"Magic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Padma Sambhava, one of the chief apostles of Lamaism, i.e. of Tibetan Buddhism, and a great master of enchantments. The doctrines of Sakya, as they prevailed in Udyana in old times, were probably strongly tinged with Sivaitic magic, and the Tibetans still regard that locality as the classic ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... SLIDES, 112 pages; contains list and prices or Magic Lanterns for Toys, for Public and Private Exhibitions, Sciopticons, Stereopticons, Scientific Lanterns, and accessory apparatus to be used with them; Magic Lantern Slides, both colored ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... a shock of shattered plate-glass: the soft-nosed bullet, splashing upon the glazed upper half of the door, caused the entire pane to collapse and disappear with the quickness of magic. ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... requested to take of our mockersons, the Chief having previously taken off his as well as all the warriors present. this we complyed with; the Chief then lit his pipe at the fire kindled in this little magic circle, and standing on the oposite side of the circle uttered a speach of several minutes in length at the conclusion of which he pointed the stem to the four cardinal points of the heavens first begining at the East and ending with the North. he now presented the pipe to me as if ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... important, and Grisell enjoyed the two miles' ride along the cliffs of Roker Bay, looking up at the curious caverns in the rock, and seeking for the very strangely-formed stones supposed to have magic power, which fell from the rock. In the distance beyond the river to the southward, Ridley pointed to the tall square tower of Monks Wearmouth Church dominating the great monastery around it, which had once held the venerable ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "O magic sleep! O comfortable bird That broodest o'er the troubled sea of the mind Till it is hushed ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... love to the author, and into which he threw all the power he possessed,—power re-enforced by multifarious reading and an instinctive appreciation of Oriental thought. These weird stories, in which the author has formulated his theory of magic, are of a wholly different type from his previous fictions, and, in place of the heroes and villains of every day life, we have beings that belong in part to another sphere, and that deal with mysterious and occult agencies. Once more the old forgotten lore of the Cabala is unfolded; ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... degrees of social importance which provide that in old countries the middle term shall be made to suffer for the priceless treasure of a respectability which is a little higher than the tram and financially not quite equal to the cab. Then, at that magic touch of the west wind the house-fly retires to his own peculiar Inferno, wherever that may be, the mosquito and the gnat pause in their work of darkness and blood to concert fresh and more bloodthirsty deeds, and even the joyous and wicked flea tires of the war dance and lays down ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... stress upon the manner in which it is interwoven with the technical constitution of the art. I have illustrated the remarkable power of the art by which decorative elements from without, coming once within the magic influence, are seized upon and remodeled in accordance with the laws of textile combination. Pursuing the investigation still further it is found that the dominion of the textile system is not limited to the art, but extends to other arts. Like a strong race of men it is not to ...
— A Study Of The Textile Art In Its Relation To The Development Of Form And Ornament • William H. Holmes
... singular effect, after travelling for some days through a wild country, seeing nothing but a solitary hacienda, or an Indian hut, to enter a fine city like Morelia, which seems to have started up as by magic in the midst of the wilderness, yet bearing all the traces of a venerable old age. By moonlight, it looked like a panorama of Mexico; with a fine square, portales, cathedral, broad streets, and good houses. We rode through ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... who evidently understood little English, though the magic words, "hands up," probably penetrated their darkness, glanced at Pachuca for orders. The latter turned his horse and rode to the edge of the arroyo. He was his usual jaunty self, a little travel ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... daily fill of meat which their souls loved, the Ogula oarsmen remained in an excellent mood, indeed the chief, Fahni, informed Alan that if only they had such magic tubes wherewith to slaughter game, he and his tribe would gladly give up cannibalism—except on feast days. He added sadly that soon they would be obliged to do so, or die, since in those parts there were now few people ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... the assayer! Suppose you tell me now about all these people here, to begin with. I have not seen much that reminded me of magic yet,' she said with ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... Countess of Pernetti. At midnight, on a certain occasion, Ludovico resolved, at the peril of his life, to make a rash expedition for the sake of gazing for one second on the face he adored, and accordingly appeared as if by magic in the palace of his well-beloved. He reached the nuptial chamber. Elisa Pernetti, whose heart most probably shared the desire of her lover, heard the sound of his footsteps and divined his intention. She saw through the walls of her chamber a countenance glowing with love. ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... of that vision worked like magic in Justin's blood. His soul rose and stretched its wings and "traced its better portion" vividly, as he sprang to his feet and walked up and down the bedroom floor. He would get a few days' leave and go back to Edgewood for Christmas, to join, with all ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... he candidly tells us (Oct. 1842) that he has been studying trees only for the last week, and bases his critical remarks chiefly on his practical experience of birch. More disinterested than our friend Sancho, he would disenchant the public from the magic of Turner by virtue of his own flagellation; Xanthias-like, he would rob his master of immortality by his own powers of endurance. What is Christopher North about? Does he receive his critiques from Eaton or Harrow—based ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... him during the years of his partnership with Sir William, and of the 'Cely Papers', which are full of information about the life of a Merchant of the Staple at Calais, Thomas Betson may be summoned before us by a kindly magic until he almost lives again. So he deserves to do, for he is one of the most delightful people revealed to us in any of the fifteenth-century letters; for honest charm he has no rival save the attractive Margery Brews, who married ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... on his clothing again with a speed that seemed to partake of magic. Then, with Harry close upon his heels, he rushed to the door, jerking ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... of truth merely intellectual would gain nothing at all by such ostentatious arts. Algebra has been distinguished by glorious names; so has the fancied knowledge of transmutation applied to the metals; so, doubtless, has many a visionary speculation of magic; so, again, has the ridiculous schwermerey of the Rabbis in particular ages. But those are as transient and even for the moment as partial titles as the titles of Invincible or Seraphic applied to scholastic divines. Out of this idea the truth grew, next (suppose ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... that," said he. "That you may fully understand that marvelous battle, I must confide to you a great secret. I have in my possession three Magic Talismans, which I have ever guarded with utmost care, keeping the knowledge of their existence from anyone else. But, lest I should die and the secret be lost, I have decided to tell you what these talismans are and where they are hidden. Come with ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... He had been so fascinated by the room's sheer magic and by Stefens' sure control of the traffic that he hadn't had a ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... cats inside a magic circle as shown in our illustration, and hypnotized them so that they should remain stationary during his pleasure. He then proposed to draw three circles inside the large one, so that no cat could approach another ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... play-wright. What a subject! With ten thousand a-year a man may do anything. There is attraction in the very sound of the words. It is well worth the penny one gives for a bill to con over those rich, euphonious, delicious syllables—TEN THOUSAND A-YEAR! Why, the magic letters express the concentrated essence of human felicity—the summum bonum of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 27, 1841 • Various
... their medal-flaunting rivals and challenged to produce this "Grace," they were crestfallen and ashamed, being obliged to admit that A'lamo was an invisible magic which (they stoutly affirmed) was nevertheless an excellent magic, since it preserved one from drowning and ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... seen her happy till this moment. She had always looked pathetic, mournful, listless. Now for the first time he saw her, as it were, released from some great oppression, and the change was almost that of identity. Her beauty had taken on a new magic. ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... such dreaded fame That, when in Salamanca's cave Him listed his magic wand to wave, The bells would ring in Notre Dame. Lay of the Lost ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... taught us that in many primitive societies religion—a sense of man's dependence on a power higher than himself—is preceded by a stage of magic—a belief in man's own power to influence by occult means the action of the world around him. That the ancestors of the Roman community passed through this stage seems clear, and in surviving religious practice we may discover evidence of such magic in various forms. ...
— The Religion of Ancient Rome • Cyril Bailey
... tell me, Nature, what else it was that made this morsel so sweet, and to what magic I owe it that the draught I took of their flagon was so delicious with it that they remain upon my ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... expresses admirably the attitude of very many teachers relative to discipline. They regard teaching as one thing—discipline as quite another. With them discipline involves some sort of magic process or the application of some iron rule authority, which secures order that teaching may then be indulged in. As a matter of fact, discipline is inherent in good teaching. It is not a matter of correction so much as a matter of prevention. The good disciplinarian anticipates ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... May at latest. I am very much afraid that Schumann will have a struggle with the difficulties and delays which usually occur in trying to get any lofty work performed. One would say that a bad fairy, in order sometimes to counterbalance the works of genius, gives a magic success to the most vulgar works and presides over the propagation of them, favoring those whom inspiration has disdained, in order to push its elect into the shade. That is no reason for discouragement, for what matters the sooner ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... by which the will assimilates a thing. "Once touched by man," says one of M. Cousin's disciples, "things receive from him a character which transforms and humanizes them." I confess, for my part, that I have no faith in this magic, and that I know of nothing less holy than the will of man. But this theory, fragile as it seems to psychology as well as jurisprudence, is nevertheless more philosophical and profound than those theories which are based upon labor or the authority ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... mountains, when, owing to the manner in which the light fell upon them, or rather did not fall upon them directly, they appeared dark and earthy. Each time, however, the sun's rays soon came to undeceive him; and that which had so lately been black and frowning was, as by the touch of magic, suddenly illuminated, and became bright and gorgeous, throwing out its emerald hues, or perhaps a virgin white, that filled the beholder with delight, even amid the terrors and dangers by which, in very truth, he was surrounded. The glorious Alps themselves, ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Vancouver's Island.—This new settlement made great progress from the very dawn of its recognition as a colony. The capital, called Victoria, sprang up as if by magic, and became a centre of business activity and colonial enterprise. Situated on the Pacific, the climate is favourable, and the position, politically and commercially, most important. The citizens of the United States laid claim to an island ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... into his breast, Which water could not quench. Nor herb, nor art, nor magic spells Could quell, nor ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... distant "L's." Clavering wondered if he really were in New York. The whole evening had been unreal enough. Certainly all that was prosaic and ugly and feverish had been obliterated by what it was no flight of fancy to call white magic. That seething mass of humanity, that so often looked as if rushing hither and thither with no definite purpose, driven merely by the obsession of speed, was as supine in its brief privacy as its dead. In spite of the fever in him he felt curiously uplifted—and glad to be alone. ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... slightest tincture of affectation, or false sentiment, would ruin the whole. We always distrust the man who would play upon our emotions, and are glad to take refuge in the ludicrous, to save ourselves from the pathetic. If a single weak spot can be detected in the magic chain which he would throw around our feelings, if every link does not ring with the sound of genuine metal, the charm is at once broken, and we laugh to scorn the writer who would fain have opened the fountain of tears. It is no mean proof of the skill of the "Bachelor," that his pathetic ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... soldier. Men of mark respect the law as a moral necessity, ordinary men as a traditional everyday rule; for this very reason military discipline, in which more than anywhere else law takes the form of habit, fetters every man not entirely self-reliant as with a magic spell. It has often been observed that the soldier, even where he has determined to refuse obedience to those set over him, involuntarily when that obedience is demanded resumes his place in the ranks. It was this feeling that made Lafayette and Dumouriez ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... one ever told me? Yet I will hazard a guess that it had to do with the mystery of life and death. Souls that were born into the world, and souls departing from the world, perchance, making report to one of God's ministers clothed in flesh. But who can say? At least I watched those magic fowls till my eyes grew dizzy, and a sort of slumber began ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... the gray hour, weary grown, When curfew o'er the wold is blown, He sees, as in a magic glass, Some lost and lonely mountain-pass; And lo! a sign of deathful rout The mocking vine has wound about,— An earth-fixed arrow by a spring, All greenly mossed, a mouldered thing; That stifled shaft no more shall sing! He shakes his head in doubt. "Laugh and sigh, live ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... Claerten said. "Like any other sense. But it isn't magic any more than your eyes are magic. They're ... given by God, if you like; they grow, they develop. So the ability to read minds, to transmit thought is given by God. No one knows why or how. Fifteen of us have developed it; fifteen ...
— Wizard • Laurence Mark Janifer (AKA Larry M. Harris)
... the street the Piper stept, Smiling first a little smile, As if he knew what magic slept In his quiet pipe the while; Then like a musical adept, To blow the pipe his lips he wrinkled, And green and blue his sharp eyes twinkled, Like a candle flame where salt is sprinkled; And ere three shrill notes the pipe had uttered, ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... this tradition sufficiently explains the necessity of the great oath against magic taken by both parties in a wager of battle in ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... Seize this very minute: What you can do, or dream you can, begin it; Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Only engage and then the mind grows heated; Begin and then ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... sisters;" one was represented as plain-looking, but amiable—the other beautiful, but a very Zantippe in temper. By some wonderful combination of circumstances, the elder lost her beauty and ugliness at the same time—when some good fairy always came along, who, by a magic touch of her wand, made both the sisters far more lovely than the elder had been. Beauty was always the burden of the tale; people who were not beautiful met with no adventures, and seemed to lead a hum-drum sort of life; therefore, I insensibly learned to ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... rebels famished to death," within a circuit of a few miles from Enniskillen. The disheartened and disorganized natives were seriously deliberating a wholesale emigration to the Scottish highlands, when a word of magic effect was whispered from the sea coast to the interior. On the 6th of July, Colonel Owen Roe O'Neil arrived off Donegal with a single ship, a single company of veterans, 100 officers, and a considerable quantity ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... colour as he lay with closed eyes, a thinness of the flesh over the cheek bones, dark shadows beneath the eyes. Whether he slept she could not be sure. But when he sat up again these signs of wear and tear seemed to vanish at the magic of his smile, which had never been brighter. Nevertheless she watched him with a new sense of anxiety, wondering if there might really be danger of his splendid physique giving way before the ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... a condition of extreme sentimentality]. I can hardly trust myself to say how much I like it. The magic of this Irish scene, and—I really don't want to be personal, Miss Reilly; but the charm of your ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... the recurring image of Menelaws could do to fight against these rising predilections was so far unavailing, that that very image waxed dimmer and dimmer, while the present object was always working through the magic of sensation. Yes, Annie Yellowlees grew day by day fonder of her protege, until at length she got, as the saying goes, "over head and ears." Nay, was she not, in the long nights, busy working a pair of red slippers for the object of her new affections, and ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... man in the hands of a mob that howled for Wilkes, that howled against Bute. The Austrian Ambassador was dragged from his carriage and held uplifted in sufficiently uncomfortable fashion while the magic number Forty-five was chalked upon the soles of his shoes. He was no further hurt; if he had been a more prudent man he would have grinned at the mischance and said no more about it. But he chose to consider his dignity and the dignity of his empire affronted by the follies of ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... anxious to stand on my own feet. I saw men in the flat, so to speak. Men and women. They were decorative forms rather than souls like myself. My girl had been like that, too, when I first saw her, a decorative form, exquisite, pathetic, entrancing. But the magic of the business was that slowly she was emerging from among those figures of two dimensions and coming to sit beside me, a companion. I had never had one before. There might never have been such a thing happen before to anybody, it seemed so strange and so astonishingly fortunate! ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... ceased their plaintive cries. A few smaller birds chirped drowsily. Back of the eastern hills the stars became a little dimmer, and the soft night breeze, which had been steadily blowing through the darkened hours, sank quietly to sleep. The subtle magic of nature began to sketch in the picture of day, throwing objects forward from the dull background, taking them bodily out of the blackness, as though creating them anew. Fresh life stirred through everything. The vault of heaven seemed full of it, and all the ravines and by-ways caught ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... thinking possesses tremendous power; that no sooner he thinks of a certain deed than the same is accomplished; that an enemy, for instance, is actually harmed by merely wishing him harm. This mode of thinking forms the basis for many magic ceremonials. It is this latter mechanism,—i.e., the endowment of one's own thoughts with an omnipotent power,—which is also frequently illustrated in malingering. It is sufficient for the type of individual who malingers to merely say the word, and the most fantastic creation of his fancy ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... religious belief of very primitive, almost savage, cast, combining a worship of the actual dead in their tombs—which were supposed to communicate and thus form a veritable "underworld," or, rather, "under-Egypt"—with veneration of magic animals, such as jackals, cats, hawks, and crocodiles. On the other hand, we have a sun and sky worship of a more elevated nature, which does not seem to have amalgamated with the earlier fetishism and corpse-worship until a comparatively late period. The ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... dare faint!" called Madaline, with the magic way she always exercised of averting evil through sheer innocent challenge. "Here, Grace, hold her head while I fetch water," and while Grace attempted to support the head Madaline had been fondling, Mary raised it with a look ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... through the pages again and again, but not once did the magic word she hunted greet her eyes. Then she went back to a paragraph in one of those chapters headed "Dinners," which had ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... draped new ivy over the dilapidated church and rectory; she let the gray-green leaves of the wistaria flutter gaily over the cornices; she touched with magic the old denuded stumps of the trees of heaven and the back yard became a shaded retreat. Sometimes at twilight when Felice came home, it seemed to her that the long ago look of the street was creeping slowly back—perhaps, of course, it was just that she was ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... must perceive that every generation of the civilized world is becoming more and more metaphysical—that the understanding is more appealed to, and has greater sway than formerly, and the imagination less. The age of magic, and witches, and ghosts, has passed away. That of poetry is on the wane. Speculation has taken the place of taste. What once passed unheeded, or was perceived only as it was felt, must now be analyzed, and sifted, and decompounded, until we have reached its elements, and a reason is ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... control his waking thoughts; his dreams could not be curbed. In that realm Rena's image was for many a day to remain supreme. He dreamed of her sweet smile, her soft touch, her gentle voice. In all her fair young beauty she stood before him, and then by some hellish magic she was slowly transformed into a hideous black hag. With agonized eyes he watched her beautiful tresses become mere wisps of coarse wool, wrapped round with dingy cotton strings; he saw her clear eyes grow bloodshot, her ivory teeth turn to unwholesome ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... thanksgiving with a cream cheese and a piece of honeycomb to the mistress of a hundred cities, Aphrodite with her house of gold.[31] The hard and laborious life of the small farmer was touched with something of the natural magic that saturates the Georgics; "rich with fair fleeces, and fair wine, and fair fruit of corn," and blessed by the gracious Seasons whose feet pass over the furrows.[32] On the green slope Pan himself makes solitary music to ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... travelled along with him on the dingy window-pane and intercepted all the well-beloved phenomena of earliest-awakening spring. One slide followed another, like the pictures of a magic lantern. Now she was pouring tea, now she was baking bread; sometimes she was playing the violin, sometimes—and oftenest—she was measuring medicines or on guard against draughts. In any event the sum total was a matchless assemblage of grace, charm, ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... station. Muller and Mrs. Bernauer stood a few minutes later on the banks of the Grand Canal and entered, one of the many gondolas waiting there. The moon glanced back from the surface of the water broken into ripples under the oars of the gondoliers; it shone with a magic charm on the old palaces that stood knee-deep in the lagoons, and threw heavy shadows over the narrow water-roads on which the little dark boats glided silently forward. In most of the gondolas coming from the station ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... laws, protect the peaceable and punish the violator of the laws of a well-organized society—that will direct their industry to useful purposes, and check their propensities to violence and plunder—such a government, in a short series of years, would behold, as if by magic, a paradise burst from her wilds, see cultivation smile upon her jungles, and hail a vast and increasing population, blessing the hand that awoke them to life, to happiness, and to prosperity. That so felicitous a change is not the mere reverie of a glowing imagination, or the sheer effusion ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... called the "pentalpha," as the crossing of its lines suggests five A's. It was used in ancient times as a magic talisman against the powers of witchcraft. The Greek Christians at one time placed it, instead of the cross, at the ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... and the assailants drawn off, and the column marched through the town, now illuminated by the flames of the two burning barracks. It was but half an hour since the attack had begun, but the appearance of the town had changed as if by magic. Every house was lit up, every window open, crowds of people thronged the streets, while the windows were filled with women and children. All were delirious with delight, and cheered, shouted, and waved their handkerchiefs as the patriot band marched along. ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... to his feet, his eyes gleaming fiercely. "How?" he demanded. "They have slain the pack. Will they not soon come for the leaders? Has the young white chieftain magic to work against their ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (1884, pp. 24-39) I find a Nicobar story which relates how Tiomberombi received a magic mirror from a snake whose enemy he had killed. Its slaves obeyed all his orders if he only put the key into the keyhole, but he was not allowed to open the mirror, as he was too weak to face the spirits openly. He dwelt on an island, but when a hostile fleet came against him, the gunners ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... usual, keenly enjoying this "gipsy" incident, with the supper after that unexpected fashion, among strange people, he hardly knew where. He was very pale, like some cunning Italian work in wax or ivory, of partly satiric character, endued by magic or crafty mechanism with vivacious movement. But as he sat thus, ever for the most part the unhappy plaything of other people's humours, escaped for a moment out of a world of demoniac politicians, the pensive atmosphere around seemed gradually ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... Christianity is traced, in comparison with the rest of the splendid and prodigally ornamented work, which is the radical defect in the "Decline and Fall." Christianity alone receives no embellishment from the magic of Gibbon's language; his imagination is dead to its moral dignity; it is kept down by a general zone of jealous disparagement, or neutralized by a painfully elaborate exposition of its darker and degenerate periods. There are occasions, indeed, when its pure and exalted humanity, when its manifestly ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... serving for ornaments as well as for charms. Certain herbs, too, and animal preparations have been used in the same way. In setting them apart to their use as amulets, great precautions have been taken that fitting times be selected, stellar and other magic influences propitious, and everything avoided that might be supposed to destroy or weaken the force of the charm. From the earliest ages the Oriental races have had a firm belief in the prevalence of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Nothing met the eye but beauty and romantic splendour; the ear received no sounds but those of mirth and melody. The younger part of the company formed themselves into groups, which at intervals glanced through the woods, and were again unseen. Julia seemed the magic queen of the place. Her heart dilated with pleasure, and diffused over her features an expression of pure and complacent delight. A generous, frank, and exalted sentiment sparkled in her eyes, and animated her manner. Her bosom glowed with ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... have added that every Republican officer was advised first to test any warning on any bit of parchment signed "Benito Juarez." Yet, as a matter of fact, there came to be such magic in the name of El Chaparrito that the name of Juarez thereto was only needed as a guarantee that the ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... scented days of the Washington spring when the air began to show a southern glow and the Squares and Circles (to which the wide empty avenues converged according to a plan so ingenious, yet so bewildering) to flush with pink blossom and to make one wish to sit on benches—under this magic of expansion and condonation Mrs. Bonnycastle, who during the winter had been a good deal on the defensive, relaxed her vigilance a little, became whimsically wilful, vernally reckless, as it were, and ceased ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... copies of ancient works. Many thousands of these texts have been recovered from the ruins of Babylon and are now being translated. They cover the whole field of literary activity, religion, law, history, grammar, science, magic, and romance. ...
— Books Before Typography - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #49 • Frederick W. Hamilton
... pictures of life in the Middle Ages the stories are of the greatest value. The geography is confused, as it is in the Iliad and the Odyssey, and facts are sometimes mixed up with magic, but modern critics believe there was a real Arthur, who lived about ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... International, a call was sent out for a congress to be held in Geneva in 1873. The congress that assembled there was not a large one, but, with no exaggeration whatever, it was one of the most remarkable gatherings ever held. For six entire days and nights the delegates struggled to create by some magic means a world-wide organization of the people, without a program, a committee, a chairman, or a vote. No longer oppressed by the "tyranny" of Marx, or baffled by his "abominable intrigues," they set out to create their "faithful image" of the new world—an organization that was not to be an organization; ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... than both together. So wonderfully eloquent was he that, whatever he might choose to say, his hearers had no choice but to believe him; wrong looked like right, and right like wrong. His voice, indeed, was a magic instrument: sometimes it rumbled like the thunder; sometimes it warbled like the sweetest music. In good truth, he was a wondrous man; and when his tongue had acquired him all other imaginable success,—when it had been heard in halls of state ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... indeed other unfavorable criticisms, on "Paradise Lost." There is scarcely any book in the world which is open to a greater number, or which a reader who allows plain words to produce a due effect will be less satisfied with. Yet what book is really greater? In the best parts the words have a magic in them; even in the inferior passages you are hardly sensible of their inferiority till you translate them into your own language. Perhaps no style ever written by man expressed so adequately the conceptions of a mind so strong and so peculiar; a manly strength, a haunting atmosphere ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... will be your own fault," replied Mr. Learning, as he drew from his pocket four purses, yellow, red, and pink, and blue. "These are the magic purses of Time," he continued, "and most valuable gifts are they; each of you shall possess one. Every morning you will find in them a certain number of pieces of silver and copper money,—men name them hours and minutes. A few you will employ in paying ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... wild imagination and his playfulness. He throws over all things a strange and magic coloring. You are startled at the boldness and beauty of his figures and illustrations, which are scattered everywhere with a reckless prodigality;—multitudinous, like the blossoms of early summer,—and ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... to inquire at the magnificent provision-merchant's he too will conjure up from the magic cellars boot-cream and metal-polish and all those vulgar groceries which make life possible. That is the secret of Bond Street. Beneath that glittering display of luxurious trivialities there are vast reserves of solid prosaic necessaries, only waiting to be asked for. A man ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 15, 1920 • Various
... this emergency, the camp moved. In the same time that it takes to say the foregoing sentence, it moved—men, women, children, and every bit of impedimenta. It was like one of those magic transformations of which we used to read in fairy-tales when ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... inactive witch was one thing—a thing scarce distinguishable from any other old woman. But this transformation of a black wand into a wide-spreading tent was so obviously the result of magic, that it was self-evident they had to do with a witch in ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... rigid, muscles tense, dreading to swing and wondering whether the result would be a schlaff or a top, when—well, I simply cannot describe the sensation. Something came over me; I don't know what. As if someone had waved a magic wand above my head. I stopped swaying, relaxed, felt the weight of the club head in my fingers, knew the rhythm of the swing, heard the sharp crack as the ivory facing met the ball. If you'll believe it, I put out such a drive as I'd never before made in all my 12 years ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... said the gloomy man, brightening up at the magic name. "I was in Monte Carlo in the year '97, and if I'd had another fifty ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... her cold hand in his warm one, he forestalled her by exhibiting, not without a certain boyish pride, the marriage license and the plain gold band which was to bind her. If these familiar and rather commonplace objects had been endowed with some evil magic, they could not have deprived her of the ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... enchanted to include the Marquise de Chelles; and Undine, as she had hoped, found Elmer Moffatt of the party. When she drove up to the Nouveau Luxe she had not fixed on any plan of action; but once she had crossed its magic threshold her energies revived like plants in water. At last she was in her native air again, among associations she shared and conventions she understood; and all her self-confidence returned as the familiar accents ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... Harold, so the dominion of Harold is overthrown by the accession of father. Harold is crowded about with ministrants. Nobody can leave him for a minute. Rosalie's father appears. Everybody leaves Harold simultaneously, abruptly, and as if by magic. Rosalie's father appears. Everybody disappears. Wonderful father! Everybody melts away: but Harold does not melt away. Courageous Harold! Everybody melts; only Harold is left, and Rosalie watching; and immediately, as always, the magnificent ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... was powerful, yet it could bear no fruits—the door could not open till the pope pronounced the magic words which held it closed. Neither Philip nor Mary was in a position to use violence ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Bachelor's Establishment The Secrets of a Princess The Government Clerks Pierrette A Study of Woman Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Honorine The Seamy Side of History The Magic Skin A Second Home A Prince of Bohemia Letters of Two Brides The Muse of the Department The Imaginary Mistress The Middle Classes Cousin Betty The Country Parson In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following: Another Study of Woman La ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... this "magic crucible" notion of assimilation is the theory of "like-mindedness." This idea was partly a product of Professor Giddings' theory of sociology, partly an outcome of the popular notion that similarities and ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... in keeping modern ideas away from the people and in maintaining a popular piety that is largely polytheistic in its worship of the saints, and embodies a great amount of traditional paganism. In our half-suburbanized England but little now remains of these vestiges of primitive religion and magic whose interest and importance were only realized by students in the later nineteenth century, when the wave of "progress" was fast ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... at the present day. The Gipsies are still a lazy, thieving set of rogues, who get their living by robbing hen-roosts, telling fortunes, and 'snapping up unconsidered trifles' like Autolycus of old. Pilfering, varied with a rude sort of magic, and the swindling arts of divination and chiromancy for the special behoof of credulous servant-girls, are the stock-in-trade of the modern Zingaris. Without education, and without industry, they transmit their vagrant habits ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... efforts can only serve to convince them of the futility of their schemes and possibly frighten some few faint-hearted persons, naturally prone to reverence great names and fancy everything must shrink at the magic of a splendid title." ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... Yes, 'tis another way of conquering; Thus I shall know that fever of the heart Which Byron tells us kills whom it devours; And 'tis a way of being still my father. Napoleon or Don Juan!—They're decision, The magic will, and the seductive grace. When to retake a great unfaithful land, Calm and alone, sure of himself and her, The adventurer landed in the Gulf of Juan, He felt Don Juan's thrill; and when Don Juan Pricked a new conquest in his list of loves, Did he not feel the pride of Bonaparte? And, ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand
... Like magic everybody seemed to become more cheerful. Things lost some of their gloomy aspect; even the rushing water looked far less bleak and threatening when those slanting shafts of sunlight ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... long transition state from his manhood's noon to its gathering eve. And in that pause there came from afar off a melodious, melancholy strain—softly, softly borne over the cold blue waters—softly, softly through the sere autumnal leaves—the music of the magic flute! ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... magic, and, with a look of wild horror, the man sprang into the air, tumbled on his back, rose up, and ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... superb highways with their lovely maples and elms overreaching them, one never tires of the magic of those deep, delicious hues that enfold the sunny ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... a city of Vanity Fair for two weeks, every day crowded with a motley throng. Booths, and even structures of some solidity, rose on it as if by magic. The lottery-houses were set up early, and, to the last, attracted crowds, who could not resist the tempting display of goods and trinkets, which might be won by investing six kreuzers in a bit of paper, which might, when unrolled, contain a number. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of their faces, which had been one of sadness, changed to one of joy and hilarity. Joyfully and with great bravery they went into action. During the four days that the battle lasted, and for some days afterward, dysentery disappeared as if banished by magic. When the battle was over and the privations were the same again as they had been, the disease returned with the same severity as before—nay, even worse, and the ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... battle had been won there, Merlin said: "I will now cause a thing to be done that will endure to the world's end." So he bade the King, who was the father of King Arthur, to send ships and men to Ireland. Here he showed him stones so great that no man could handle, but by his magic art he placed them upon the boats and they were borne to England. Again by his magic he showed how to transport them across the land; and after they were gathered he had them set on end, "because," he said, "they would look ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... the night. Once more he felt the magic pulse of life within him, and ran to the top of the hedge and down again twenty times for the mere joy of running. Head upwards he flew, head downwards, backwards, forwards, sideways. Sometimes he ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English |
