"Magician" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... building. The camera man had no difficulty in securing the effects, as it was only necessary to have the actor creep over a flat picture of the building spread on the floor. Every day brought us new tricks. We see how the magician breaks one egg after another and takes out of each egg a little fairy and puts one after another on his hand where they begin to dance a minuet. No theater could ever try to match such wonders, but for the camera they are not difficult; the little dancers were simply at a much further ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... man can make movements with his hands so swiftly that they are covered in less than a tenth of a second, ordinary human sight can not register them. He has achieved the magician's slogan—the quickness of the hand deceives the eye. It takes natural aptitude and long practise, whether one is juggling gilded balls or blued-steel revolvers. Sandy could, with a circling movement of his wrists, draw his guns from their holsters and bring them to bear ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... she was a spirit or a goddess who inhabited the ancient tombs that lay to the south of the old city whither she had come because of the threatened war with Rezu, whom alone she feared, he did not know why. He told me again, moreover, that she was the greatest magician who had ever been, and that it was certain she did not die, since their forefathers knew her generations ago. Still she seemed to be under some curse, like the Amahagger themselves, who were the descendants of those who had once ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... in solitude—may be found the happiest with the literary character. Solitude is the nurse of enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is the true parent of genius. In all ages solitude has been called for—has been flown to. No considerable work was ever composed till its author, like an ancient magician, first retired to the grove, or to the closet, to invocate. When genius languishes in an irksome solitude among crowds, that is the moment to fly into seclusion and meditation. There is a society in the deepest solitude; in all the men of genius of ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... till of very late times it had no place at all; as being subservient to nothing but rigide Truth. And if any man by the ingenuity of his owne nature, had attained to any degree of perfection therein, hee was commonly thought a Magician, and his ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... of Set, great seeress and magician of the old world in whom once my spirit dwelt, send forth your Ka, your everlasting Emanation, to help me. Crush this black hound. ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... throughout Europe long before Galland's work was published, and in forms strikingly resembling other Asiatic versions, from one of which the Arabian tale must have been adapted. The incidents of the Magician and Aladdin at the Cave, and the conveying of the Princess and the vazir's son three nights in succession to Aladdin's house (which occurs, in modified forms, in other tales in The Nights), I consider as ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... We look for the Magician who, with a wave of the hand, made all these to live and move before us. We know he must be there. We "cannot make him dead"; but he can make himself and us alive in the life of the past. A little door, with one shutter ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... eyebrows went up in a peak. "I have a pretty considerable fluency of language, as an American cousin would say, and the worst of it is, I speak first and think afterwards! Your iron bands remind me of the man in the dear old fairy-tale who was under the spell of a wicked magician, and had iron straps bound round his heart. There was only one way in which they could be broken, and no one knew what it was, but one day a peasant woman took pity on his sufferings and tried to nurse him, and snap! one of the bands broke off and fell ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... to frighten the servants of the house into confession, or perhaps, (and what is just as likely,) for a frolic and the indulgence of Mr. R——'s well known curiosity, to summon a conjuror, or wise man. There happened to be a famous magician, lately arrived from distant parts of Africa, then at hand, and he came at their call. This man asked for nothing but an innocent boy under ten years of age, a virgin, or a woman quick with child. The first of the three was the easiest to be procured, and a boy was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... passage in the eulogy on Choate where he describes him arming himself in the entire panoply of his gorgeous rhetoric—and you will get some far-away conception of the power of this magician. ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... often acting out the incidents as we rode or drove abroad. An omission to perform a duty was the fatal forgetfulness to sprinkle pepper on the cream-tarts; if my father subjected me to an interrogation concerning my lessons, he was the dread African magician to whom must be surrendered my acquisition of the ring and the musty old lamp. We were quite in the habit of meeting fair Persians. He would frequently ejaculate that he resembled the Three Calendars in more respects than one. To divert me ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the reputation of a wizard, who lived about the end of the 12th and beginning of the 13th centuries, of whose art as a magician many legends ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... months? And why did you do it? I have heard of an elixir to counteract the effects of time, but your recipe seems to work the other way—to make time rush forward at two hundred times his usual rate, in one place, while he jogs on at his usual gait elsewhere. Unfold your mystery, magician. Seriously, Ken, how on earth ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... Queen and others of her type and sex. The Rhymer of Ercildoune was probably only a man more learned and far-seeing than others of his time. His reputation for Second Sight may rest upon a basis similar to that which led the mediaeval mind to dub Virgil a magician, and to recognise the wizard in Sir Michael Scott, the grave ambassador and counsellor of kings, and, at a later date, enabled the profane vulgar to discover a baronet of Gordonstoun to be a warlock, for no better reason than because, with ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... fervour, will assert that either the jest or the frankly cynical moral of Pietro of Abano compensates for the jolting in a springless waggon over a rough road and a long. We make the acquaintance of a magician who with knowledge uninspired by love has kicks and cuffs for his reward, and the acquaintance of an astute Greek, who, at least in his dream of life, imposed upon him by the art of magic, exploits the talents of his friend Pietro, and gains the prize of ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... deathlike. At that time his shade separated from the body and transferred itself in a moment to Tyre, Babylon, or Nineveh, examined what it wished, listened to counsels relating to us, and after the awakening of the prophet gave the most minute account of all that it had witnessed. More than one evil magician, after falling asleep in like fashion, has sent out his shade against a man whom he hated, and overturned or destroyed furniture and ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... incidental and an instrument; who but took the tragedy of life by the way, as he went to set forth the whole story of the soul; never losing sight of Karma, and that man is his own adverse destiny; finishing all with the triumph of the soul, the Magician, in The Tempest. And I count him less than that Blind Titan in Bardism, who, setting out to justify the ways of God to men, did verily justify the ways of fate to the Soul; and showed the old, old truth, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... either of mystification or of obscure or indirect allusion. The clouds have been dispelled; the DARKNESS VISIBLE has been cleared away; and the Great Unknown—the minstrel of our native land—the mighty magician who has rolled back the current of time, and conjured up before our living senses the men and the manners of days which have long passed away—stands revealed to the hearts and the eyes of his affectionate and admiring countrymen. If he himself were capable of imagining ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... engraving, was discovered by some one who understood his genius, and could make use of it, and was offered a place in the great, gay city, Mere Giraud formed an ambitious plan. He should take Laure and find her a position also; she had the fingers of a fair magician, and could embroider marvelously. So she trusted Laure to him, and the two bade farewell to St. Croix and departed together. A month passed, and then there came a letter containing good news. Valentin was doing well, and Laure ...
— Mere Girauds Little Daughter • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the passage in Germany, and he pleased himself with his bounty, till the question whether the children could spend the money forced itself upon him. He sat down feeling less like a good genius than a cruel magician who had tricked them with false wealth; but he kept his remorse to himself, and tried to interest his wife in the difference of social and civic ideal expressed in the change of the inhibitory notices at the car windows, which in Germany had strongliest forbidden ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... because I had foreseen his Marriage with a Farmer's Daughter. The Regret which arose in my Mind upon the Death of my Companions, my Anxieties for the Publick, and the many Calamities still fleeting before my Eyes, made me repent my Curiosity; when the Magician entered the Room, and awakened me, by telling me (when it was too late) that he ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... is rather incredible, what some writers relate concerning Apollo'nius Tyane'us, who was then at Ephesus. This person, whom some call a magician, and some a philosopher, but who more probably was only an impostor, was, just at the minute in which Domi'tian was slain, lecturing in one of the public gardens of the city; but stopping short, on a sudden he cried ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... newly of age, and bound on the grand tour aboard the crack merchantman of old Bracknell's fleet, felt his heart leap up as the distant city trembled into shape. Venice! The name, since childhood, had been a magician's wand to him. In the hall of the old Bracknell house at Salem there hung a series of yellowing prints which Uncle Richard Saulsbee had brought home from one of his long voyages: views of heathen mosques and palaces, of the Grand Turk's Seraglio, of St. Peter's Church in Rome; ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... overcome with wine, who was in a similar predicament. At sight of a wedding party that passed rejoicing along, he wept; but he burst into uncontrollable laughter when he heard a man order at a shoemaker's stall a pair of shoes that would last seven years; and when he saw a magician at his work he broke ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... Tennyson was a veritable magician, who charmed with his genius hundreds and thousands of people. No arduous mental effort is necessary for the enjoyment of his verse, which is one reason why he is and will remain a popular poet. Browning ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... the drama Ratnavali a magician makes the characters see an imaginary conflagration of the palace and also a vision of heaven. His performance seems to be accepted as merely a remarkable ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... alone; whereas the mental offspring of our illustrious countryman came healthy and vigorous into the world, and promise long to continue. To vary the metaphor—the tree of some other men's fancy bears fruit at the rate of a pint of apples to a peck of crabs; whereas the tree of the great magician bears the sweetest fruit—large and red-cheeked—fair to look upon, and right pleasant to the taste. I shall conclude with the words of Sir Walter, which no man can contradict, and which many can attest: "I ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 470 - Volume XVII, No. 470, Saturday, January 8, 1831 • Various
... and readily identifying herself with the situation of those legendary heroines with whose adventures, for want of better reading, her memory had become stocked. The fairy wand, with which in her solitude she had delighted to raise visions of enchantment, became now the rod of a magician, the bond slave of evil genii, serving only to invoke spectres at which the exorcist trembled. She felt herself the object of suspicion, of scorn, of dislike at least, if not of hatred, to her own family; ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... pole-star; though the night be never so dark, yet shall the mariner be able by the help of this needle to steer his course aright. But no master-mariner," he adds, "dares to use it lest he should fall under the imputation of being a magician."[1] By the end of the 13th century the compass was coming into general use; and when Columbus sailed he had an instrument divided as in later times into 360 degrees and 32 points, as well as a quadrant, sea-astrolabe, and other nautical devices. The astrolabe, ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... Arabs invariably declared that they had not a drop, that the goats were dry, or had strayed away; and some paltry excuses were offered until the temper of the Turk became exhausted, and the coorbatch assisted in the argument. A magician's rod could not have produced a greater miracle than the hippopotamus whip. The goats were no longer dry, and in a few minutes large gourds of milk were brought, and liberally paid for, while I was ridiculed by the Turk, Hadji Achmet, ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... the magician," said I, as, after a shower of nuts, I saw a huge land-crab descending the tree quietly, and quite regardless of our presence. Jack boldly struck a blow at him, but missed, and the animal, opening its enormous claws, made up to its opponent, who fled in terror. But the laughter ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... tongues. My friend, "the sweet Harp-String" (I give no more than his Irish name for fear of gaugers), has the science of unpacking the stubbornest heart, but then he supplies the potheen-makers with grain from his own fields. Besides, he is descended from a noted Gaelic magician who raised the "dhoul" in Great Eliza's century, and he has a kind of prescriptive right to hear tell of all kind of other-world creatures. They are almost relations of his, if all people say concerning the parentage of ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... pursuits. No considerable work has yet been composed, but its author, like an ancient magician, retired first to the grove or the closet, to invocate his spirits. Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm. When the youth sighs and languishes, and feels himself among crowds in an ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... it is not yet noon, hunger rages in us. The pancakes, the syrup, the toast and the other incidents of breakfast have disappeared the way the rabbit vanishes when the magician waves his hand. The horrid Polyphemus did not so crave his food. And as yet there is no comforting sniff from the kitchen. Scrubbing and other secular matters engage the farmer's wife. There is as yet not a faintest gurgle in ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... began to touch their foreheads knowingly. I was suspected simply because I did not want to turn out sweet sonnets about the pretty stars. Why, man, I have a star in my stomach! Every poet has. We are of the same stuff as the stars. It was Marlowe who said, 'A sound magician is a mighty god.' He was wrong. Only the mentally unsound are really wise. This the ancients knew. Even if Gerard de Nerval did walk the boulevards trolling a lobster by a blue ribbon—that is no reason for judging him crazy. As he truly said, 'Lobsters neither bark nor bite; and ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... seemed as if she longed to leave this secluded spot and return to the metropolis. She looked for all the world like a hothouse plant. I don't think the Scotch could do better than to purchase Abbotsford, while it has some imprint of the great magician, and secure its preservation; for I am sure that, a hundred years hence, no place will be more frequently visited in Scotland than the home of the late Sir Walter Scott. After sauntering three hours about the premises, I left, but not without feeling that ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... a magician, a sorcerer, a wizard, and a witch all rolled into one," was the answer; "and you can imagine what a dreadful thing that ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... career. I remember that this speech, which was received with so intense an enthusiasm by all who heard it, contained the speaker's defence of what is known as the Majuba Hill policy. To those of us who were under the wand of the magician it seemed that no ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... in astonishment. "Sir, you are a magician! Only yesterday you could have driven this girl out of her senses with such a creature ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... Enid, is perhaps the least popular of the four Books. No pleasure, we grant, can be felt from the character either of the wily woman, between elf and fiend, or of the aged magician, whose love is allowed to travel whither none of his esteem or regard can follow it: and in reading this poem we miss the pleasure of those profound moral harmonies, with which the rest are charged. But we must not on these grounds proceed to ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... various marvels the doctor has much to tell us concerning two sisters in Lucifer who have long been at daggers drawn, and considering their supernatural attributes, it is incomprehensible in a high degree that they have not destroyed one another like the Magician and the Princess of a more credible narrative of wonders in the "Arabian Nights." Diana Vaughan, much heard and little seen, has since become famous by her conversion to the Catholic faith. Honoured with her acquaintance for a considerable ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... is based on an old myth found in many forms, all turning upon the attempt to cheat a magician out of his promised reward. See Brewer's Reader's Handbook, Baring-Gould's Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, Grimm's Deutsche Sagen, and the Encyclopaedia Britannica. There are Persian ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... no fear of anything of that sort," he said calmly. "I do not pretend to be a magician or a diviner, yet I think I know you for what you are, and ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Chew Chew proceeded without noticing the Scarecrow's remarks. "Fifty years ago—after your Extreme Highness had defeated in battle the King of the Golden Islands—a magician entered the realm. This magician, in the employ of this wicked king, entered a room in the palace where your Highness lay sleeping and by an act of necromancy ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... crown and country, but shut himself up in his palace, seeking by the silliest auguries to ascertain the issue of the war. The most notable of these vaticinations was "the Augury of the Hogs", which he practised by the advice of a certain Jewish magician. He shut up in separate pens three batches of hogs, each batch consisting of ten. One batch was labelled "Romans" (meaning the Latin-speaking inhabitants of Italy), another "Goths", and the third "Soldiers ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... the man. "You see, I am a magician in a show—that is I do all sorts of funny tricks, such as making a rabbit come out of a hat, or shutting a pig up in a box and changing it to a bird, and making ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... play'd of late to every passing thought With finest change (might I but half as well So write) the pale magician of the bow, Who brought from Italy the tales, made true, Of Grecian lyres; and on his sphery hand, Loading the air with dumb expectancy, Suspended, ere ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... simple the elements of perfect happiness appear to be, regarded in the abstract, it becomes surprising to think how difficult it is to attain them in the concrete. A kind magician may grant us all we ask, may transport us whither we would go, dower us with all we lack, bring to us one desired companion after another, but something is wrong. We have a toothache, or in spite of our rich ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... see! how shadowy, Of some occult magician's rearing, Or swung in space of heaven's grace Dissolving, dimly reappearing, Afloat upon ethereal tides St. Paul's ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... Pericles or any other great orator, I was entertained and delighted, and I felt that he had spoken well. But no mortal speech has ever excited in my mind such emotions as are excited by this magician. Whenever I hear him, I am, as it were, charmed and fettered. My heart leaps like an inspired Corybant. My inmost soul is stung by his words as by the bite of a serpent. It is indignant at its own rude and ignoble character. I often weep ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... are still more a magician than I am. Well, one day when Beausire had beaten the poor girl more than usual, she fled to me for refuge; I pitied her, and gave her shelter ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... are presented with the German impersonation of Satan as a wise old magician, only with claws instead of feet, commissioning his three captains (hauptleutern), Furwitz, Umfallo, and Neidelhard, to beset and ruin Theurdank. They are interpreted as the dangers of youth, middle life, and old age—Rashness, ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... kingdoms, as well as every mineral, were floating in amorphous masses through space. Human beings, like genius that was condensed from vapor at the rubbing of Aladdin's lamp, were diffused in gases, waiting the touch of the Great Magician's wand to bring them into form and infuse them with life. In all the distinct creations of God, from the time when the waters first subsided and the dry land appeared, in everything organized and inorganized, earth, air, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... pull this one out of the fire, I won't be a general; I'll be a magician," he said. "Pickering'll be a magician, I mean; he's the boy who'll save our bacon, if it's saveable." He looked somberly across the flame-reflecting water. "Let's not kid ourselves; we're just kicking and biting at the guards on the way up ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... calamities, what dangers they underwent, how holy men were of aid to kings in great dangers, how they taught the Gospel, what encounters they had with heretics. Examples of mercy are also of service, as when we see the denial forgiven Peter, when we see Cyprian forgiven for having been a magician, when we see Augustine, having experienced the power of faith in sickness steadily affirming that God truly hears the prayers of believers. It was profitable that such examples as these, which contain admonitions for ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... door of the studio opened, and there came a flood of light, and the step of a man was heard: the hearts of all the colors jumped for joy, because the step was that of their magician, who out of mere common clays and ground ores could raise them at a touch into splendors of the ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... natural consternation and a fine speech by Arthur, Gawain accepts the challenge, takes the battle-ax, and with one blow sends the giant's head rolling through the hall. The Green Knight, who is evidently a terrible magician, picks up his head and mounts his horse. He holds out his head and the ghastly lips speak, warning Gawain to be faithful to his promise and to seek through the world till he finds the Green Chapel. There, on next ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... water, like weird, glutted beasts, staring stupidly, some in one direction, some in another, all herded together by the dominating tower of the Halles. The moon shone across the houses, throwing shadows on some glorifying roof-tree and pinnacle, the peaked cap of a Chaldean magician which crowned a little turret, and above it all, stood out the sublime octagonal diadem of the mighty tower. But no beam fell on the dark waters. Nevertheless Jeanne and Noerni leaned for some time against the parapet, gazing into the gloomy depths; Noemi talked incessantly. ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... protracted absence, and put to death his father and mother and his infant brother. On learning of this murderous act Jason determined on revenge. But Pelias was too strong to be attacked openly, so the hero employed a strange stratagem, suggested by the cunning magician Medea. He and his companions halted at some distance from Iolcus, while Medea entered the town alone, pretending that she was a fugitive from the ill-treatment ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... all one to us in our secret hearts, which throbbed with passionate excitement over our own small affairs of to-day, and to-morrow. Little cared we, as our white boat bore us southward, on the bosom of the sacred river—little cared we for the love-story of the Great Enchantress—pupil of Magician Thoth, —fair Isis, in whose honour that boat was named. Her tragic journey along this river, whose stream she could augment by one sacred tear, should have been followed by our fancy. We should have seen ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... to be something of a magician, Don Carlos, and your castle is something like Aladdin's cave," Myra remarked to her host as she was dancing with him later in the evening ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... fraught with clanger. Men looked with favour on the long-established supremacy of these great families, and their influence and power were therefore not easily broken. Bute sought to dissolve the spell; but the hand of Bute was not that of a magician, and he signally failed in the attempt. Broken, but not subdued, the aristocracy formed new parties, and acted upon new principles, all calculated, when dictated by the spirit of opposition, to annoy the sovereign, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... and the fellow dragged in his advice that I spend the rest of the night at the house of Mr. Oliver. His acquaintance with that gentleman seemed to grow while we talked, and broke into bloom like a magician's rosebush. He described him as a kind old bird who made hospitality to strangers his meat and drink. A conjecture darted into my mind. "Why, yes! that is his married son, is he not, yonder in the cabin; the one with ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... in his treatise On Isis and Osiris, knows of no writer more ancient than Zoroaster the magician, as he calls him, that is likely to have taught the two principles. Trogus or Justin makes him a King of the Bactrians, who was conquered by Ninus or Semiramis; he attributes to him the knowledge of astronomy and the invention of magic. But this magic was apparently ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... mansion of the Grahams, on "Cannobie lea," over which the young Lochinvar bore away his stolen bride. We passed also Branksome Tower, the scene of the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," and reached Selkirk in the early evening. The next day I spent at Abbotsford. The Great Magician had been dead only ten years, and his family still occupied the house with some of his old employees who figure in Lockhart's biography. I sat in the great arm-chair where Sir Walter Scott wrote many of his novels, ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... of the supernatural is materialistic and downright, as befitted an age which believed in witchcraft. The {106} greatest part of the English Faustus is the last scene, in which the agony and terror of suspense with which the magician awaits the stroke of the clock that signals his ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... were so few and slight. In health and fortune, prospect and resource, they came back poorer men than they had gone away. But it was home. And though home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit answered to, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... pirates, bless you, no less. That is, he said he was a sea-captain; but he talked French like a Parisian, and quoted Shakespeare like Mr. Burke or Dr. Johnson. He may have been M. Caron de Beaumarchais, for I never saw him, or a soothsayer, or Cagliostro the magician, for he ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... his spectacles. Immediately 'the inner man' of each individual would be displayed before him, like a game of cards, in which he unerringly might read what the future of every person presented was to be. Well pleased the little magician hastened away to prove the powers of the spectacles in the theatre; no place seeming to him more fitted for such a trial. He begged permission of the worthy audience, and set his spectacles on his nose. A ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... famous in the annals of witchcraft. In a work called "The Theatre of God's Judgments," published, in London, by Thomas Beard in 1612, there is the following passage: "It was a very lamentable spectacle that chanced to the Governor of Mascon, a magician, whom the Devil snatched up in dinner-while, and hoisted aloft, carrying him three times about the town of Mascon, in the presence of many beholders, to whom he cried in this manner, 'Help, help, my friends!' so that the whole town stood amazed thereat; yea, and ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... uncommon; nor are the children put to death, as by the Ashantis. Both races cut the boss from hunchbacks after decease, and 'make fetish' over it to free the future family from similar distortion. Our villagers told us strange tales of a magician near Assini who can decapitate a man and restore him to life, and who lately had placed a dog's head on a boy's body. Who can 'doubt the fact'? the boy ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... the priest's fingers after the celebration of Holy Communion in the Catholic Church. The wine and water used for this purpose are themselves sometimes called "the ablution.'' on the frog. Let the medicine man or magician pray that the fever may pass into the frog, and the frog be forthwith re-leased, and the cure will be effected. In the old Athenian Anthesteria the blood of victims was poured over the unclean. A bath of bulls' blood was much in vogue as a baptism in the mysteries of Attis. The ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... from Atlantis. With the aid of a Drilgo interpreter, they conveyed to me that they had been greatly impressed by the disappearance of the Atom Smasher. They have nothing like it, of course, and they think I'm a Number One magician. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... of Masai, separated from their own people, to seek to get home through Durumaland in its present agitated condition; and if they must die, they would esteem it a greater honour to die by the hand of so mighty a white leibon (magician) than to be slain by the cowardly Wa-Duruma or Wa-Teita. As it was our intention to visit their country very soon, we willingly permitted them to ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... Imperial Highnesses with their ladies-in-waiting. One thing only was wanting, as a Jacobin bitterly remarked—the million of men who were slain to end all that mummery. The fascinating story of how this amazing transformation was effected cannot be told here. The magician who wrought it was possessed of a soaring imagination, of a mental instrument of incomparable force and efficiency, of an iron will, a prodigious intellectual activity, and a piercing insight into the conditions of material success, rarely, if ever before, united in the same degree in ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... his majesty, unwilling to have it said that he had neglected his daughter's cure, put forth a proclamation in his capital city, importing, that if any physician, astrologer, or magician, would undertake to restore the princess to her senses, he need only come, and he should be employed, provided he was willing to lose his head if he miscarried. He had the same thing published in the other principal cities and towns of his dominions, as likewise in those ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... whole, upon this analysis, it appears that in all those executive departments in which Moses, by stress of the responsibilities which he had assumed, was called upon, imperatively, to act, there was but one, that of the magician or wise man, in which, by temperament and training, he was fitted to excel, and the functions of this profession drove him into to intolerably irksome and distressing position, yet a position from which throughout his life he found it ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... something mysterious in it," the chief answered with a laugh. "One feels as though all the secrets of the United States were boxed up and in the storage vaults of the building. But the magician is the Director. He is the man whose spells have woven this web of organization, whose skill and knowledge have unlocked commercial secrets, and whose perception has ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... head. "No. It would take a magician to do that. We are not clever enough, either ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... "The Sorceries of Sin," "Devotion of the Cross." In 1867, "Belshazzar's Feast," "The Divine Philothea" (with Essays from the German of Lorinser, and the Spanish of Gonzales Pedroso). In 1870, "Chrysanthus and Daria, the Two Lovers of Heaven." In 1873, "The Wonder-working Magician," "Life is a Dream," "The Purgatory of St. Patrick" (a new translation entirely in the assonant metre). Introductions and notes are added to all these plays. Another, "Daybreak in Copacabana," was finished a few months before his death, and has ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... beautiful rooms to live in, pictures, books, toys without number, teachers, companions, and everything that money could buy or ingenuity devise; but for all this, the young prince was unhappy. He wore a frown wherever he went, and was always wishing for something he did not have. At length a magician came to the court. He saw the scowl on the boy's face, and said to the king: "I can make your son happy, and turn his frowns into smiles, but you must pay me a great price for telling him this secret." "All right," said the king; "whatever you ask I will give." The magician ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... elastic silk underclothing follows the movements of one's body. The lucidity of Bergson's way of putting things is what all readers are first struck by. It seduces you and bribes you in advance to become his disciple. It is a miracle, and he a real magician. ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... that in the days of the famed Prince Arthur, who was king of Britain, in the year 516, there lived a great magician, called Merlin, the most learned and skilful enchanter in the world at ...
— The History of Tom Thumb, and Others • Anonymous
... Scott are now innumerable, each more tempting than the other; but affection turns back to the old red and white, in forty-eight volumes, wherein one first fell under the magician's spell. Thackeray, for some reason I cannot recall, unless it were a prejudice in our home, I did not read in youth, but since then I have never escaped from the fascination of Vanity Fair and The Newcomes, and another about which I am to speak. What giants there were in ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... that they are all told to King Khufu by his sons; and as the beginning is lost, eight lines are here added to explain this and introduce the subject. The actual papyrus begins with the last few words of a previous tale concerning some other magician under an earlier king. Then comes the tale of Khafra, next that of Bau-f-ra, and lastly that ...
— Egyptian Tales, First Series • ed. by W. M. Flinders Petrie
... nature's vast realms. The same ordinance which keeps the spheres in their orbits and holds the satellites in subordination to the planets, is the ordinance that subjects the negro race to the empire of the white man's will. From that ordinance the snake derives its power to charm the bird, and the magician his power to amuse the curious, to astonish the vulgar, and to confound the wisdom of the wise. Under that ordinance, our four millions of negroes are as unalterably bound to obey the white man's will, as the four satellites ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... pretension, whether public or private, in the land of the Lion and the Sun, is a substantial edifice of mud and brick, inclosing a square court-yard or garden, in which splashing fountains play amid a wealth of vegetation that springs, as if by waft of magician's wand, from the sandy soil of Persia wherever water is abundantly supplied. Tall, slender poplars are nodding in the morning breeze, the less lofty almond and pomegranate, sheltered from the breezes by the surrounding building, rustle never ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... achiever! the marvellous magician! Look at him! A head hardly six feet above the ground out of which he was taken. His "dome of thought and palace of the soul" scarce twenty-two inches in circumference; and within it, a little, gray, oval mass of "convoluted albumen and fibre, of some four pounds' weight," ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... my Bertha," said Hereward, taking her hand: "We were then almost children; and though our vow was in itself innocent, yet it was so far wrong, as being sworn in the presence of a dumb idol, representing one who was, while alive, a bloody and cruel magician. But we will, the instant an opportunity offers itself, renew our vow before a shrine of real sanctity, and promise suitable penance for our ignorant acknowledgment of Odin, to propitiate the real Deity, who can bear us through those storms ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... which the amateurs of mystery in our age record as facts, a material living agency is always required. On the Continent you will find still magicians who assert that they can raise spirits. Assume for the moment that they assert truly, still the living material form of the magician is present; and he is the material agency by which from some constitutional peculiarities, certain strange phenomena are represented ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... Ascanius founded Alba, and afterwards married. And Lavinia bore to Aeneas a son, named Silvius; but Ascanius (1) married a wife, who conceived and became pregnant. And Aeneas, having been informed that his daughter-in-law was pregnant, ordered his son to send his magician to examine his wife, whether the child conceived were male or female. The magician came and examined the wife and pronounced it to be a son, who should become the most valiant among the Italians, and the most beloved of all men. (2) In consequence of this prediction, the ...
— History Of The Britons (Historia Brittonum) • Nennius
... money left him melted away, he continued his vigorous mental examination, until the alarming shrinkage in his funds left him staring fixedly at his last asset. Could he use it? Was it an asset, after all? How clever was he? Could he face an audience and perform the usual magician tricks without bungling? A slip by a careless, laughing, fashionable young amateur amusing his social equals at a house party is excusable; a bungle by a hired professional meant an end to hope in ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... objections to the Bible, as the record of a divine education of our race, is asked in that one word—development. And to what are we indebted for that potent word, which, as with the wand of a magician, has at the same moment so completely transformed our knowledge and dispelled our difficulties? To modern science, resolutely pursuing its search for truth in spite of popular obloquy and—alas! that ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... a magician at whose touch the plainest features take on new aspects. Helen's face had never been plain. Even in its anguish it had produced in beholders the profound commiseration which is more readily given when beauty is sorrowful. Now that a new life at heart was expressing ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... and The Jew of Malta (Barabbas). These three were all upon congenial lines, expressing that Titanism in revolt against the universe which was the inspiring spirit of Marlowe. But it was the character of Faust that especially fascinated him, for he found in the ancient magician a pretty clear image of his own desires and ambitions. He was one of those who loved "the dangerous edge of things," and, as Charles Lamb said, "delighted to dally with interdicted subjects." The form of the plays is loose and broken, and yet there is a pervading larger unity, not only of dramatic ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... magician, mysteriously, "that this star-child will destroy other children, that his descendants will conquer thine. Take warning. Purchase this child from thy officer, Terah, and slay it so that it may not grow up ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... book down, and read, and my blood is fired as it used to be in youth. Andante con moto in the Voluntaries, and the thing about the trees at night (No. XXIV. I think) are up to date my favourites. I did not guess you were so great a magician; these are new tunes, this is an undertone of the true Apollo; these are not verse, they are poetry—inventions, creations, in language. I thank you for the joy you have given me, and remain your old friend and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... possibly, as we have shown, as a recollection of the four rivers of Atlantis, but because it represented the secret of their great sea-voyages, to which they owed their national greatness. The hyperborean magician, Abaras, carried "a guiding arrow," which Pythagoras gave him, "in order that it may be useful to him in all difficulties in his long journey." ("Herodotus," vol. ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... bazaars they said that Umballa was warring in the face of the gods. The erstwhile white queen of the yellow hair was truly a great magician. For did she not cause the earth to open up and swallow her sister ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... a magician. He walked with great strides through the fields, looking at the sky and waving his arms. He commanded the clouds. He wished them to go to the right, but they went to the left. Then he would abuse them, and repeat his command. He would watch them out of the corner of his eye, ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... great magician. He has known how to render labor pleasant and attractive. As for the pleasure, over and above good wages, he accords to us a portion of his profits according to our deserts; whence you may judge of the eagerness with which we go to work. And that is not all: he ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue |
