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... theory of astronomy for the esoteric few. The Church is made up of men, and while priests for the most part are quite content to believe what the Church teaches, yet it has ever been recognized that there was one doctrine for the Few, and another for the Many—the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... catch the excitement in the air, the strange, laden undercurrent of spiritual salvation-something esoteric, undefinable, the ecstasy of a million souls pulsing to the throb of a supreme moment. He drew back, ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... Dana Da to tell a fortune for charity's sake, and, gave him five rupees, a dinner, and some old clothes. When he had eaten, Dana Da professed gratitude, and asked if there were anything he could do for his host—in the esoteric line. ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... always within my powers to appreciate their work. Sometimes the charm of what they played was too esoteric for my understanding. The sounds were unmeaning to me; not infrequently they were absolutely discordant. But I had confidence enough in the superiority of their intellects over mine not to condemn, still less ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... worse answered, however, than by a reference to his relations witb the priestly caste of Egypt and their wisdom. It is not to be believed that an Egyptian deity could inspire the Hebrews of Goshen with courage for the struggle against the Egyptians, or that an abstraction of esoteric speculation could become the national deity of Israel. It is not inconceivable indeed, although at the same time quite incapable of proof, that Moses was indebted to the Egyptian priests for certain advantages of personal culture, or that he borrowed ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... labyrinths of embroidery; at her throat a big knot of white lace, the ends of which fell winding in a creamy cascade to her waist (do they call the thing a jabot?); and then.... But what can a man trust himself to write of these esoteric matters? She carried herself extremely well, too: with grace, with distinction, her head held high, even thrown back a little, superciliously. She had an immense quantity of very lovely hair. Red hair? Yellow hair? Red hair with yellow lights burning in it? Yellow hair with ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... of ignorance are peculiarly cruel. Here, then, I find at last an opportunity of noticing in explanatory notes many details of the text which would escape the reader's observation, and I am confident that they will form a repertory of Eastern knowledge in its esoteric phase. The student who adds the notes of Lane ("Arabian Society," etc., before quoted) to mine will know as much of the Moslem East and more than many Europeans who have spent half their lives in Orient lands. For facility of reference ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... and refinements of tints for its effectiveness. It is significant that the absorbed and affected Rossetti did not like it; it is too frank and clear and open, and shows too little evidence of the morbid brooding and hysterical forcing of an arbitrary and esoteric note dear to the English pre-Raphaelites. It attests a delight in color, not a fondness for certain colors, hues, tints—a difference perfectly appreciable to either an unsophisticated or an educated sense. It has ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... Aura of anger and passion. The Aura of hate. The Aura of love. The Aura of churches, prisons, hospitals and places of vice. The Aura of character and of passing feeling. Astral atmospheres of buildings and places. Collective and composite auras. A key to some great and deep occult teachings, and esoteric mysteries. How the trained occultist is able to ascertain the character, and tendencies of ...
— The Human Aura - Astral Colors and Thought Forms • Swami Panchadasi
... I've never been fired," I returned; "you make me determined to do or die." Then I asked: "Is it a kind of esoteric message?" ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... on belief in the Tao, or the way, as the flow of the universe and the nature of things. Taoism encourages a principle of non-force, or wu-wei, as the means to live harmoniously with the Tao. Taoists believe the esoteric world is made up of a perfect harmonious balance and nature, while in the manifest world - particularly in the body - balance is distorted. The Three Jewels of the Tao - compassion, simplicity, and humility - serve as the basis ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... work-basket, at which he labors with enthusiasm, driving his pickaxe bill into it and cutting a big hole. It is most curious to see him set himself to pick a hole, for instance, in a close-woven rattan chair, or a firm piece of matting stretched upon the floor. Selecting, by some esoteric wisdom, the most vulnerable spot, he pushes and pounds and pokes till he gets the tip of his beak under a strand, and then pulls and jerks and twists till he draws it out of its place. After this the task is easy, and he spends hours over it, ending with a hole ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... Their actions acquire a superiority over those of man not by supernatural agencies or extraordinary developments of physical power; their preeminence lies in the quiet assumption of power, in the immediate sequence of action on volition. Their divinity is esoteric, consisting in attributes innate and not assumed. Action with them is power; but in the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... to admit even intimate friends to this confidence. But as eugenics spread, concealment of taint will become almost impracticable, and the facts may as well be confessed. But even then there will be limitations. There might be an esoteric book for the individual's own account of himself. Such important items as the incidence of puberty (though notorious in some communities) could not well be included in a book open even to the family circle, for generations to come. The quiescence of the genital sense, the sedatives naturally ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... Chautauque course, had prepared and delivered for the Social Science Club, which she organized, five papers ranging in subject from the home life of Rameses I., through a Survey of the Forces Dominating Michael Angelo, to the Influence of Esoteric Buddhism on Modern Political Tendencies. More than that, she had been elected president of the City Federation clubs and being a delegate to the National Federation from the State, was talked of for ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... know the best; how are we to gain this definite idea of the vast world of letters? There are some who appear to suppose that the "best" are known only to experts in an esoteric way, who may reveal to inquirers what schoolboys and betting-men describe as "tips." There are no "tips" in literature; the "best" authors are never dark horses; we need no "crammers" and "coaches" ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... consideration of the history of man in the post-mortem state, it is necessary, however briefly, to state the constitution of man, as viewed by the Esoteric Philosophy, for we must have in mind the constituents of his being ere we can understand their disintegration. Man then ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... Madigans meant to stand no nonsense from Kate. Other girls' big sisters had been known to assume superiority as their skirts lengthened, and to imply an esoteric something in their experience which younger sisters could not comprehend, and privileges which they might not share. But for them, the Madigans, though they were graciously willing to count Kate out of such outdoor sports as were incompatible with lengthened skirts, she might ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... thereof, sinking funds, haulage rates, and legal decisions and pending legislation affecting transportation. Or it might be more accurate to say that one endeavoured to engage the other in conversation on these esoteric matters, at which the other repeatedly shied, evincing a preference for those of ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... passage, and Mary, pushing away her papers, crossed the hall, and went to the library door. It was still closed, and she wavered in her turn, disliking to disturb her husband, yet anxious that he should not exceed his normal measure of work. As she stood there, balancing her impulses, the esoteric Trimmle returned with the announcement of luncheon, and Mary, thus impelled, opened the door and went ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... was an account of how a farmer got the best of a bunco steerer in New York City, and was delivered in the esoteric dialect of the Bowery. It was not long before willing smiles gave place to long-drawn faces of comic bewilderment, and, although Copernicus set his best example by artificial grins and pretended inward laughter, he could evoke naught but ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... be said briefly, in the primary meaning of the word, is the doctrine received by oral tradition as an important supplement to the written Jewish Scriptures, but the Cabala as we know it is an esoteric system which was formed under the influence of many streams of ancient thought-systems, and which came into vogue about the thirteenth century, though its devout adherents claimed that it had been orally transmitted through the intervening ages from Adam in Paradise. According to the teaching of ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... it must be distinctly understood that I am not responsible for anything that the President said; nor is he, either. He is not a great speaker; but whatever he says has an esoteric and an exoteric meaning; and some of his remarks about my vegetables went very deep. I said nothing to him whatever about politics, at which he seemed a good deal surprised: he said it was the first garden he had ever been in, with a man, when the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... in him, Two trades occult upon which knaves have thriven, Almost since man from Paradise was driven; Padding with pompous phrases worn and old Their scanty esoteric science dim, And gravely selling, at their weight in gold, Placebos colored to their patients' whim. Man's noblest mission here too oft is made, In heathen as in Christian lands, a trade. Holy the task to comfort and console The tortured body and the sin-sick soul, But pain and sorrow, even ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... ancient times, none were allowed participation in the Higher Mysteries, without having proved their fitness for the reception of esoteric truth, so in these days only those seem to be permitted to breathe the hidden essence in Shelley, who have realized the acute phases of spiritality. Among the few who have enjoyed these bi-fold gifts, none have ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... understood save by the initiated of such craft, trade or profession. It may be correct, according to the rules of grammar, but it is not universal; it is confined to certain parts and localities and is only intelligible to those for whom it is intended. In short, it is an esoteric language which only the initiated can understand. The jargon, or patter, of thieves is cant and it is only understood by thieves who have been let into its significance; the initiated language of professional gamblers is cant, and ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... no doubt was his exoteric teaching, but Professors Hanky and Panky have assured me most solemnly that his esoteric teaching was as I have given it. By the way, these gentlemen are both, I understand, at Sunch'ston, and I think it quite likely that I shall have a visit from them this afternoon. If you do not know them I should have great pleasure in introducing ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... worlds, were to Mrs. Widesworth propositions which her perfect health and unmitigated prosperity continually proved. That, in a theological point of view, everything was wrong, she considered an esoteric condiment to add piquancy to the loaves and fishes which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... her doubtingly, although the idea appealed to him. Outriding his admiration of the idea, however, was a recurrence of his old impression of Romola Borria. He knew that he never had been a match for her cunning, her esoteric knowledge of China. ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... divulged, because the victims prefer to suffer loss rather than have their names dragged into a publicity which, to say the least, would reflect on them discreditably. For these, and other obvious reasons, many kinds of secret crimes flourish and abound in the esoteric life of great cities. In New York, where money is often rapidly acquired, and where little curiosity is manifested as to the mode of its acquisition, there are naturally many facilities for putting black-mailing schemes into ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... was after the examples of Mohammedan rules that Frederick traded on his own account in all parts of the Mediterranean, reserving to himself the monopoly of many commodities, and restricting in various ways the commerce of his subjects. The Fatimite Caliphs, with all their esoteric unbelief, were, at least in their earlier history, tolerant of all the differences in the religious faith of their people; Frederick, on the other hand, crowned his system of government by a religious inquisition, which will seem the more reprehensible ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... peoples, it was assumed, without question, that the myths could not really be, or originally have been, irrational and absurd: they must conceal, under their seeming absurdity and outwardly irrational appearance, some truth. They must have had, originally, some esoteric meaning. They must have conveyed—allegorically, indeed—some profound truths, known or revealed to sages of old, which it was the business of modern students to re-discover in mythology. And accordingly profound truths—scientific, cosmographic, astronomical, geographical, philosophic ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons
... over-professionalism, from the reign of which in Germany his own writings, which sin by being 'literary,' have suffered loss of credit. Philosophy, he says, has long assumed in Germany the character of being an esoteric and occult science. There is a genuine fear of popularity. Simplicity of statement is deemed synonymous with hollowness and shallowness. He recalls an old professor saying to him once: 'Yes, we philosophers, ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... to particulars, enter into detail, go into detail, come to the point. Adj. special, particular, individual, specific, proper, personal, original, private, respective, definite, determinate, especial, certain, esoteric, endemic, partial, party, peculiar, appropriate, several, characteristic, diagnostic, exclusive; singular &c (exceptional) 83; idiomatic; idiotypical; typical. this, that; yon, yonder. Adv. specially, especially, particularly &c adj.; in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... we do know—not through reason but through sheer instinct: We cannot venture to meet again—that way. For I, it seems, am a man like other men except that I lack character; and you are—you! still unchanged—with all the mystery of attraction, all the magic force of vitality, all the esoteric subtlety with which you enveloped me the first ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... furthermore from the influence of his rather poetic and dreaming nature, I began to show a half wistful intensity of interest in things occult, mysterious and difficult. We left New York in 1882, and it was then that I read for diversion in my long ride to California, Colonel Olcutt's Esoteric Buddhism. ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... universal use of the rattle among the Indians in their sacred dances is very significant. The meaning of the snake song is unknown to the Indians who sing it. The words are probably either archaic or remnants of a sacred language or mystic words of an esoteric priesthood. ...
— Contribution to Passamaquoddy Folk-Lore • J. Walter Fewkes
... Sir George in these days was very cordial, greeting him with that genial esoteric warmth which is always felt by one English country gentleman with a large estate for another equally blessed. Six months ago, when it was believed that Ralph had sold his inheritance to his uncle, Sir George when he met the ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... reticent about certain dark mysteries, which he alluded to under the resounding title of Siberian Magic. The reticence wore off in a week or two under the influence of an entire lack of general curiosity, and Leonard began to make more detailed allusions to the enormous powers which this new esoteric force, to use his own description of it, conferred on the initiated few who knew how to wield it. His aunt, Cecilia Hoops, who loved sensation perhaps rather better than she loved the truth, gave him as clamorous an advertisement as anyone could ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... the weight and importance of Linda's fish, a little explanation is necessary. Hauptmann was not merely a philologer, which is a formidable thing in itself, but he belonged to the esoteric group that deals with languages which have no literature. As he had often remarked, any fool could compile a grammar of a language that has left extensive documents; the process was almost mechanical, but to reconstruct a ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... fatal to human bodies—but Doggie found his bed very hard lying. And it smelt sour and sickly. For nights, in spite of fatigue, he could not sleep. His mates sang and talked and bandied jests and sarcasms of esoteric meaning. Some of the recruits from factories or farms satirized their officers for peculiarities common to their social caste and gave grotesque imitations of their mode of speech. Doggie wondered, but held his peace. The deadly ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... he now saw how it was that dancers are better paid than great poets, and why the ballet forms in diplomatic circles an inexhaustible subject of conversation. By Apis! how great is the number of the esoteric, and how small the array of the esoteric frequenters of the theatre! There sit the stupid audience, gaping and admiring leaps and attitudes, studying anatomy in the positions of Lemiere, and applauding the entrechats of Roehnisch, prattling ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... that matter, neither Britain, France, Belgium, (nor the United States with her 186-odd variants of Christianity in her 186-odd religious sects), grew out of political cynicism, least of all out of some aloof system of esoteric idealism. ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... conclusion drawn from this passage by Isidore Geoffroy, that Buffon had modified his opinions, and was inclined to believe in a more limited mutability than he had done a few years earlier. His exoteric position is still identical with what it was in the outset, and his esoteric may be seen from the spirit which is ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... military. The military profession serves on both the land and the sea, in armies and navies; and while both the land and the sea branches are exacting in their demands, the sea or naval branch is the more exacting of the two; by reason of the fact that the naval profession is the more esoteric, the more apart from the others, the more peculiar. In all the naval countries, suitable youths are taken in hand by their governments, and initiated into the "mysteries" of the naval profession—mysteries that would always remain mysteries to them, if their initiation were ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... essences, pomades, head-gears from France, dishes or ornaments from China, then already beginning to be fashionable; not to mention drugs of various descriptions, chiefly for the use of the ladies, and partly by other services, more or less connected with the esoteric branches of ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... by man either intuitively or rationally, and these were harmonised with the Bible by a process of lifting the veil from the text, and thus penetrating to the true meaning hidden beneath the letter. Allegorical and esoteric exegesis always had this aim: to find written what had been otherwise found. Honour was thus done to the Scriptures, though the latter were somewhat cavalierly treated in the process; Philo's doctrine (at the beginning of the Christian era) and the great canonical book of ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... evidences of antiquity, and to silence a voice that bore obnoxious testimony. The notion of tradition underwent a change; it was required to produce what it had not preserved. The Fathers had spoken of the unwritten teaching of the apostles, which was to be sought in the churches they had founded, of esoteric doctrines, and views which must be of apostolic origin because they are universal, of the inspiration of general Councils, and a revelation continued beyond the New Testament. But the Council of Trent resisted the conclusions which this language seemed ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... not think that this either will tell the tale, but I do think there is a story to be told—I imagine an esoteric wing to the Unionist Party. I imagine that Party includes a secret organisation—they may be Orangemen, they may be Masons, and, if there be such, I would dearly like to know what the metaphysic of their position is, and how they square it with any idea ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... Froude perhaps a little, Maitland, one might believe, to some extent,[8] Professor Bury, Lord knows, neither that nor any other emotion comprehensible in man. To the don, indeed, the absence of the past is one of the factors in his fascinating, esoteric game: were some astounding document to appear that should make the origin and constitution of the mediaeval manor as clear as daylight, the problem would lose its interest, the agile don would find it too easy for him. The equipment ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... ideas, almost two diametrically opposite worlds—the road to the one and the road to the other lie miles apart. To understand that fact thoroughly—this is almost enough, in the Orient, to make one a sage. The Brahmins knew it, Plato knew it, every student of the esoteric knows it. When, for example, a man gets any pleasure out of the notion that he has been saved from sin, it is not necessary for him to be actually sinful, but merely to feel sinful. But when faith is thus exalted above everything else, it necessarily follows ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... answer him by ruling out modern poetry from the argument. There was more good poetry, neither complex, nor erotic, nor esoteric, written before our generation than even a maker of anthologies is likely to read. But I am not willing to dodge the issue so readily. There is modern poetry for every reader who is competent to read poetry at all. If there is none too much of it, that is his own fault. ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... abolished, and its possession prohibited. Even the utterance of any word denoting Colour, except by the Circles or by qualified scientific teachers, was punished by a severe penalty. Only at our University in some of the very highest and most esoteric classes—which I myself have never been privileged to attend—it is understood that the sparing use of Colour is still sanctioned for the purpose of illustrating some of the deeper problems of mathematics. But of this I can only speak ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... the poems, and there is the question of the rusticity or at least simplicity of the form and language. It is possible to advocate the introduction of Boccaccio's 'nonnulli sensus' and yet demand that, whatever the esoteric interpretation of which the poem may be capable, the outward expression shall be appropriate to the apparent condition of the speakers; while on the other hand it is possible to confine the meaning to the evident ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... hideously monotonous mutton chop and potato which so many millions of unimaginative Anglo-Saxons are content to swallow on each recurring day. And Mrs. Fay, her landlady, had a soul; and her skill in cooking was her pride and glory. Cookery was to her what poetry and the worship of Humanity, and Esoteric Buddhism are to others; and from the time when she began life as a kitchen-maid in a small hotel, she had followed her art with singleness of purpose and unflagging zeal. She felt it as a kind of degradation to have ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... twofold creation of the world and a double process of development (an esoteric and an exoteric revelation) of God himself. The creation of the ideal world, as a free act of love, is a non-deducible fact; the theogonic process, on the contrary, is a necessary event by which God becomes a unity returning from division to ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... principal source of this contentment, for he was a young man—he wasn't really young, but you always thought of him as young—of infinite potentialities; Burnaby, just back from some esoteric work in Roumania, whither he had gone after the War, and in Washington for the night and greatly pleased to accept an invitation for dinner; but essential as he was, Burnaby was only part of the tableau arranged. To meet him, Mrs. Ennis had asked her best, for the time being, friend, Mimi ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... being treated quite so insultingly DE HAUT EN BAS, from the height of esoteric art to the depth of general exoteric amateurism, replied, hotly, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... profit, rather indeed the reverse. They have been forced from me by earnestness of heart, and they express my most serious convictions. For seventeen years they have been lying in my mind, continually thought of and pondered over. I was not more than eighteen when an inner and esoteric meaning began to come to me from all the visible universe, and indefinable aspirations filled me. I found them in the grass fields, under the trees, on the hill-tops, at sunrise, and in the night. There was a deeper meaning everywhere. The sun burned with it, the broad ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... 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 esoteric yearly. ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... this it would appear that some, at least, of the English clergy have adopted the Jesuit principle, practically so convenient, by which any one may have an esoteric religion for himself as the comfortable lining of the cloak, and an esoteric religion for other people as the outside of the cloak. Meanwhile these clergymen are deeply respected, whilst honest men whose opinions are not one whit more heretical are ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... avuncular and less than cousinly; they are tender without being romantic, and confiding without being burdensome. He has the private entree at chhoti hazri, or early breakfast; he sees loose and flowing robes that are only for esoteric disciples; he has the private entree at five o'clock tea and hears plans for the evening campaign openly discussed. He is quite behind the scenes. He hears the earliest whispers of engagements and flirtations. He can give a stone to the Press Commissioner in the gossip handicap, and win ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... Berosus, that we have nothing to proceed upon beyond a few disfigured fragments.[121] And yet Chaldaeism comprises a great mass of teachings; he whom we know as "the divine Zoroaster" had been preceded by twelve others, and esoteric doctrine was as well known in Chaldaea as ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... twenty-five, he looked considerably older. I tried to find out what he had been up to, but, with the air of mystery he affects, he would go into no details. He gave me to understand that he had sojourned in lands where the white man had never been before, and had learnt esoteric secrets which overthrew the foundations of modern science. It seemed to me that he had coarsened in mind as well as in appearance. I do not know if it was due to my own development since the old days at Oxford, and to my greater knowledge of the world, but he ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... disputatious. In truth, his quickness in discovering and apprehending distinctions and analogies was such as a veteran judge might envy. The lawyers of the Duchy of Lancaster were astonished to find in an unprofessional man so strong a relish for the esoteric parts of their science, and complained that as soon as they had split a hair, Lord Holland proceeded to split the filaments into filaments still finer. In a mind less happily constituted, there might have been ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... work of practical instructions, by Tson-kha-pa, in two portions, one for ecclesiastical and exoteric purposes, the other for esoteric use. "To make ready" for Dubjed, is to prepare the vessels used for seership, such as mirrors and crystals. The "other selves," refers to the fellow students. Unless the greatest harmony reigns among ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky
... with somewhat of a manner, asking for an immediate cup of hot water, and to Lilly there was something esoteric even in that. The sturdy, fine machine of her own body had the crass ability to start off the day with bacon and eggs. She blushed for the healthiness of ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... sacrificing to ideals. And what is more, quite superior, virtuous people, religious in the best sense of the word, are apt to have, besides the ostensible and perhaps rather obsolete one of churches and meeting-houses, another cultus, esoteric, unspoken but acted upon, of which the priests and casuists are ladies'-maids ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... into the domain of spiritual things, and has dealt, with more daring than knowledge, with esoteric mysteries. The great reading public knows little of these matters, because, as a rule, they have been expressed by writers whose works are too abstruse to catch the popular ear. It is only when they are handled by writers of imaginative fiction that they become popularly known at all. In 'The ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... carries us by means of the careless expenditure of many passages of somewhat ribald beauty, along with him, captive to his pervasive charm. We are constantly reminded, in endless, almost wearisome, imagery, of gold and purple, foreign languages, esoteric philosophies, foods the names of which strike the ear as graciously as they themselves might strike the tongue. From Huysmans he has learned the formula for ravishing all our senses. Words are often used for their own sakes to call up images, colour flits across every page, across, ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... esoteric combinations are not at all necessary for the postulation of wildly variant life forms. Earth itself was prolific in its variations; Earthlike planets were equally inventive. Carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, plus varying proportions of phosphorus, potassium, iodine, ...
— Cum Grano Salis • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the other hand, you think of your intended ride as the most romantic of all your possibilities; of the Campagna generally as an illimitable experience. One's rides certainly give Rome an inordinate scope for the reflective—by which I suppose I mean after all the aesthetic and the "esoteric"—life. To dwell in a city which, much as you grumble at it, is after all very fairly a modern city; with crowds and shops and theatres and cafes and balls and receptions and dinner-parties, and ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... love teach youthful maidens anything at all of Botany? Or Mathematics cause a thrill erotic in the heart? Will flirting give a lady brains—if she hasn't got any?— Or solve the esoteric problems hid in Ray's Third Part? You may lose yourself completely in pursuing Etiology, Or safely throw yourself away upon a Cubic Rule; But nowhere else in nature will you find such useless "ology," As in a man who's dead in love and makes ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... body over the face of which broods the Spirit from beyond the Great Range." And when that time was well established a change was made in the organisation of the Society. It was no longer, so to speak, one and indivisible, but two parts were made—Exoteric and Esoteric; and, as you know, for some time the Colonel fought against that, thinking it meant an unwise and dangerous division of authority in the Society, until, as he was coming over here with his mind in opposition ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... which Mr. Bryan never enjoyed, of a correct Republican upbringing and a mind. The Republican upbringing and the mind have come of late years to preponderate. Looking at Mr. Hughes to-day, you could not tell him from a Republican, except perhaps by his mind, though such esoteric Republicans as Brandegee, Cabot Lodge, and Knox ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... understand, meant, as she knew well, long days and weeks of solitary brooding; therefore inventions, and, indeed, all unnecessary work, were in his case to be discouraged. Such solitary brooding also drew from the mind of Morris a vague mist of thought about matters esoteric which, to Mary's belief, had the properties of a miasma that crept like poison through his being. She wished for no more star-gazing, no more mysticism, and, above all, no more memories of the interloping woman who, in his ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... the company examined even microscopically the response of the stranger to Mr. Winterblossom, straining their ingenuity to discover, in the most ordinary expressions, a deeper and esoteric meaning, expressive of something mysterious, and not meant to meet the eye. Mr. Meiklewham, the writer, dwelt on the word circumstances, which he ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... exhausted. It had just made a gigantic effort. It was overcome with sleep, and, like a child worn out by a long day, before going to sleep, it was saying its prayers. The gate of dreams had reopened; in the train of religion came little puffs of theosophy, mysticism, esoteric faiths, occultism to visit the chambers of the Western mind. Even philosophy was wavering. Their gods of thought, Bergson and William James, were tottering. Even science was attainted, even science was showing the signs of ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... us the spectacle of things having a profound meaning and yet carnally interpreted. Christian boldness and Christian liberty must be reconquered; it is the church which is heretical, the church whose sight is troubled and her heart timid. Whether we will or no, there is an esoteric doctrine, there is a relative revelation; each man enters into God so much as God enters into him, or as Angelus, [Footnote: Angelus Silesius, otherwise Johannes Soheffler, the German seventeenth century hymn-writer, whose tender and mystical verses have been popularized in England ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... visible expression of the enthusiasm of a people who were achieving communal liberty. Very far from being the gift of the Church, it was in its beginning an unconscious protest against the hieratic, impassive, esoteric art of the religious orders. We find only laymen in the long list of master-workmen and painters who have left us the innumerable Gothic monuments which stud the soil of Europe. Those artists of genius who, like those of Greece, knew how to speak to the populace ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... inexorable law by which Artifice must perish from time to time. That such branches of painting as the staining of glass or the illuminating of manuscripts should fall into disuse seems, in comparison, so likely; these were esoteric arts; they died with the monastic spirit. But personal appearance is art's very basis. The painting of the face is the first kind of painting men can have known. To make beautiful things—is it not an impulse laid upon ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... esoteric idiom, unintelligible to the vulgar, have endeavoured to write down in books how the human mind works in its house,—and I believe they have not succeeded very well. They have broken into this house when ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... resemblance between Man and the higher Ape, so frequently cited by Darwinists as pointing to some ancestors common to both, presents an interesting problem, the proper solution of which is to be sought for in the esoteric explanation of the ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... geniality in the Drumtochty manner, but it was simply the reticence of a subtle and conscientious people. Intellect with us had been brought to so fine an edge by the Shorter Catechism that it could detect endless distinctions, and was ever on the watch against inaccuracy. Farmers who could state the esoteric doctrine of "spiritual independence" between the stilts of the plough, and talked familiarly of "co-ordinate jurisdiction with mutual subordination," were not likely to fall into the vice of generalisation. When James Soutar was in good fettle, he could trace the whole ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... quotations it will be seen that the occult teachings as to speech are directly at variance with the theories of many philologists and evolutionists. A first speech which was like song— another and more developed speech which is held sacred—an esoteric side to speech in which the elements of our conventional languages (i.e. the letters) are so arranged that speech becomes potent enough to guide the elements, and human speech becomes the speech of the gods—there is no kinship between this ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... confidential intimacy, he gave no invitation. Boswell felt it with all the jealousy of a little mind. "Dr. Goldsmith," says he, in his memoirs, "being a privileged man, went with him, strutting away, and calling to me with an air of superiority, like that of an esoteric over an esoteric disciple of a sage of antiquity, 'I go to Miss Williams.' I confess I then envied him this mighty privilege, of which he seemed to be so proud; but it was not long before I obtained the same ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... secret and perilous doctrines—Communism, for instance, under some modification, or rancorous Jacobinism. And secondly, suppose that for the present, or in the existing stage of the secret society, there really were no esoteric and mischievous doctrine propagated, there was at any rate the custom established of meeting together in secret, of corresponding by an alphabet of conventional signals, and of acting by an impenetrable organization, always applicable to evil purposes, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... realism as if it were a satire of Lucian, and its style is belittled with petty affectations of rhetoric. It is the enduring beauty of the conception that has continued to fascinate. Hence we may say of 'The Golden Ass' in its entirety, that whether readers are interested in esoteric meanings to be divined, or in the author's vivid sketches of his own period, the novel has a charm which long centuries have ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... exact descriptions. As regards the latter, the Staff officers had reason to be reassured. No living journalist could have reproduced the scientific account of the sighting arrangements given to us in an esoteric yet quite comprehensible language by the high priest of these guns, who was a middle-aged artillery Captain. It lasted about twenty minutes. It was complete, final, unchallengeable. At intervals the artillery Captain himself admitted ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... with the rule of three. Your question really implies that we pretend to complete knowledge not only of all past and present phenomena, but of all that are possible in the future, and we leave all that sort of thing to the adepts of esoteric Buddhism. Our pretensions are infinitely more modest. We have succeeded in finding out the rules of action of a little bit of the universe; we call these rules "laws of nature," not because anybody knows whether they bind ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... consisting of various sects that arose in the Apostolic age of Christianity, and that sought, agreeably to the philosophic opinions which they had severally embraced, to extract an esoteric meaning out of the letter of Scripture and the facts especially of the Gospel history, such as only those of superior speculative insight could appreciate; they set a higher value on Knowledge (gnosis, whence their name) ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the mystics of Islam, and their poetry, while often externally anacreontic—bacchanalian and erotic—possesses an esoteric, spiritual signification: the sensual world is employed to symbolise that which is to be apprehended only by the inward sense. Most of the great poets of Persia, Afghanistan, and Turkey are generally understood to have ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... am aware that these things are but trifles to the Theosophists and Esoteric Buddhists, who profess to project their astral bodies, and play many other hocus pocus tricks of transmitting voices and articles to immense distances. They may therefore be able to explain these phenomena, I cannot; still I have the belief ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... himself and of the exponents of his purely esoteric doctrine, belong to the reflective type which will presently be given special consideration. But with the ordinary believer, even where an extraneous but almost inevitable polytheism is least in evidence, the religious experience consists in substantially ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... said he, "that 'Nil admirari' is the devil's favorite text; and he could not choose a better to introduce his pupils into the more esoteric parts of his doctrine. And therefore I have always looked upon a man infected with the disorder of anti-romance as one who has lost the finest part of his nature and his best protection ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... observed the professor, "and it's natural that some of their learning should have descended to their posterity. We have been clever in giving names to such phenomena, but we know perhaps even less about their esoteric meaning than the Aztecans did. I should judge that Miriam would be what is called a good 'subject.' Kamaiakan discovered that fact; and as for what followed, we can only infer it from the results. I was always an admirer of Kamaiakan; ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... the lowest deeps of the deep Elizabethan Art; that Art which no plummet, till now, has ever sounded. It was locked with its utmost reach of traditionary cunning. It was buried in the inmost recesses of the esoteric Elizabethan learning. It was tied with a knot that had passed the scrutiny and baffled the sword of an old, suspicious, dying, military government—a knot that none could cut—a knot that must ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... this class used as adjectives mostly follow the same rule, as 'sporadic', 'dynamic', 'pneumatic', 'esoteric', 'philanthropic', 'emetic', 'panegyric'. As nouns the earlier introductions threw the stress back, as 'heretic', 'arithmetic', but later words follow the adjectives, as 'emetic', 'enclitic', 'panegyric'. As for 'politic', which is ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... own leaders, and the leaders of one another. Schopenhauer must have organized a labor party in his salad days. And yet one can't help feeling that he committed suicide as a philosopher by not committing it as a man. He claims kinship with Buddha, too; though Esoteric Buddhism at least seems spheres removed from the philosophy of 'The Will and the Idea,' What a wonderful woman Madame Blavatsky must be. I can't say I follow her, for she is up in the clouds nearly all the time, and I haven't as yet developed an astral body. Shall I send ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... appeal to me; the pseudo-Grecian temple in the corner, with water cascading down its steps, the make-believe clouds which float across the ceiling, the tables of glass lighted from beneath—all this, ordinarily, seems trivial and banal; but occasionally, in an esoteric mood, I like Murray's, and can even find something picturesque and romantic in bright gowns, and gleaming shoulders, and handsome faces seen amid these bizarre surroundings. And then, of course, there is always the cooking, which leaves ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... seems like learned trifling. The name may belong to that ancient dialect from which are derived many of the names of the days and months in the native calendar, and which, as an esoteric language, was in use among the Maya priests, as was also one among the Aztecs of Mexico. Instances of this, in fact, are very common among the American aborigines, and no doubt many words were thus preserved which could not be analyzed ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various
... in the typical music of our day. It is a curious experience to turn from the music of such typical moderns as Loeffler and Debussy, with its elusive melodic contours, its continual avoidance of definite patterns, its passion for the esoteric and its horror of direct communication, to the music of such a writer as MacDowell. For he has accomplished the difficult and perilous feat of writing frankly without obviousness, simply without triteness. ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... we have intimated, a fast-growing esoteric literature of exposition and comment,— part of it simply the expression of the disciple's loyal homage, part of it designed to win and educate the reluctant Philistine intellect to the comforts of a true faith. In the latter class ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... business, and particularly how you invented it, I don't understand at all," said Sanderson, "but just that phase—I do." He reflected. "These happen to be a series of gestures—connected with a certain branch of esoteric Masonry. Probably you know. Or else—HOW?" He reflected still further. "I do not see I can do any harm in telling you just the proper twist. After all, if you know, you know; if ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... of the nation but its root as well. All the gracious gifts of Heaven flowed through them. Though they kept themselves socially aloof from the populace, they set a moral standard for them and guided them by their example. I admit Bushido had its esoteric and exoteric teachings; these were eudemonistic, looking after the welfare and happiness of the commonalty, while those were aretaic, emphasizing the practice of virtues ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... infinitely little; above all, bows to the ground before the red-wigged Bashaw, Flattener of the Earth, whom for Madame's sake and his own he is anxious to be well with. "Fall on your face nine times, ye esoteric of only Impure Science!"—intimates Maupertuis to mankind. "By all means!" answers M. de Voltaire, doing it with alacrity; with a kind of loyalty, one can perceive, and also with a hypocrisy grounded on love of peace. If ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... His esoteric project was the original project of Christopher Columbus, extended and modified. Columbus had hoped to establish a communication between our quarter of the world and India across the great western ocean. But he was stopped by an unexpected obstacle. The ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... been guarded most jealously. For many thousands of years it has been the real occult and esoteric teaching, while the Oriental metaphysics has been open and exoteric. It could not be understood without the key, and the key was in the physics known only to "the tried and approved disciple." A little has leaked out—enough ...
— Ancient and Modern Physics • Thomas E. Willson
... one and only charge, to Strathmiglo in Fife. The marriage was fruitful and a happy one, although there is a hint in the record of some religious difference upon which one would like to dwell if the subject were not too esoteric for this generation. The minister showed a certain indulgence, and so long as his wife lived he never employed the paraphrases in the solemn worship of the sanctuary. She was a woman of provident mind. Shortly ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... Eric Till just before the War Was steeped in esoteric And antinomian lore, Now verging on the mystic, Now darkly symbolistic, Now frankly Futuristic, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various
... of Papias [210:2]. This explanation might have been left to itself if it had remained as a mere hypothesis of Overbeck's, but it has been recently accepted by Hilgenfeld. He speaks of these five 'exoteric' books, as attached to 'the five esoteric or genuine books;' and to this source he attributes not only the account of the four Maries, but also a notice relating to the death of St John which is given by Georgius Hamartolos on the authority of ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... a moral training in clearness and tangibility. An occult impulse to vice is hidden in all vagueness and in all teachings meant to be heard but not to be understood. Nature is never obscure, never occult, never esoteric. She must be questioned in earnest, else she will not reply. But to every serious question she returns a serious answer. "Simple, natural, and true" should make the impression of simplicity and truth. Truth and virtue are but opposite sides of the same shield. As ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... meetings were held in a public-house in Advocate's Close; the meaning of its initials (as recently divulged by Mr. Baxter) was Liberty, Justice, Reverence; no doubt understood by the members in some fresh and esoteric sense ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his mastery of that esoteric English by which the members of various sets, smart, sporting and other, conceal the meaning of what they say from outsiders, especially from foreigners who have acquired their knowledge of our language by painful study ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... pleasure in good verses simply for their own sake. In the eighteenth century a new volume of verse became at once the talk of the town and every cultivated person read it. Now we have allowed poetry to become a thing so esoteric in its exaltation that only the poetically minded can read it. Neither the Excursion nor the Epipsychidion could possibly be read by the great public. All the world could and did read Pope's Epistles and Goldsmith's Traveller. ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... esoteric meaning see Pilgrimage ii. 24. I passed through Al-Akik in July when it was dry as summer dust and its "beautiful trees" were mere ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... Contrast with such a revelation the cave-muttered oracles of heathenism and their paltering double sense. Be sure that when God speaks, He speaks clearly and to all, and that in Christianity there is no esoteric teaching for a few initiated only, while the multitude ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... Smyrna about 140 A.D., must be a good authority, that the Apostle St. John lived on till the times of Trajan (98-117 A.D.). If so, it is very possible that the Gospel was not yet published, or barely published, when Clement of Rome wrote his Epistle to the Corinthians. Neither, considering its almost esoteric character and the slow rate at which such a work would travel at first, should we be very much surprised if it was not in the hands of Barnabas (probably in Alexandria) and Hermas (at Rome). In no ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... discussing with herself the probability of Langham's appearance. 'Whom shall I introduce him to first?' she pondered, while she shook hands. 'The poet? I see mamma is now struggling with him. The 'cellist with the hair—or the lady in Greek dress—or the esoteric Buddhist? What a fascinating selection! I had really no notion we should ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he is one creed outside, and another inside. So remember, if you buy him, one of him is called Esoteric, ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... of Feuh-hi." I hope readers will not ask me to explain this, for I have not the slightest idea what it means. Yet I am persuaded that for ages the symbol has had occult and probably mathematical meanings for the esoteric student. ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... system of doctrine, comprehending at once the past, the present, and the future condition of man. Jesus Christ divulged the sacred and eternal truths contained in these views to mankind, and Christianity, in its abstract purity, became the exoteric expression of the esoteric doctrines of the poetry and wisdom of antiquity. The incorporation of the Celtic nations with the exhausted population of the south, impressed upon it the figure of the poetry existing in their mythology and institutions. The result was a ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... the word begins in close connexion with the Greek mysteries.[3] A mystic [Greek: mystes] is one who has been, or is being, initiated into some esoteric knowledge of Divine things, about which he must keep his mouth shut ([Greek: myein]); or, possibly, he is one whose eyes are still shut, one who is not yet an [Greek: epoptes].[4] The word was taken ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... amused, and then, remembering that the joke was not apparent, "If you'd ever seen her, even for a moment, you'd know why I laugh. She is the embodiment of sophisticated cosmopolitanism, an expert on all sorts of esoteric, aesthetic and philosophic matters, book-binding, historic lace, the Vedanta creed, Chinese porcelains, Provencal poetry, ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... or any of them should excite my admiration and respect. Really, if you must know it, Mr. Towers, this is where I grow humble-minded in your presence. I am fascinated with your ability to deal with the usually indefinable, the esoteric side of art,—the esoteric side of life by interpretation. And here I discover a shadowy, ghostly likeness between you and this George Santayana. You do not think toward the same ends, or write in the same style, but ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... mistake which gathers a nimbus of mystic sense around every book excessively revered. Thus the Greeks fancied an inner and mystical sense in Homer; and thus Italian professors expound the esoteric significance of Dante. ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... realism of the oxen at Laon. It gave play to the artist in his effort for variety of decoration, and it amused the people,—probably the Virgin also was not above being amused;—now and then it seems about to suggest what you would call an esoteric meaning, that is to say, a meaning which each one of us can consider private property reserved for our own amusement, and from which the public is excluded; yet, in truth, in the Virgin's churches the public is never excluded, ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... least hardly anyone. A few of the children, perhaps, and a very, very few grown-up people—persons who believe in Faith-healing and Esoteric Buddhism, and Thought-reading, and Arbitration, and Phonetic Spelling, can believe in anything, except what their mothers taught them on their knees. All of these ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... conscious and full abandonment of the soul, and this, however carefully led up to, and prepared for with tears and renunciations, was not, could not, be made, except at a set moment of time. Faith, in an esoteric and almost symbolic sense, was necessary, and could not be a result of argument, but was a state of heart. In these opinions my Father departed in no ways from the strict evangelical doctrine of the Protestant churches, but he held it in a mode and with a severity peculiar ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... true value of the meetings became apparent, the day was changed to Wednesday. The Dinner was established ostensibly for the discussion and determining of the "big cut," and the function became as exclusive and esoteric as a Masonic initiation. From that day to this it has, with few exceptions, been held januis clausis; and beside it the Literary Ladies' Dinner and Bluebeard's Chamber are as open to the world and free from mystery as the ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... the outward relations of life, as we are constituted, in order for men and women to understand each other. Friendship is not philanthropy: it is a refined and subtile sentiment which binds hearts together in similar labors and experiences. It must be confessed it is exclusive, esoteric,—a sort of moral freemasonry. Jerome, and the great bishops, and the illustrious ladies to whom I allude, all belonged to the same social ranks. They spent their leisure hours together, read the same books, and kindled at the same sentiments. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... of Egypt" will be found to be an Occult library in itself, a textbook of esoteric knowledge, setting forth the "wisdom Religion" of life, as taught by the Adepts of Hermetic Philosophy. It will richly repay all who are seeking the higher life to carefully study this book, as it contains in a nutshell the wisdom of the ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... want the new great poet to sing of. I agree with William Morris that art is the one thing we all want, the expression of man's joy in his work. And the more that art retires into fine nuances and intellectual subtleties, the more that it becomes something esoteric and mysterious, the less I care about it. When Tennyson said to the farmer's wife, 'What's the news?' she replied, 'Mr. Tennyson, there's only one piece of news worth telling, and that is that Christ died for all men.' ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... time to time on to linen paper. Says the poet Mr Udd, "Being seated, to run through the region of the spiritual world; I have had this advantage in books. To be intoxicated by a single glass of wine; I have experienced this pleasure when I have drunk the liquor of the esoteric doctrines." I kept Homer's Iliad on my table through the summer, though I looked at his page only now and then. Incessant labor with my hands, at first, for I had my house to finish and my beans to hoe at the same time, made more study impossible. Yet I sustained myself by the prospect of such reading ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... of a Marquis is apt to be tainted by special considerations in regard to his own family. This Marquis, though he had his exoteric politics, had his esoteric feelings. With him, Liberal as he was, his own blood possessed a peculiar ichor. Though it might be well that men in the mass should be as nearly equal as possible, yet, looking at the state of ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... as an object of awe. Danger of speaking of Grail or revealing Its secrets. Passages in illustration. Why, if survival of Nature cults, popular, and openly performed? A two-fold element in these cults, Exoteric, Esoteric. The Mysteries. Their influence on Christianity to be sought in the Hellenized rather than the Hellenic cults. Cumont. Rohde. Radical difference between Greek and Oriental conceptions. Lack of evidence as regards ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... who needed the knowledge that the name was pronounced Yahhy-Bahhy, and that the doctrine taught by Mr. Yahi-Bahi was Boohooism. This latter, if anyone inquired further, was explained to be a form of Shoodooism, only rather more intense. In fact, it was esoteric—on receipt of which information everybody remarked at once how infinitely superior the Oriental peoples are ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... the ceremonies of initiation. Containing almost entirely esoteric work, it cannot be written. The Master should not only familiarize himself with it, but he should also diligently learn and explain to the candidate each truth symbolized by each step of the ceremonies through which ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... concealed, unrevealed, mysterious, cryptic, recondite, occult, esoteric, cabalistic, abstruse, unknown, latent; secluded, privy, withdrawn, retired, covert, private, sequestered; stealthy, underhand, clandestine, sly, surreptitious, confidential, undetected. Antonyms: ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... to be drawn from the Apostolic tradition, critically examined. This tradition lies before us in a series of Apostolic writings, and in a secret doctrine derived from the Apostles, (positive).[348] As exoteric it is comprehended in the regula fidei (positive),[349] as esoteric it is ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... highest pitch of efficiency. The fear of being maladroit departed from me. Ideas—delicate and subtle ideas—welled up in me one after another; I was bound to give utterance to them. I began to talk about my idol Chopin, and I explained to Diaz my esoteric interpretation of the Fantasia. He was sitting down now, but I ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... his ferocious temper repelled some, and his Rabelaisisms and kindred witticisms others, Sir Charles won the admiration and esteem of almost all who knew him. It was from him, to some extent, that Burton acquired the taste, afterwards so extraordinarily developed for erotic, esoteric and other curious knowledge. Napier intensely hated the East India Company, as the champions of his detested rival, Major Outram, and customarily spoke of them contemptuously as the "Twenty-four kings of Leadenhall Street," while Burton on his part ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... Monumental Christianity, by Lundy, especially chapter on "The Discipline of the Secret." For a full discussion of the attitude of St. Paul, see St. Paul and the Mystery-Religions, by Kennedy, a work of fine scholarship. That Christianity had its esoteric is plain—as it was natural—from the writings of the Fathers, including Origen, Cyril, Basil, Gregory, Ambrose, Augustine, and others. Chrysostom often uses the word initiation in respect of Christian teaching, while Tertullian ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton |
