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noun
Sesame  n.  (Bot.) Either of two annual herbaceous plants of the genus Sesamum (Sesamum Indicum, and Sesamum orientale), from the seeds of which an oil is expressed; also, the small obovate, flattish seeds of these plants, sometimes used as food. See Benne.
Open Sesame, the magical command which opened the door of the robber's den in the Arabian Nights' tale of "The Forty Thieves;" hence, a magical password.
Sesame grass. (Bot.) Same as Gama grass.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sesame" Quotes from Famous Books



... town rose up clear and hard, lingering and falling like notes of music. Somewhere they were playing football, and the shouting was distant and regular like the tramp of armed men. "Three" struck the Cathedral clock, as though it were calling "Open Sesame." Other lesser clocks repeated the challenge cry through the town. "Woppley—Woppley—Why!" sung the man who was selling skins down Orange Street. The sky, turning slowly from blue to gold, shone mysteriously through the glass of the street ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole

... Paul require no praise from the hands of the reviewer; his name is a true 'open sesame' to all hearts. Not to know him argues one's self unknown. Some of his finest passages are to be found in the Campaner Thal. It was written from his heart, and embodies his conviction of immortality. How tender its imagery, how rich its consoling ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... matutinal greeting—"My Dear Sweetheart"—routed the blue devils that camped nightly on his worried and harassed soul, as he lay abed and wrestled with the mighty problems that confronted him. To Bob McGraw those three words held the open-sesame of life; they gave him strength to cling to his high, resolve; they whispered to him of the prize of the conflict which awaited him at the end of his long road to Donnaville, and sent him forth to face the world with ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... Gilfoyle had an "open sesame" to the dovecote they grew impatient with delay. Gilfoyle's landlady had also grown impatient with delay, but Connery forced her to wait for what he called the ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... art of injudicious reading, the art of miscellaneous reading which every normal man ought to cultivate, is a very fine and satisfactory art; for the best guide to books is a book itself. It clasps hands with a thousand other books. It has always seemed to me that "Sesame and Lilies" would not have been conceived by Ruskin if he had not heard well an echo of "The Following of Christ." There was a time when the lovers of Ruskin who wanted to read "The Stones of Venice" and the rest at leisure, felt themselves obliged to form clubs, ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan

... a taxicab apparently being the open sesame. One might have gone afoot and have looked ever so much like a "good thing" and he would not have been admitted. But such is the simplicity of the sophistication of the keepers of such places that a motor car opens all locks ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve

... wild rice, sesame, and Kaffir corn, are cereals little known in this country, although where they are raised they are largely used by the natives. However, we need not trouble to consider their food value as they are not easily procurable either in ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon

... pools in which pebbles might be dropped, making no ripples—one must suppose that there are such pools, since there are certainly such faces. St. George saw how it was. Here, spoken casually by the prince, just as the Banal would speak of the visible and invisible worlds, here was the Sesame of understanding toward which the centuries had striven, the secret of the link between two worlds; and here, of all mankind, were only they two to hear—they two and that motionless company who knew what the prince ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale

... his ears. 'My heart yearns towards my people of El Muddee,' he says; 'I have thought how to relieve their miseries. Near them lies the fruitful land of El Guanee. It is rich in maize and cotton, in sesame and barley; it is worth a thousand purses; but I will let it to my children for seven hundred, and I will give over the rest of the profit to them, as an alleviation ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... terrible little hammers. He thought of the Prince in the story which Christine had read aloud to him. The Prince, who was a fine and dashing fellow, had gone straight to the black enchanted cave where the dragon lived, and had thumped on the door with the hilt of his gold sword and shouted: "Open, Sesame!" And when the door opened, he had gone straight in, without turning a hair, and slain the ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... then the name Grace Noir was a sort of talisman opening to the young man's vision the interior of wonderful treasure- caves; it was like crying "Sesame!" to the very rocks, for though he was not in love with Gregory's secretary, he fancied the day of ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis

... the result, a considerable progress, for which the Philippines are indebted to the Spaniards. The influence of social relations has been already exhibited in the text. The Spaniards have imported the horse, the bullock, and the sheep; maize, coffee, sugar-cane, cacao, sesame, tobacco, indigo, many fruits, and probably the batata, which they met with in Mexico under the name of camotli. [113] From this circumstance the term camote, universal in the Philippines, appears to have had its origin, Crawfurd, indeed, erroneously considering it a native term. According ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... that the possession of certain physical gifts—such as the ability to wriggle one's ears or do the "splits"—is in itself no "open sesame" to lasting social success. "Slow and sure" is a good rule for the young man to follow, and although he may somewhat enviously watch his more brilliant colleagues as they gain momentary applause by their ability to throw ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart

... dost, cleave unto her, and give up unto her thy body and mind; Think with her ideas, and distribute thy smiles at her bidding: So shalt thou become like unto her, and thy manners shall be "formed:" And thy name shall be a sesame at which the doors of the great shall fly open: Thou, shalt know every peer, his arms, and the date of his creation, His pedigree and their intermarriages, and cousins to the sixth remove; Thou shalt kiss the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various

... an "open sesame" to the room. The door was suddenly jerked open, and with a blanching face, the young ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur

... and nine that go not astray, never feel the caressing touch which the yearning Shepherd lays on the obstinate wanderer, who would not pasture in peace; and from the immemorial dawn of inchoate civilization, prodigals have possessed the open sesame to parental hearts that seemed barred against the more dutiful. By what perverted organon of ethics has it come to pass in sociology, that the badge of favoritism is ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... tried most assiduously to cultivate an acquaintance with members of child-world, but into that kingdom there is no open sesame. The sure keen intuition of a child recognizes on sight a kindred spirit and Silvia's forced advances met with but indifferent response. She wistfully proposed to me one day that we adopt a child. My doubts as to the ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... in his secret apprehension. His identification with his unimpressionable neighbour's mood had shown him what to expect. These letters—these innocent and precious outpourings of a rare and womanly soul—the only conceivable open sesame to the hard-locked nature he found himself pitted against, would soon be resolved into ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green

... the transcendental revelations of his Egeria. Nothing appeared to be concealed from her; the inmost mind of the sovereign: there was not a royal prejudice that was not mapped in her secret inventory; the cabinets of the whigs and the clubs of the tories, she had the "open sesame" to all of them. Sir Somebody did not want office, though he pretended to; and Lord Nobody did want office, though he pretended he did not. One great man thought the pear was not ripe; another that it was quite rotten; but then the first was ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... largely pressed in Southern France from the seeds of the sesame plant which is cultivated in the Levant, India, Japan and ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons

... Sawad, was then the green land of waving corn, where three crops were annually harvested and the average yield was two hundredfold of the seed sown. The wheat and barley, so Herodotus tells us, were a palm-breadth long in the blade, and millet and sesame grew like trees. And in these details the revered Father of Lies seems to have spoken less than the truth, for the statistics we get elsewhere more than bear out his accounts of its amazing fertility. From its wealth before his day had arisen the might of Babylon, and for centuries later, while ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson

... a poetic word—mere mention of it would distress Mr. Yeats; but it is potent as "Sesame" to unlock the treasures of memory. And before the laggard Spring comes round again many of us will sigh for a whiff of yellow, acrid smoke, curling from a smoldering fire in the heart of the ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor

... Stories). The possibility of Galland's version having passed into the East from Europe does not seem to have been considered till I suggested it in my Introduction to the Arabian Nights. There is little doubt that Open Sesame is European, and similarly this story occurs in Straparola early enough to prevent any possibility of doubt on the subject. The sequel of incidents appears to be ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs

... somehow, one never recollects these taboo days, wherever one may be, till one's pulled up short by them in the course of one's travels. Now, what on earth am I to do? A box, it seems, is the Open, Sesame of the situation. Some mystic value is attached to it as a moral amulet. I don't believe that excellent Miss Blake would consent to take me in for a second night without the guarantee of a portmanteau to ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen

... making fun here on earth of the justice of men, and securing from God the pardon from eternal condemnation thru the simple means of invoking the name of a saint, or thru the medium of a Latin word which, acting as a sort of open sesame opens wide to the devotee the gates ...
— The Legacy of Ignorantism • T.H. Pardo de Tavera

... work. Read prayerfully. We learn how to pray by reading prayerfully. This Book does not reveal its sweets and strength to the keen mind merely, but to the Spirit enlightened mind. All the mental keenness possible, with the bright light of the Spirit's illumination—that is the open sesame. I have sometimes sought the meaning of some passage from a keen scholar who could explain the orientalisms, the fine philological distinctions, the most accurate translations, and all of that, who yet did not seem to know the simple spiritual ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon

... is no time for laughing. You remember the phrase which was the 'open sesame' of this chateau full ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux

... a great event for Betty. Mrs. LaMotte, who does such beautiful illustrating for the magazines had seen Betty's last story, and asked her for her next manuscript. If she illustrates it, the pictures will be an open sesame to any editor's attention. She gave her so much encouragement too, and made some suggestions that Betty said would help ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston

... sending a telegram from Lyons to the proprietor of my favourite hotel (securing apartments), knowing him to be a very decent fellow; but now, perforce," he added with an intent look, trying to read her, "my would-be landlord must go to the wall, while the doors of the villa obey the open sesame of ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny

... most part her life was dull, though she did not feel it. The life of the rich, instead of being varied and full of deep experience, is actually in most cases exceedingly monotonous and narrowing. The common belief that wealth is an open sesame to a life of universal human experience is a stupid delusion, frequently used as a gloss to their souls by well-intentioned people. Apart from the strict class limitations imposed by the possession of large property, the object of protected and luxurious people ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... I have read a few articles upon the subject, including one by Cardinal Newman. It is wonderful that so many people imagine that there is something miraculous in the oath. They seem to regard it as a kind of verbal fetich, a charm, an "open sesame" to be pronounced at the door of truth, a spell, a kind of moral thumbscrew, by means of which falsehood itself is compelled ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... passages. There was little fear of being run to earth with hidden exits everywhere. Wainscoting, solid brickwork, or stone hearth were equally accommodating, and would swallow up fugitives wholesale, and close over them, to "Open, Sesame!" again only ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea

... phonograph. When the tympanum vibrates under the influence of the voice, the stylus acts as a pawl and turns a ratchet-wheel. An ingenious smith might apply it to the construction of a lock which would operate at the command of 'Open, Sesame!' Another trifle perhaps worthy of note is his ink, which rises on the paper and solidifies, so that a blind person can read the writing by passing ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... cleanliness and recreation; and even the women after childbirth do not refrain from the bath, and children just born are bathed in the rivers and springs of cold water. When leaving the bath, they anoint the head with ajonjoli [i.e., oil of sesame] mixed with civet—of which, as we shall later show, there is great abundance in those regions. Even when not bathing, they are accustomed to anoint their heads for comfort and adornment, especially the women ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson

... before said, who create etiquette, and Burke tells us that "manners are of more importance than laws." A fine manner is the "open sesame" that admits us to the audience chamber of the world. It is the magic wand at whose touch all ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... over the wire a few million times daily was taken from Menlo Park by men installing telephones in different parts of the world, men who had just learned it at the laboratory, and thus made it a universal sesame for telephonic conversation. ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... off his saddle-bag, which from its weight seemed to Ali Baba full of gold and silver. One, whom he took to be their captain, came under the tree in which Ali Baba was concealed; and, making his way through some shrubs, spoke the words, "Open, Sesame." As soon as the captain of the robbers said this, a door opened in the rock, and after he had made all his troop enter before him, he followed them, when the door shut again ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan

... the younger gods with the Titans. The rest of his poem is a picturesque drama, in which every artifice of invention is visibly and consciously employed; not a single fact being for an instant conceived as tenable by any living faith" (Sesame and Lilies, ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford

... and it may be more than doubted whether a poet's philosophy be ordinary metaphysics, divisible into chapter and section. It is rather something which is more energetic in a word than in a whole treatise, and our hearts unclose themselves instinctively at its simple Open sesame! while they would stand firm against the reading of the whole body of philosophy. In point of fact, the one element of greatness which The Excursion possesses indisputably is heaviness. It is only the episodes that are universally ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... island in the world, and its king is called Sendernaz. The men and women are idolaters, and go entirely naked, except a small cloth before them. They grow no corn except rice; and they have plenty of oil of sesame, milk, flesh, palm wine, Brazil wood, the best rubies in the world, sapphires, topazes, amethysts, and other gems. The king of the island is said to have the finest ruby that ever was seen, as long as the hand, and as thick as a mans wrist, without spot or ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr

... geologist, naturalist, entomologist may each pursue his favourite studies unmolested. Here, as everywhere else, the utmost liberality is shewn to all, but to Englishmen particularly, your country is your passport. Like the mysterious "Open Sesame" in the Arabian nights, you have only to say, "Je suis Anglais" and you go in and out at pleasure. I have seen Frenchmen begging in vain with ladies and officers of the party and turned away because they had happened on the wrong day or hour, and then we, without ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley

... This Declaration had been handsomely engrossed by one of their number, and signed by the oldest and most prominent advocates of woman's enfranchisement. Their tickets of admission proved an "open sesame" through the military barriers, and, a few moments before the opening of the ceremonies, these women found themselves within the precincts from which most of their sex ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... girl has quitted the bath; she is charming from head to foot, both belly and buttocks; the cake is baked and they are kneading the sesame-biscuit;[345] nothing is lacking but ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... inside. 68. The men who bear loads brought three sar of oil, 69. Besides a sar of oil which the offering consumed, 70. And two sar of oil which the boatman hid. 71. I slaughtered oxen for the [work]people, 72. I slew sheep every day. 73. Beer, sesame wine, oil and wine 74. I made the people drink as if they were water from the river. 75. I celebrated a feast-day as if it had been New Year's Day. 76. I opened [a box of ointment], I laid my hands in unguent. 77. Before the sunset the ship was finished. 78. [Since] ... ...
— The Babylonian Story of the Deluge - as Told by Assyrian Tablets from Nineveh • E. A. Wallis Budge

... entrance in readiness to be carried outside and set upon the beasts. But by the will of Allah Almighty he had clean forgotten the cabalistic words and cried out, "Open, O Barley!" whereat the door refused to move. Astonished and confused beyond measure he named the names of all manner of grains save sesame, which had slipped from his memory as though he had never heard the word; whereat in his dire distress he heeded not the Ashrafis that lay heaped at the entrance and paced to and fro, backwards and forwards, within the cave sorely puzzled and perplexed. The wealth whose sight ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... know how, and when, and to whom to bow, is in itself an art. The bow is, indeed, an all-important accomplishment,—it is the 'Open Sesame' of the 'Polite World.' To bow gracefully, therefore, may be regarded as the most important part of ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... unlikely that he would marry some lady of rank. He laughed heartily at the notion. It was also rumoured that he meant to return and take a place in the neighbourhood, stand for the county, and be one of the greatest men in South Wales. In short, the enchanter, the merlin, the open sesame, the omnipotent sorcerer gold was to work the miracles to which Howel had been so long looking forward. And the gossips were not far wrong. Gold is truly a famous master-key to all hearts ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale

... so fruitful as to yield commonly two hundredfold, and when the production is greatest, even three hundredfold. The blade of the wheat plant and barley is often four fingers in breadth. As for millet and the sesame, I shall not say to what height they grow, though within my own knowledge; for I am not ignorant that what I have already written concerning the fruitfulness of Babylonia, must seem incredible to those who have never visited the country.... Palm trees grow in great numbers ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... whilst C. D. remains for years a briefless barrister; and yet for the life of us we cannot tell but that C. D. is the abler man of the two. Perhaps he was wanting in some one of the less conspicuous elements that are essential to a successful career; he said, 'Open, wheat!' instead of 'Open, sesame!' and the barriers remained unaffected by his magic. The secret may really be simple enough. The complete success of such a book as 'Robinson' implies, it may be, the precise adaptation of the key to every ward of the lock. The ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... written a few lines upon the pasteboard which made it an open sesame to the possessor to any and all of her concerts. Mike thanked her gratefully, and had to promise to come to see her again before the steamer reached New York, and to think over her proposal. He kept his promise so far as calling on her ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis

... (Poem by Browning.) Blaisdell. Child life in tale and fable. Bellamy and Goodwin. Open Sesame, pt. 1. Browning. Pied piper of Hamelin; il. by Greenaway. Browning. Poems. Chisholm. Golden staircase. Lucas. Book of verses for children. Patmore. Children's garland from the best poets. White. ...
— Lists of Stories and Programs for Story Hours • Various

... (thanks to the science of the modern inventor) that burglars could not carry it away. The door only opened at the pleasure of those who knew its password. The letter-lock was a warden who kept its own secret and could not be bribed; the mysterious word was an ingenious realization of the "Open sesame!" in the Arabian Nights. But even this was as nothing. A man might discover the password; but unless he knew the lock's final secret, the ultima ratio of this gold-guarding dragon of mechanical science, it discharged a blunderbuss ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... high-toned and virtuous women. Moreover, they are to be seen in boxes at the theatre and the opera, and in almost every accessible place where wealthy and fashionable people congregate. In point of fact, through the potent influence of their more or less wealthy protector, they possess the open sesame to all places where admittance is not secured by vouchers, and in many instances those apparently insuperable barriers fall before their indorser's tact ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe

... a loss to explain these strange words until a visit from the bishop himself made everything clear. Then great was the rejoicing, for instinctively each heart knew that the simple little ring had won the fight. The story of its giving was an "open Sesame" wherever it was told, and the much needed addition to Danbury Hospital was made possible through the sacrifice of one ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown

... apprehension converted into a stiletto or dirk, and such is the force of self-preservation, that I was on the point of tripping her up and throwing her on her back. But thrusting the supposed dirk against the wall—presto—open sesame—the wall gave way, and she drew me through a doorway. This was done so quickly it absolutely seemed magic. For an instant I thought of dropping her arm—indeed I should have done so, and retreated back through the door, but she held my arm tight, and I almost quaked, for I thought she had dragged ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various

... children again, if we will be philosophers!' The phrase appears here almost in passing, and Reid never came back to it again. And yet in it is contained the Open Sesame which gives access to the hidden spirit-treasures of the world. In this unawareness of Reid's of the importance of what he thus had found we must see the reason for his incapacity to develop his philosophy beyond ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs

... to bear. As he counted the piles of bank-bills on his employers' counter, or stacked up heaps of coin, in his ordinary business, he fancied himself another Ali Baba, in a cave to which he had found the Open Sesame, and he could hardly contain himself till the time should come when he should take possession of his unimaginable wealth. He had built air-castles before, but never one so magnificent, so real. He could have hugged Bullion, bear as he was.—We ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... money from a merchant, and give the merchant a field tillable for corn or sesame and order him to plant corn or sesame in the field, and to harvest the crop; if the cultivator plant corn or sesame in the field, at the harvest the corn or sesame that is in the field shall belong to the owner of the field and he shall pay corn ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... to Bedawin raids." He summarizes the agricultural products of the neighbourhood of Damascus as:—"Wheat, barley, maize (white and yellow), beans, peas, lentils, kerane, gelbane, bakie, belbe, fessa, borake (the last seven being green crops for cattle food), aniseed, sesame, tobacco, shuma, olive, and liquorice root. The fruits are grapes, hazel, walnut, almond, pistachio, currant, mulberry, fig, apricot, peach, apple, pear, quince, plum, lemon, citron, melon, berries of various kinds, and a few oranges. The vegetables are cabbage, potatoes, artichokes, tomatoes, ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... North China is for sale—furs, silks, jade, jewels, sweetmeats, everything. But it is to the sweet-stalls that we always go, where wonderful Chinese candies and sugared fruits are for sale. We first change a dollar into pennies, and then all four of us eat our way from stall to stall—sesame candy, sugared walnuts, sugary plums on straws. It's wonderful. Germs? Maybe, but we don't care. I am sick of germs, of the emphasis that every one at home places on them. It's restful to get into a country where there aren't any, or at least people don't know about them. The trouble with America ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte

... of civilized life. They then spent the night at Eleusis, in celebrating the mysteries of the Goddess. The second day was one of mourning, during which the women sat on the ground around the statues of Ceres, taking no food but cakes made of sesame and honey. On it no meetings of the people were held. Probably it was in the afternoon of this day that there was a procession at Athens, in which the women walked bare-footed behind a waggon, upon which were baskets, with sacred symbols. The third day was one of ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... according to his particular desires of the particular moment. I think he really caught it from an illustration in The Arabian Nights, from the picture of Cassim grandiloquently proclaiming "Open Sesame!" He is an imaginative little beggar. "Mummy," he said to me the other night, "see all the moonlight that's been spilled on the grass!" But children are made that way. Even my sage little Poppsy, when a marigold-leaf fell in the bowl of our solitary gold-fish, cried out ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer

... are born here are black enough, but the blacker they be the more they are thought of; wherefore from the day of their birth their parents do rub them every week with oil of sesame, so that they become as black as devils. Moreover, they make their gods black and their devils white, and the images of their saints they do ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... municipal affairs of the city, having sat on many committees appointed to deal with bills promoted by the Corporation. His solicitude to oblige his constituents is, indeed, only bounded by his ability to serve them, and the "open sesame" is seldom beyond his control. As a speaker he never did and never will excel, although he has several times, and notably on the question of the management of ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans

... Nina was the sesame which unlocked his powers of speech; and wiping the large drops ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes

... safety. When they came up to him and dismounted, he counted forty of them. They unbridled their horses and tied them to trees. The finest man among them, whom Ali Baba took to be their captain, went a little way among some bushes, and said: "Open, Sesame!"(1) so plainly that Ali Baba heard him. A door opened in the rocks, and having made the troop go in, he followed them, and the door shut again of itself. They stayed some time inside, and Ali Baba, fearing they might come ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various

... every truly refined woman with a large loving heart which is irresistible. The two qualities combined give a winning grace that is an "open sesame" everywhere. The trouble is that culture and polish are too often the ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... insurance agent. On the battlefield his rank entitles him to such consideration only as is due to a captain. Here he may ignore colonels, may say to a brigadier, "Stop pushing." He has what all desire, the "Open Sesame" which clears the way to ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham

... done immediately after the Rothschilds had floated a rather large and risky loan for his Kingship. This is irrelevant, inconsequential, and outside the issue. That the House of Rothschild with its branches had an open sesame upon the purse-strings of Europe for half a century is a fact. Nations in need of cash had to apply to the Rothschilds. The Rothschilds didn't loan them the money—they merely looked after the details of the loan, and guaranteed the lender that the interest ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... glittering, colorful, a delight to the eye. Around the circle of bright faces rippled a low, merry murmur. The umpire, grotesquely padded in front by his chest protector, announced the batteries, dusted the plate, and throwing out a white ball, sang the open sesame of ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey

... by jests." The author might even have argued that his keenest satire had been poured upon those national enemies, the English, when he declared what has been sometimes regarded as the national oath to be the pith and marrow of the English language, the open sesame to English society, the key to unlock the English heart, and to obtain the judicious swearer all ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... odor with which Mr. Lindsley sprayed himself as he sprayed his handkerchief with a domestic scent called "Sesame and Lilies," his neoclassic determination to write the American Iliad must have died painlessly when his iambically disposed feet ventured too deeply into the quagmire of pedagogy, from which he was not to emerge. But for the first time in her life Lilly was hearing her name pronounced by one ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... longer a field of labour for the individual. Co-operation is the open sesame to the economic life of the future. And co-operation means organization. Organization, then, is the Alpha and Omega of the new era. That is the mysterious radium which has enabled a single race to assail and hold its own against a group of powers whose territory ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

... no longer stood still. Michael was forgotten. And, while her brush sped hither and thither, she crooned low and clear, the song that had proved the open sesame to her cave ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... overwhelmed in certain destruction living in the dominions of the Kuru king. Ye bulls among men, listen as we indicate the merits and demerits springing respectively from association with what is good and bad! As cloth, water, the ground, and sesame seeds are perfumed by association with flowers, even so are qualities ever the product of association. Verily association with fools produceth an illusion that entangleth the mind, as daily communion with the good and ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

... Cultivation was carried on to a large extent throughout the country; the corn generally used was the common dhurra (Sorghum vulgare). This was usually the dark-red variety, which, being rather bitter, has a chance of escape from the clouds of small birds which ruin the crops. Sesame was common throughout all portions of Central Africa, and throve well upon the poor ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... her baby's altered looks. Little Jack, with his angel face, his halo of curls, his exquisite, innocent eyes, had been a joy to behold. Waking, sleeping, merry, sad—at one and every moment, of his life the mere sight of him had been as an open sesame to the hearts of those who beheld. The knife turned in his mother's heart at the thought of Jack shorn, scarred, spectacled. She dared not confide her grief to her husband. He would not understand. Looks! What could looks matter, when the child had been delivered ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey

... Although a native of Texas, Senator Nixon's life is essentially a Nevada Romance. He started on his career as a simple telegraph operator, and then migrated with all the Nevada immigrants in the boomy days of the goldfields. It wasn't exactly "open Sesame" and then a fortune. It was perseverance that "did the trick." But it made a mighty good job of it, for at the time of his decease in 1912, the Senator was worth several millions, and his beautiful residence situated at the top of a hill on the outskirts ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton

... here that there is only one way in which a Negro, or a white man, can ever make himself respected. Statute law will not do it; rights voted him by the State are of small avail; making demands will not secure the desired sesame. If we ever gain the paradise of freedom it will be because we have earned it—because we deserve it. A make-believe education may suffice for a white man—especially if he has a rich father, but a Negro who has to carve out his own destiny must be taught order, system, and quiet, ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... German Schlussel blume, that is, key flowers; also Mary's-keys and keys of heaven. Both the primrose and tulip are believed in South Germany to be an Open Sesame to hidden treasure. ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland

... enthusiasm. The Arabs here had extensive plantations of sesame, dhurra, and cotton, and the nights were spent in watching them, to scare away the elephants, which, with extreme cunning, invaded the fields of dhurra at different points every night, and retreated before morning to the thick, thorny jungles of the Settite. ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker

... man be ever shadowed by the vampire wing of his past? Have I not a right to be happy? Money, estate, name, are mine, all that means an open sesame to the magic door. Others go in, but I beat against its flinty portals with hands that bleed. No! I have no right to be happy. The ways of the world are open; the banquet of life is spread; the wonder-workers ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... one-the iron of expediency had entered into his soul. He dared not jeopardize Loder's position, because he dared not dispense with Loder. The door that guarded his vice drew him more resistlessly with every indulgence, and Loder's was the voice that called the "Open Sesame!" ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... failure in His eternal plans. Immutability, perfection, beauty, are stamped on all His laws. Love is the vital essence that pervades and permeates, from the center to the circumference, the graduating circles of all thought and action. Love is the talisman of human weal and woe—the open sesame to every human soul. Where two beings are drawn together, by the natural laws of likeness and affinity, union and happiness are the result. Such marriages might be Divine. But how is it now? You all know our marriage is, in many cases, a mere outward tie, impelled ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... finding that exuberance, this Open Sesame to the things that count, may not be won without the friendly collaboration of the pores; and that two birds of paradise may be killed with one stone (which is precious above rubies) by giving the mind fun while one gives the pores ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler

... and several times went into Hal's room purposely, but Mr. Benton was always before me. It was because you felt all this that the letter made you feel truly an opening path—your tearful talk by the old apple tree was the 'sesame' that opened ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell

... proper objects,—and their imaginations the undisturbed right to revel in the supposititious grievances of the far-off wretched and oppressed. The poor black man! the tortured slave! the benighted infidel! the debased image of his maker! the sunken bondsman! These terms must be the "Open sesame" for the breasts from whence spring bibles, bribes, blankets, glass beads, pocket-combs, tracts, teachers, missions, and missionaries. Oppression is what they would put down; but then the oppression ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... the call to arms with its heart, and its heart goes out with that of the North in rejoicing at the result. The demonstration lacking to give the touch of life to the picture has been made. The open sesame that was needed to give insight into the true and loyal hearts both North and South has been spoken. Divided by war, we are united as never before by the same agency, and the union is of hearts as ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... son is born, or being born does not live, it is supposed that the first-born child is possessed by a malignant spirit who destroys the young lives of the new-born brothers and sisters. So at the mother's next confinement sugar and sesame-seed are passed seven or nine times over the new-born infant from head to foot, and the elder boy or girl is given them to eat. The sugar represents the life of the young one given to the spirit who possesses the first-born. A child born with teeth already ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... water and dress it in various ways and make many dishes of it." "And how should we come by fire in the sea? We know not broiled nor boiled nor aught else of the kind." "We also fry it in olive-oil and oil of sesame.[FN269]" How should be come by olive-oil and oil of sesame in the sea? Verily we know nothing of that thou namest." "True, but O my brother, thou hast shown me many cities; yet hast thou not shown me thine own city." "As for mine own city, we passed it a long way, for it is near ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... of Eggs The Wisdom of the Egyptians Principles of Incubation Moisture and Evaporation Ventilation—Carbon Dioxide Turning Eggs Cooling Eggs Searching for the "Open Sesame" of Incubation The Box Type of Incubator in Actual ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings

... (3 syl.) the magic words which caused the cave door of the "forty thieves" to open of itself. "Shut Sesam[^e]!" were the words which caused it to shut. Sesame is a grain, and hence Cassim, when he forgot the word, cried, "Open, Wheat!" "Open, Rye!" "Open, Barley!" but the door obeyed no sound but "Open, Sesam[^e]!"—Arabian Nights ("Ali Baba or ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... were now to begin an experience which was to last us through our entire journey. Here we were, a wandering company of who-knows-what, arriving hungry, drenched and unexpected long after the supper-hour, and our mere appearance was the "open sesame" to all the treasures of house and barn. Not knowing what our hap might be, we had gone provided with blankets and food, but both proved to be superfluous wherever we could find a house. Bad might be the best it afforded, but the best was at our service. At K——'s Ferry it was decidedly not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various

... kWh per capita (1991) Industries: cotton lint, beverages, agricultural processing, soap, cigarettes, textiles, gold Agriculture: accounts for about 40% of GDP; cash crops - peanuts, shea nuts, sesame, cotton; food crops - sorghum, millet, corn, rice; livestock; not self-sufficient in food grains Economic aid: US commitments, including Ex-Im (FY70-89), $294 million; Western (non-US) countries, ODA and OOF bilateral commitments (1970-89), $2.9 billion; ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... rise of such a community, much might be learned. Yet in the large libraries of the East we find only one book on the subject, and Poole's mammoth Index—that "Open, sesame," of the literary man—refers us to not a single magazine article of any sort on Cleveland. The book referred to is entitled Early History of Cleveland, with Biographical Notices of the Pioneers and Survivors; its author was Colonel Charles Whittlesey. As is the case in almost all such histories, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... knew this occurrence would be an open sesame to that laboratory of Tom's. And it proved to be ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various

... 3-1/2 hours. About north-west. Simba sent a handsome present of food, a goat, eggs, and a fowl, beans, split rice, dura, and sesame. I gave him ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... window and looked out. She looked right over his head at first, and then she looked down and saw him, and her eyebrows went far up on her forehead, and her mouth opened; and so he knew that she was delighted to see him. He nodded to give her courage, and shouted three times, "Open Sesame, Open Sesame, Open Sesame," and then she opened the ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens

... though naked of trees; the rich pasturage it furnishes permits them to keep large herds of cattle and goats, from which they have an ample supply of milk, cream, butter, and ghee. Rice is grown everywhere; sweet potatoes, yams, muhogo, holcus sorghum, maize, or Indian corn, sesame, millet, field-peas, or vetches, called choroko, are cheap, and always procurable. Around their tembes the Arabs cultivate a little wheat for their own purposes, and have planted orange, lemon, papaw, and mangoes, which thrive here fairly well. Onions ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... however lay warm under the snow and were unwilling to rise, until Xenophon himself set the example of rising and employing himself without his arms in cutting wood and kindling a fire. Others followed his example, and great comfort was found in rubbing themselves with pork-fat, oil of almonds or of sesame,[65] or turpentine. Having sent out a clever scout named Demokrates, who captured a native prisoner, they learned that Tiribazus was laying plans to intercept them in a lofty mountain pass lying farther on in their route; upon which they ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote

... The "Open Sesame" in this case has been spoken through the railroad-whistle. Railroads cannot make mines and quarries, and fat soil and bounteous rivers; yet railroads have been the making of Illinois. Nobody who has ever seen her spring roads, where there are no rails, can ever question ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... and sincere; but we are constrained to believe that among them were those who wore the livery of heaven from purely selfish motives, in a community where church-membership was an indispensable requisite, the only open sesame before which the doors of honor and distinction swung wide to needy or ambitious aspirants. Mere adventurers, men of desperate fortunes, bankrupts in character and purse, contrived to make gain of godliness under the church and state government of New England, put on the austere ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... of the Bible and you think of the "Arabian Nights," and you almost expect to see the enchanted carpet layin' round somewhere, and some one goin' up to the close shet doors sayin', "Open sesame." ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley

... by the gods. Proceeding to that spot of Vyasa, one obtaineth the merit of a thousand kine. O son of the Kuru race, proceeding next to the well called Kindatta, he that throweth into it a measure of sesame, is freed from all his debts and obtaineth his success. Bathing in the tirtha called Vedi, one obtaineth the merit of the gift of a thousand kine. There are two other celebrated tirthas called Ahas and ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

... finally said, "this is the 'open sesame' to everything. This and your remarkable resemblance to my sister, together with the date you have given me, prove to me beyond the shadow of a doubt that you are the daughter ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... bucolic friends, that I know, more vitally by far than they, what is in Wordsworth, and what is not. Any man who chooses to live by his precepts will thankfully find in them a beauty and rightness, (exquisite rightness I called it, in "Sesame and Lilies,") which will preserve him alike from mean pleasure, vain hope, and guilty deed: so that he will neither mourn at the gate of the fields which with covetous spirit he sold, nor drink of the waters which with yet more covetous spirit he stole, ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... "open Sesame" could have been more magical. In a moment, roused up suddenly from sleep, and forgetting every thing but those tender recollections of gentle care in infancy, and kindness all through life, the child of nature startled out of bed, drew the bolt, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... locked up in the same cell with him at Headquarters, and that the latter was in desperate need of morphine. That Parker was an habitual user of the drug could be easily seen from the most casual inspection, but that it would prove an open sesame to the girl's confidence was, as the detective ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train

... people the very name of 'Raphael' is like the 'Open Sesame' of the robber chief in the old story. In a moment a door seems to open out of the commonplace everyday world, and through it they see a stretch of fair sweet country. There their eyes rest upon gentle, dark-eyed ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman

... entanglement with that movie actress is sure to make trouble for us, Ford. You might be a little more considerate. Just as we are getting in with the Perritons. And their guest, Mrs. Conroth, was really very nice to mother this morning on the beach. She has the open sesame to all the society there is on this side of the Atlantic. It's really a ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper

... vary in each case and in generation. Tom Brown and Mr. Knowles' "King Arthur" may not do for you what they did for me; "Sesame and Lilies," "Past and Present," Emerson's "Twenty Essays" may be superseded, though I can hardly believe it; but see to it that you find and read their true successors, carry out Dr. Abbott's advice to his boys—to "read half a dozen de-vulgarizing ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby

... herself from her environment and view it with the stoical indifference of a spectator that caused Wilton with its harsh New England standards, to characterize Celestina as "easy goin'." In fact, this popularly termed "flaw" in her make-up was what had acted as an open sesame to every door at which she knocked and had kept a roof above her head. She had been just sixty years of age when Willie Spence's sister had died and left him alone in the wee cottage on the Harbor Road, and all Wilton had begun to speculate as to what was to become of him. Willie was as dependent ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett

... an exhibition of mine art in those halls,' said he, '('twas in old forgotten days, in Bosco's palmy time), much is altered. OPEN SESAME!' he cried; but, ...
— HE • Andrew Lang

... tobacco, wheat, corn, millet, cotton, sesame, mulberry leaves, citrus, vegetables; beef, pork, ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... more than sentimental travelers to the Holy Land. It needed machinery for its corn-fields and its mines. It needed prints and muslins from the Lancashire looms. It needed rice and sugar. And it had more to give than a religious education. Fine soap and fruit and wine and oil and sesame it gave, golden tobacco, and beautiful craftmanship in silver and gold, fine rugs from Persia. Brass and copper and ornamental woodcarving from Damascus, mother of cities; walnuts, wheat, barley, and apricots from its gardens and fields. Wool and cotton, ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne

... fifty gantas of rice, or eight or ten gantas of wine, for one toston; fowls have advanced to two reals apiece, although the usual price is one real; while a hog costs four or five pesos, or six or eight for one of considerable size. Oil of agenxoli [sesame], cocoanuts, and butter, which formerly could be bought very cheaply, cannot now be obtained—although in this there is variation, as little or much comes ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various

... I may go to a hotel. It leaves one so much freer." Peter was a lawyer, and saw no need of committing himself. "If I am there when you are, I can perhaps help you enjoy yourself. I think I can get you a lunch at the White House, and, as I know most of the officials, I have an open sesame to some other nice things." Poor Peter! He was trying to tempt Leonore to tolerate his company by offering attractions in connection therewith. A chromo with the pound of tea. And this from the man who had ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford

... of calligraphy extant are probably the Terence of the fourth century and the Virgil of the fifth century, in the Vatican Library. Alas for those who have no open sesame to that collection! We shall never forget our disappointment upon entering the Vatican. We could not gaze even on the mouldy vellum or faded leather of old bindings, and saw nothing but stupid modern ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various

... to the master's children, these in turn would no doubt repeat the fairy tales which they had read in books or heard from their parents' lips. The magic mirror is as old as literature. The inability to restore the stolen voice is foreshadowed in the Arabian Nights, when the "Open Sesame" is forgotten. The act of catching the voice has a simplicity which stamps it as original, the only analogy of which I can at present think being the story of later date, of the words which were frozen silent during the extreme cold of ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt



Words linked to "Sesame" :   sesame oil, sesame seed, sesame family, Sesamum indicum, benni, herbaceous plant, Sesamum, benne, open sesame, benniseed, herb



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