"Occult" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... design of giving a more correct Edition of Spenser; and, without doubt, would have performed it well; but he was dissuaded from his purpose by his Friends, as beneath the dignity of a Professor of the occult Sciences. Yet these very Friends, I suppose, would have thought it had added lustre to his high Station, to have new-furbished out some dull northern Chronicle, or dark Sibylline AEnigma. But let it not be thought that what is here said insinuates ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... glanced up, and his gaze flickered over Jim like summer lightning, inspiring in the young man so strong a feeling of repulsion that it almost amounted to nausea. There was something horribly magnetic in the look, and Jim felt that this man possessed some strange occult power which was lacking in ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... each other, but they never betrayed any coolness. Even had they desired it, they would have been held in awe by fear of Napoleon, who insisted on harmony in his court. Still, there could be distinguished at the Tuileries two parties in occult opposition, belonging respectively to the old and to the new nobility. At the head of the first stood the Count and the Countess of Montesquieu; of the second, the Duchess of Montebello, to whom the Empress's preference gave great authority. ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... but this industry has suffered what can only be a temporary check, from the change of fashion in regard to the wearing of laces. Why the loveliest of all fabrics made for the adornment of women should ever go "out of fashion" would be amazing if anything in the vagaries of that occult and omnipotent influence could be. The Irish ladies ought to circulate Madame de Piavigny's exquisite Lime d'Heures, with its incomparable illustrations by Carot and Meaulle, drawn from the lace work of all ages and countries, as a tonic against despair in respect to this industry. In one of ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... points, beautiful sentiments, practical beneficence, and occult theories of this oriental belief. He becomes enamored of the life and teachings ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... gold mine in Mexico is known by the picturesque and mysterious name of The Four Fingers. It originally belonged to an Aztec tribe, and its location is known to one surviving descendant—a man possessing wonderful occult power. Should any person unlawfully discover its whereabouts, four of his fingers are mysteriously removed, and one by one returned to him. The appearance of the final fourth betokens his swift ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... follow from self-evident premisses, and would affirm nothing which he did not clearly and distinctly perceive, and who had so often taken to task the scholastics for wishing to explain obscurities through occult qualities, could maintain a hypothesis, beside which occult qualities are commonplace. What does he understand, I ask, by the union of the mind and the body? What clear and distinct conception has he got of thought in most intimate union with a certain particle of extended ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... that the entire charge of the lighting of the house was left in his hands,—even to that of its stores of wax and tallow and oil; and great was the pleasure he derived, not only from the trust reposed in him, but from other more occult sources connected with the duties ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... paper partitions. I had not been long in bed on Saturday night when I was awoke by Ito bringing in an old hen which he said he could stew till it was tender, and I fell asleep again with its dying squeak in my ears, to be awoke a second time by two policemen wanting for some occult reason to see my passport, and a third time by two men with lanterns scrambling and fumbling about the room for the strings of a mosquito net, which they wanted for another traveller. These are among the ludicrous incidents of Japanese travelling. ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... had followed a fresh trail and found stale bones. Despite his youth, the desert had put something of its own grim haunting mystery into this man who loved it; to him had it been given to understand much that to the layman savored of the occult; at birth, God had been very good to him, in that He had ordained that during all his life the Desert Rat should be engaged in learning how to die, and meet the issue unafraid. For the Desert Rat was a philosopher, and even at this ghastly spectacle his sense of humor did ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... the worship of the sun had its chief centre and its most sacred shrines. It was the seat of the most ancient university in the world, to which youthful students came from all parts of the world, to learn the occult wisdom which the priests of On alone could teach. Thales, Solon, Eudoxus, Pythagoras, and Plato, all studied there, perhaps Moses too. It was also the birthplace of the sacred literature of Egypt, where were written on papyrus leaves the original chapters of the oldest book in the world, ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... of every one, fall down suddenly upon the ground, when they are in their flight over certain 'neighbouring fields hereabouts: a relation I should not have made, if I had not received it from several credible men. But those who are less inclined to heed superstition, attribute it to some occult quality in the ground, and to somewhat of antipathy between it and the geese, such as they say is betwixt wolves and scyllaroots: for that such hidden tendencies and aversions, as we call sympathies and antipathies, are implanted in ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... page of Greek; he tried a theme occult,— A message and an errand,—every time the same result! Then Cyrus knew that somehow his machine had missed its aim; For though the works ran smoothly it was always ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... or be fanned away. It has life and it is not without law; it has an obvious life, and a less obvious law. But with Greece abides the obvious law and the less obvious life: symmetry as apparent as the symmetry of the form of man, and life occult like his unequal heart. And this seems to be the nobler and ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... questions which knock for answer at every heart,—on life and death, on love, on wealth and poverty, on the prizes of life and the ways whereby we come at them; on the characters of men, and the influences, occult and open, which affect their fortunes; and on those mysterious and demoniacal powers which defy our science and which yet interweave their malice and their gift in our brightest hours. Who ever read the volume of the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... how this "meek and gentle" fellow met blackbird impudence. If one of the sable gentry came down too near a dove, the latter gave a little hop and rustled his feathers, but did not move one step away. For some occult reason the blackbird seemed to respect this mild protest, and ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... she had spoken to Don oppressed her more and more. That Paul had grasped the Absolute Key she could not doubt, but it seemed to Flamby that he had given life to something which had lain dormant, occult, for untold ages, that he had created a thing which already had outgrown his control. In art, literature and music disciples proclaimed themselves. One of France's foremost composers produced a symphony, Dawn, directly inspired by the gospel of Paul Mario; ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... it would require a herculean effort to attain a position where he could look over the heads of other men. That position, he argued, was not worth the life-long effort required. Withal, he could not bring himself to quite understand why he had married Mary Greenwater, unless that she possessed some occult power and gained control over forces of his nature which he did not understand. True, there was but little or no obligation to the ceremony. It held good in the Cherokee Indian nation, that government within a government. ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... must not be omitted. A doctor is, with them, a person of importance and esteem, but his province seems rather to charm away occult diseases than to act the surgeon's part, which, as a subordinate science, is exercised indiscriminately. Their excellent habit of body*, the effect of drinking water only, speedily heals wounds without an exterior application which with us would take weeks or months to close. They are, nevertheless, ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... pass after so surprising a manner; it is with no small concern I see the original of the Staffian race so little known in the world as it is at this time; for which reason, as you have employed your studies in astronomy and the occult sciences, so I, my mother being a Welsh woman, dedicated mine to genealogy, particularly that of our own family, which, for its antiquity and number, may challenge any in Great Britain. The Staffs are originally of Staffordshire, ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... other art stirs the sense. Probably the Greek myth of Orpheus and his lute was not a myth after all; perhaps Orpheus had mastered the occult knowledge of this great power. Surely it would be worth some learned scientist's while to investigate from a psychological point of view how it is, and why it is, that certain chords cause certain emotions, and give base or ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... a different reason. I was thinking of the influences that had pressed me out of my destined groove, by every human right my own. I remember how sanguine Count Reitzenstein was that through the Service I ought to gain the power I had lost. But as I sat in the hotel room had occult powers been given me, I never would have taken up Secret Service work. But one is not quite as wise at twenty-four ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... the flattering attention that is given the condemned; no one else is given half the chance to make a glorious finish. By some occult influence his faults are utterly effaced and every latent talent is developed to a point of absolute perfection. When this 'ne plus ultra' is reached, a quick curtain is dropped over his career, and he lives in the memory of countless ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman
... Girl and then nodding reassuringly she got her message of cheer over the gulf of his understanding. In return the Dummy told her by gestures how he knew the girl and how she had bound up the leg of the superintendent's dog. The Senior was a literal person and not occult; and she was very busy. When the Dummy stooped to indicate the dog, a foot or so from the ground, she seized that as ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... lobster smothered in cream and sherry (piping hot) daintiest possible wafers of bread-and-butter embracing leaves of pale lettuce, a hollow-stemmed glass effervescent with liquid sunlight of a most excellent bouquet, and then another: these served not in the least to subdue his occult jubilation. ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... mob had dethroned the God of Sickness, and banished his effigy in a paper junk, launched on the river at night, in flame. A geomancer proclaimed that a bamboo grove behind the town formed an angle most correct, germane, and pleasant to the Azure Dragon and the White Tiger, whose occult currents, male and female, run throughout Nature. For any or all of these reasons, the town was delivered. The pestilence vanished, as though it had come but to grant Monsieur Jolivet his silence, and to add a few score uncounted living wretches to the dark, mighty, ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... self-containment and reserve. Quick to notice, as he was, and acutely observant of much that might have been expected to escape him, he still kept as much locked up within as he so liberally gave out. Bulwer Lytton was at one time, as is well known, addicted to the study of mediaeval magic, occult power, and the conjunctions of the heavenly bodies; and among other figures he one day amused himself by casting the horoscope of Mr. Gladstone (1860). To him the astrologer's son sent it. Like most of such things, the horoscope has one or two ingenious hits and a dozen nonsensical misses. ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... incredulous Western world puts no faith in Mahatmas. To it a Mahatma is a kind of spiritual Mrs. Harris, giving an address in Thibet at which no letters are delivered. Either, it says, there is no such person, or he is a fraudulent scamp with no greater occult powers—well, than ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... has begun life with a single-minded devotion to the science of experimental chemistry, very surprising in a young and handsome man with a brilliant future before him. A profound knowledge of the occult sciences has persuaded the Baron that it is possible to solve the famous problem called the "Philosopher's Stone." His own pecuniary resources have long since been exhausted by his costly experiments. His sister has next supplied him ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... What was the occult power within this man—whom no one liked, yet who seemed mysteriously to fascinate all who came inside the charmed circle of his personal influence? Instead of answering defiantly, as she had done to Isabel, Custance contented ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... the place of their masters. That is their conception of Home Rule. They have been told from infancy that the British Government keeps them down because of their religion. They know that the British Government is Protestant, and they believe that in some occult way the superior position held by the Protestants in Ireland is due to favouritism. Under a Home Rule Parliament, that is, a Catholic Parliament, this condition of things will be reversed, and they will at ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... question, and although people were shy of alluding to Rebecca, she yet seemed to know, in some occult and instinctive fashion, ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... appreciate the large patronage they have received from the reading public, for which we return our sincere thanks. We hope the near future will give us the work referred to by the author in his preface, as doubtless it will be a great revelation of Occult laws that govern our little Earth in its relation to our Sun and solar system, of which it forms a part, and give much light on those subjects that ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... I cried, as we rode on, feeling for some occult reason very angry with the Man of Wrath. "And her wretched husband doesn't care a rap, and will probably beat her to-night if his supper isn't right. What nonsense it is to talk about the equality of the sexes when the ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... facing toward the danger and so pointed out its direction for Breed. It is this sort of signaling which men will not understand, preferring instead to credit an animal, warned at a distance of many miles, with some mysterious occult knowledge. ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... at table was lively. The prince could not forbear relating his adventure of the key, which excited general astonishment. A warm dispute on the subject presently took place. Most of the company positively maintained that the pretended occult sciences were nothing better than juggling tricks. The French abbe, who had drank rather too much wine, challenged the whole tribe of ghosts, the English lord uttered blasphemies, and the musician made a cross to exorcise the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... unattached samurai who formed part of it, should not be punished but should be provided for subsequently. It might have occurred to the leaders of the Osaka party that these lenient conditions covered some occult designs; nothing was less likely than that a statesman like Ieyasu would be content with so signal a failure. But a short-sighted sentiment of confidence seems to have obscured the judgment of the Osaka folks. They actually gave heed to Ieyasu's complaint that ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... Accused,—our learning's fate,—of wizardry, Rebellion, to the setting up a rule {250} And creed prodigious as described to me. His death, which happened when the earthquake fell (Prefiguring, as soon appeared, the loss To occult learning in our lord the sage Who lived there in the pyramid alone), Was wrought by the mad people—that's their wont! On vain recourse, as I conjecture it, To his tried virtue, for miraculous help— How could he stop the earthquake? That's their way! The other imputations must be ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... said Sir Lucien coolly, "we are men of the world—and we do not look for consistency in womenfolk. Mrs. Irvin has decided to consult a palmist or a hypnotist or some such occult authority before dining with you this evening. Doubtless she seeks to learn if the play to which you propose to take her is ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... single faculty should be seen in the environment of a character, and that its operations should be clothed more or less in circumstance. And since love has its ingenuities, its fine-spun and far-flung threads of association, its occult symbolisms, Browning knows how to press into the service of the central emotion objects and incidents and imagery which may seem remote or curious or fantastic or trivial or even grotesque. In Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli love which ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... This enormous and ponderous saddle-mattras is called Hellesa; and as the Pretender rode on it, he was called Bu Hellesa; that is the father of a Hellesa.] 288 This man was reported to be an adept in the occult sciences; and it was both reported and credited, that the occult art enabled him to multiply corn and provision for the army to any quantity he might want. I was established at Santa Cruz, which was three days' horse-travelling from Buhellesa's standard; the (Shereef,) ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... at the Captain, but addressed the Doctor eagerly, as one more capable of understanding matters occult: "And I'll tell you another thing—Mr. Left ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... The pun, the wonderful bo-peep of double meanings darting out to surprise and smack one another from behind words of the same sound, sometimes the same spelling, overwhelmed the provincial mind with awe of London's occult and prolific genius. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... consoled myself with the reflection that the occasion for such a revelation no longer existed, and I had no desire needlessly to persecute a man whose iniquities could, at all events, harm no one but himself. And still, knowing from experience his talent for occult diplomacy, I took the precaution (without even remotely implicating Miss Hildegard) to put Mr. Pfeifer on his guard. One evening, as we were sitting alone in his library enjoying a confidential smoke, I related to him, merely as part of the secret history of our ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... lore. She drew magic circles, saw visions of people in a glass, possessed numerous charms and incantations, and, above all, kept a wonderful magic book. She attempted to find lost money, to tell the future, and to cure disease; indeed, she had a varied repertoire of occult performances. ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... this sort, of course, are familiar wherever a successful occult creed makes its way against ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... Spanish Arabs, in particular, are commended by Sprengel above their brethren for their observations on the practice of medicine. [41] But whatever real knowledge they possessed was corrupted by their inveterate propensity for mystical and occult science. They too often exhausted both health and fortune in fruitless researches after the elixir of life and the philosopher's stone. Their medical prescriptions were regulated by the aspect of the stars. Their physics ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... thing, but the man seems to have some odd kind of gift. Whether it be that "second sight" which we Scotch people are so prone to believe in, or some other occult form of knowledge, I know not, but nothing of a disastrous tendency ever occurs in this place but the men with whom he lives are able to quote after the event some saying of his which certainly appears to have foretold it. He gets uneasy or excited—wakes ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... take its place among things to be investigated, the evidence is too convincing to be pooh-poohed. Science and philosophy are now boldly entering the dim regions of the occult in search of its laws; on the battlefield Tommy Atkins is already there thinking over weird things and he comes to conclusions, finding the ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... C. DE SAINT-GERMAIN, the recognized leading authority on all occult subjects. A plain, practical thorough work on this all absorbing topic. Over 100 illustrations. Cloth, special cover in colors, $1.00 Paper, lithographed cover in five ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... of this man, the promoter of the Manchurian Syndicate, and, if report spoke truly, the possessor of an influence over the young Czar which could be attributed only to some occult art. ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... except that this man, essentially a man of evil, possesses some occult influence which other men ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... mountain grotto, devoted himself to the study of the occult principles of the 'Old Philosopher' until the material elements of his mortal frame were gradually evaporated or sublimated, and without having passed through the change which men call death, he became an immortal spirit returning whence ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... about the great stove in the boarding-house office also possessed the charm of balsam fragrance. One told the other occult facts about the "Southeast of the southwest of eight." The second in turn vouchsafed information about another point of the compass. Thorpe heard of many curious practical expedients. He learned that one can ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... 'Porta:' a native of Naples, famous for skill in the occult sciences. He wrote a book on Physiognomy, seeking to trace in the human face resemblances to animals, and to ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... familiar to those alone to whom such practice is habitual."[6] Said Thespesion to Apollonius Tyanaeus, according to the biography of the latter, by Philostratus; "The Egyptians do not venture to give form to their deities, they only give them in symbols which have an occult meaning." ...
— Scarabs • Isaac Myer
... has no slightest material interest in the nationality or the place of residence of those who conduct this traffic; though all the facts go to say that in some puzzle-headed way the common man commonly persuades himself that it does make some occult sort of difference to him; so that he is commonly willing to pay something substantial toward subsidising businessmen of his own nationality, in the way of a protective tariff and ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... three, representing enemies (the queen being one of the number), had their arms hanging down; the other two, representing persons whose favor was desired, had them raised aloft. With certain cabalistic words and occult rites the puppets were next secretly hidden beneath an altar whereon the mass was celebrated, and the mysterious "sacrifice" was believed to complete the efficacy of the charm. It was no new superstition imported ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... of speaking members, God knows that we have enough. And I suppose that these purblind sheep do have some occult weight that is salutary. They enable a leader to be a leader, and even in that way they are useful. We shall ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... not spoken one word since the disappearance of the sonnet—that sonnet which would have told her of her future; for had not Marescotti, by some occult power, read her secret? Alas! too, was she not about to reenter her gloomy home without catching so much as a glimpse of Nobili? Count Marescotti had no opportunity of saying a word to Enrica that was not audible to all. He did venture to ask her if she would be present next ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... hair, and has begun the adaptation of the new photography to brain study. The relation of the new rays to thought rays is being eagerly discussed in what may be called the non-exact circles and journals; and all that numerous group of inquirers into the occult, the believers in clairvoyance, spiritualism, telepathy, and kindred orders of alleged phenomena, are confident of finding in the new force long-sought facts in proof of their claims. Professor Neusser in Vienna has photographed gallstones in the liver of one patient (the stone showing ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... fish, the bird, the brute, Of every kind occult or known (Each exquisitely form'd to suit Its humble lot, and that alone), Through ocean, earth, and air fulfil ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... an occult power of stealing upon the affections, of exciting universal benevolence, and disposing every heart to fondness and friendship. But this is a felicity granted only to the favourites of nature. The greater part of mankind find a different reception from different dispositions; they sometimes obtain ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... had tampered with certain soothsayers and witches, by whose pretended art he hoped to atchieve the death of his monarch. In one of the courts of inquisition, which James delighted to hold upon the professors of the occult sciences, some of his cousin's proceedings were brought to light, for which he was put in ward in the castle of Edinburgh. Burning with revenge, he broke from his confinement, and lurked for some time upon the borders, where he hoped for the countenance of his son-in-law, Buccleuch. ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... must know, Madam, that about a thousand Years ago I was an Indian Brachman, and versed in all those mysterious Secrets which your European Philosopher, called Pythagoras, is said to have learned from our Fraternity. I had so ingratiated my self by my great Skill in the occult Sciences with a Daemon whom I used to converse with, that he promised to grant me whatever I should ask of him. I desired that my Soul might never pass into the Body of a brute Creature; but this he told me was not in his Power to grant ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... was not so occult as to justify a doubt upon that subject; and moreover, Salome, lack of astuteness is far from being your greatest defect. My motive should eloquently plead pardon for my candor, if I venture to tell ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... called the Broad Vista Tower. The lofty tower facing the east, she designated "the variegated and flowery Hall;" bestowing on the line of buildings, facing the west, the appellation of "the Hall of Occult Fragrance;" and besides these figured such further names as: "the Hall of peppery wind," "the Arbour of lotus fragrance," "the Islet of purple caltrop," "the Bank of golden lotus," and the like. There were also tablets with four characters such ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... the purpose of exhibiting distinctly some phases in the life of this dangerous and implacable woman who, by her affiliation with the Order of Jesuits, had acquired an occult and formidable power. For there is something even more menacing than a Jesuit: it is a Jesuits; and, when one has seen certain circles, it becomes evident that there exist, unhappily, many of those affiliated, who, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... reconstituted modern monarchies as Italy and Germany, for they, too, for all their legal difference, rest also on the grey. The party conflicts of the future will turn very largely on the discovery of the true patriot, on the suspicion that the crown or the machine in possession is in some more or less occult way traitorous, and almost all other matters of contention will be shelved and allowed to stagnate, for fear of breaking the unity of the ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... figure at court, he now even aspired to closer relations with royalty, and built a magnificent country home, which was large enough to accommodate a visiting court. He even persuaded the king to visit the Mortlake factory, that the royal presence might enhance the value of art in the occult way known only to the subjects ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... in a room which he had not yet investigated. It was somewhat bare as to furniture; it struck strange to his senses as if he had stumbled into another world; in some occult way it preserved a tradition of travel and adventure. The bookcase he came to inspect was flanked by a small cabinet of coins and curios—Italian, Grecian, Egyptian, and Japanese; the walls were hung with bad ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... story he had been too dull to suspect. The truth, when it came home, smote him like a blow; his hatred for the author, which had been momentarily forgotten—momentarily lost in his admiration of the artist—rose up anew, and he recognized this occult spell which had held him breathless as the thrall of a vital reality, not, after all, the result of inspired acting. Instantly he saw past the make-believe, into the real, and what he saw caused him ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... the trouble to destroy the Russian fleet or to blow the seven forts of Cronstadt into the air. The revelations of the spy went for nothing; and, after the cutlasses of the lads in blue-jackets had been sharpened to a razor-like degree of keenness, those blades, for some occult reason, were not allowed to cut deep enough; the only cutting—and running into the bargain—being done by the Russian fleet, which, safely ensconced in the harbour of Cronstadt, defied us from behind the walls of fortresses which we did not care to bombard. Still, the Baltic fleet was not wholly ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... by a mysterious shuddering when he hears of "four-dimensional" things, by a feeling not unlike that awakened by thoughts of the occult. And yet there is no more common-place statement than that the world in which we live is ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... merest fragment of the secret correspondence which passed between the chief conspirators, and of the written evidence recorded by them in various forms, then and afterwards, we have a substantial unmasking of the combined occult influences which presided over the initiatory steps of the great American Rebellion—its central council—the master wheel of its machinery—and the connecting relation which caused all its subordinate parts to move in ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... soft feminine light it reflects, it corresponds to [Symbol: Mercury], which unceasingly flows towards all being, in order to support its central fire, [Symbol: Fire]. The exaltation of the latter leads to the fire test, the idea of which Wirth seems to take in strictly occult form, in the manner of Eliphas Levi. Finally, a circulation takes place, in that the individual will seeks like a magnet to draw the divine will, always falls down again, rises, however, and so on in cycles, till both meet in the "philosophical ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... evening, my friends," the one Pash was saying, "a very remarkable lady—if I may use so democratic a term in the connection—to whom the limits of Time and Space are empty words, and before whose supreme Will the most portentous Forces of Occult Nature mutely confess themselves her attending slaves—" But at that moment the rolling drums of Kiang-ti's thunder drowned his words, although he subsequently raised his voice above it to entreat that any knives or other articles ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... taken a human life, or at all events the life of an enemy, may have partly sprung from a belief that the slayer increased his own strength and valour either by subjugating the ghost of his victim and employing it as his henchman, or perhaps rather by simply absorbing in some occult fashion the vital energy of the slain. This view is confirmed by the permission given to the killer to assume the name of the killed, whenever his victim was a man of distinguished rank;[721] for by taking the name he, according to ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... in the Great Spirit who governs the destinies of the Red men of the desert—in the happy hunting-grounds, the future abode of brave warriors who die fighting on the battle-field—in the existence of demons, who wander through the forests in search of victims—and in the occult powers of wizards and medicine men. He had been taught that the only objects in life worthy of the occupation of men were war and the chase—that he should look with contempt on those who, he had heard, spent their time in the peaceful business ...
— The Trapper's Son • W.H.G. Kingston
... Harlequin and Scaramouch for the duenna's hand, in the course of which the former disguises himself in female attire and again as a country lad, the latter as a learned apothecary, Charmante visits the doctor, and feigning to be a cabalist profound in occult lore, bids him prepare that night to receive Irednozor, monarch of the Moon, and the Prince of Thunderland who will appear to wed his daughter and his niece. Harlequin shortly after makes his entry as an ambassador from the celestial ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... dream from start to finish. Curious because, in various forms, this was the third time he had seen her stand with hands outstretched, calling to him. He did not believe in dreams. He had neither patience for presentiments nor faith in anything that bordered on the occult. ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... life, must carefully eschew any concatenation of events which might seem exceptional. His aim is not to tell a story to amuse us, or to appeal to our feelings, but to compel us to reflect, and to understand the occult and deeper meaning of events. By dint of seeing and meditating he has come to regard the world, facts, men, and things in a way peculiar to himself, which is the outcome of the sum total of his studious observation. It is this personal view of the world ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... small act of yours and ours: there is no doubt to me, now that I taste the real grain, but all Europe will henceforth have to rely more and more upon your Western Valleys and this article. How beautiful to think of lean tough Yankee settlers, tough as gutta-percha, with most occult unsubduable fire in their belly, steering over the Western Mountains, to annihilate the jungle, and bring bacon and corn out of it for the Posterity of Adam! The Pigs in about a year eat up all the rattlesnakes for miles round: a most judicious function on the part of the Pigs. ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the suggestions made in this little book come from my own memories of early school life; and my own experience since of the methods used in Occult training has shown me how much happier boys' lives might be made than they usually are. I have myself experienced both the right way of teaching and the wrong way, and therefore I want to help others towards the right way. I write upon the subject because it is one which is very ...
— Education as Service • J. Krishnamurti
... for scientific data. They were good observers of astronomical phenomena, careful recorders of such observations, and mathematicians of no small repute. Unfortunately, they mixed with their really scientific studies those occult pursuits which, in ages and countries where the limits of true science are not known, are always apt to seduce students from the right path, having attractions against which few men are proof, so long as ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... mind of the average medical practitioner, is (or has been) something mysterious or occult. He uses much psychotherapy himself but it is nearly always applied unconsciously and indirectly through some form of physical or chemical therapy that he believes will cure. He is usually quite devoid of insight into the effect ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... public good; and while Constantine designed to ruin the foundations, he seemed to reform the abuses, of the ancient religion. After the example of the wisest of his predecessors, he condemned, under the most rigorous penalties, the occult and impious arts of divination; which excited the vain hopes, and sometimes the criminal attempts, of those who were discontented with their present condition. An ignominious silence was imposed on the oracles, which had been publicly convicted of fraud and falsehood; the effeminate ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... magic;[150] princes were governed in their political movements by astral calculations;[151] a grave minister details with complacency, although without comment, various anecdotes of the operation of the occult sciences,[152] and even makes them a study; while a European monarch, strong in the love of his people and his own bravery, suffers the predictions of soothsayers and prophets to cloud his mind and to shake his purposes, ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... low level; small joy either for the maker or the user. Pure art, a fine-spun specialty, a process carried on by an elect few who openly despise the unappreciative many. Art has become an occult profession requiring a long special education even to enjoy, and evolving a jargon of criticism which becomes more ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... Sam. xxviii. 5-25. There is no reason why this scene should not be historical; it was natural that Saul, like many an ancient general in similar circumstances, should seek to know the future by means of the occult sciences then in vogue. Some critics think that certain details of the evocation—as, for instance, the words attributed to Samuel —are of a ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... often hear of the magical influence of poetry. The expression in general means nothing; but, applied to the writings of Milton, it is most appropriate. His poetry acts like an incantation. Its merit lies less in its obvious meaning than in its occult power. There would seem, at first sight, to be no more in his words than in other words. But they are words of enchantment. No sooner are they pronounced than the past is present and the distant near. New forms of beauty start at once ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... the neighbourhood of Augsburg. These vagabonds gave out that they were exiles from Lower Egypt, and pretended to know the art of predicting coming events. It was soon found out that they were much less versed in divination and in the occult sciences than in the arts of plundering, roguery, ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... impersonating the criminal's victim—a murdered woman—and appearing to him at night before a concealed witness. But spirits are doomed. The present extraordinary wave of superstition and the immense prosperity of the dealers in the 'occult' is a direct result of the war. They are profiteers—every one of them—crystal gazers, mediums, fortune tellers, and the rest. They are reaping a rare harvest for the moment. We punish the humbler ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... other inquiries from those who were in a position to know; and I learned that this medium, a celebrated "Doctor of the Occult, Astrologer, Palmist and Spirit Medium," was at that time giving private sittings in Council Bluffs to earnest inquirers only, for the small sum of ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... literary like the other productions of their profound parents, but were a band of robust, active youngsters unburdened with brains, excepting Ptolemy of soup plate fame. Not that he betrayed any tendencies toward a learned line, but he was possessed of an occult, uncanny, wizard-like wisdom that was disconcerting. His contemplative eyes seemed to search my soul ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... great ordeal, and on a given night she and the bewitched householder, together with his wife and four or five trusty friends with drawn swords, shut themselves up in a room, and commenced their mysterious ceremonial. There was the boiling of occult herbs; the roasting of a beeve's heart stuck full of nails and pins; the reading of certain passages from the family Bible; a mighty gesticulating with the swords, which were first thrust up the chimney to prevent the Black Witch from coming down, ...
— Witchcraft and Devil Lore in the Channel Islands • John Linwood Pitts
... which the isolation was due, even outside those special periods. And, in fact, in these communities, the separation of the sexes is not merely intermittent; it has become chronic. The two elements of the population live separately." Durkheim proceeds to argue that the origin of the occult powers attributed to the feminine organism is to be found in primitive ideas concerning blood. Not only menstrual blood but any kind of blood is the object of such feelings among savage and barbarous peoples. All sorts of precautions must ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... But if I should try to render his words, I should spoil their impression in the vain attempt, and I feel that it is best to give the story as best I can in words of my own, so far from responsive to the requisitions of the occult incident. ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... these occult narratives were full of serious meaning for me, and my thoughts were far more with the two seniors above than with the two exacting female juniors below. However, the time passed, and presently Tempest's ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... sea. Its fascination drew her onward still— On to the ridgy rocks that seaward ran, And out along their furrows and jagged backs, To the last lonely point where the green mass Arose and sank, heaved slow and forceful. There She shuddered and recoiled. Thus, for a time, Sport-slave of power occult, she came and went, Betwixt the shore and sea alternating, Drawn ever to the greedy lapping lip, Then, terror-stung, driven backward: there it lay, The heartless, cruel, miserable deep, Ambushed in horror, with its glittering eye Still drawing her ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... recovered, excepting such as had been afflicted with twitches and aches, which, however, assumed the less alarming aspects of rheumatism, ciatics, and lumbagos; and the good people of New England, abandoning the study of the occult sciences, turned their attention to the more profitable hocus pocus of trade, and soon became expert in the legerdemain art of turning a penny. Still, however, a tinge of the old leaven is discernible, even unto ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... not seem, from the general language held concerning them, or from any directly traceable results, that mountains have had serious influence on human intellect; but it will not, I think, be difficult to show that their occult influence has been both constant and essential to the progress ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... single production; he loses himself. For his masterpiece, which he is composing in the recesses of his creative genius, is the new man. The "caprices," the "naughtinesses," the "mysterious vapors" of little children are perhaps the occult cry of unhappiness uttered by the ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... is called a most good-natured man, but of melancholy temperament, pottering, and timid, with a bent for everything mysterious and occult.... A half-whispered ah! was his habitual exclamation; he even died with this exclamation on his lips, two years after his removal ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... Mississippi, has the question, "is there an existence after death," been approached with the most earnest hopes to solve as one of the greatest mysteries. Shelley devoted a vast amount of energy to the elucidation of this occult, yet overt, truth; and ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... to him as if the blot were some strange night thing that must have companioned him, invisibly, when he kept his nocturnal watches in the drawing-room, and that now partially revealed itself to him in the, perhaps, more acutely occult region of the basement. ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... Miss Isabel Newton, the Secretary of the Society for Psychical Research, and I attended the demonstration given by Yoga [sic] Rama of his alleged occult powers at the ...
— Telepathy - Genuine and Fraudulent • W. W. Baggally
... of priests of Celtic day, Ancient Druids, holding sway By smattering of Occult law And man's eternal sense of awe. Stonehenge They used Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain Reputed Prehistoric Fane; Note each megalithic boulder; No Monument in ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... ship, and shore to shore, with their thundring voices, out done yet with the shouts and acclamations of your glad people, when our shaken Republique rushed at once into your princely Armes for safety and Asylum, not by the occult power of Destiny, or blind revolution, but the extraordinary hand of Providence, whose pathes are in the great Waters, and whose footsteps are not known: O novum atque inauditum ad principatum ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn
... astrology and divination, and their sister black arts, had, with much address, endeavoured to recommend himself to his sovereign, by a character pre-established in his own castle, for a successful cultivation of the occult sciences. He had long withdrawn himself from the eyes of the world, and even of his own tenants, and shut himself up in his castle, with a due assortment of death's heads, charts, owls, globes, bones, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... impossible book to analyse, either in short or long measure. The hero wanders about France, and has all sorts of adventures, the recounting of which is not without touches of Rabelais, of the Moyen de Parvenir, perhaps of the rising fancies about the occult, which generated Rosicrucianism and "astral spirits" and the rest of it—a whole farrago, in short, of matters decent and indecent, congruous seldom and incongruous often. It is not like Sterne, because it is dull, and at the same time quasi-romantic; while "sensibility" had not come in, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... of the Black Chasseurs, and commanded by Colonel Lutzow. In Prussia the still vivid memory of the late queen exercised a great influence over the new direction given to its institutions, in which she occupied the place of an occult divinity. During her lifetime she gave to Baron Nostitz a silver chain, which as her gift became the decoration, or we might rather say the rallying signal, of a new society, to which was given the name of the Conederation of Louise. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... evening when his watch was done sauntered Con. His professional curiosity had been stirred by these occult bartenders at whose bar none drank, and who daily drew upon Kenealy's store of liquors to follow ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... Josiah's heels whilst I rid by palaces and elephants and camels and fakirs and palm trees. Oh, Jonesville yarn! you never expected to be knit amid seens like this. I can knit and admire scenery first rate, and my blue and white yarn seemed to connect me with Jonesville in some occult way, and then I knew Josiah would need his socks before we ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... began to enquire as to who might have done it. Then Yuvanaswa truthfully admitted that it was his act. Then the revered son of Bhrigu spoke unto him, saying. 'It was not proper. This water had an occult virtue infused into it, and had been placed there with the object that a son might be born to thee. Having performed severe austerities, I infused the virtue of my religious acts in this water, that a son might be born to thee. O saintly king of mighty valour ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Connecticut Historical Society, was dictated by Miss Annie G. Ellsworth, and the words of it were "What hath God wrought?" The telegraph was at first regarded with superstitious dread in some sections of the country. In a Southern State a drought was attributed to its occult influences, and the people, infatuated with the idea, levelled the wires to the ground. And so common was it for the Indians to knock off the insulators with their rifles in order to gratify their curiosity in regard to the "singing cord," that it was at first extremely difficult to keep ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... 'to stake one's life for others? to deracinate occult and powerful evil? I appeal to Mr. Godall. He, at least, as a philosophic looker-on at life, will spit upon such philistine opinions. He knows that the policeman, as he is called upon continually to face greater odds, and that both worse equipped and for a ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... it all was that the whole village began to suffer from catalepsy as Dads said, and then it all got into the newspapers, and occult societies camped at the gates, water diviners drilled on the lawns, the Merry Harvester was filled with 'ologists hailing from this country, and some genuine catamaniacs, until I had the bright idea of fastening a placard on the gates to say that the cat was dead, though she had suddenly ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... united the crowns of Leon and Castile, and attracted to his court many of the philosophers and learned men of the East. He was a poet closely connected with the Provencal troubadours of his time, and so skilled in astronomy and the occult sciences that his fame spread throughout Europe. He had more political, philosophical, and elegant learning than any man of his age, and made further advances in some of the exact sciences. At one period his consideration was so great, that he was elected Emperor ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... on the supposition, that 'one mind' could command an unlimited direction over any given number of 'limbs', provided they were all connected by 'joint' and 'sinew'. But suppose, through some occult and inconceivable means, these limbs were dis-associated, as to all material connexion; suppose, for instance, one mind, with unlimited authority, governed the operations of 'two' separate persons, would not this, substantially, be ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... by a microscope, though its magnifying power is enormously greater than that of any microscope ever made or ever likely to be made. The hypothetical molecule and atom postulated by science are therefore visible realities to the occult student, though the latter recognizes them as much more complex in their nature than the scientific man has yet discovered them to be. Here again is a vast field of study of absorbing interest to which a whole volume might readily be devoted; and a ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... discover themselves in the most glaring colours. In like manner, I am persuaded, there might be several useful discoveries made from a criticism of the fictions of the antient philosophy, concerning substances, and substantial form, and accidents, and occult qualities; which, however unreasonable and capricious, have a very intimate connexion with the principles of ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... consult a certain famous wizard. The interview had to do with an affair of the heart; but after the man of magic had foretold the most favourable issues, and concocted a love-potion that was certain to help his visitor's cause, the conversation drifted on to occult ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... some ways, crucial. I have spoken with Jesuits and Plymouth Brethren, mathematicians and poets, dogmatic republicans and dear old gentlemen in bird's- eye neckcloths; and each understood the word "facts" in an occult sense of his own. Try as I might, I could get no nearer the principle of their division. What was essential to them, seemed to me trivial or untrue. We could come to no compromise as to what was, or what was not, important in the life of man. Turn as we pleased, we all ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Lawrence (still designated as the "Baroness" by her stepdaughter and by old acquaintances) to whom Preston owed the constant reminder of his dependence upon the purse of his father-in- law. In those subtle, occult ways known only to a jealous and designing nature, the Baroness found it possible to make Preston's life a torture, without revealing her weapons of warfare to her husband; indeed, without allowing him to even smell the powder, while she ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... is the best known and most widely spread of them all. By occupation he is a professor of three occult sciences. First, he is a juggler, and in this art he has some skill. His masterpiece is the famous mango trick, which consists in making a miniature mango tree grow up in a few minutes, and even blossom and bear fruit, out ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... Scott, had learned "the art of glammorie In Padua beyond the sea," and who is famous in the annals of Massachusetts, where he was at one time a resident, as the first man who dared petition the General Court for liberty of conscience. The full title of the book is Three Books of Occult Philosophy, by Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Knight, Doctor of both Laws, Counsellor to Caesar's Sacred Majesty and Judge of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... analyze the nature of the particular desire that moves her, controls her, keeps her alive,—in short. It is not love; of that I feel confident; and it is not hate,—though it is more like hate than love. It is something indefinable, something that is almost occult, so deep-seated and bewildering is the riddle. You look upon me as a madman—yes! I know you do! But mad or sane, I emphatically repeat, the Princess is NOT HUMAN, and by this expression I wish to imply that though she has the outward appearance of a most ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... the East. He represents a movement which has for its object the uniting of the East and West in the acceptance of a universal faith. An attempt was at first made to interest people in the subject by laying some stress upon the minor phenomena of occult science. Unfortunately, such wonders attracted disciples who cared more for thaumaturgy than for doctrine, and these fell away as soon as they discovered that the object in view was not the production of marvels. The new world has riches, and the old world has ideas. It would ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... my father's unpopularity. It was a not unlikely result of exercising a great and yet occult influence upon a department of Government which is likely in any case to be more conspicuous for its failures than for its successes. There were, however, more personal reasons which I think indicate his peculiar characteristics. I have said enough to illustrate his gluttony of work. I should ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... streets—and the streets were soon full of people, as a pomegranate is full of seeds—was positive that something had happened of importance, or no less positive that something of importance was going to happen, or that something of importance was actually happening. In some occult manner it had leaked out that a number of the youths of Florence were absent from their dwellings. It gradually became known that all those that were thus absent were members of the same party, and that party the one which was held in no great affection by Messer Simone, the ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... historic conception witchcraft and its demonstrations centered in the claim of power to produce certain effects, "things beyond the course of nature," from supernatural causes, and under this general term all its occult manifestations were classified with magic and sorcery, until the time came when the Devil was identified and acknowledged both in church and state as the originator and sponsor of the mystery, sin and crime—the sole father of the Satanic compacts with men and ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... Smith were men of phenomenal capacity, who actually invented a religion and created a community by the apparent establishment of supernatural and occult powers. The phrenologists, the venders of patent medicine, the Christian Scientists, the single-taxers, and all who proclaim panaceas and nostrums make the same majestic and pontifical appeal to human nature. It is this mystical power, this religious element, which ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... the most probable thing will happen. In the middle of the nineteenth century, when attention was first called to the solidarity and internal correlations of groups, especially if they were large and genetic, it was believed that occult and far-reaching laws had been discovered. That opinion has long been abandoned. If there are four dice in a box, each having from one to six dots on its faces, the chance of throwing four sixes is just the same as that ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... of water, unless an immense compressing power should alter the nature of those operations. But compression alters the relation of evaporation only with regard to heat, or it changes the degree of heat which water may be made to sustain; consequently, we are to look for no occult quality in water acting upon bodies at the bottom of the deepest ocean, more than what can be observed in experiments which we have it in our power ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... I. was repealed in George II.'s. reign, but even then persons pretending to use witchcraft, tell fortunes, or discover stolen goods, by skill in the occult sciences, were to be punished by a year's imprisonment; and by an Act, 5 George IV., c.83, any person or persons using any subtle art, means, or device, by palmistry, or otherwise, to deceive his Majesty's subjects, were to be deemed rogues and vagabonds, and ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... to in their respective and characteristic manners, the Oneidas eating like gentlemen and talking together in their low and musical voices; the Wyandotte gobbling and stuffing his cheeks like a chipmunk. The Stockbridge Mole, noiseless and mum as the occult and furry animal which gave to him his name, nibbled sparingly all alone by himself, and read in ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... whole of the ethnologic method. It is open and easy when the facts are in our possession. There are no secret springs, no occult forces, in the historic development of culture. Whatever seems hidden or mysterious, is so only because our knowledge of the facts is imperfect. No magic and no miracle has aided man in his long conflict with the material forces around him. No ghost has come from the grave, no God from on high, ...
— An Ethnologist's View of History • Daniel G. Brinton
... the beauty that she would not give him, and which, he feared, she was ready to give to another. He hated Saul, for his stolid ignorance of his daughter's danger. He hated most of all Farnham, for his handsome face, his easy smile, his shapely hands, his fine clothes, his unknown and occult ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... a book-walled room and grow bloodless with dreaming over insoluble problems. And yet a friend of mine told me that these towns, and especially California towns, were filled with seers and prophets. The occult flourishes in the high, dry atmosphere, those of the faith say. Don't you permit Clarke to destroy your love of nature, Miss Lambert; you belong to the sane and sunny world, and he has no right to bring his gloomy conceptions home to you. ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... type. Reform was foiled, as Burke put it, because the turnspit in the king's kitchen was a member of parliament. Such sinecures and the pensions on the civil list or the Irish establishment provided the funds by which the king could build up a personal influence, which was yet occult, irresponsible, and corrupt. The measure passed by Burke in 1782[2] made a beginning in the removal of ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... had the peculiar gift, which developed into ever-increasing perfection as her hair grew whiter, of being able to express ideas by means of words which had no relation to them at all. Within three minutes, by three different remarks whose occult message no stranger could have understood but which forced itself with unpleasant clearness upon Edwin, Mrs Hamps had conveyed, "Janet Orgreave only cultivates Maggie because Maggie is ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... not sure what sweet occult telepathy might have passed between us, Curtis. . . . Somehow I believe that all is not yet ended. . . . . Pass the pork! . . . I like to think that somehow, some ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... had been accustomed to the rigor of true scientific research, and who possessed sufficient mathematical skill for the examination of the Newtonian doctrines, viewed them at first as reviving the occult qualities of the ancient physics, and resisted their introduction with a pertinacity which it ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... other hand, among the multitude of beliefs left in Egypt by degenerate traditions, there were found some which hinted, more or less clearly, at occult truths, and which might have perpetuated or generalised this practice. It was supposed, according to Servius, that the transmigrations[112] began only when the magnetic bond between the soul and its ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... even a hush of tone, as one would say "a brick house" or "a gold watch," or anything. She, promptly detecting his disappointment at her coldness, tried to simulate the fervour of an initiate, but this may never be done so as to deceive any one who has truly sensed the occult and incommunicable virtue of the candy cane. For one thing, she kept repeating the words "candy cane" baldly, whenever she could find a place for them in her soulless praise; whereas an initiate would not once have uttered the term, but would have looked in silence. Another initiate, ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... between the sowing of such grain as diamonds or emeralds, and the subsequent reaping, whether by accident or by art. For, with regard to the last, it is no more impossible, prima fronte, that a substance may exist having an occult sympathy with subterraneous water or subterraneous gold, than that the magnet should have a sympathy (as yet occult) with the northern pole ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... a delicate one. This much is certain, she cannot have any sense that other people may not have, and the existence of a special sense is not evident to her or to any one who knows her. Miss Keller is distinctly not a singular proof of occult and mysterious theories, and any attempt to explain her in that way fails to reckon with her normality. She is no more mysterious and complex than any other person. All that she is, all that she has done, can be explained directly, except such things ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... in order to make good a robbery and punish the offender. I say that you are led, in that case, to your conclusion by exactly the same train of reasoning as that which a man of science pursues when he is endeavouring to discover the origin and laws of the most occult phenomena. The process is, and always must be, the same; and precisely the same mode of reasoning was employed by Newton and Laplace in their endeavours to discover and define the causes of the movements of the heavenly ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... Wales did at the beginning of the century, to form a Parliamentary party, and control votes in the House of Commons by cabals hatched at Marlborough House. But he might, if he were so disposed, in less occult ways meddle in politics. As a matter of fact, noteworthy and of highest honour to the Prince, the outside public have not the slightest idea to which side of politics his mind is biassed. They know all about his private life, what he eats, and how much; how he dresses, whom ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... smiled to herself in mournful amusement. For she scarcely questioned the probability that her friend would in due course become disillusioned of a very ordinary individual—he certainly sounded a little like an adventurer—who for some occult reason had been idealised by this great-souled, wayward and utterly foolish creature. How many shattered idols had not Lady Bridget picked up from beneath their over-turned pedestals and consigned to Memory's dust-bin! On how many pyres had not that oft-widowed soul committed suttee to be resurrected ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... oratory—occult eloquence," the scribe said earnestly, "and she is mistress of the art. She told the history of Israel and catalogued its wrongs in a manner that lacked only measure and music to make it a song. But, Kenkenes, she did not move us to compunction and pity. When she had done, we had ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... was a sharp observer of the fiddle-faddle of daily life; she had a keen scent for evil motives underlying simple actions. Thus when she perceived the intimacy which had newly arisen between the Fraeulein and Miss Palliser, she told herself that there must be some occult reason for the fact. Why did those two always walk together? What hidden charm had ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... Who knew—who was sure—that there was any name given to them behind which there was no angry force to be appeased, no intercessory pity to be won? Were not gems medicinal, though they only pressed the finger? Were not all things charged with occult virtues? Lucretius might be right—he was an ancient, and a great poet; Luigi Pulci, too, who was suspected of not believing anything from the roof upward (dal tetto in su), had very much the air ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... ought to have anticipated actually came to pass. England first discovered the occult negotiations of d'Aubigny at Versailles, and, unwilling that the Princess des Ursins should bestow anything upon France, she changed her tone, and became almost a defaulter to her. A Valentian gentleman, Clemente Generoso, says Duclos, still copying ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... developed. Examined a man esteemed a great dervish, who is always reading and writing the Koran. It's strange that the saint had the organ of veneration well developed. The Rais hearing of my cunning in this occult science, which some of the people called a new deen, ("religion,") wished to see me perform; so, on visiting him in the evening, he ordered forth all his understrappers and hangers-on, and made them submit to the fearful ordeal of head pummelling, first begging ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... it now. It is that wilderness into which I stumbled. It overlooks the terrain in Alsace where for fifty years the Hun has been busy day and night with his sinister, occult operations. Its entrance, if there be any save by the way of avalanches—the way I entered—must be guarded by the Huns; its only exit into Hunland. That is Les Errues. That is the region which masks the Great Secret of ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... there was none to explore Your winding labyrinths occult, None to delve your ore Of strange virtue, or do Your magical business, you Were there, never old nor new, Veined in the world and alive:— Before the Planets, ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... picture is, it is furthermore permeated by a significance that is not occult. It bears witness to the possible strength of a passion that is so spiritual as to be without taint of sense; and to a confident belief in an immortality wherein the utmost limits of a blessedness not of this world may be compassed. Such are in this picture the simpler, ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... perhaps justly, of Lincoln's presentiments. It is not exceptional, it is common in all rural communities to multiply and magnify signs. The commonest occurrences are invested with an occult meaning. Seeing the new moon over the right shoulder or over the left shoulder, the howling of a dog at night, the chance assemblage of thirteen persons, the spilling of salt,—these and a thousand other things are taken to be signs of something. The habit of attending to ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... people and see them in various phases of their lives I say to myself, as St. Francis Xavier said of them more than three hundred years ago, "This nation is the delight of my soul." The critic, the hypercritic, is everywhere. He suspects everybody and everything. He can find occult motives and psychological reasons for everything. I confess I am a trifle tired of the critic, especially the psychological critic, in reference to Japan. I view the people there as they are to-day, and I have satisfied myself that we can see at work ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... articulation. In that case we may take it for certain that the natural rigidity of the surrounding structures has the effect of pushing the thickened membrane further between the bones of the joint than occurs in a like condition elsewhere, leading, of course, to a lameness that is marked in degree but occult as to cause. ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... time—all in good time," said Marvin, with that faith in some occult power, seemingly the Government and Providence working in conjunction, to which parsons and many women confide their worldly affairs and sit ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman |
