"Hocus-pocus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the year, will receive a fraction of this money—perhaps even so large a fraction as one half. It may be that, ere now, some obliging person about the City Hall has offered to buy the claim for $1000, and take the risk of the hocus-pocus necessary for getting it—which to him is no ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... regular troops, and a regiment of Oregon mounted volunteers under command of Colonel James W. Nesmith—subsequently for several years United States Senator from Oregon. The whole force was under the command of Major Rains, Fourth Infantry, who, in order that he might rank Nesmith, by some hocus-pocus had been made a brigadier-general, under an appointment from the Governor of ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... explained, any more'n Abe here! You prefer hocus-pocus. And nothin' will teach you. Take Rhody! Sees Michaelis flunk his job miserable. Sees Mary go down like a woman shot, hands and legs paralyzed again,—Doctor says, for good, this time. And what does the girl do about it? Spends the night out yonder laborin' with them benighted ...
— The Faith Healer - A Play in Three Acts • William Vaughn Moody
... land?" I queried: for I did not understand all this hocus-pocus of locating any given spot in the Iowa prairies in 1855. ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... I see! Pipes and iron safes and hocus-pocus! But I do not care!" He turned to Doloria and, taking one of her hands, said: "You, mon ami, shall find your heart's best desire. It is I who say it!—I, who have the authority!" The way he clung to that ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... the mayor. 'And now, Doc Waugh-hoo,' he goes on, 'why don't you demonstrate? Can't you pull the cork out of your magnetism with your teeth and hocus-pocus them handcuffs off?' ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... us," proceeded the lawyer. "Go and have your little talk with the landlady or take whatever other means suggest themselves for luring this girl from her room. I will summon Hazen and hold him very closely under my eye till the whole affair is over. He shall get no chance for any hocus-pocus business, not while I have charge of your interests. He shall do just what he has laid out for himself and nothing more; you may ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... sort o' hocus-pocus might that be, I want to know—did somebody blow that light out just when I was hopin' big things might come from it, or was it only a bunch o' cabbage palms that come in ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... thy satire's darts To gie the rascals their deserts, I'd rip their rotten, hollow hearts, An' tell aloud Their jugglin' hocus-pocus ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... blasted," said Jonas Billings from the crowd. "Chinese dukes, eh! What's it all about?" "Reg'lar hocus-pocus," remarked the vagabond brother ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... said, "Tails, go." He opened his hand, and looked at the coin. "Heads! Very good. Go on with your hocus-pocus, ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... that I don't feel any animosity against them; I would much rather be fighting the French; but they, by a sort of hocus-pocus, are our allies," remarked Green. "In reality we are not making war on the Russian people; we are expressly ordered not to injure any of their property; our business is only to ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... members of the Brigade made of all this hocus-pocus I had no idea. Afterwards, when the adventure was over, I asked Mary, "Where in the world did you get that stuff?" And she told me how she had once acted in a children's comedy, in which there was an old magician who spent his time putting spells on ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... in Illinois called St. Genevieve. By some hocus-pocus known to accomplished politicians, this city has had no Mayor since the 4th of June, 1867. In the absence of definite information upon the subject, we take it for granted that St. Genevieve must be a most delightful place ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... But what I do in my trade, I do to sell. What all we fellows do, we do to sell. If we didn't want to sell it for the most we can get for it, we shouldn't do it. Being work, it has to be done; but it's easily enough done. All the rest is hocus-pocus. ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... lie—published the thing he would no longer have said. He thought he worshiped the truth, but he did not. He knew that the truth was everything, but a lie came that seemed better than the truth. In his soul he knew he was not acting truly; that had he honestly loved the truth, he would not have played hocus-pocus with metaphysics and logic, but would have made haste to a manly conclusion. He took the package, and on his way to the dining-room, dropped it into the post-box ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... see. And it is NOT hocus-pocus. To do it properly, we should kill something to please him; but perhaps he will answer Caesar without that if we spill ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... that, by some hocus-pocus which I do not exactly comprehend, myself, I have introduced a wheel within a wheel, a letter within a letter, a play within a play, after the manner of the old dramatists; and I beg you to make a note that the foregoing admonitions and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... and what recourse is there left to the people but 'Boulangism'? 'Boulangism' is the instinctive, more or less deliberate and articulate, outcry of a people living under constitutional forms, but conscious that, by some hocus-pocus, the vitality has been taken out of those forms. It is the expression of the general sense of insecurity. In a country situated as France now is, it is natural that this inarticulate outcry should merge itself at first into a clamour for the revision of a Constitution which has been ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... read it attentively, and then remarked 'Unless one's thought pack more neatly in verse than in prose, it is wiser to refrain. Commonplace gains nothing by being translated into rhyme, for it is something which no hocus-pocus can transubstantiate with the real presence of living thought. You entitle your piece, "My Mother's Grave," and expend four pages of useful paper in detailing your emotions there. But, my dear sir, watering does ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Lady Thomson, decisively. "I ought to know what Science is, considering how often I've met Mr. Darwin and Professor Huxley. Hypnotism and this kind of unpleasant talk is not Science. It's only a new variety of the hocus-pocus that's been imposing on human weakness ever since the world began. I'd sooner believe with poor Milly that she's possessed by a devil. It's less silly to accept inherited superstitions than to invent ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... second day would eat the chestnuts in our presence. Never did he show the slightest fear of us or of anything, but he was unwearied in his efforts to regain his freedom. After a few days we put a strap upon his neck and kept him tethered by a chain. But in the night, by dint of some hocus-pocus, he got the chain unsnapped and made off, and he is now, I trust, a patriarch of his tribe, wearing ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... hocus-pocus of incantations she brews the magic draught, which Faust drinks. He is then hurried away by Mephistopheles back into ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... about. "What hocus-pocus is this?" he was asking himself. Still the silence persisted. He looked at the waiting men, motionless, their heads bent, their hands ready above the parchment scrolls. He saw again the white walls, the single broad band of some ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... constantly verified by experience, that one would be justified in believing either that one's senses were deluded, or that one had not really got to the bottom of the phenomenon. Of course, if one could vary the conditions, if one could take a little silex, and by a little hocus-pocus a la crosse, galvanise a baby out of it as often as one pleased, all the philosopher could do would be to hold up his hands and cry, "God is great." But short of evidence of this kind, I don't mean to believe anything ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... to relegate him. As for me, my scepticism was to me robur et aes triplex. I disposed of the snake, put out the gas; and down we three sat, amid profound darkness, like three male witches in "Macbeth," having previously locked the door to prevent any one disturbing our hocus-pocus. ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies |
