"Trance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... moment Machenga, who seemed to have gradually sunk into a kind of trance, rose slowly to his feet, and, with fixed, glassy eyes staring straight before him, began to mutter to himself in a voice pitched so low that at first I could distinguish nothing of what he said. Then he began to glide slowly ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... up a lovely picture indeed, but nothing more; for his friend was an accepted suitor, and might indulge himself by keeping agreeable fancies alive as long as he chose; while Harry had been rather rudely awakened from his trance by very shabby treatment in the first place, and a refusal at last. To Hazlehurst, the most amusing part of Ellsworth's story was, an allusion to a certain resemblance in character between Mrs. Taylor and 'one whom he had so much admired, one whom ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... the voyage and at quarantine. The name at once attracted him, being one well known both to him and to us. At last they all died, or were supposed to have died, at the quarantine station. Langhetti, however, found that one of them was only in a 'trance state,' and his efforts for resuscitation were successful. This one was a young girl of not more than sixteen years of age. After her restoration he left the quarantine bringing her with him, and came up to the city. Here he lived for a ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... story and of the music. In the brevity lies the point of the plot: in the curt dismissal of the humbled spirit, at the height of his revel, to his place as broom in the corner. Wistful almost is the slow vanishing until the last chords come like the breaking of a fairy trance. ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... in skirmish-line. Two Whistles rode beside his speeding prophet, and saw the red sword waving near his face, and the sun in the great still sky, and the swimming, fleeting earth. His superstition and the fierce ride put him in a sort of trance. ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... no comments on her changed appearance, Constance chatted for a time on indifferent subjects, and noted closely, as a loving friend will, the face and manner of her listener. Sybil sat like one in a trance, rather a nightmare, her eyes roving from her visitor's face to the door, and back again, and this constantly repeated; her whole attitude and manner, that of one listening, rather for some sound, or alarm, from afar, than to the words of the ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... 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 flatteries,—the easy tone of ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... said, 'Mr. Holmes, here's a case for you. When is my wife's birthday?' Wouldn't that have given Sherlock a jolt? However, I know enough about the game to understand that a fellow can't shoot off his deductive theories unless you start him with a clue, so rouse yourself out of that pop-eyed trance and come across with two or three. For instance, can't you remember the last time she had a birthday? What sort of weather was it? That might ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... time the curtain was drawn up until the opera ended, Leone was in a trance. Quite suddenly she had entered this new and beautiful world of music and art—a world so bright and dazzling ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... This speechless trance seemed to have its influence upon the awe-inspiring shadow outside the door: for, after giving utterance to another specimen of shrill piping, it withdrew with as much silence as if it had been but ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... his family-altar—one of those thousand priests of God's ordaining that tend the sacred fire in as many families of New England. He had risen with the morning star and been forth to meditate, and came in with his mind softened and glowing. The trance-like calm of earth and sea found a solemn answer with him, as he read what a poet wrote by the sea-shores of the Mediterranean, ages ago: "Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord my God, thou art very great; thou art clothed with honor and majesty. Who coverest thyself with light as with ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... American mediums, he would be seized by a controlling power,—would snatch a pencil, and dash out upon paper the wildest discords. These we would play for him, at his request, from morning till night,—during much of which time he would seem to be in a happy trance. Of this music no chord or melody was true; they were jangling ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... under the influence of anaesthetics for two days—for two days he is in a trance. And on the third, the fever mounts to the danger line and descends again—only after he had stretched his little arm ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... Like man by prodigy amazed, Upon the king the abbot gazed; Then o'er his pallid features glance Convulsions of ecstatic trance. His breathing came more thick and fast, And from his pale-blue eyes were cast Strange rays of wild and wandering light; Uprise his locks of silver white, Flushed is his brow, through every vein In azure tides the currents ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... 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 ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... believe, while in the end I felt agitated, and at last really myself believed what I said. I was pale, anxious and trembling, and I gently put my arm round her waist and spoke to her softly, whispering into the little curls over her ears. She seemed in a trance, so absorbed in ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... 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
... determined to be one—to devote myself entirely to divine abstraction, to heavenly glory, and to incessant worship—and, stupendous as the assertion may seem, for six weeks I did so. This resolution became a passion—a madness. I was as one walking in a sweet trance—I revelled in secret bliss, as if I had found a glorious and inexhaustible treasure. I spoke to none of my new state of mind— absorbed as I was, I yet dreaded ridicule—but I wrote hymns, I composed sermons. ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... domestic, 'you hear what Mr. Bommaney says. This is a matter of the most urgent importance, and must be looked into at once. Tell my mother that I have been home, and that I have been called suddenly back on urgent business.' Bommaney stood in a kind of stupid trance, and the young man, taking him by the arm, had some ado to secure his attention. 'Come! Come, sir,' he said; 'we will look into this at once. You must not remain in ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... yearning for stature and responsibility. As for poor Weldon, he would stride for hours at a time with eyes fixed ahead, a wild figure,—ragged and fringed. And we knew that the soul within him was torn with thoughts of his dead wife and of his child in captivity. Again, when the trance left him, he was an addition to our little party not ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... lay there enraptured with the beauty of light and mystery of shade, thrilling at the lonesome lament of the owl, I have no means to tell; but I was awakened from my trance by the touch of something crawling over me. Promptly I raised my head. The cave was as light as day. There, sitting sociably on my sleeping-bag was a great black tarantula, as large ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... medical assistance was immediately summoned. All night she remained delirious. On the morning, she fell into a state of absolute insensibility. The next evening, the physicians said, would be the crisis of her malady. It proved so; for although she awoke from her trance with some appearance of calmness, and suffered her night-clothes to be changed, or put in order, yet so soon as she put her hand to her neck, as if to search for the for the fatal flue ribbon, a tide of recollections seemed to rush upon ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... as if he understood the joke. He closed his mouth and sighed deeply, as one who has just wakened from a trance. ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... a voice had spoken in her soul, a dear, insistent voice, bidding her begone. She obeyed, scarcely knowing what she did. Back across the dusty veldt she rode, moving as one in a trance. She joined the Irishman waiting for her, but she looked at him with eyes ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... I was thinking so intensely of you," he began instantly. "A startlingly vivid thought of you came to me just then. Didn't I look like a man in a trance?" ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... first success, his habits of work, his troubles with his wife, his liaison with Lady Blank, his tastes in fruits and wines, his handwriting, his very teeth and boots. He passed his life in a sort of trance, an ecstacy of self-absorption; he had fallen in love with his own conception of himself, like a metaphysical Narcissus. This idiosyncrasy was the means of defeating various conspiracies, in which Chalks, of course, was the prime mover, calculated to impose ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... one in a trance, tried to push past her and reenter the room. Selma stood firm. She said: "If you do not go I shall have these men take you to your carriage. You do not know what you ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... answered me, "I know not how it comes to pass that I am not indeed dead. Sidy Mahammet surprised me one day sucking a she-camel. He ran up to me, gave me several blows, and grasped me so hard by the neck, that I fell down almost lifeless at his feet. I was greatly surprised, on recovering from my trance, to find myself alone. I found my neck was all bloody, and you may see the marks of his nails at this hour. I crept upon my hands into a hole in a rock. The echo frequently caused the voice of my barbarous master to resound in my ears; he ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... up the smith, the first discovery was, that he was alive; and the next, that he was likely to live as long as if he had never heard the report of a pistol in his life. He had made a narrow escape, however; the bullet had grazed his head, and stunned him for a moment or two, which trance terror and confusion of spirit had prolonged, somewhat longer. He now arose to demand vengeance on the person of Waverley, and with difficulty acquiesced in the proposal of Mr. Morton, that he should be carried ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... the grave which was yawning to receive me. I thank God I was spared the fearful doom of being buried alive! The coffin burst, the shock, the sudden rush of air restored me, and I found myself awakened from a fearful trance, sent back to life and earth. The lesson has been fearful. But my close approach to death may yet prove my salvation. Give me my clothes to robe myself ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... 'tis time to stirre him fro[m] his trance: I pray awake sir: if you loue the Maide, Bend thoughts and wits to atcheeue her. Thus it stands: Her elder sister is so curst and shrew'd, That til the Father rid his hands of her, Master, your Loue must liue a maide at home, And therefore has ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... he is not dead; he 's in a trance. Why, here 's nobody shall get anything by his death. Let me call him again, for ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... gentlemen left, and I was again alone with the doctor, I suddenly awoke from my trance; rising from my couch, I stepped up to him, and made him a respectful obeisance. He looked at me in dismay, and seemed paralyzed with stupefaction, for you know all my limbs were palsied, and I could only move my tongue. 'My dear doctor,' I said, very ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... blend with the play-tune, Weaving the mystical spell of the dance; Lighten the deep tune, soften the gay tune, Mingle a tempo that turns in a trance. Half of it sighing, half of it smiling, Smoothly it swings, with a triplicate beat; Calling, replying, yearning, beguiling, Wooing the heart and bewitching the feet. Every drop of blood Rises with the flood, ...
— Music and Other Poems • Henry van Dyke
... of waking trance-this for lack of a better word-I have frequently had, quite up from boyhood, when I have been all alone," Tennyson wrote. "This has come upon me through REPEATING my own name to myself silently, till all at once, as it were out of the intensity of the ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... man whose mind was cast in a different mould; he had already marked the solicitude and given it his own interpretation, and he had already opened his own eyes upon her beauty. How far this had conscious connection with the condition of actual trance into which he now fell cannot be known. It is probable that what the Psalmist calls the "secret parts" are not in such minds as Smith's open to the man's ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... to the bed as if with adamantine chains, while her mind and soul were the voiceless spectators of a tragedy of which she knew that she was the cause. She could not even open her eyes. If she could have loosed but a muscle from the rigidity of the trance, she knew that her whole frame would be relaxed in an instant. Then she would have bounded—oh! with what speed—into the other room, where her immortal part was helplessly watching the conflict, and interceded at the risk of her life. Alas! Prometheus ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... into a trance; the slaves made their cries; in short, there was that stir amongst them, that one would have thought they had heard the "blast of consternation from the ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... track through all the simpler orders of life fragments of 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 ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... Queen's hand, and she had already placed her foot on the gangway, by which she was to enter the skiff, when the Abbot, starting from a trance of grief and astonishment at the words of the Sheriff, rushed into the water, and seized ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... faster. He had Butch by the wrist before the gun came clear—just gave a little twist—and there he stood with the gun in his hand pointin' into Butch's face, and Butch sittin' there like a feller in a trance or wakin' up out of a ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... who lie Cast out from bliss, the days of joy come back, And all the soul with wormwood sweetness rack, So in that trance of dreadful ecstasy The vision of her girlhood glinted by:— And how the father through their garden stray'd, And, child with children, play'd, And teased the rabbit-hutch, and fed the dove Before him from above Alighting,—in ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... more, and this had roused me from my trance:—Steerforth had left his seat, and gone to her, and had put his arm laughingly about her, and had said, 'Come, Rosa, for the future we will love each other very much!' And she had struck him, and had thrown him off with the fury of a wild cat, and had ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... smashed most of the furniture, and went to bed with their boots on. Then his kindly good-nature rebelled. "I felt that this was running hospitality into the ground, so I pulled them out and left them on the floor to cool off from their alcoholic trance." ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... the Queen immersed in such a trance, And moving through the past unconsciously, Came to that point where first she saw the King Ride toward her from the city, sighed to find Her journey done, glanced at him, thought him cold, High, self-contained, and passionless, not like him, ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... out of a trance of many hours, I found myself lying amid the wreck of my instrument, myself as shattered in mind and body as it. I crawled feebly to my bed, from which I did not rise ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... wondring at his stay, went out and found him in the Trance; since which time, he has beene haunted and frighted with Goblins, 40 times; and never durst tell any thing (as I sayd) because the Hags had so threatned him till in his sicknes he revealed it ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... Death be truly one, And every spirit's folded bloom Through all its intervital gloom In some long trance should ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... went on rifling his victim, Miles partially recovered from his trance of horror, and anxiety for his own life nerved him to attempt action of some sort. He thought of the revolver for the first time at that moment, and the remembrance seemed to infuse new life into him. Putting his right hand to his belt, he found it there, ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... hypnotism the lower mind comes entirely over the surface, just these hypnotic events can indeed suggest two different views of the subconscious and this doubleness is reenforced if we still add the entertaining material which comes to light by the automatic writing of mediums in their trance. The hypnotized person is ready to perform any foolishness, is not influenced by any considerations of tact and taste and wisdom and respect, and thus some of the chief believers in the subconscious personality stick to the diagnosis that the lower mind in us which shows ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... lay like one in a trance for some considerable time, and it is said that all arrangements were made for her funeral. Presently, however, she gave signs of life, and in course of time ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... playful imagination, lively imagination, fertile imagination, fancy. "mind's eye"; "such stuff as dreams are made of" [Tempest]. ideality, idealism; romanticism, utopianism, castle-building. dreaming; phrensy[obs3], frenzy; ecstasy, extasy[obs3]; calenture &c. (delirium) 503[obs3]; reverie, trance; day dream, golden dream; somnambulism. conception, Vorstellung[Ger], excogitation[obs3], "a fine frenzy"; cloudland[obs3], dreamland; flight of fancy, fumes of fancy; "thick coming fancies" [Macbeth]; creation of the brain, coinage of the brain; imagery. conceit, maggot, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... Cyriax, editor of the Spiritualistische Bltter, published at Liepsic, Ger., has given in the issue of March 31st the following communications from Dr. Hahnemann and Dr. Spurzheim, delivered through a trance medium. They are valuable essays, whatever may be their source, and the reader will not fail to observe their general coincidence with the doctrine presented by myself in the May number of the JOURNAL OF MAN in the article on ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... when I was about fifteen years old, I dreamed that the spring, near which our kindred live, dried up, and forced us to move to another spring where we had to stay for two months. When I came to myself (for it was not so much like sleep as a trance), I wondered; but this passed away after a time, and I had almost forgotten the occurrence, when one day, about a month later, we were startled by hearing there was no water in the spring. The winter before had been very dry, with almost no rain, ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... strange disease, and the manner in which an old moth-eaten tippet could afford relief. The information which I gathered was briefly as follows: The "Anadyrski bol," so called from its having originated at Anadyrsk, was a peculiar form of disease, resembling very much the modern spiritual "trance," which had long prevailed in north-eastern Siberia, and which defied all ordinary remedies and all usual methods of treatment. The persons attacked by it, who were generally women, became unconscious of all surrounding things, acquired ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... was a zealous Protestant, protecting the cause whenever it was persecuted, encouraging Huguenots, and not disdaining the Presbyterians of Scotland. She was not as generous to the Protestants of Holland and Trance as we could have wished, for she was obliged to husband her resources, and hence she often seemed parsimonious; but she was the acknowledged head of the reform movement in Europe. Her hostility to Rome and Roman influence was inexorable. She may not have carried reforms as far as the Puritans ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... than ever," said the young man, silencing her lips with his own, and in their trance of love the world seemed to reel away from under their feet, with all its sorrows and shames, and leave them ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... met at the gate upon his return by a sad-faced girl whose blue eyes wore a look of piteous appeal. He tried to comfort her all he could; but it did no good. She could not talk; she could scarcely eat or sleep, but went about her daily work as if in a trance. Occasionally in the evening she would give way to tears, and for three weeks she existed in a state of wretchedness no pen can describe. Then one evening her father handed her a letter in a strange handwriting and turned his face away, for ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... etc., and, hanging these satchels on my arms, called on Copernicus to fulfil his promise. Instantly all things disappeared again from my view; I was floating with my satchels in mid-ether, and fell into a trance. When I awaked, I was in my father's house in New York. How long the passage required, I have no ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... vain—the shocks of the day had been too great. He threw himself, dressed as he was, upon his bed—never perceived the absence of his favourite—the candle was allowed to burn itself to the socket, and Vanslyperken fell off into a trance-like sleep. ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... was standing in a sort of trance at that particular point of Manhattan marked by the junction of Charlton and Varick streets and the end of Macdougal, about two hundred feet north of Spring. And there was nothing at all about the scenic setting, you ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... his cheek had become white, his forehead still knit. 'Axworthy!' he said, still as in a trance. ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... understands this Principle,—Love. Who is sufficient for these things? Who remembers that patience, forgiveness, abiding faith, and affection, are the symptoms by which our Father indicates the dif- [30] ferent stages of man's recovery from sin and his en- trance into Science? Who knows ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... waterfall without feeling something akin to disappointment: it is only subsequently that the image comes back full into the mind, and brings with it a train of grand or beautiful associations. Hamlet feels this; his senses are in a state of trance, and he looks upon external things as hieroglyphics. ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... fears, From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears!' Such were the sounds that o'er the crested pride Of the first Edward scattered wild dismay, As down the steep of Snowdon's shaggy side He wound with toilsome march his long array. Stout Gloucester stood aghast in speechless trance; 'To arms!' cried Mortimer, and couched ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... his trance, and struggled to answer quietly. "I've a letter here which I suppose I'd better show ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... love-poetry, where the world lay bathed in moon-light, fragrant with dew-wet roses and jasmine, harmonious with the clear tinkle of mandolin and guitar. Then a lethargy, like unto that which steeps the senses, and benumbs the faculties of the lotus-eaters, enveloped her brain, and she lay as one in a trance,—awake, yet sleeping; conscious, yet unburdened ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... a queer sensation. I seemed to go into a trance, Away from the music's pulsation, Away from the lights and the dance. And the wind o'er the wild prairie Seemed blowing strong and free, And it seemed not Joe, but Harry Who was standing there close ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... sounds of decay; and he stared at it, prevented as if by a spell from stooping to make it up, prevented even from looking at his watch. At length he shivered slightly, and the movement broke the trance. He wandered to the door, which Charlie had left ajar, and listened. No sign of life! He listened intently, but his ear could catch nothing whatever. What were those two doing upstairs with the boy? Cautiously he stepped out into the passage, and went ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... the 18th, with my brother officers, the captain of the ship, and General Humbert. They treated us with great humanity on board the cutter, giving us a little weak brandy and water every five or six minutes, and after that a bason of good soup. I fell on the locker in a kind of trance for near thirty hours, and swelled to such a degree as to require medical aid to restore my decayed faculties. Having lost all our baggage, we were taken to Brest almost naked, where they gave us a rough shift of clothes, ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... window like one in a trance, so stunned she could not even feel angry at his defiance of her. A long, long moment of silence: then they heard Sylvie's bright voice on the porch, and she came in with a waft ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... and examined the naked feet, quite uninjured, of the performers. He publishes an extract to this effect from his diary. The performers, I believe, were Klings. Nothing is said to indicate any condition of trance, or other ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... the throne on which the Princess was sitting, all they could do was to repeat the last word she had said, and she didn't care to hear that again. It was just as if the people within were under a charm, and had fallen into a trance till they came out again into the street; for then—oh, then they could chatter enough. There was a whole row of them from the town gates to the palace. I was there myself to look on," said the Crow. "They grew hungry and thirsty; but from the palace they got not so much as a glass of water. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... before the two stars broke under the strain, and by that time news had come to Mr. Fairbanks that Wall Street was Easy Money's other name. Armed with his grin, he marched into the office of De Coppet & Doremus, and when the manager came out of his trance Shakespeare's worst enemy was holding down the job ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... vapours 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 much, and that when he list. Many times such men when they ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... distance. They walked slowly and methodically, as if they were not hurried on by any physical concerns. As they drew near, I saw them to be Onan and Zimri, the Lords of Past and Future. When they arrived I was awakened from the trance that I had fallen into, and I gave them a slight bow, for I was still standing upright. The look on their faces was one of sorrow, for no matter how many times they had seen the destruction of humanity, each time it ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... there twin images of himself, that drew him softly and surely into themselves until he was absorbed by them and felt that he was no longer a reality but a reflection. Then a deep unconsciousness stole over all his senses and he slept, or passed into that state which seems to lie between sleep and trance. ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... exclusively. After a few weeks I succeeded in completely suspending animation in one of them for several hours. There was no life apparently existing during that period. It was not a trance or coma, but the complete simulation of death. No harmful results followed the revivifying of the animal. The contraction of the cells was far more difficult to accomplish; I finished my last experiment less than six ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... the serpent came back also. But Wagner murmured words of sweet assurance and consolation—of love and joy, in her ears; and she felt that it was no dream, but that she was really saved! Then, winding her arms round Fernand's neck, she embraced him in speechless and still almost senseless trance, for the idea of such happy deliverance was overpowering—amounting to an agony which a ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... Immediately, in trance, I was carried over land and sea to some distant kingdom, and placed upon a triumphal car, amongst companions crowned with laurel. The darkness of gathering midnight, brooding over all the land, hid from us the mighty crowds that were weaving restlessly about ourselves ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... and that to add anything to his views would be in the nature of painting the lily and gilding the refined gold. Mike himself said nothing. Psmith and Edward were equally silent. The former sat like one in a trance, thinking his own thoughts, while Edward, who, prospecting on the sideboard, had located a rich biscuit-mine, was too occupied ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... white man counting out money into Alessandro's hand; then he turned and walked away, Alessandro still standing as if rooted to the spot, gazing into the palm of his hand, Benito and Baba slowly walking away from him unnoticed; at last he seemed to rouse himself as from a trance, and picking up the horses' reins, came slowly toward her. Again she started to meet him; again he made the same authoritative gesture to her to return; and again she seated herself, trembling in every nerve ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... trance like death. Possibly not a soul hears this music, unless it is the watchers at the bedside of Mr. Leonard Tappleton, the richest man in town, who has lain dying these three days, and cannot last until sunrise. Or perhaps some mother, drowsily ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... time as Manuel, one of the principal commanders of his army, having jogged and shaked him so as to rouse him out of his trance, said to him, "Sir, if you will not follow me, I will kill you; for it is better you should lose your life than, by being taken, lose your empire." —[Zonaras, lib. iii.]—But fear does then manifest its utmost power when it throws us upon a valiant despair, having before deprived us of all sense ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... 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 ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... for Lutwyche, telling Gottlieb, has told us; but Jules must glean it from her puzzled, broken utterance, filled with allusions that mean nothing until semi-comprehension comes through the sighs of tortured soul and heart from her who still is, as it were, in a trance. And this dream-like state causes her, now and then, to say the wrong words—the words he spoke—instead of those which had "cost such pains to learn ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... unintelligible to Hester, and she would dearly have liked to question Sylvia; but Sylvia sate a little apart, with Bella on her knee, her cheek resting on her child's golden curls, and her eyes fixed and almost trance-like, as if she ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... could no 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 ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... speaks of a tulip-tree near which he sometimes sat—"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"; and mentions that in a dream-trance he actually once saw his "favorite trees step out and promenade up, down and around VERY CURIOUSLY." (1) Once the present writer seemed to have a partial vision of a tree. It was a beech, standing somewhat ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... while she lay and watched it in a sort of trance; and then in the stillness full realization came to her, and she knew that she was not mad or dreaming. This was ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... Some declared that another had been raised from the dead, while others declared that the child had but been in a trance and would have awakened anyway. Had not even the Healer declared that she only slept? But Jesus heeded not the disputants, but returned to ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... entertain a conjecture, to imagine how these fatal accidents had fallen out, Juliet awoke out of her trance, and seeing the friar near her, she remembered the place where she was, and the occasion of her being there, and asked for Romeo, but the friar, hearing a noise, bade her come out of that place of death, and of unnatural sleep, for ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... fear, And slavery chosen, more vile by choice of chance Than dull damnation of inheritance From Russian year to year Alas fair mother of men, alas my France, What ailed thee so to fall, that wert so dear For all men's sake to all men, in such trance, Plague-stricken? Had the very Gods, that saw Thy glory lighten on us for a law, Thy gospel go before us for a guide, Had these waxed envious of our love and awe, Or was it less their envy than thy pride That bared thy breast for the obscene vulture-claw, High priestess, by whose ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... great man had slumped back in his chair in a kind of stunned trance while the apoplectic purple of his earlier wrath faded from his face. He did open his mouth, but not in any effort to speak. It was only to lick his thick lips and gurgle noisily in his fat throat. He tried to rise, ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... and when after a time they were able to look up again, a wild terror seized them. The Master was not there. Now that they no longer saw Him, they shouted loudly; shrieked out His name. Only John remained calm, and looked out into the darkness, wrapt in some bewilderment or trance. ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... 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 or reverie. ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... his sword she caught, And fell in trance that wist of nought, Swooning: but softly Balen sought To win from her the sword she thought To die on, dying by Launceor's side. Again her wakening wail outbroke As wildly, sword in hand, she woke And struck one swift and bitter stroke ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... is not much to perish, if that were all. But the world will be the worse for ever. Trance is deceived. She comes, in an error, to avenge herself, and to enslave the ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... keep your human speech, and ye shall sing a sad music such as no music in the world can equal, and ye shall have your reason and your human will, that the bird-shape may not wholly destroy you." Then she became as one possessed, and cried wildly like a prophetess in her trance:— ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... and paid it back to an eternal death. The old cattleman was refusing his payment. It was no state of coma in which he lay; it was no prolonged trance. He was vitally, vividly alive; he was concentrating with a bitter and exhausting vigour day and night, and fighting a battle the more terrible because it was fought in silence, a battle in which he could receive no aid, no reinforcement, a battle in which he could not win, ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... Joshua pounded along over the wet sand or through ruts filled with water, and not once during the trip was he ordered to "Giddap" or "Show some signs of life." Not until the first scattered houses of the village were reached did the lightkeeper awaken from his trance sufficiently to notice that the old horse was limping ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of the medicine dance is to work up the dancer to a state of trance, in which he receives a revelation in regard to ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin
... bodies and clawed feet. How much happier he is in the clear and joyful note of colour in some figures standing before a door on the right! And how much better we recognise his sweet spirit in the features of the blest, with their clear eyes whose pupils are fixed trance-like ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... the enchantment of the jade light about them, his ears deaf to brook and rustling forest. All his senses were concentrated on the close warmth of her misty lips, the curve of her young shoulder, her woman sweetness and longing. Then his senses forgot even her lips, and floated off into a blurred trance of bodiless happiness—the kiss of Nirvana. No foreign thought of trains or people or the future came now to drag him to earth. It was the most devoted, most ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... me, pinioned hand and foot In catalepsy—say I should have known That trance had not yet darkened into death, And held my scalpel. Well, suppose I knew? Sum up the facts—her life against her death. Her life? The scum upon the pools of pleasure Breeds such by thousands. And her death? Perchance The obolus to appease the ferrying Shade, And waft her into immortality. ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... Athos, Porthos, Aramis, nor D'Artagnan. He had not been introduced to them. This little book will be fortunate far beyond its deserts if it tempts a few readers to extend the circle of their visionary acquaintances, of friends who, like Brahma, know not birth, nor decay, "sleep, waking, nor trance." ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... spectacled youth in resentful charge of the office—his principals, it being Saturday afternoon, were golfing the happy hours away—professed blank ignorance of everything. Aristide fixed him with his glittering eye and flickered his fingers and spoke richly. The youth in a kind of mesmeric trance took down a battered, dog's eared book and turned over ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... falls into the ground, so long as the earth is cold and dry, it lies like a person in a trance, as if it were dead; but as soon as the warm, damp spring comes, and the busy little sun-waves pierce down into the earth, they wake up the plantlet and make it bestir itself. They agitate to and fro the particles of matter in this tiny body, and cause them to ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley
... hour of this intense excitement, the congregation was dismissed, one of them, at least, more dead than alive; for "Aunt Ceely," who had long been known as "er pow'ful sinful ooman," had fallen into a trance, whether real or assumed must be determined by wiser heads than mine; for it was no uncommon occurrence for those "seekin' 'ligion" to lie in a state of unconsciousness for several hours, and, on their return to consciousness, to relate the most wonderful experiences of what had happened to them ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... 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 ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... in the ruddy glow of the fire. Her face was deathly pale and she was shuddering violently. She held her little cambric handkerchief crushed up into a ball to her lips. Her eyes were fixed, almost glazed, like one who walks in a trance. ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... the substances used for inducing this state. In diseases of the brain or spinal cord anaesthesia is an occasional symptom, but in such cases it is usually limited in extent, involving a limb or a definite area of the body's surface. Complete anaesthesia occurs in a state of catalepsy or trance— conditions associated with no definite lesion of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... wished she would utter some hysterical cry, so that I might get relief and be at ease. She made wonderfully little noise: she seemed to have got what she wanted—all she wanted, and to be in a trance of content. Neither in mien nor in features was this creature like her sire, and yet she was of his strain: her mind had been filled from his, as the cup from ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... aware that while he gazed, like a man in a trance, the two young people walked on their way and were on the point of passing beyond reach of eye or ear. He made a sudden involuntary movement as if he would call them back, and for the first time his faithful hiding-place, strained beyond silent endurance, ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... her finger to her lip, she impressed upon it the sign of the cross, and yielded up her spirit without a groan. And the icy hand of death neither changed the freshness of her countenance nor robbed it of its celestial loveliness; it seemed as if she were in a trance, listening to the music of angelic hosts, and glowing with their boundless love. The Bishop of Jerusalem and the neighboring clergy stood around her bed, and Jerome closed her eyes. For three days numerous choirs of virgins ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... exuberance. They laughed and danced and sang for very joy. Priscilla jigged all over the house like an excited brown leaf in a breeze. None of them, except Father Bob, Mother Jess, and Laura, could keep still. Laura went about like a person in a trance, with a strange, happy quietness in her ordinarily energetic movements and a brightness in her face that dazzled. There was no boisterousness in any one's rejoicing, only a gentleness of gaiety that was very wonderful to see ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... fact that Alphonzo-Maria di Liguori, Bishop of Saint-Agatha, administered consolations to Pope Ganganelli, who saw him, heard him, and answered him, while the Bishop himself, at a great distance from Rome, was in a trance at home, in the chair where he commonly sat on his return from Mass. On recovering consciousness, he saw all his attendants kneeling beside him, believing him to be dead: "My friends," said he, "the Holy Father ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... manifestations to him is the sole subject of present consideration. While in Jerusalem Paul was blessed with a visual manifestation of the Lord Jesus, accompanied by the giving of specific instructions. His own testimony is to this effect: "While I prayed in the temple, I was in a trance; and saw him saying unto me, Make haste, and get thee quickly out of Jerusalem: for they will not receive thy testimony concerning me." In explanation of his rejection by the people, Paul confessed his evil past, saying, "Lord, they know that I imprisoned ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage |
