"Trance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... because, to the understanding of the eleventh century, the evidence at hand indicated that he embodied in a high degree the infinite energy. The eleventh century was intensely imaginative and the evidence which appealed to it was those phenomena of trance, hypnotism, and catalepsy which are as mysterious now as they were then, but whose effect was then to create an overpowering demand for miracle-working substances. The sale of these substances gradually drew ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... that she was fighting some evil power; and what power it was, I knew full well; for twice, during her pains, I heard the click of the horseshoe. But no one could help her. After her delivery, she lay as if in a trance, neither dead, nor at rest, but as if frozen to ice, and conscious of it all the while. Once more I heard the terrible sound of iron; and, at the moment, your mother started from her trance, screaming, 'My child! my child!' We suddenly became aware that no one had attended ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... may trust me, for I'm not, Though a slave, a fugitive. Lord! how gladly do I live In this solitary spot, Where my soul in raptured prayer May adore Thee, or in trance See the living countenance Of Thy prodigies so rare! Human wisdom, earlthly lore, Solitude reveals and reaches; What diviner wisdom teaches In ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... two shillings Uncle Eb had given me. Such sublimity of proportion I have never seen since; and yet it was all very small indeed. The stores had a smell about them that was like chloroform in its effect upon me; for, once in them, I fell into a kind of trance and had scarce sense enough to know my own mind. The smart clerks, who generally came and asked, 'Well, young man, what can I do for you?' I regarded with fear and suspicion. I clung the tighter to my coin always, and said nothing, although ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... off her hands, but she laid them again more firmly on his shoulders, and went on speaking, as if half in reverie, half in trance, looking down the long slope of green and gold as if it showed the vista ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... along the line of stanch faces to Edelwald. His calm uplifted countenance—with the horrible platform of death growing behind it—looked, as it did when he happily met the sea wind or went singing through trackless wilderness. She broke from her trance and the ring of women, and ran before ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... gladdens the hills in June, And Columbine waltzes a gypsy tune; Or deep in the pleasance, happily met, She whirls with a gay little pirouette, Where the long trees lean in a twilight trance, Dreaming her over ...
— In the Great Steep's Garden • Elizabeth Madox Roberts
... departure, Mr. Barnstable," said Griffith, sighing heavily, and rousing himself, as if from a trance. "These rude sights cannot but appall the ladies. You will please, sir, to direct the order of our march to the shore. Captain Manual has charge of our prisoners, who must all be secured, to answer for an equal number of ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... than once a loud slap showed that some citoyenne in the line had resented with a vigorous hand the insolence of a lewd admirer, while, pressed close against her neighbour, a young servant girl, with eyes half shut and mouth half open, stood sighing in a sort of trance. At any word, or gesture, or attitude of a sort to provoke the sportive humour of the coarse-minded populace, a knot of young libertines would strike up the Ca-ira in chorus, regardless of the protests of an old Jacobin, highly indignant ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... the shirt may with one hand be so manipulated as to be drawn swiftly over the head... Pa was adept at undressing. He was in bed within five minutes, after a panting, exhausted interval during which he sat in a kind of trance, and was then proudly as usual knocking upon the floor with his walking-stick for Jenny to come and tuck ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... snail replied: "Your arrogance Awakes my patience from its trance; Recalls to mind your humble birth, Born from the lowliest thing on earth. Nine times has Phoebus, with the hours, Awakened to new life, new flowers, Since you were a vile crawling thing! Though now endowed with painted wing, You then were vilest of the vile— ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... of a young saint, yet with white hair and perhaps 50 years on his back, is standing near the stone in a trance of intense melancholy, looking over the hills as if by mere intensity of gaze he could pierce the glories of the sunset and see into the streets of heaven. He is dressed in black, and is rather more clerical in appearance than most English ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... explained, while the cold sweat poured from his face, and his limbs were flaccid as an infant's, that the sound of a rattle had caused him to stop short—that a pleasant halo danced before his eyes, and sweet sounds met his ears—and that from that instant until the conclusion of the trance, "he was as happy as ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... fields were literally mosaics of blue, purple, pink, yellow, and crimson bloom. Clumps of wild roses fringed the road, and the air was delicious with a thousand odours. Nature was throbbing with the fullness of her short midsummer life, with that sudden and splendid rebound from the long trance of winter which she nowhere makes ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... you for your own sakes to be reasonable creatures, your cowardly wrath falls upon her! You do well!' They were silent while he spoke. They were watching, open-eyed and open-mouthed, the thread of dark-red blood which wakened them up from their trance of passion. Those nearest the gate stole out ashamed; there was a movement through all the crowd—a retreating movement. Only ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Robinson. The others stood free at that moment, and Robinson exclaimed, 'Sheriff Cross, you are my first man.' He raised his Winchester and fired at Cross, a distance of a few feet, and I saw Cross fall dead at my side. It was all a sort of trance or dream to me. I did not seem to realize what was going on, but knew that I could make no resistance. My gun was not within reach. I knew that I, ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... of all eight, but could not make intelligible contact. If asleep, it caused pleasant dreams; if awake, pleasant thoughts of the loved one so far away in space; but that was all. It visited mediums, in trance and otherwise—many of whom, not surprisingly now, were genuine—with whom it held lucid conversations. Even in linkage, however, the multi-mind knew that none of the mediums would be believed, even if they all told, simultaneously, exactly the same story. The multi-mind ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... situation of mind when Mr. Falkland sent for me. His message roused me from my trance. In recovering, I felt those sickening and loathsome sensations, which a man may be supposed at first to endure who should return from the sleep of death. Gradually I recovered the power of arranging my ideas and directing ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... the fluttering fancies that engage The vain pursuits of a degenerate age, . . . Would fain the shade of elder days recall, The Gothick battlements, the bannered hall; Or list of elfin harps the fabling rhyme; Or, wrapt in melancholy trance sublime, Pause o'er the working of some wondrous tale, Or bid the spectres ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... at the hideous image of his ruined self as if fascinated with the horror of that which had been somehow wrought. Slowly, as one in a trance, he went closer, and, without moving his gaze from the mirror, placed the bottle and tumbler upon the bureau. As if compelled by those burning eyes that stared so fixedly at him, he leaned forward still closer ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... Slipper," nee "The Renunciation of Rosalind." For two hours he read with the deepest absorption, only pausing to make an occasional note on a pad at his elbow. Then after he had laid down the manuscript with its purple wrappings and ribbons, he sat for a half hour in a trance, out of which he came to seat himself at the typewriter to indite a portentous letter, which he put in an envelope, sealed ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... fan, parasol, gloves, handkerchief, and vinaigrette in the grass to do so. "Oh, Mr. Homos," she fluted, and the tears came into her eyes, "it was beautiful, beautiful, every word of it! I sat in a perfect trance from beginning to end, and I felt that it was all as true as it was beautiful. People all around me were breathless with interest, and I don't know how I can ever ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... that after Lincoln sat down and calm had succeeded the tempest, I waked out of a sort of hypnotic trance, and then thought of my report for the paper. There was nothing ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... leisure, with my Sunday hat on, and a pair of clean white cotton stockings, in this heavenly mood, under the green trees, and beside the still waters, out of which beautiful salmon trouts were sporting and leaping, methought in a moment I fell down in a trance, as flat as a flounder, and I heard a voice visibly saying to me, "Thou shalt have a son; let him be christened Benjamin!" The joy that this vision brought my spirit thrilled through my bones, like the sounds of a blind man grinding "Rule Britannia" out of an organ, and my senses vanished from ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... from nightly fears; From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears!' Such were the sounds that o'er the crested pride Of the first Edward scatter'd wild dismay, As down the steep of Snowdon's shaggy side He wound with toilsome march his long array: Stout Glo'ster[2] stood aghast in speechless trance: To arms! cried Mortimer,[3] and couch'd ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... it," returned Leslie. "I have seen death, in my time, too often not to recognise it. You will observe that breathing has ceased; neither can I find any trace of a pulse, or the slightest flutter of the heart-beat. All these symptoms are, I believe, quite consistent with a state of trance; and, remembering that, we must of course be careful to do nothing precipitately. But I am convinced that the man is really dead—a very short time will suffice, in this climate, to demonstrate whether or not that is the case—and ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... know that?" he asked. "Ursa, a bear, you know. And then, while we were sitting there, the Princess went off into a trance. She said there was a beautiful spirit present, who blessed us all. She called Mrs Quantock Margarita, which, as you may know, is the Italian ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... ennui with flowers and fan; And as his gem-tipped chibouque glows, he sees, In dreamy trance, those marvellous mysteries The prophet sings ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... move the phantasy, the phantasy the appetite, which moving the animal spirits causeth the body to walk up and down as if they were awake. Fracast. l. 3. de intellect, refers all ecstasies to this force of imagination, such as lie whole days together in a trance: as that priest whom [1603]Celsus speaks of, that could separate himself from his senses when he list, and lie like a dead man, void of life and sense. Cardan brags of himself, that he could do as ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... trouble to the old man. "I jest can't keep him off the streets nights," was his chief complaint. By day Billy Brue walked the streets in a decent, orderly trance of bewilderment. He was properly puzzled and amazed by many strange matters. He never could find out what was "going on" to bring so many folks into town. They all hurried somewhere constantly, but he was never able to reach the centre of excitement. Nor did ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... him as if she were coming out of a trance. She caught her breath and gave him one wild, beseeching look, crying out with something like a sob: "Oh, how can I ever go back to that room now?" And then her breath seemed suddenly to leave her and she fell back against the seat as ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... said the major, with a loud voice, to arouse us from our trance of happiness without taking any mean opportunity of looking unobserved. "Supper, Sparks, O'Malley; come now, it will be some time before we all meet this ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... sloping in the sky, beat down upon them as hot as fire; but neither of them noticed it. Neither did they notice hunger nor thirst nor fatigue, but sat there as though in a trance, with the bags of money scattered on the sand around them, a great pile of money heaped upon the coat, and the open chest beside them. It was an hour of sundown before Parson Jones had begun fairly to examine the books and papers in ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... and in the air, Will not let me close my eyes, I murmur often, mix'd with sighs, That my weak heart will not hold At some things that I behold. Nay, not sighs, but quiet groans, That swell out the little bones Of my bosom; till a trance God sends in middle of that dance, And I behold the countenance Of Michael, and can feel no more The bitter east wind biting sore My naked feet; can see no more The crayfish on the leaden floor, That mock ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... the ring she carried into France, When thither first the damsel took her way; With her the brother, bearer of the lance, After, the paladin, Astolpho's prey. With this she Malagigi's spells and trance Made vain by Merlin's stair; and on a day Orlando freed, with many knights and good, ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... appeared to forget my very existence. He fell into a sort of trance, with his eyes fixed on vacancy. There was a dead hush in the place, nothing but the crackle of the fire and the steady drip of the rain. I endured it as well as I might, for though my legs were sorely cramped, I did not dare to move ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... had now lain as it were in a doze for about two hours, and my father and myself, who were anxiously watching every breath, observed her awake up, as if it were from a sound sleep; she appeared to feel as if she had recovered from a trance; she spoke; and to the great joy of my father and myself she was perfectly collected. But our joy was of the most transient nature. She looked around in the most melancholy manner, and having enquired where all the children were gone, she expressed a great desire to see them ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... conference Rouletta stood quivering, her face a blank, completely indifferent to her surroundings. 'Poleon made her sit down, and but for her ceaseless whispering she might have been in a trance. ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... introduced, and not permanent. A transitory period of want can be tided over by contrivance. The lily withdrawing its vital forces into the bulb, protected from the greatest extremity of rigour by seclusion in the Earth; the trance of the hibernating animal; ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... a foreboding look to Paris; like a pretty woman, the city has mysterious fits of ugliness or beauty. So the outer world seemed to be in a plot to steep this man about to die in a painful trance. A prey to the maleficent power which acts relaxingly upon us by the fluid circulating through our nerves, his whole frame seemed gradually to experience a dissolving process. He felt the anguish of these throes passing through him in waves, and the houses and the crowd ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... more, but lay like one in trance, That hears his burial talk'd of by his friends, And can not speak, nor move, nor make one sign, But lies and ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... close of his address. Anna shook Ivan, and Ivan came out of the trance which the President's words had brought upon him. He sat ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... don't mind it," was Holmes's reply. "Now, Watson, I'll need you again. I've had my eye on a certain party since my deduction-trance yesterday noon, and was waiting for her sense of shame to impel her to confess her part in the cuff-button robbery; but since she has not as yet done so, I shall be forced to resort to sterner measures. Come with me, and leave these fellows to kill time ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... closely akin to Wordsworth in his overpowering consciousness of the life in nature. This consciousness is the strongest force in him, so that at times he is almost submerged by it, and he loses the sense of outward things. In this condition of trance the sense of time vanishes, there is, he asserts, no such thing, no past or future, only now, which is eternity. In The Story of my Heart, a rhapsody of mystic experience and aspiration he describes in detail several such moments of ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... that this afternoon some of the male workers had added to their usual solidity a singular trance-like intoxication. It had often struck him before as a form of drunkenness peculiar to the St. Kentigern laborers. Men passed him singly and silently, as if following some vague alcoholic dream, or moving through some Scotch mist of whiskey ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... his trance-like slumber, John Madison, or what remained of him, lifted his head and painfully raised himself on one elbow. He was a pitiable-looking object. His hair, all dishevelled and matted, hung down over haggard-looking eyes; his cheeks were hollow from hunger, ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... answered, in a low, even voice, like one in a trance, "that you are a Messalina, a Julia, a Joan of Naples, ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... down to the gate with them. Malcolm thought she looked rather grave when she returned, as though something troubled her, but she would not hear of the party breaking up, and promised Malcolm that she would sing all his favourite songs to his friends, and she kept her word. Malcolm sat in a trance of beatitude while the beautiful voice floated out into the darkness, startling some night-bird in the copse; and Verity's eyes were wet, and she stole closer to her husband, for it seemed to her as though the shadows from the old life were creeping round her; and ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... sort of trance. Never had she felt surer of life and the full fruition of every hope and faith. Just how this marvelous blossoming would come, she could not guess. Her chances of meeting her Fate were no better than at any moment of ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... its stilted diction, ceased. All eyes were upon Link Ferris. The mountaineer, stung to life by the silence and the multiple gaze, came out of his trance of shock. ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... "He's gone into a trance simply because there's not enough left in him to constitute an individuality. The germ has taken the inside clean out of him. He's ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... sufferings. Sweet, lovely beings, let them have husbands to lift them above all earthly cares and trials! Oh! angels of our homes," says he, liftin' his eyes to the heavens, and kinder shettin' 'em, some as if he was goin' into a trance, "fly around, ye angels, in your native haunts! mingle not with rings, and vile laws; ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... because still untouched, founded on facts, and with amplifiable variations that border on the probable. He that lionizes Stratford-on-Avon, will remember in one of the Shakspearian museums of that classic town, the pictured trance of hapless ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... going fast, Cartaphilus; but tarry thou till I come again." After the crucifixion, Cartaphilus was baptized by the same Anani'as who baptized Paul, and received the name of Joseph. At the close of every century he falls into a trance, and wakes up after a time a young man about thirty years of age.—Book of the Chronicles of the Abbey of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... that; if it wasn't what she might have of charm that he had fallen in love with, it wasn't what she might have of virtue either. Perhaps one's soul hadn't much to do with either charm or virtue. And, after all, whatever it was, he was gazing at it, rapt, smiling, grave, in the lover's trance. He saw her, and only her. And she saw him, and a great many other ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... a violent jar to be awakened so rudely from a trance of love, to turn suddenly from the one you care for most in all the world, and behold the one you have best reason to hate. Nevertheless, it is not in human nature to descend rocket-wise from the ethereal heights of love. I was still in an exalted state of ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... trance, when the Water-Lady hushed, and stretched forth a slender forefinger to the moon. It stood like a dot over the round tower. Farina rose in haste. She did not leave him to ask her aid, but took his hand and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... drink the sunset like strong wine Or, hushed in trance divine, Hailed the first shy and timorous glance from far ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... Eleanor has not spoken. She walks like one in a trance to the quaint old chair Mrs. Mounteagle draws forward. She sits down mechanically and gazes at the colours in the carpet, just as she did once ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... of the Geebungs raised him slowly from the ground, Though his wounds were mostly mortal, yet he fiercely gazed around; There was no one to oppose him — all the rest were in a trance, So he scrambled on his pony for his last expiring chance, For he meant to make an effort to get victory to his side; So he struck at goal — and missed it — then he ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... the rest of the evening, he was silent, pale, a little shaky methought. He was not as I had been before my maiden duel: blustering and gay, in a trance-like recklessness; assuming self-confidence so well as to deceive even myself and carry me buoyantly through. He seemed rather in suspense like that of a lover who has to beg a stern father for a daughter's ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... officer on foot could scarcely walk. He moved in a kind of trance, and each step was difficult. He may have been half asleep. At intervals a triangular sign was borne aloft—red, blue, or some other tint. These signs indicated the positions of the different companies in the trenches. (Needless to say that the regiment had come during the night ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... his miserable trance by the even tread of soldiers marching towards him; he looked up and there were several officers coming along the edge of the trench, escorted by ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... himself. Elsie and Inza had suddenly come within the range of his vision, and the sight of them stirred him out of his moody trance. He moved in their direction, but before he could come up with them, to his great disappointment, the pushing crowd swallowed them. Then he went in search of Merriwell, whom he found without trouble, for Merriwell was ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... Talana Hill victory soon became apparent. The threat of Erasmus sitting on Impati still impended, and Yule moved his camp next day to a site which he believed to be out of range. But in the meantime Erasmus awoke from his trance and, on the afternoon of October 21, opened fire with a six-inch gun,[18] and again Yule was compelled to shift his camp. He had already asked for reinforcements, but White was unable to spare them, and recommended him to fall back upon Ladysmith. Next day Yule was encouraged by the news of a ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... the dews at even— Her tears fell ere the dews were dried; She could not look on the sweet heaven, Either at morn or eventide. After the flitting of the bats, When thickest dark did trance the sky, She drew her casement-curtain by, And glanced athwart the glooming flats. She only said, "The night is dreary— He cometh not," she said; She said, "I am aweary, weary, I would ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... close to him and, with one of those hideous leers which had already caused her to shudder, he beckoned her to sit. Esther obeyed as if in a dream. Her eyes were dilated like those of one in a waking trance. She moved mechanically, like a bird attracted by a serpent, terrified, yet unresisting. She felt utterly helpless between these two villainous brutes, and anxiety for her English lover seemed further to numb her senses. When ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... voice. A smile of heavenly beauty played over his pallid features as the music ceased,—a radiance like that crimson glow which covers the mountain-top at dawn. He spoke almost inaudibly, as if in a trance; then repeating with a musical flow the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... close of the year 1607 a very feeble demonstration was made in the direction of the Dutch republic by the very feeble Emperor of Germany. Rudolph, awaking as it might be from a trance, or descending for a moment from his star-gazing tower and his astrological pursuits to observe the movements of political spheres, suddenly discovered that the Netherlands were no longer revolving in their preordained orbit. Those ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... then turned away with a helpless shrug. Eric woke from a trance to a thunder of opposing voices. Lady Poynter was retailing the secret history of the latest political crisis and the fall of the Coalition Government. His wheezing, well-fed host was attacking the Board of Trade with ill-disguised ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... In this happy trance of excited pleasure I passed the morning. Amidst the military chit-chat of the day around me, treated as an equal by the greatest and the most distinguished, I heard all the confidential opinions upon the campaign and its leaders; and in that most entrancing of all ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... "When these women come to me for advice, I don't invent what I say to them. It's as though something told me what to say. I have never met them before, but as soon as I pass into the trance state I seem to know all their troubles. And I seem to be half in this world and half in another world—carrying messages between them. Maybe," her voice had sunk to almost a whisper; she continued as though ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... moved nor spoke. Almost as if in a trance she watched these two, who seemed to belong to a world in which she had no part—grey-haired man and grey-haired woman clasping hands across a ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... The trance continued till after breakfast, when our officers' impatience could no longer withstand the bait, and, though short of efficient boats, the yawl and lieutenant's gig were manned for a hazardous enterprise. The ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... separates his periods of consciousness on the various planes. When the power of bringing over the consciousness is perfectly acquired the pupil will have the advantage of the use of all the astral faculties, not only while out of his body during sleep or trance, but also while fully ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... listened in a trance, only waking up now and then to see if he couldn't goad someone into revealing the name of this new animal. But they always foiled him. Sandy Sawtelle drew an affecting picture of himself being cut off by high living at the age of ninety, leaving six or eight million dollars in round numbers ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... thy presence with worshipping fear— The breeze even stills when it reaches thine ear— My lips dare not whisper in softest refrain The trance of my heart ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... an eloquent prophecy about the human mind. He regards the whole of nature as a development of higher forms out of the lower, through shade after shade of systematic change. The dim stir of chemical atoms towards the axes of a crystal form, the trance-like life of plants, the animal troubled by strange irritabilities, are stages which anticipate consciousness. All through that increasing stir of life this was forming itself; each stage in its unsatisfied susceptibilities seeming to be drawn out of its own limits by the more pronounced current ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... l. 15. Through devotion now we see him. The kind of prophetic trance, in which holy men, abstracted from all earthly thoughts, were enwrapt, enabled them to see ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... a passion the seeds of which he supposed had been crushed by the weight of his misfortunes and the depths of his griefs, he proceeded homewards in a trance of thought, not far differing from that of the dreamer who sinks into a harassing slumber, and, filled with terror, doubts whether ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... drew together into a swaying mass; a dozen blades glittered in the sun. With a gasp, she came out of her trance to catch ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... completely ousted the Rue St. Honore; that the Avenue de la Grande Armee should be, fashionably speaking, dead after a short and brilliant life; and that the little streets of the Faubourg St. Germain should be all that is most chic—what fortunes might have been made! Indeed, no one in a trance or in his right mind can tell to-day why it is right to walk on the right-hand side of the Boulevard des Italiens and the Boulevard des Capucines, and heinously wrong to walk on the left; while, on the contrary, no self-respecting ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... that will redden the faded roses of eighteen hundred and——spare them! But, as I was saying, phosphorus fires this train of associations in an instant; its luminous vapors with their penetrating odor throw me into a trance; it comes to me in a double sense "trailing clouds of glory." Only the confounded Vienna matches, ohne phosphor-geruch, have worn my ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... haystack, which was about sixteen feet from the ground, and then he sat down on the roof of the cowshed and told the baker's boy exactly what he thought of him. I don't think the boy heard it all - he was in a sort of trance of terror. When Robert had said everything he could think of, and some things twice over, he shook ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... Psychometry, Clairvoyance, Clairaudience, Inspiration, Trance, and Physical Mediumship; Prayer, Mind, and Magnetic Healing; and all classes of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... wonderment as she held out her hand to Benton and watched trance-like his lowered head as he bent ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... survive the change called by us "death," is capable of entering living bodies and making use of their organs. The form in which this belief is most commonly met with, is that of the alleged inspiration of trance mediums by the souls of the dead. Such a case is that of Mrs. Piper, said to have been animated by the soul of Dr. Phinuit and other personalities now disincarnated. It has naturally been argued that ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... terror, and gazing vacantly about him, was suddenly stricken, as it were, while in the very attitude of rising, into a deep and heavy sleep. The grasp of his hand relaxed; the upraised arm fell languidly by his side; and he lay like one in a profound trance. ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... opportunity. The girl hurried to the door with a light step, so light upon the smooth solid gravel that the footman heard nothing until she was on the broad stone step under the porch, when the fluttering of her skirt, as it brushed against the pillars, roused him from a species of trance ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... girl quickly tossed off the liquor, I groaned aloud, awaked from my trance, and fled to my room, where I bolted the door, and fell upon my knees. God forgive her! What a sight! I wanted to rush into the bar-room, seize the young girl, and lead her away from the place and her companions, but I could not. I had barely enough room for myself. I had little money. What ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... of the power of communicating in states of trance with the angelical and faery beings,—the children of the day and of the twilight—and he had been contending that we should only believe in what we can see and feel when in our ordinary everyday state of mind. "Yes," I ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... of wind and a little broadening of the light roused Katy from a trance of half-understood thoughts. She crept once more into Amy's room. Mrs. Swift laid a warning finger on her lips; Amy was sleeping, she said with a gesture. Katy whispered the news to the still figure on the sofa, then she went noiselessly out of the room. The great hotel was fast ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... a trance when he spoke of the brave, bearded Frenchmen, From the green sun-lit valleys of France to the wild Hochelga [a] transplanted, Oft trailing the deserts of snow in the heart of the dense Huron forests, Or steering the dauntless canoe through the ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... tossing and beset with horrid phantoms of remorse and jealousy, instantly fell dead in love with that sun-chequered, echoing corner. Holding his feet, he stared out of a drowsy trance, wondering, admiring, musing, losing his way among uncertain thoughts. There is nothing that so apes the external bearing of free will as that unconscious bustle, obscurely following liquid laws, with which a river contends among obstructions. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cheerful young man, "I'm glad to see you emerge from your trance and return to earth again. I've said good morning twice, and watched you for half an hour, and you didn't even know I was in ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... trouble between you and this woman?" asked Lucille. "She is older than you, yet she constantly crosses your path." Then, closing her eyes, Lucille broke out passionately and rapidly, like a person in a trance: "Why does she act so? What is the matter with her? She is often interfering with you, but is always followed by that man; he must be her enemy. See! a shadow falls over her! What does it mean! She fades away and vanishes—it ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... best form for all diseases and all persons. For example, it matters not how new associational systems are formed so long as they are substituted for the pernicious ones. It may be in the common experiences of every-day life, through the pleading of a friend, during sleep or trance, in some abnormal state of a hypnotic character, or during religious ecstasy, and we cannot well say in any given case that one form will be more efficacious than another. Mental healing creates nothing ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... at the barbarian? How had Cato scourged from the forum him who would have given the Attic or Gallic speech to men of Rome? How proudly and how nobly Germany stopped "the incipient creeping" progress of French! And no sooner had she succeeded than her genius, which had tossed in a hot trance, sprung ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... could have kept him company. Yet he could find none who could meet his want as a helpmeet. Milton has fancifully described Adam expressing his want to the Infinite. It grew upon him. Then he has pictured him asleep, and seeing, as in a trance, the rib, with cordial spirits warm, formed and fashioned with ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... plain when he realized this was no ghost of Steele, but the Ranger in the flesh. Blome's whole frame rippled as thought jerked him out of his trance. His comrades sat stone-still. Then Hilliard and Pickens dived without rising from the table. Their ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... working on its own contents, not on outer objects. But if it has so far separated itself from connection with the brain, that it cannot be readily recalled by outer means, then it is, called Turiya, a lofty state of trance. These four states, when correlated to the four planes, represent a much unfolded consciousness. Jagrat is related to the physical; Svapna to the astral; Sushupti to the mental; and Turiya to the buddhic. When ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... last chest was shut again and locked, and I had exhausted my ingenuity at commendation, and my patience also, he turned to me as a man come out of a trance. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... voice seemed to act as the most potent of charms in restoring her to consciousness; it broke through the death-like trance in which she lay, and, opening her beautiful eyes, she fixed ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... homely music leave that warm recess—vibrating far into the tremulous air. Here, even here are pleasures; those stray[17] forms of joy, which Nature spreads throughout the world, that he who seeks may find them. When the Sun, uprising from his long and gloomy trance, beams through the clearer air, how beautiful, in some obscurest dell[18] of that lone land, led by the music of an unseen river to see fair flowers, with light-awakened buds, salute the spring tide. Happily, they smile in the midst of nakedness, like sweet ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... letter, then. The weather has burst suddenly into summer (though it rains a little this morning), and I have been let out of prison to drive in the Cascine and to Bellosguardo. Beautiful, beautiful Florence. How beautiful at this time of year! The trees stand in their 'green mist' as if in a trance of joy. Oh, I do hope nothing will drive us out of our Paradise this summer, for I seem to hate the North more ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... the two Frenchmen were fast approaching each other. In a few minutes, they must engage, while the Speedy was left further and further astern of her consort. At this critical instant, one of the Frenchmen fired a gun of defiance. That report seemed to arouse the Speedy as from a trance. Her head-yards came furiously round, all the officers vanished from her taffrail, and down went both fore and main-tacks, and to the mast-head rose all three of her top-gallant-sails. Thus additionally impelled, the lively craft dashed ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... tulip tree near by—the Apollo of the woods—tall and graceful, yet robust and sinewy, inimitable in hang of foliage and throwing-out of limb; as if the beauteous, vital, leafy creature could walk, if it only would. (I had a sort of dream-trance the other day, in which I saw my favorite trees step out and promenade up, down and around, very curiously—with a whisper from one, leaning down as he pass'd me, We do all this on the present occasion, exceptionally, just ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... profound that Aunt Hester began to be afraid he had fallen into a trance. She did not try to rouse him herself, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... reach,' said the Prioress. 'Master Lorimer hears that none have access to King Henry, God help him! and he sits as in a trance, as though he understood and took heed of nothing—not even of this ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... life and health,—that soft and consecrating spell which falls upon us, drawing in all our thoughts from the present, arresting, as it were, the current of our being, and turning it back and holding it still as the flood of actual life rushes by us,—while in that trance of soul the beings of the past are shadowed—old friends, old days, old scenes recur, familiar looks beam close upon us, familiar words reecho in our ears, and we are closed up and absorbed with the ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... Coralie Mars, the next witness, who declared she had sought a spell to make the man, she was forced into marrying, fall into a trance, just before the marriage ceremony was to take place; and that, instead of bringing this about, the spell Edward Curtis had sold her had caused her to have St. Vitus's Dance,—was adroitly trapped into admitting that she had really wanted her ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... might: Somewhat of all things sealed and recondite, Save the enigma of herself, she knows. The master could not tell, with all his lore, Wherefore he sang, or whence the mandate sped; Ev'n as the linnet sings, so I, he said;— Ah, rather as the imperial nightingale, That held in trance the ancient Attic shore, And charms the ages with the notes that o'er All woodland chants immortally prevail! And now, from our vain plaudits greatly fled, He with diviner silence dwells instead, And on no earthly sea with transient roar, Unto no ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... the back of the stage. MAX remains for a long time motionless, in a trance of excessive anguish. At his first motion WALLENSTEIN returns, and places ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... the tree I slid, like snow down a mountain, an' stood at the foot of it an' pelted the bear with stones. The Injun's blanket began to smoke. It was no laffin' matter, for I knowed if I didn't drive the brute off in a jiffy Old-pot-head's son would be a comin' out of his trance mighty sudden an' that meant a catch-as-catch-can with a ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... And so in that trance of adoration, in that sacred Glory, in that rapturous consciousness that he had fought his last fight with the enslaving affects, there formed themselves in his soul—white heat at one with white light—the last sentences of ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... forth (Our ransom of eternal worth) Both God and man. What voice can sing This mystery, or Cherub's wing Lend from his golden stock a pen To write, how Heaven came down to men? Here fear and wonder so advance My soul, it must obey a trance. ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... by a mighty effort of will was to cease meeting the girl, and that I did. I even avoided the chance encounters of the garden, leaving my lodging only when I knew that she had gone to her music lessons, and returning after nightfall. Yet all the while I was as one in a trance, indulging the most fascinating fancies and ordering my entire intellectual life in accordance with my dream. Ah, my friend, as one whose actions have a traceable relation to reason, you cannot know the fool's paradise ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... close by the presbytery, in a house half of wood, which blazed like tinder; there was nothing comparable to it in all the village. A domestic suddenly cried out that mademoiselle was in her oratory, probably in a trance. Not a soul dares venture through the flames to save her, though she is a saint. Monsieur le Cure hears the rumor of it; he steps in through the doorway through which the smoke is rolling; walks in as tranquilly as if he were going to make a visit as pastor; he is lost to their sight; ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... occupation that might be expected to go on for ever and outside of which was nothing at all. His life was not here; it was at home. He got the feeling that this business in which he was caught up was a business apart altogether from his own individual life,—a kind of trance in which his own life was held temporarily in abeyance, a kind of transmigration in which he occupied another and a very strange identity: from whose most strange personality, often so amazingly occupied, he looked wonderingly ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... more than usually obstinate after his late success. 'Never mind, sir. I can stand pretty firm of myself, sir, I believe, without being shored up by you.' And having given utterance to this retort, Mr Willet fixed his eyes upon the boiler, and fell into a kind of tobacco-trance. ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... French bawd, her mother, screamed out: "Pagolo! Caterina! here is the master!" When I saw the pair advancing, overcome with fright, their clothes in disorder, not knowing what they said, nor, like people in a trance, where they were going, it was only too easy to guess what they had been about. The sight drowned reason in rage, and I drew my sword, resolved to kill them both. The man took to his heels; the girl flung herself upon her knees, and shrieked to Heaven for mercy. In ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... arrangements entailing dismemberment which the Great Powers imposed on Russia during her cataleptic trance are revised, as they may be, whenever she recovers consciousness and strength, what course will events then follow? If she seeks to regather under her wing some of the peoples whose complete independence the League of Nations was so eager to guarantee, will ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon |
