"Sorcerer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... kind, was I rich, what did I have to eat, did I smoke or drink, how many shirts and trousers did I have, how many guns and what kinds, etc. The end of it was, that they either took me for a dangerous sorcerer, and withdrew in fear, or for a fool to be got the better of. In the latter case, they would run eagerly to their houses and bring out some old broken article to offer for sale. A few sarcastic remarks ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... deceive; but though I contradicted him not, he saw that I knew too much of his secrets to be any longer a safe companion. Meanwhile, his name waxed famous—or rather infamous, and many of those who resorted to him did so under persuasion that he was a sorcerer. And yet his supposed advance in the occult sciences drew to him the secret resort of men too powerful to be named, for purposes too dangerous to be mentioned. Men cursed and threatened him, and bestowed on me, the innocent assistant of his studies, the nickname of the Devil's foot-post, which ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... true. Its deeper meaning was hidden from their simple intelligence. Moreover, they expended no store of thought on the doctor. He was old, ugly, learned—and a little "loco"—mad, if not a bit of a sorcerer, as the common people suspected him of being. The little white jacket was in reality a concession to Mrs. Gould's humanizing influence. The doctor, with his habit of sceptical, bitter speech, had no other means of showing his profound respect ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... to themselves appear and the story passes from narration to action. We learn from two brothers that they are seeking their sister, Delia, who has been carried off by a wicked magician, Sacrapant—not to be confused with Greene's Sacripant. This same sorcerer has also separated a loving couple; by his art the lady, Venelia, has gone mad, and the youth, Erestus, is converted into an old man by day and a bear by night. The aged-looking Erestus is regarded ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... times, without injury, handled poisonous snakes. On the morning of July 13, 1869, he was detailed as guard with the herd at Fort Cummings, New Mexico, when, in the presence of the herders, he succeeded in catching a rattlesnake and proving his power as a sorcerer. The performance being over and the snake killed, he caught sight of another of the same class, and tried to duplicate his previous feat; but his dexterity failed, and he was bitten in the middle finger of the right ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... with returning pilgrims from the Red Sea put in here with two blades of her propeller gone. Three weeks ago now." "Wasn't there something said about the Patna case?" I asked, fearing the worst. He gave a start, and looked at me as if I had been a sorcerer. "Why, yes! How do you know? Some of them were talking about it here. There was a captain or two, the manager of Vanlo's engineering shop at the harbour, two or three others, and myself. Jim was in here too, having a sandwich and a glass of beer; when we are busy—you see, ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... deal as he bent over the fire and gave Birt directions, and, with his waving hands and the glow on his hoary hair and beard, he looked like some fantastic sorcerer. Somehow Rufe was glad to see the familiar countenances of Pete and Joe, and was still more reassured to note that his mother was quietly standing beside the table, as she stirred the batter for bread in a wooden bowl. Tennessee had pressed close to Birt, her chubby hand clutching ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... Guatemala, written about 1690 by Francisco Antonio Fuentes y Guzman, the author gives some information about a sorcerer of this school, who was arrested in Totonicapan, and with whom the historian had something to ...
— Nagualism - A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History • Daniel G. Brinton
... I told thee before, I am subject to a tyrant, sorcerer, that by his cunning hath cheated me of ...
— The Tempest • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... part I keep a still tongue! But if M. Safrac is not a sorcerer and fortune-teller, why does he spend his time ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... appointed guardian of his infant nephew, Henry VI., on his father's death; but partly though the intrigues and squabbles of the royal family, partly by his own mismanagement, he lost the confidence of the nation. His wife, Jacqueline, had been persuaded by a sorcerer that her husband would be king, and she joined him in acts of witchcraft in order to bring this about. She was condemned (October, 1441) to do penance by walking three successive days in a white sheet and carrying a lighted taper, starting ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... "Then a sorcerer leaped upon my high place, rattling many deer hoofs, and calling aloud that his brethren might hear his voice. Light he promised them for themselves, and darkness for the camp, and he sang his war song, shouting and rattling the deer hoofs. ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the Upas tree could be uprooted and banished from our midst,—if with a wave of his magic wand some sorcerer could make it disappear, so much the better. But this is impossible. We should require an axe of gold to cut down the tree; and this we do not possess. If a rich and powerful Government shrinks from the expense of such an undertaking, ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... picture in the bowl! Now I can guess. 'Those who dare much for love.' It did not say for love of man, and woman can love woman. But would she dare a deed that none of our race could even dream? Well, the Zulu blood is bold. Perhaps, perhaps. Oh! Eddo, thou black sorcerer, whither art thou leading the Children of the Tree? On thy head be it, Eddo, not on mine; on thy head for ever ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... as you please," cried Bianca; "yet it is very particular though, that my Lady Isabella should be missing the very same day, and that this young sorcerer should be found at the mouth of the trap-door. I accuse nobody; but if my young Lord came ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... pinkish hue in the middle of the forehead; he used to wear a green frockcoat with smooth brass buttons, a striped waistcoat with a stand-up collar, a jabot and lace cuffs. 'If he shows me my old Dessaire,' I thought, 'well, I shall have to admit that he's a sorcerer!' ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... "I am the famous sorcerer THUMBLING," answered our hero, in as gruff a voice as his little body was capable of; "and I have only to say a single word to chop your head off your shoulders. You don't know yet with whom you have ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... stopped at the hut of the Bee-man a Junior Sorcerer. This young person, who was a student of magic, was much interested in the Bee-man, whom he had often noticed in his wanderings, and he considered him an admirable subject for study. He had got a great ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... Dong Ming was crowned King he loved a Sorcerer and promised him promotion and set him above all the Princes that were in the ...
— Seven Maids of Far Cathay • Bing Ding, Ed.
... to read in a sorcerer's books," said he with a smile, though his countenance was uneasy and displeased. "Georgiana, there are pages in that volume which I can scarcely glance over and keep my senses. Take heed lest it prove as detrimental ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... used to control the elemental powers in some fashion I did not discover. I also put on a black gown, and remember that it did not fit perfectly, and that it interfered with my movements considerably. The sorcerer then took a black cock out of a basket, and cut its throat with one of the daggers, letting the blood fall into the large bowl. He opened a book and began an invocation, which was certainly not English, and had a deep guttural sound. Before he had finished, another of the sorcerers, a ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... playful. The Egyptians by nature were not cruel, and we have very few records either in history or tradition of bloodthirsty Pharaohs; but the life of an ordinary individual was of so little value in their eyes, that they never hesitated to sacrifice it, even for a caprice. A sorcerer had no sooner boasted before Kheops of being able to raise the dead, than the king proposed that he should try the experiment on a prisoner whose head was to be forthwith cut off. The anger of Pharaoh was quickly excited, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... The "Ongootkoot" is the sorcerer, prophet and historian. He claims to have the power of expelling "Toongna" by his enchantments, and can do such marvelous things as change the wind, drive off eclipses, avert or drive off misfortunes and expel the evil one from the sick. There are two ways of becoming an "Ongootkoot"—one ...
— Short Sketches from Oldest America • John Driggs
... refuses to continue the game," exclaimed Napoleon; "it despises my swindling, and forgets that it is itself a swindle. You may be thankful, M. Maelzl, that we are no longer in the middle ages; formerly they would have burned you at the stake as a sorcerer, attempting to do what God alone is able ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... a fisherman Dane, Set out on a sudden for Spain, Because, runs the story, He'd met with a hoary Mysterious sorcerer chap, Who, trouble to save him, Most thoughtfully gave him A magical traveling cap. I barely believe that the story is true, But here's what that ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... prepared to say. It is your affair, not mine. You must go to the House of the Sorcerer, who will soon discover ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... she asked abruptly. "There are times when I do not recognise you. There are words Leopold used to use which I have never heard from your lips. Is not West Africa the sorcerer's paradise? Perhaps you are an imposter, and the man I love is there still, in trouble—perhaps ill. You play the part of Everard Dominey like a very king of actors. Perhaps before you came here you played ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of Tuscany; after the great name of Rome; Naples, at length, between Vesuvius and the sea, that first station of the Greeks in Italy, world-famed for its legends of the Sibyl and the sirens and the sorcerer Virgil, received her king. The very names of Parthenope, Posilippo, Inarime, Sorrento, Capri, have their fascination. There too the orange and lemon groves are more luxuriant; the grapes yield sweeter and more intoxicating wine; the villagers are more classically ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... certainly been so far very remiss in his duties, in the habit of their father's shepherd Thirsis; and on hearing how they have parted company with their sister, tells of Comus and his enchantments, and arming his hearers with hemony, powerful against all spells, guides them to the hall of the sorcerer. The scene now changes to the interior of the palace of Comus, 'set out with all manner of deliciousness,' where the god and his rabble are feasting. On one side we may imagine an open arcade giving on to the banks of the Severn, silvery in the moonlight, the cool purity of its waters contrasting ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... impeded by difficulties, and though confident of success, was careful against any obstacles or casualties which might arise, and intent upon discovering every means which might be in their favor if thought of beforehand. Gullah Jack was regarded as a sorcerer, and as such feared by the natives of Africa, who believe in witchcraft. He was not only considered invulnerable, but that he could make others so by his charms; and that he could and certainly would provide ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... the above specified "Occult Arts" without any great previous preparation, and even without adopting any too restraining mode of life. One could even dispense with any lofty standard of morality. In the last case, of course, ten to one the student would blossom into a very decent kind of sorcerer, and tumble down headlong into black magic. But what can this matter? The Voodoos and the Dugpas eat, drink and are merry over hecatombs of victims of their infernal arts. And so do the amiable gentlemen vivisectionists ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky
... much," exclaimed the Englishman, with an oath. "I proclaim you the greatest sorcerer on earth if you can solve this problem," continued he, turning to the Sicilian. We admired the wise choice of the prince, and unanimously gave our approval to the proposition. In the meantime the sorcerer paced up and down the room with hasty ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... of the unbelieving to Satan is far more vital than a mere pleasure-seeking allegiance. On two occasions Jesus spoke of the unsaved as the "children of Satan" (Matt. 13:38; Jno. 8:44), and Paul so addressed Elymas, the sorcerer, according to Acts 13:10. The same class is also twice called the "children of disobedience" (Eph. 2:2; Col. 3:6), and once it is called the "children of ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... their own languages and adopted the local Aryan vernaculars. The name Bhuiya is a Sanskrit derivative from bhu, earth, and signifies 'belonging to the soil.' Bhumij, applied to a branch of the Kol tribe, has the same origin. Baiga is used in the sense of a village priest or a sorcerer in Chota Nagpur, and the office is commonly held by members of the Bhuiya tribe in that locality, as being the oldest residents. Thus the section of the tribe in the Central Provinces appears to have adopted, or been given, the name of the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... [218] strangest creations of sleep seem here, by some appalling licence, to cross the limit of the dawn. The English poet too has learned the secret. He has diffused through King Arthur's Tomb the maddening white glare of the sun, and tyranny of the moon, not tender and far-off, but close down—the sorcerer's moon, large and feverish. The colouring is intricate and delirious, as of "scarlet lilies." The influence of summer is like a poison in one's blood, with a sudden bewildered sickening of life and ...
— Aesthetic Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... Wild, a native of Caledonia, who lived in the sixteenth century, about a century after the great Ambrose Merlin, the sorcerer. Fordun, in his Scotichronicon, gives particulars about him. It was predicted that he would die by earth, wood, and water, which prediction was fulfilled thus: A mob of rustics hounded him, and he jumped from a rock into the Tweed, and was impaled on a stake fixed in the river bed. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Simon the Sorcerer was baptized presumably with water; was he born again? We are told that he remained in the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity and that his heart was not right in ...
— Water Baptism • James H. Moon
... if by nature it be dull and slow. Themistocles (when aged) the names did know 220 Of all th'Athenians; and none grow so old, Not to remember where they hid their gold. From age such art of memory we learn, To forget nothing which is our concern; Their interest no priest nor sorcerer Forgets, nor lawyer, nor philosopher; No understanding memory can want, Where wisdom studious industry doth plant. Nor does it only in the active live, But in the quiet and contemplative; 230 When Sophocles (who plays when aged wrote) ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... and the will to Self. Then the invalid became a heretic or sorcerer; as heretic or sorcerer he suffered, ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... from the circle to the spot where they stood, and, seizing the magister by the throat, roared, "Dog of a sorcerer! this is some of thy black-art. Jobst here was right; thou hast raised ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... In his later novels Ainsworth abandoned the manner of Mrs. Radcliffe, but did not fail to make use of the motive of terror and mystery. The scenes of horror which he strove to convey in words were often more admirably depicted in the illustrations of Cruikshank. The sorcerer's sabbath in Crichton, the historical scenes of horror in The Tower of London, the masque of the Dance of Death in Old St. Paul's, the appearance of Herne the Hunter, heralded by phosphoric lights, in Windsor Castle, the terrible orgies of The Lancashire Witches, ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... a pause, during which we left the plantation well behind us; "that old sorcerer, as you call him, was born upon the estate, a slave. The estate belonged to M. Floran,—the husband of the lady whom we visited; and she was a cousin, and the marriage was a love-match. They had been married about two years when the ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... to add—"understand, I don't rank him as a magician, or sorcerer; nothing like that. I'd rather think that he's merely in possession of a scientific secret, no more wonderful in itself than, say, wireless. He's merely got hold of it in advance of ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... the subject of so much superstition. In ancient times it was believed that a dog went mad if a hyena turned its evil-eye upon it, and the beast was believed by many to be a wicked sorcerer who went about in human form by day, and at night assumed the shape of a hyena. The poor and ignorant peasantry of Arabia, even at the present day, believe in the evil-eye of this beast, and are afraid to shoot it lest they should incur the wrath of the wicked spirit ...
— Harper's Young People, May 11, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... whatsouer of that kinde that consultes with the Deuill, plainelie prohibited, and alike threatned against. And besides that, she who had the Spirite of Python, in the Actes, (M15) whose Spirite was put to silence by the Apostle, coulde be no other thing but a verie Sorcerer or Witch, if ye admit the vulgare distinction, to be in a maner true, whereof I spake in the beginning of our conference. For that spirit whereby she conquested such gaine to her Master, was not at her raising or commanding, as she pleased to appoynt, but spake by her ...
— Daemonologie. • King James I
... bronze horse that had power to heal all the diseases of horses. He was a necromancer, and there is still shown, in a certain town in Italy, the mirror in which he made the dead appear. And yet a woman deceived this great sorcerer. A Neapolitan courtesan invited him to hoist himself up to her window in the basket that was used to bring the provisions, and she left him all night suspended between ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... a modern tale of an inner-directed sorcerer and an outer-directed sorcerer's apprentice ... ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... wonders did produce, But both were to no use: As yet the sorcerer's mimic power served for excuse. Try what the earth will do, said God, and lo! They struck the earth a fertile blow, And all the dust did straight to stir begin, One would have thought some sudden wind had ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... heretic; and, moreover, the various ways in which it is written, e.g., sometimes Valdo, sometimes Valdus, at other times Valdesius or Valdensis, shows that the word was not a proper name, but a mere appellative. So with regard to the idea that Vaudois comes from Vaudes, a sorcerer, it would be more correct to say that the term sorcerer was one applied by the inhabitants of the plains to those who were Vaudois, or hill-men, under the notion that the inhabitants of such localities practised sorcery. Hence we are compelled to assume that the name is purely geographical, ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... raised grave doubts in the minds of "professors," that is members of the church, whether they had not compromised their characters by being seen at such an unhallowed exhibition. Nowadays, a clever boy who has made a study of parlor magic can do many of those tricks almost as well as the great sorcerer himself. How simple it all seems when we have seen the ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... determined by accident. Glamour (see p. 145) was popularised by Scott, who found it in old ballad literature. Grail, the holy dish at the Last Supper, would be much less familiar but for Tennyson. Mascot, from a Provencal word meaning sorcerer, dates from Audran's operetta La Mascotte (1880). Jingo first appears in conjurors' jargon of the 17th century. It has been conjectured to represent Basque jinko, God, picked up by sailors. If this is the case, it is probably ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... wise was this Oleg that he was believed to be a sorcerer. When the Greek emperor blockaded the passage of the Bosphorus in 907, he placed his two thousand boats (!) upon wheels, and let the sails carry them overland to the gates of Constantinople. The Russian poet Pushkin has made this the subject of a ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange, and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against the property relations that ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... as she carried an imaginary hero or heroine through a series of the raciest adventures; the child all eagerness and sympathy, now clapping his little hands at the fall of the giant, or the defeat of the sorcerer, and now arguing and suggesting in ways which gave perpetually fresh stimulus to the mother's inventiveness. He could see her dressing up with him on wet days, reciting King Henry to his Prince Hal, or Prospero to his Ariel, or simply giving ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... appear as witchcraft or magic: and, indeed, Saemund's predilection for the sagas and songs of the old heathen times (even for the magical ones) was so well known, that among his countrymen there were some who regarded him as a great sorcerer, though chiefly in what is called white or innocuous and defensive sorcery, a repute which still clings to his memory among the common people of Iceland, and will long adhere to it through the numerous ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... phenomenon was like some alchemical and mysterious operation. And the steam, as it rose and spread abroad in the immense, pale interior, might have been the fumes of a fatal philtre distilled by a mediaeval sorcerer. ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... worse than a disease, it has enervated my people until they have lost everything, and still they are among us. They are children raised by a secret cult on my own world, trained into strange practices. It is somewhat like a witch or sorcerer would be to you, but much, much different. You could not understand unless you were raised among us. When men are tired of life, they go to a Zoorph. It is not nice to speak of, what they are and what they do. To us, it is like death, only worse. Yet we have them, as ants have pets, as dogs ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... hunchbacked dwarf and bell-ringer of the cathedral; one of its archdeacons, Claude Frollo, theologian, philosopher, expert in, but contemner of, physical and astrological science, and above all, alchemist, if not sorcerer; the handsome and gallant, but "not intelligent" and not very chivalrous soldier Phoebus de Chateaupers, with minors not a few, "supers" very many, and the dramatist Pierre Gringoire as a sort of half-chorus, half-actor throughout. The evolution of this story ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... the peace pipe round from hand to hand in silence, before the warriors rise to answer Champlain. Then with the pompous gravity of Abraham dickering with the desert tribes, they warn Champlain it is unsafe to go farther. Beyond the Ottawa is the Nipissing, where dwell the Sorcerer Indians—a treacherous people. Beyond the Nipissing is the great Fresh Water Sea of the Hurons. They will grant Champlain canoes, but warn him against the trip. Later the interpreter comes with word they have changed their minds. Champlain must not go ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... the heads of the church, the judges, or me, as you treat those unhappy ones [accused of witchcraft], subject any of us to the same tortures, and you will discover that we are all sorcerers."[550] He quoted an inquisitor who boasted that if he could get the pope on the rack he would prove him a sorcerer.[551] In the thirteenth century "judges were well convinced of the failure of the procedure with its secret and subjective elements, but they could not in any other way ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... becoming converted to the Catholic faith in 1856 he was received in private audience by that handsome, urbane, but by no means satisfactory pontiff, Pio Nono, who, however, eight years later caused him to be summarily expelled from Rome as a sorcerer ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... blade of scented sword-grass, and to proceed the next morning to the banks of the lake, which was no other than that over which the Red Head reigned. Now Hah-Undo-Tah, or the Red Head, was a most powerful sorcerer, living upon an island in the centre of his realm of water, and he was the terror of all the country. She informed him that there would be many Indians upon the island, who, as soon as they saw him use the shining bowl to drink with, would come and ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... set before a sorcerer. I would as lief eat bill-poster's paste a year old. It tastes like a sour, acid custard. Yet white men learn to eat it, even to yearn for it. Captain Capriata, of the schooner Roberta, which occasionally made port in Atuona Bay, could digest little else. Give him a bowl of popoi ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... power dominated illness itself and imposed his own rules upon his overstrained body. At the same time he dreamed of a calmer life, he pictured the delights of bucolic days and longed to know when this driving slavery was to end. Accordingly we find him consulting a sorcerer, a reader of cards, the celebrated Balthazar, in regard to his future. He was amazed to find how much of his past this man was able to reveal to him, a past made up of struggles and of obstacles overcome, and he joyously accepted ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... somehow in the smaller forms that the French composer finds the trenchant utterance of his fancy. A Scherzo, after the ballad of Goethe, "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," tells the famous story of the boy who in his master's absence compels the spirit in the broom to fetch the water; but he cannot say the magic word to stop the flood, although he ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... "Druid" was a Greek appellation derived from the Druidic cult of the oak ([Greek: drus]).[1002] The word, however, is purely Celtic, and its meaning probably implies that, like the sorcerer and medicine-man everywhere, the Druid was regarded as "the knowing one." It is composed of two parts—dru-, regarded by M. D'Arbois as an intensive, and vids, from vid, "to know," or "see."[1003] Hence the Druid ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... look around The realm you rule, for this is haunted ground! Here stalks the Sorcerer, here the Fairy trips, Here limps the Witch with malice-working lips, The Graces here their snowy arms entwine, Here dwell the fairest sisters of the Nine,— She who, with jocund voice and twinkling eye, Laughs at the brood of follies as they fly; She of the dagger and the deadly ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... always possible, by fair means or foul, but with one who had subjugated them in a supernatural manner. There was no other explanation of the inexplicable facts which they had witnessed. I was a sorcerer, a kind of marabout, a direct emissary of ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... in Mesopotamia, he retired to the Temple of the Moon, with a certain sorcerer and some others, and, his nocturnal operations concluded, he left the temple locked, the door sealed, and placed a guard over the gate. He was killed in the war, and never returned to Carra, but when, in the reign of Jovian, the seal was broken and the temple opened, a body was ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... meat.' So they opened the door of the dark room and found me standing in the niche, praying and reciting the Koran and glorifying Allah and humbling myself before the Almighty. When they saw me in this state Matrohina exclaimed, 'This man is indeed a sorcerer of the sorcerers!'; and hearing his words, they all came in on me, Dakianus and his company withal, and they beat me with a grievous beating, till I desired death and reproached myself, saying, 'This is his reward who exalteth himself and who prideth himself on that which ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... in the game, is not the object addressed. It is held out to him who is to guess—the conjuror—and it is he who is addressed, and under a conjuring name. In short (to hazard a wide conjecture, it may be), he is invoked in the person of NIC NEVILLE (Neivie Nic), a sorcerer in the days of James VI., who was burnt at St. Andrew's in 1569. If I am right, a curious testimony is furnished to his quondam popularity among ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various
... with the sorcerer!—to the fire with the broomstick-rider!—to the fire with the comrade of the infernal spirits!' cried others; and one threw at him a half-burnt log of the St. John's fire, which, striking him on the forehead, sent the unfortunate Cagot reeling to the foot of a tree, against ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... not require any Fees from handsome Women that come to see them, but only intimate the Desire their Master has to Caress them for a Night. The Husbands take these Impostures for Truth, and surrender their Wives to the Gods and the Winds. Night being come, the brawny Sorcerer (who Employs the Persons abovemention'd, to ensnare fine Women to his Caresses) Embraces the fair one closely, and Enjoys her instead of the Devil. If this Ignorance and Superstition prevail'd in this Kingdom, I doubt not but ...
— Tractus de Hermaphrodites • Giles Jacob
... Elymas are both 'witches', in Wiclif's New Testament (Acts viii. 9; xiii. 8), and Posthumus in Cymbeline: but when the medieval Latin 'sortiarius' (not 'sortitor' as in Richardson), supplied another word, the French 'sorcier', and thus our English 'sorcerer' (originally the "caster of lots"), then 'witch' gradually was confined to the hag, or female practiser of these arts, while 'sorcerer' was ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... thee down at last! Too long hast thou trifled with our patience,—thou must abjure thy heresies, or die! What sayest thou now of doom,—of judgment,—of the waning of glory? Wilt prophesy? ... wilt denounce the Faith? ... Wilt mislead the people? ... Wilt curse the King? ... Thou mad sorcerer!—devil bewitched and blasphemous! ... What shall hinder me from at once slaying thee?" And he half drew his formidable sword from ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... means with my brother to divert his passion; but the fascination was too strong, and my pains proved ineffectual. In anything else, my brother would have suffered himself to be ruled by me; but the charms of this Circe, aided by that sorcerer, Le Guast, were too powerful to be dissolved by my advice. So far was he from profiting by my counsel that he was weak enough to communicate it to her. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... not removed. Most of the inhabitants left the island; the few who remained were cautious how they approached the Castle, and watched until some bold adventurer should bring that happy awakening which the speech of the sorcerer seemed in some ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... as may be readily believed, and, as the prince had intended, spread a report that gave to him thenceforth the rank of a sorcerer, and ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... less a witness than Philip Melanchthon, the reformer. Martin Luther refers to Faust in his "Table Talk" as a man lost beyond all hope of redemption; Melanchthon, who says that he talked with him, adds: "This sorcerer Faust, an abominable beast, a common sewer of many devils (turpissima bestia et cloaca multorum diabolorum), boasted that he had enabled the imperial armies to ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... who buy the 'best-sellers' are the people who would prefer to do anything rather than be reduced to reading. I protest that the man who makes these people read on until they see how 'it all came out' is a deal more than an artist; he is a sorcerer." ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... seen these two Years, to be unmoved at the Horror and Reverence which appear in the whole Assembly when the mercenary Man fell down dead; at the Amazement of the Man born blind, when he first receives Sight; or at the graceless Indignation of the Sorcerer, when he is struck blind. The Lame, when they first find Strength in their Feet, stand doubtful of their new Vigour. The heavenly Apostles appear acting these great Things, with a deep Sense of the Infirmities which they relieve, but no Value of ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... he could neither hear nor see. Before him, sitting motionless as a statue, with his back against the trunk of the oak tree and his keen, hawk-like face turned toward the hills and the sky, was Secotan, the sorcerer and medicine man, whom all of Nashola's tribe praised, ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... of Annam[909] record a discussion which took place before the Emperor Thai-Ton (1433-1442) between a Buddhist and a sorcerer. Both held singularly mixed beliefs but recognized the Buddha as a deity. The king said that he could not decide between the two sects, but ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... and ever so lightly. "Eh, and did you never understand why by preference I talked with you at evening from my balcony? It was because I could forget you then entirely. There was only a voice in the dark. There was a sorcerer at whose bidding words trooped like a conclave of emperors, and now sang like a bevy of linnets. And wit and fancy and high aspirations and my love—because I knew then that your love for me was splendid and divine—these also were my sorcerer's potent allies. I understood then how glad ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... sorcerer! thou traitor!" yelled Messire Florimont Lecocq,—and lugging out his sword, he plunged it in ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... had happened since the wreck, and all became grave again as he told of the capture in the early morning after their night march, the wild orgy in which their captors had indulged, the elaborate preparations they had made under the direction of their sorcerer for the sacrificial rite to which their captives were destined. But for the appearance of the aeroplane he had no doubt that within a few short hours they would have been massacred, and their skulls ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... enlightenment—at least, in this country—when the person who makes strange discoveries which cannot be explained, and the person who announces facts which cannot be comprehended by the human mind, need not fear to be punished as a sorcerer, or thrust into a cell as a lunatic. I may be mistaken in regard to this latter point, but I think I am right. In any case, I do not wish to live much longer as I have been living. As I must live on, with generation after generation rising up about me, I want those generations to ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... Majesty's cuisine,—an appointment of peculiar importance and trust in the household of an Oriental prince. Finding that by no feminine devices could she procure the influence she coveted over her master's mind and affections, she finally had recourse to an old and infamous sorcerer, styled Khoon Hate-nah ("Lord of Future Events"), an adept of the black art much consulted by women of rank from all parts of the country; and he, in consideration of an extraordinary fee, prepared for her a variety ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... neck, and take no charge of it farther! In which, to Friedrich's Biographers, there is this inestimable benefit, if far the reverse to Friedrich's self: That we shall soon have done with the French, then; with them and with so much else; and may, in time coming, for most part, leave their huge Sorcerer's Sabbath of a European War to dance itself out, well in the distance, not encumbering us farther, like a circumambient Bedlam, as it has hitherto done. Courage, reader! Let us give, in a glance or two, some notion of the course things took, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... opens in the house of the Governor, where a large party, among them a group of conspirators, is assembled. During the meeting a petition is presented for the banishment of Ulrico, a negro sorcerer. Urged by curiosity, the Governor, disguised as a sailor and accompanied by some of his friends, pays the old witch a visit. Meanwhile another visit has been planned. Amelia, the wife of the Governor's secretary, meets the witch at night ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... of itinerant, mountebank, conjurer, cheat, sophist, and sorcerer, heaped upon the teachers of Christianity; sometimes to account for the report or apparent truth of their miracles, sometimes to explain their success. Our Lord was said to have learned his miraculous power in Egypt; "wizard, mediciner, cheat, rogue, conjurer," were the epithets applied ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... Bacchus' black servant, negro fine, Sorcerer that mak'st us doat upon Thy begrim'd complexion, And, for thy pernicious sake More and greater oaths to break Than reclaimed Lovers take 'Gainst women: Thou thy siege dost lay Much too in the female way, While thou suck'st the labouring ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... Hyacinth never stirred or tired of listening. This much they learned afterward, that he talked a great deal about strange lands, unknown countries, and amazingly wonderful things; stopped there three days, and crept with Hyacinth down into deep shafts. Little Rosebud execrated the old sorcerer pretty thoroughly, for Hyacinth was altogether absorbed in his conversation, and paid no heed to anything else, hardly even to the swallowing of a mouthful of food. At length the man took his departure, but left with Hyacinth a little book which no man could read. Hyacinth gave him fruit, and bread, ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... breast in a suddenly-invading torrent.—"Accursed sorcerer!" he yelled fiercely, and seizing Muzio by the throat with one hand, he fumbled with the other for the dagger in his belt, and buried its blade to the ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... and deeply absorbed in the interest of the scene, to be capable of playing his part as became the place where he was seated. He felt all the magic of that sorcerer, who had displayed, within the paltry circle of a wooden booth, the long wars of York and Lancaster, compelling the heroes of either line to stalk across the scene in language and fashion as they lived, as if the grave had given up the dead for the amusement ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... remained at Ticonderoga practising sorcery and divination to aid the warriors or learn how it fared with them. Bougainville writes in his Journal on the fifteenth of October: "Yesterday the old Pottawattamies who have stayed here 'made medicine' to get news of their brethren. The lodge trembled, the sorcerer sweated drops of blood, and the devil came at last and told him that the warriors would come back with scalps and prisoners. A sorcerer in the medicine lodge is exactly like the Pythoness on the tripod or the witch Canidia invoking the shades." The diviner ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... bargain, and never appears to feel a particle of commiseration for their lot. In fact, the emotional feeling displayed by Pre Du Tertre (whom he mocks slyly betimes) must have seemed to him rather condemnable than praiseworthy; for Labat regarded the negro as a natural child of the devil,—a born sorcerer,—an ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... voluptuous abundance of Asia, its beating [63] sun, its "fair-towered cities, full of inhabitants," which the chorus describe in their luscious vocabulary, with the rich Eastern names—Lydia, Persia, Arabia Felix: he is a sorcerer or an enchanter, the tyrant Pentheus thinks: the springs of water, the flowing of honey and milk and wine, are his ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... woman, or child, or cattle, is caused either by evil spirits or by an angry god. The Bijapur Veddas have a yearly feast to their ancestors to prevent the dead bringing sickness into the house.[18] "A Catholic missionary," says Professor Frazer, "observes that in New Guinea the nepir, or sorcerer, is everywhere.... Nothing happens without the sorcerer's intervention; wars, marriage, death, expeditions, fishing, hunting, always and everywhere ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... always plotting against the fair and good; he is bold, enterprising, strong, a mighty hunter, always weaving some intrigue or other, keen in the pursuit of wisdom, fertile in resources; a philosopher at all times, terrible as an enchanter, sorcerer, sophist. He is by nature neither mortal nor immortal, but alive and flourishing at one moment when he is in plenty, and dead at another moment, and again alive by reason of his father's nature. But that which is always flowing in is always flowing ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... he has been anxious about the health of the Hanski family; and it is curious that a few months before he received the letter from Madame Hanska, telling of her husband's death, he had visited a sorcerer, who by means of cards, told him many extraordinary things about his past career, and said that in six weeks he would receive news which would ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... it was clean jadoo— white magic, as distinguished from the unclean jadoo which kills folk. It took a long time before Suddhoo admitted that this was just what he had asked me to come for. Then he told me, in jerks and quavers, that the man who said he cut seals was a sorcerer of the cleanest kind; that every day he gave Suddhoo news of the sick son in Peshawar more quickly than the lightning could fly, and that this news was always corroborated by the letters. Further, that he had told Suddhoo how a great danger ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... the summer wind mocked at me and whispered to me of demons. And when I rose and stood at gaze, troubled, and minding every river-breeze, faintly I seemed to scent the taint of evil. If those two scalps be Erie, then where the Cat-People creep their Sorcerer ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... I ask for riches, my master will claim them. If I ask the power to become invisible, they will put me to death as a sorcerer. Therefore it is best for me to ask for the gift of physical strength, in order that I may do the work ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors |
