"Magic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to an instruction received by her four years previously, but not in sleep, and not from Apollonius, though from a source no less transcendental. (Ed.) *** Remembering, on being told this dream, that "Eliphas Levi," in his Haute Magic, had described an interview with the phantom of Apollonius, which he had evoked, I referred to the book, and found that he also saw him with a smooth-shaven face, but wearing a ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... ashipu or ishippu, 'sorcerer.'[1456] These names probably do not exhaust the various kinds of 'magicians' that were to be found among the Babylonian priests. In the eighteenth chapter of Deuteronomy, no less than eleven classes of magic workers are enumerated, and there can be little doubt but that the Pentateuchal opposition against the necromancers, sorcerers, soothsayers, and the like is aimed chiefly against Babylonish customs. We have seen in previous chapters how largely ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... forgive them," said the artist, "who confounded learned skill with unlawful magic! I trust a man may be as skilful, or more so, than the best chirurgeon ever meddled with horse-flesh, and yet may be upon the matter little more than other ordinary men, or at ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... thousand francs. Unfortunately the time for the conscription was near. Like many young men of that district, Trumence believed in witchcraft, and had gone to buy a charm, which cost him fifty francs. It consisted of three tamarind-branches gathered on Christmas Eve, and tied together by a magic number of hairs drawn from a dead man's head. Having sewed this charm into his waistcoat, Trumence had gone to town, and, plunging his hand boldly into the urn, had drawn number three. This was ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... it," says Doctor Kirby. "How did I know that all these apple-knockers had been filled up with Sykes's Magic Remedy only two weeks ago? I may have been a spiritualistic medium in my time now and then," he says, "and a mind reader, too, ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... days passed, and there was no sign of the miracle she had confidently expected. The magic of the marriage vow failed to transform her; Pauline Dumont was still Pauline Gardiner in mind and in heart. There was, however, a miracle, undreamed of, mysterious, overwhelming—John Dumont, the lover, became John ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... had Fox and Geese, and Blind-man's-buff. They guessed riddles and conundrums, had magic writing, questions and answers, and made the parlor, the sitting-room, the spacious halls, and the wide stairway ring with their merry laughter. How pleasant the hours! Time flew on swiftest wings. They had a nice supper,—sandwiches, tongue, ham, cakes, ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... the better classes with themselves in power, they should fix on just that particular number, three thousand, as if that figure had some necessary connection with the exact number of gentlemen in the State, making it impossible to discover any respectability outside or rascality within the magic number. And in the second place," he continued, "I see we are trying to do two things, diametrically opposed; we are manufacturing a government, which is based on force, and at the same time inferior in strength to those whom we propose to govern." That was what he said, but what his colleagues ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... Mr Swiveller's dinner-time, which was at three o'clock, and seemed about three weeks in coming. At the first stroke of the hour, the new clerk disappeared. At the last stroke of five, he reappeared, and the office, as if by magic, became fragrant with the smell of gin and ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... smarting eyes, the girls stood around, while as if by magic the clouds of smoke diminished to tiny streams and then ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick
... a sad silence, (for the children were now quite still, and were looking at Charley, with their eyes full of love and tears,) I went up to a table, at which he had pointed, and saw what looked like a large tin box. It proved to be a splendid magic lantern! The children had saved all their money for many months to be able to buy it, and the little mother told me, that when they came in a body that morning and gave it to Charley, with their dear love and many kisses, their faces glowing with pleasure, it was the ...
— The Little Nightcap Letters. • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... description. Nor does he feel much less embarrassed when he contemplates the accomplishments of those wonderful interpreters of the works of the noble masters, who have, either through the enchanting modulations of their voices or with skilful touch upon instruments, evolved their magic strains. Let an abler pen than mine portray the sublime triumphs of Hasse, Mario, Wachtel, Santley, Whitney; of Albani, Malibran, Lind, Parepa Rosa, Nilsson; of Haupt, Paganini, Vieuxtemps, Ole Bull, Rubinstein, Liszt, and ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... grace and a softness in the prismatic lymph that give a new form and color to the common and familiar objects it has printed in its still, pellucid depths. Every little basin of clear water by the roadside is a magic mirror, and transforms all that it encloses. There is a vastness of depth, too, in that concave hemisphere, through which the vision sinks like a falling star, that excites and fills the imagination. What it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... drawing[14] the identical incident had occurred in his own house, and it was hard to believe on the following morning that the subject of his plunging blanc-mange, similarly apostrophised, had not been imported by some sort of magic into Punch's page. A similar coincidence, far graver in its first suggestion, has been given me by Mr. Arnold-Forster. A friend of his sent in to Punch a comic sketch of the Tsar travelling by railway, ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... more than a moment, the room was completely transformed. It was no longer a storeroom for surplus stock, for the storage of bulky and empty packing cases! From the cases the men had picked out, like a touch of magic, appeared a veritable printing plant, an elaborate engraver's outfit—a highly efficient foot-power press, rapidly being assembled by Whitie Burns; an electric dryer, inks, a pile of white, silk-threaded bank-note paper, a cutter, and a score of ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... us spread the hills and dales, Where GEOFFREY spun his magic tales, And call'd them history. The land Whence ARTHUR sprung, and all his band Of gallant knights. Sire of romance, Who led the fancy's mazy dance, Thy tales shall please, thy name still be, When Time ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield
... commotion was observed in the most advanced lines of the opposing army; the moullas could be seen haranguing the irregular host with frantic energy, the beating of the tom-toms was redoubled, and then as if by magic waves on waves of men—ghazees of the most desperate type—poured down upon the plain, and rushed upon General Stewart's force. The main body of the Afghan army remained upon the hill to watch the ghazees in their reckless onslaught, ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... supernatural? This moment of our history seemed to have dropped into our hand like a jewel from the crown of some drunken god. It had no resemblance to our past; and so we were led to hope that all our wants and miseries would disappear by the spell of some magic charm, that for us there was no longer any boundary line between the possible and the impossible. Everything seemed to be saying to us: "It ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... her, not forgetting to say—what, according to the chronicler, was a common report—that she had compassed Hereward's love by magic arts. She used to practise sorcery, he said, with her sorceress mistress, Richilda of Hainault. All men knew it. Arnoul, Richilda's son, was as a brother to her. And after old Baldwin died, and Baldwin of Mons and Richilda came to Bruges, Torfrida was ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... "obstupui" was perfectly realized in me, for, with the exception of a single groan, which I gave on first seeing the object, I found that if one word would save my life, or transport me to my own fireside, I could not utter it. I was also rooted to the earth, as if by magic; and although instant tergiversation and flight had my most hearty concurrence, I could not move a limb, nor even raise my eyes off the sepulchral-looking object which lay before me. I now felt the perspiration fall from my face in torrents, ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... his opinion as to the religion of the White Kendah and their pretensions to a certain degree of magical skill. Of this magic I will make only one remark: If it existed at all, it was by no means infallible. To take a single instance, Harut and Marut were convinced by divination that I, and I only, could kill Jana, which was why they invited me ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... There are days for the deep woods, and for the open fields; days for the beach, and for the inland river; days for solitary musing beside some secluded rivulet, and days for the companionship and movement of the highways. Each day is fitted by some subtle magic of adaptation to the place and the aspect of nature which it is to reveal with a clearness denied to other hours. There came such a day not long ago to me; a day of tonic atmosphere—clear, cloudless, inspiring; there was no audible invitation in the air, but I knew by some instinct ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... Scottish kirk. There, as I interpret him, worshippers seem to be in the immediate presence of the awful and invisible Power which rules the universe; and without condescending to blind themselves by delusive symbols and images and incense and priestly magic, stand face to face with the inscrutable mystery. The old Puritanism comes out in a new form. The Calvinist creed, he says in 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,' was the 'grain on which the bravest, hardiest, and most vigorous race of men that ever ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... to be magic in all that is made," said Aimee; "so that all are magicians who have learned to draw it forth. Monsieur Loisir was showing us yesterday how the lightning may now be brought down from the thunder-cloud, and carried into the earth at some given spot. Our servants, who have yearly seen the thunderbolt ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... lock the gate when you come back, and bring the key to one place—let me see—the drawer in the hall table, the one with marble on it; for you know a place for every thing is our rule. On these conditions, I hereby deliver you this magic key, with the ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... men, 'Tis with the drops which fell from Shakspeare's pen. The storm which vanish'd on the neighbouring shore, Was taught by Shakspeare's 'Tempest' first to roar. That innocence and beauty which did smile In Fletcher, grew on this enchanted isle. But Shakspeare's magic could not copied be— Within that circle none durst walk but he. I must confess 'twas bold, nor would you now That liberty to vulgar wits allow, Which works by magic supernatural things; But Shakspeare's power is sacred as a king's. Those legends from old priesthood ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... We feel, as we read, how deep his sympathy has been with their intensity, their love of wild nature, their desire for beauty, their interest in humanity and in character, their savagery and their tenderness, their fairy magic and strange imaginations that suddenly surprise and charm. Whenever anything lovely emerges in the tale, he does not draw attention to it, but touches it with so artistic a pencil that its loveliness is enhanced. And he has put into ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... more unequal writer than Skelton;—in the discourses on the Trinity, the compeer of Bull and Waterland; and yet the writer of these pages, 500-501! Natural magic! a stroke of art! for example, converting the Nile into blood! And then his definition of a miracle. Suspension of the laws of nature! suspension—laws—nature! Bless me! a chapter would be required for the explanation of each several word ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Father who gave us first a love for books, and taught us the magic of lovely words. And it was Father who tried to place our stumbling little childish feet in the Narrow Way, and to turn our eyes ever towards a better country—"that is an heavenly!" I suppose it was the dimly-understood talk of the better country ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... the black river of Death which the original heroes often had to cross on journeys to the Celtic Other World into a rude and forbidding moat about the hostile castle into which the romancers degraded the Other World itself. Countless magic details, however, still remained recalcitrant to such treatment; and they evidently troubled Malory, whose devotion to his story was earnest and sincere. Some of them he omits, doubtless as incredible, but others he retains, often in a form where the ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... examining both. I have not yet done that, for the examination would take time, and 'Nkuni's case seemed urgent; therefore I went to Sekosini's hut to talk with him about it. And when at length I stood face to face with the witch doctor I laid my magic upon him, so that he was perforce obliged to tell me all the truth of the matter; and he confessed that 'Nkuni's illness was part of a conspiracy to remove your friends from you, that you might ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... given no sign of wanting a third from either; and I blame them with the more zest because neither 'A Faun on the Cotswolds' nor 'Ariel in Mayfair' was a merely popular book: each, I maintain, was a good book. I don't go so far as to say that the one had 'more of natural magic, more of British woodland glamour, more of the sheer joy of life in it than anything since "As You Like It,"' though Higsby went so far as this in the Daily Chronicle; nor can I allow the claim made for the other by Grigsby in the Globe that 'for pungency of satire there has been nothing ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... Siegfried's Tarnkappe (invisible cloak) and of "Fortunatus' cap" is common in Moslem folk-lore. The idea probably arose from the venerable practice of inscribing the blades with sentences, verses and magic figures. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... name, the voice of the older man had assumed a respectful tone, and all around the vulgar sneers and bitter mockery had died away as if by magic contact with something hallowed ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... injunction amid laughing encouragement from the young women whose feet already were tapping the floor in anticipation of the Virginia Reel, Two Sisters, Hull's Victory, or even the waltz, "lately imported from the Rhine." A battered Cremona appeared like magic and ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... was not proud, Katy again departed, and was soon driving toward Madison Square. She was very happy that morning, for seeing Marian had brought Silverton near to her, and airy as a bird she ran up the steps of her own dwelling, where the door opened as by magic, and Wilford himself confronted her, asking, with the tone which always made her heart beat, where she had been, and he waiting for her two whole hours. Surely it was not necessary to stop so long with a seamstress, he continued when she tried to explain. Ten minutes would suffice for directions, ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... that Rome might be restored to the same freedom it had enjoyed under the great king. Then they would dwell together in the sacred city. That, too, was Veranilda's desire; for on her ear the name of Rome fell with a magic sound; all her life she had heard it spoken reverentially, with awe, yet the city itself she had never seen. Rome, she knew, was vast; there, it seemed to her, she would live unobserved, unthought of save by him she loved. Seclusion ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... their borders do not behold the sea. Beyond them to the east there lies a desert, for ever untroubled by man: all yellow it is, and spotted with shadows of stones, and Death is in it, like a leopard lying in the sun. To the south they are bounded by magic, to the west by a mountain, and to the north by the voice and anger of the Polar wind. Like a great wall is the mountain to the west. It comes up out of the distance and goes down into the distance again, and it is named Poltarnees, Beholder of Ocean. To the northward red rocks, smooth ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... to the Princesses. The first day of my reading in the inner apartment of Madame Victoire I found it impossible to pronounce more than two sentences; my heart palpitated, my voice faltered, and my sight failed. How well understood was the potent magic of the grandeur and dignity which ought to surround sovereigns! Marie Antoinette, dressed in white, with a plain straw hat, and a little switch in her hand, walking on foot, followed by a single servant, through the walks leading to the Petit ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... that his mere 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 ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... magical formula, and Pelle was reminded of Father Lasse, who had counted his shillings over a score of times before he ventured to buy anything. He anticipated much from this discovery, and it was his intention to make good use of the magic words when his own ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... national guards and the constructors of the barricades at the Porte Saint-Denis. Throughout the day barricades were demolished by the national guards and gardes mobiles, but only after fierce and deadly conflict. During the night of the 23rd new barricades were raised as if by magic, and on the morning of the 24th, a system of ingenious and powerful defences existed through a large extent of Paris, behind which and commanding which, from the windows and house-tops, well-armed and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... time the judge should show some haste. The parties, sure, have had sufficient bleeding, Without more fuss of scrawls and pleading. Let's set ourselves at work, these drones and we And then all eyes the truth may plainly see, Whose art it is that can produce The magic cells, the nectar juice." The hornets, flinching on their part, Show that the work transcends their art. The wasp at length their title sees, And gives ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... forty years back. But now, what a marvellous change! Coal has been found close by, and the little village has leapt, as if by magic, into a thriving town. Huge factories and foundries rise from the banks of the stream; the ford is spanned by a substantial bridge; the corn-mill has disappeared, and so have the rheumatic-looking old mossy ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... radiating a light of her own in the deep shade of the interlaced boughs, she resembled a good fairy, weary with a long career of well-doing, touched by the withering suspicion of the uselessness of her labours, the powerlessness of her magic. ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... whined Gashford, drawing his chair nearer with an injured air, and laying his broad flat hand upon the table; 'ME,' he repeated, bending the dark hollows of his eyes upon him with an unwholesome smile, 'who, stricken by the magic of his eloquence in Scotland but a year ago, abjured the errors of the Romish church, and clung to him as one whose timely hand had plucked me ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... did not like "The Stolen Mind." It seemed to me to be a mixture of superstition and magic. A fairy tale. I am glad that you are publishing this magazine, and I think that it is worth double its present price. You have my good wishes to the magazine for a long and astounding career. My way ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... keenly—at the moment of his greatest happiness. And there are many ways of accepting misfortune—as many, indeed, as there are generous feelings or thoughts to be found on the earth; and every one of those thoughts, every one of those feelings, has a magic wand that transforms, on the threshold, the features and vestments of sorrow. Job would have said, "The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away: blessed be the name of the Lord"; and Marcus Aurelius perhaps, "If it be no longer allowed me to love those I loved high above all, it is doubtless ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... turf rises, and they seem to slowly sink into the earth. The monotonous and yet pleasing cry of the peewits, the sweet titlark singing overhead, and the cuckoos flying round, filled the place with the magic charm of spring. ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... in the old hole, Bunny. More of these magic-lantern advertisements ... and absolutely the worst bit of taste in town, though it's saying something, in that equestrian statue with the gilt stirrups and fixings; why don't they black the buffer's boots and his horse's hoofs while they are about it? ... More bicyclists, of course. That was just ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... with the lonely barren places where the granite will not suffer even the lichen to fasten on its surface, in short, with all the ideas we ask a landscape to possess: grace and awfulness, poesy with its renascent magic, sublime pictures, delightful ruralities,—all these are here; ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... the magic of Shelley's rhythm, but the feeling for nature is as genuine as in the later ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... not sleep, but breathed heavily, tossing from side to side with the heat, throwing off almost all the bedclothes. And in the magic moonlight what a beautiful, what a proud animal she was! A little time passed, and then steps were heard again: the old father, white all ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... pale, a man with long hair, in a black doublet, who approached the foot of the bed where Sainte-Croix lay. Brave as he was, this apparition so fully answered to his prayers (and at the period the power of incantation and magic was still believed in) that he felt no doubt that the arch-enemy of the human race, who is continually at hand, had heard him and had now come in answer to his prayers. He sat up on the bed, feeling mechanically at the place where the handle of his sword would have been but two hours since, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... interests in the early years were seemingly just as circumscribed, but who felt that nameless something—that push from within—which first found its outlet in a deeper interest in the life about him than his brothers ever knew; and who later felt the magic of the world of books; and, still later, the need of expression, an expression which finally showed itself in a masterly interpretation of country life and experiences. The same heredity here, the same environment, the ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... only seen the commencement of this magic cavern; it has more wonders to reveal to us," remarked her husband, desiring the black guide to lead on. He accordingly proceeded through one of the widest passages in front of them, holding his torch high above his head to show its height, which appeared ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... plants that fell to pieces at the touch of the fingers. Only by chipping away at hard old Latin, contracted and dogged in more senses than one, and by gathering together scattered passages in classic authors, could anything be learned. Then there arose another difficulty, how to identify the magic plants? The same description will very nearly fit several flowers, especially when not actually in flower; how determine which really was the true root? The uncertainty and speculation kept up the pleasure, till at last I should not have cared to have had the original question answered. ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... Nina exclaimed, throwing it away from her. "You see, I was right; it is devilish, and no doubt belongs to some one near here who practises Black Magic—Mad Valerie, perhaps. This cross that I wear round my neck, which is made of yew, no doubt warned me of this danger and so saved me from an awful fate. You smile!—but I am certain of it. The yew-tree is just as efficacious in the case of ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... other black wood. I looked at these articles and recognized them. They had stood in front of the sanctuary in the temple in Kendah Land, and over them I had once seen this very woman dressed as she was to-night, bend her head in the magic smoke before she had uttered the prophecy of the ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... heard, but in spite of all our hopes and expectations, and almost against our belief, it also sounded right astern, and further away than any of the others. I was ready to cry with vexation. It seemed like the work of magic, and as if a set of mischievous imps or spirits, like those on Prospero's island, were employed in trying our tempers and patience. There seemed no use in going on thus, to be constantly baulked; so I ordered the men to lay on their oars, resolved ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... timber among Sir Felix's undergrowth. Half an hour later, had your unwary feet led you to a certain corner of Sir Felix's well-timbered demesne, you might have scratched your head and wondered what magic carpet had transported you into the heart of the Cognac District. And all this was the work of the men of Troy (not being volunteers) who had come either in the long-boats or in the ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... "unknowable", and it owes its serviceability for the sacerdotal purpose to its recondite character. It appears to have been from this source that learning, as an institution, arose, and its differentiation from this its parent stock of magic ritual and shamanistic fraud has been slow and tedious, and is scarcely yet complete even in the most advanced of the ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... and that I fire one of mine and await results before we ventured any nearer, and if there are any of the red devils there we can kill some of them before they get to us. And now both closely watching the wagons I fired the shot. Still as death and not a move for a moment, and then as if by magic a man came out from under a wagon and stood up looking all around, for he did not see us. Then he threw up his arms high over his head and shouted—"The boys have come. The boys have come!" Then other bare heads appeared, and Mr. Bennett and wife and Mr. Arcane ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... Crusade ensuing, Messer Torello appoints a date, after which his wife may marry again: he is taken prisoner, and by training hawks comes under the Soldan's notice. The Soldan recognizes him, makes himself known to him, and entreats him with all honour. Messer Torello falls sick, and by magic arts is transported in a single night to Pavia, where his wife's second marriage is then to be solemnized, and being present thereat, is recognized by her, and returns with ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... 19:18-20. Fifty thousand pieces of silver would be equal to ten thousand dollars' worth, or, according to some estimates, six times that amount. But ten thousand dollars' worth of books on incantation and magic alone destroyed, considering the scarcity of books in that day, shows the wondrous extent to which the gospel had been accepted. This was made the occasion of a great tumult in the city, when one, Demetrius, seeing that the prestige of Diana was diminishing, ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... the ruin of every noble resolve, I cry aloud against the utterness of the destroyer. My life has indeed been a sad one; so sad, so lonely, that no language in my power of utterance can give to the reader a full conception of its moonless darkness. Would that the magic pen of a De Quincey were mine that my miseries might stand out until strong-hearted men and true-hearted women would weep, and every young man and maiden also would tremble and turn from everything intoxicating as from the oblivion ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... a magic in the very word that could, almost at any moment, summon tears into her eyes. Of course she accepted right gladly. If her husband's duties were so pressing that the long-talked-of journey to Lewis and Borva had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... "Most of his verse is tinged with sadness—as in most Irish poetry—but there is a fine imaginative quality that lifts it to a far higher plane than that of the conventional melancholy rhymer. There are poems in this book that recall the magic of Rossetti.... Victor Daley has left his mark in the ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... essentially greater than the very vastness which appals us, seeing that it embraces and envelops it. Enormous depths of space are pictured in my brain, through my optic nerve; and what eludes the magic mirror of my retina, my mind can conceive, apprehend, make its own. It is not even true to say that the mind cannot conceive infinity—the real truth (if I may for once be Chestertonian), the real truth is that it can conceive ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... exterminate. Though they are thus seeking him, and he seeking them, it is amazing what difficulty they find in meeting: they do meet, however, every now and then, and many sore evils does the Destroyer suffer at their hands. By faith and fortitude, however, and the occasional assistance of the magic implements he strips them of, he is enabled to baffle and elude their malice, till he is conducted, at last, to the Domdaniel cavern, where he finds them assembled, and pulls down the roof of it upon their heads and his own; perishing, like Samson, in ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... him at the city, whose thousands of tinned roofs, rising one above the other from the water's edge to the citadel, were all a splendor of argent light in the afternoon sun. It was indeed as if some magic had clothed that huge rock, base and steepy flank and crest, with a silver city. They gazed upon the marvel with cries of joy that satisfied the driver's utmost pride in it, and Isabel said, "To live there, there in that Silver City, in perpetual sojourn! To be always going to go on a morrow ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... when a tune Speeds us to Heaven, and night is at the noon Of all its frolic, all its wild desire! O thrall of rapt illusions when we tire Of coy reserve, and all the moments pass As pass the visions in a magic glass, And every step is shod with ecstacy, And every smile is fleck'd with ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... their pure water, Anat, the great spouse of Anou, Has held thee in her sacred arms; Iaou has transferred thee into a holy place; He has transferred thee from his sacred hands; He has transferred thee into the midst of honey and fat, He has poured magic water into thy mouth, And the virtue of the water has opened ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... Persia into the best regulated families. Unfortunately there was only one Omar and there were scores of imitators who, in order to make the Astronomer go round, were obliged to draw him out to the thinness of Balzac's Magic Skin. While all this was going on, the present Editor was forced to conclude that the burning literary need was not for more translators, but for more Omars to translate; and what was his surprise to note that the work of a later ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... essential doctrines of [v.04 p.0690] the original Buddhism. They are at the same time its distinctive doctrines; that is to say, the doctrines that distinguish it from all previous teaching in India. But the Buddha, while rejecting the sacrifices and the ritualistic magic of the brahmin schools, the animistic superstitions of the people, the asceticism and soul-theory of the Jains, and the pantheistic speculations of the poets of the pre-Buddhistic Upanishads, still retained the belief in transmigration. This ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... strange smite] No. [He holds up a tabloid between finger and thumb] White magic, Keith! Just one—and they may do what they like to you, and you won't know it. Snap your fingers at all the tortures. It's a great comfort! Have one to keep ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... have had some magic power, for the click of a musket was heard as the abbe exclaimed, "I have fifty cartridges in my pocket, monsieur le marquis, and my ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... tightened in an expression of settled grief. Kitty was sorry for Mrs Norton, but Kitty was too young to understand, and her sorrow evaporated in laughter. She listened to John's explanations of the future as to a fairy tale suddenly touched with the magic of realism. That the old could not exist in conjunction with the new order of things never grew into the painful precision of thought in her mind. She saw but the show side; she listened as to an account of private theatricals, and in spite ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... thing that now and then in poetry rises (if I may use the paradox) above perfection. It does not contain, as one or two of the Odes contain, what I may call the Great Thrill. It nowhere compels that sudden 'silent, upon a peak in Darien' shiver, that awed surmise of the magic of poetry which arrests one at the seventh stanza of the 'Nightingale' or before the closing lines ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 'out in the Colonies' and 'a huge melon' were enough to plunge me suddenly into a dream. As by an apparition, I beheld tropical trees, forests alive with marvelous birds. Oh! the simple magic of the words 'the Colonies'! In my childhood they stood for a multitude of distant sun-scorched countries, with their palm-trees, their enormous flowers, their black natives, their wild beasts, their endless possibilities ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... exquisite entertainment by the talents and management of Garrick, who greatly surpassed all his predecessors of this and perhaps every other nation, in his genius for acting; in the sweetness and variety of his tones, the irresistible magic of his eye, the fire and vivacity of his action, the elegance of attitude, and the whole pathos of expression. Quin excelled in dignity and declamation, as well as exhibiting some characters of humour, equally exquisite and peculiar. Mrs. Cibber breathed the whole soul of female tenderness ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Sacramento, of which the Senator was the pioneer, charging sixteen dollars a passage, and actually coining money. Other boats were built, out of materials which had either come around Cape Horn or were brought from the Sandwich Islands. Wharves were built, houses were springing up as if by magic, and the Bay of San Francisco presented as busy a scene of life as any part of the world. Major Allen, of the Quartermaster's Department, who had come out as chief-quartermaster of the division, was building a large warehouse at Benicia, with a row of quarters, out of lumber at one hundred dollars ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... protected by the magic power of unapproachable sanctity, and the husbandman has been strictly interdicted from the earliest time to this very day from casting a glance at it during the time when the river is rising; for what ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... songs, the cheers and games and reminiscences, re-enforced the noisy decorations. At the last, in one of those intense moments of quiet which young people can produce as by magic, came a neat little speech whose purpose was highly praiseworthy. But, to John Wesley, Jr., it ended on the wrong note. Another listener took mental exception to it, though his ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... as she is fit for me, And of just compass for her knuckles be. Blest ring, thou in my mistress' hand shall lie, Myself, poor wretch, mine own gifts now envy. O would that suddenly into my gift, I could myself by secret magic shift! 10 Then would I wish thee touch my mistress' pap, And hide thy left hand underneath her lap, I would get off, though strait and sticking fast, And in her bosom strangely fall at last. Then I, that I may seal her privy leaves, Lest to the wax the hold-fast dry gem cleaves, Would ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... Ulysses, the two most important in the subsequent war, endeavored to escape this necessity. Achilles was the son of the sea-nymph Thetis, who had dipped him when an infant in the river Styx, the waters of which magic stream rendered him invulnerable to any weapon except in one spot,—the heel by which his mother had held him. But her love for her son made her anxious to guard him against every danger, and when the chieftains came ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... boy of seventeen, sauntering into his sister's room and taking a somewhat insecure seat upon a fancy table, where, with hands in pockets, he regarded her quizzically. "Great Scott, what a turn out! You look like a magician in the midst of a magic circle. Are you going to witch the lot into newts and toads? Whence this thusness? You won't persuade me that it's a fit of neatness and you're actually tidying. Doesn't exactly ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... small magic lantern does very well for evening exhibitions, but the lantern can be used in the daytime with good results by directing sunlight through the lens instead of using the oil lamp. A window facing the sun is selected and the shade is drawn almost down, the remaining space being covered by a piece ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... ye of heaven, Floats o'er this vast and wondrous monument, And shadows forth its glory. There is given Unto the things of earth, which Time hath bent, A spirit's feeling, and where he hath leant His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power And magic in the ruined battlement, For which the palace of the present hour Must yield its pomp, and wait ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... for the gentleman and the amateur; the greater number of those who toiled at it were work-tried, seasoned men. And yet, although it had now sunk to the level of any other arduous and uncertain occupation, and the magic prizes of the early days were seldom found, something of the old, romantic glamour still clung to this most famous gold-field, dazzling the eyes and confounding the judgment. Elsewhere, the horse was in use at the puddling-trough, and machines for crushing quartz were under discussion. But ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... believe that there is another Line besides that which my senses indicate, and another motion besides that of which I am daily conscious. I, in return, ask you to describe in words or indicate by motion that other Line of which you speak. Instead of moving, you merely exercise some magic art of vanishing and returning to sight; and instead of any lucid description of your new World, you simply tell me the numbers and sizes of some forty of my retinue, facts known to any child in my capital. Can anything be ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... the empress, having reached Kherson in advance and gone north to anticipate her coming. He accompanied her down the stream, looking with her on the show of prosperity and populousness which delighted her inexperienced eyes, and smiling covertly at the delusion which Potemkin's magic had raised, well assured that as soon as she had passed silence and desertion would succeed these busy scenes. At a new projected town on the way, of which Catharine had, with much ceremony, laid the first stone, Joseph was asked to lay ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... his similes; most of them, however, when they first began to write, went the fullest length in imitation, and tricked themselves out in euphuistic tinsel. They were careful by choosing appropriate titles for their novels to publicly connect themselves with the euphuistic cycle. "Euphues" was a magic pass-word, and they well knew that the name once pronounced, the doors of the "boudoirs," or closets as they were then called, and the hands of the fair ladies, were sure to open; the book was ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... a moment that my attention was distracted by the ladies and by thoughts of mademoiselle. A gentleman was speaking (Mr. Lewis told me it was Mr. Ross of Pennsylvania) in a most impassioned manner, and the magic word "Mississippi" caught my ear and charmed my attention. Mr. Ross ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... which are the bluest of stones, and resemble the sky in color. Golden images of the gods whom they worship, are set up about the vault, and show like stars in the firmament. This is the chamber in which the king delivers his judgments. Four golden magic-wheels hang from its roof, and threaten the monarch with the Divine Nemesis, if he exalts himself above the condition of man. These wheels are called 'the tongues of the gods,' and are set in their places by the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... ruler in whom the new culture took its most notable form, Frederick the Second, the "World's Wonder" of his time, was regarded by half Europe as no better than an infidel. A faint revival of physical science, so long crushed as magic by the dominant ecclesiasticism, brought Christians into perilous contact with the Moslem and the Jew. The books of the Rabbis were no longer an accursed thing to Roger Bacon. The scholars of Cordova were no mere Paynim swine to Adelard of Bath. How slowly indeed ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... remember that there is one thing I have not been altogether truthful about, through forgetting,—about the Danes we have seen. I recall now that last winter Teboen often saw one when she was gathering herbs in the wood. She spoke with him of the magic things she brews to make Elfgiva sleep, and he gave her herbs which she thought so useful that she has been fretful because she ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... four or five of his companions. Trinity in unity, he said, was as much a contradiction as a square circle. Ezra was the author of the Pentateuch. The Apocalypse was an allegorical book about the philosopher's stone. Moses had learned magic in Egypt. Christianity was a delusion which would not last till the year 1800. For this wild talk, of which, in all probability, he would himself have been ashamed long before he was five and twenty, he was prosecuted by the Lord Advocate. The Lord Advocate ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... for when the night shut in, the spars of the Foam were faintly discernible, drawn like spiders' webs on the bright streak of the evening sky. In a few more minutes, even this tracery, which resembled that of a magic-lantern, vanished from the eyes of those aloft; for it had not been seen by any on deck for more ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... circumstances, but even if it were, no reply might be brought, lest the transaction should partake of the nature of a phenomenon—something which could be proved on the physical plane to have been an act of magic. ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... came crouching at his feet and wept for lack of it. "Oh, give me back my magic cap, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the "thrower," because he lifts the lump of clay above his head and throws it down heavily upon the center of the wheel. The things that happen to that lump of clay when he touches it and the wheel revolves seem like the work of magic. He presses his thumbs into it from above and draws the walls up between his thumbs and fingers. He clasps his hands around it, and it grows tall and slender. He lays his finger on the top of the little column of clay, and it flattens in a moment. He points his finger at it, ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... behind him for the can of milk. It was rather warm, but it tasted good for all of that. Then, putting the wooden stopper back in place, he once more took up his task. Perhaps he might have been rowing around that harbour yet had not the fog suddenly disappeared as if by magic. Wisps of it remained here and there, but even as he watched them, they curled up and were burned into nothingness like feathers in a fire. He found himself near the head of a two-mile-long harbour. The calm ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... good and well managed in Gracieuse, it may also be said that almost everything is badly managed in Finette.[224] To begin with, there is that capital error which has been noticed above, that it is not really a fairy tale at all. Except the magic quenouilles, which themselves are of the smallest importance in the story, there is nothing in it beyond the ways of an ordinary adventurous nouvelle. The touch of grivoiserie by which the Princesses Nonchalante and Babillarde ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... hour, Rip and Santos, both in false good health thanks to medical magic, were on their way back to the ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... and the sinking sun over his shoulder, the battered knight rode toward the foothills and on up the winding path, oblivious of the Eternal Painter's magic and conscious only that every step brought him nearer his Heart's Desire. Here was the rock where she was seated when he had first seen her. What ages had passed since then! And there, around the escarpment, he saw her pony on the shelf! Dropping P.D.'s reins, he hurried on impetuously. ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... shrieking, and whirling their paddles round their heads. I am unwilling to injure the poor wretches. I aim instead at the trees. The white splinters start off on either side from a palm-tree struck by the shot. The effect is like magic, the Indians' threatening shrieks are changed to cries of terror, and in hot haste they dash back through the surf towards the shore. Still we are left in doubt as to the fate of our friends. It is clear that we cannot land to go to their assistance. But I resolve not to give them up. We rest ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... 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 Imaginary Mistress The Middle Classes Cousin Betty The Country Parson In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following: Another Study of ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... ever knew; Unriddled those dark oracles as well As those that made them could themselves foretell. For as the Britons long have hoped, in vain, Arthur would come to govern them again, You have fulfill'd that prophecy alone, And in your poem placed him on his throne. 20 Such magic power has your prodigious pen To raise the dead, and give new life to men, Make rival princes meet in arms and love, Whom distant ages did so far remove; For as eternity has neither past Nor future, authors say, nor first nor last, But is all instant, ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... was ran out as easily as though it had been a twelve-pounder. The first captain seized the lock string; there was a deafening report, and an eleven-inch shell went booming into the fort. The force of the discharge ran the gun back into the turret again, and the ports closed as if by magic. They did not close entirely, however, for there was a space of about four inches left between them, to allow for the action of the rammer in loading. The gun was sponged, the cartridge driven home, and the gunner's mate stood at the muzzle ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon
... constituted, everything will be justice and happiness in a world now so full of misery and injustice. And it is no good for proletarians to object, they have no means of production: by guaranteeing themselves credit gratis, all who want to work will, as by the touch of a magic wand, have everything ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... finding it! I had the joy to see you enter the agency, and I waited, trembling with the prayer that I might persuade you to come to my aid. Mademoiselle, will you do me the honour to allow me to reproduce the magic of your features on my canvas? I entreat it of you in ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... backward to its remembered morning: sin seemed to be a question of doctrine and inward penitence, humiliation an exercise of the closet, the bearing of his deeds a matter of private vision adjusted solely by spiritual relations and conceptions of the divine purposes. And now, as if by some hideous magic, this loud red figure had risen before him in unmanageable solidity—an incorporate past which had not entered into his imagination of chastisements. But Mr. Bulstrode's thought was busy, and he was not a man to act ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... veranda round the south and west. The living-room ran across the south side; into its east wall he built a capacious fireplace, with narrow slits of windows to right and left, and in the western wall were deep French windows commanding the magic of the view across the valley. The dining-room, too, faced to the west, with more French windows to let in sun and soul. The kitchen was to the east, and off the kitchen lay Grant's bedroom, facing also to the east, as becomes a man who ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... back among his cohort. And as if some conjurer had flourished a wand of magic, in the twinkling of an eye the first century had formed in marching order; every legionary had flung over his shoulder his shield and pack, and at the harsh blare of the military trumpet the whole legion fell into line; the aquilifer with the bronze eagle, that had tossed on high in a score ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis |
