"Mystic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... much to save the souls of men from hell, about which, indeed, there is comparatively little talk in the Fioretti, but to draw them also into the mystic circle where such angelic music was heard, that Francis of Assisi preached throughout Umbria, and even as far as the Soldan's country; and, if we interpret it rightly, the strings of that heavenly viol were the works of creation and the ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... to see with, what softness the scepticism of Jarno, the commercial spirit of Werner, the reposing polished manhood of Lothario and the Uncle, the unearthly enthusiasm of the Harper, the gay animal vivacity of Philina, the mystic, ethereal, almost spiritual nature of Mignon, are blended together in this work; how justice is done to each, how each lives freely in his proper element, in his proper form; and how, as Wilhelm himself, the mild-hearted, all-hoping, all-believing ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... taken it up with embarrassing effusion. This was the late James Collinson, whose principal picture, "St. Elizabeth of Hungary," finished in 1851, produced a sort of crisis in Rossetti's career. This painting out-mystified the mystic himself; it was simply maudlin and hysterical, though drawn with some feeling for grace, and in a very earnest spirit. Rossetti, with his strong good sense, recognized that it would be impossible ever to reach the public with art of this unmanly ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... would not be able to overstep the magical circle thus described. Many of the males probably knew, or at least suspected, what was going on; but they prudently remained within doors, knowing well that if they should be caught peeping indiscreetly at the mystic ceremony, they would be unmercifully beaten by those who were taking ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... broken and mysterious picture. A boy of quick and enthusiastic temper grows up into youth in a dream of love. The lady of his mystic passion dies early. He dreams of her still, not as a wonder of earth, but as a saint in paradise, and relieves his heart in an autobiography, a strange and perplexing work of fiction—quaint and subtle enough for a metaphysical conceit; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... know not if the shadow of his soul, Or the divine effulgence of his heart, Has through thy veins in mystic silence stole; But thou to me dost seem of ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... in a spell as Jacob Settle spoke. There was something so far away in the tone of his voice—something so dreamy and mystic in the eyes that looked as if through me at some spirit beyond—something so lofty in his very diction and in such marked contrast to his workworn clothes and his poor surroundings that I wondered if the whole thing were ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... mystic Eastern night With purple shadow filled the air, Behind her window framed in light, She sat ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... the trouble with the Shazlis also came to a head. The Shazlis were Sufis, or mystics, esoterics of El Islam, who tried to spiritualize its material portions. Richard was most interested in them, and he used to study them and their history. The mystic side of their faith especially appealed to him. He thought he saw in it a connexion between Sufiism in its highest form and Catholicism; and indeed it was so. He followed it up unofficially, disguised as a Shazli, and unknown to any mortal except ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... lads found that it was some sort of a religious ceremony that was being proceeded with. A group of men in white flowing robes and high conical hats—decorated with mystic symbols worked out in precious stones that looked like rubies and emeralds, though of such size that this seemed scarcely credible—were walking round and round the altar in a sort of what the irreverent Billy termed "a cakewalk." ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break, our bonds of affection. The mystic cords of memory, stretching from every battle- field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... inclined to laugh; the whole thing seemed so absurd. On reflection, however, I perceived that in reality it was very serious to people situated as we were. This woman was a savage; more, a mystic savage of considerable powers of mind—a formidable combination. Also there were no restraints upon her, since public opinion had as little authority in the Black Kloof as the Queen's Writ. Lastly, it was not unknown for women to conceive ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... Pointing out new paths unto the sky, Far pleasanter than our fathers trod With bleeding feet in the fear of God; While Atheists laugh our faith to scorn, And say that no man of woman born Ever pierced the evil or caught a gleam Of the mystic land beyond life's stream; That our fondest hopes, our prayers and sighs For life eternal beyond the skies, Are superstitions conceived in fear And cherished ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Voice again. Oh, mystic words Of a compelling grace: The curtain rose from off his darkened sight— He saw ...
— The Miracle and Other Poems • Virna Sheard
... mind, and I shall enter the Church if she will receive me. There is no use in resisting. You cannot be an Anglican, you must be a Catholic or a mystic. If you enter the Church at all, it must be the Catholic. There is nothing else. So let me beg you, my dear Isaac, to begin by owning the Church and receiving ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... god of gods, strung the invisible wires of mental telegraphy between our hearts, and over the mystic, unseen lines our thoughts, bright as hope, dark as sin, lighter than the thistle down, heavily charged with the electricity of doubt and trust, faith and fear, love and longing, flew noiselessly back and forth through the stillness and ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... unconscious self gets possession of one's personality and the consciousness is for a certain time deposed or exiled, the same thing may happen, and does happen in our waking hours. Therefore isolement must not be regarded as anything wonderful or mystic, but merely as a day-dream. I admit that this seems at first sight a plausible explanation. Yet I can say with Gibbon, "this statement is ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... those sunny hours are flown, And loud "The Fortune" knocks at every gate; Still move we on the path where none returns, Where wait afar, or near, our funeral urns, That mystic path, whose ways are all unknown, For only ...
— Across the Sea and Other Poems. • Thomas S. Chard
... shame—whether conventional or real he did not pretend exactly to determine—which so strangely wrapped it about. To use Damaris' favourite word, they were very "beautiful" both in themselves and in their almost mystic affection, these two young creatures. And just on that very account he would be glad to get away from them, to be no longer onlooker, or—to put it vulgarly—gooseberry, fifth wheel ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... of vines, or what will be vines when the summer comes, but are now black, knotted and gnarled clubs, without a sign of life in the seemingly dead stick. One who sees that sight may find a new beauty and meaning in the mystic words, "I am the Vine, ye are the branches." It is not merely the connection between branch and stem common to all trees; not merely the exhilarating and seemingly inspiring properties of the grape, which made the very ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... some among us insist that the mystic rose of the emotions shall be painted a brighter pink than nature allows, are the rest to forego glamour? Or because, to view the matter differently, psychology has shown what happens in the brain when a man falls in love, ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... Trismegistus, counsellor of Osiris, King of Egypt, was credited with the invention of writing and hieroglyphics, the drawing up of the laws of the Egyptians, and the origination of many sciences and arts. The Alexandrian school ascribed to him the mystic learning which it amplified; and the scholars of the Middle Ages regarded with enthusiasm and reverence the works attributed to him — notably a treatise on ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... sown nor reared The fruits of harvest; first the bent plough's share And heavy timber, and slow-lumbering wains Of the Eleusinian mother, threshing-sleighs And drags, and harrows with their crushing weight; Then the cheap wicker-ware of Celeus old, Hurdles of arbute, and thy mystic fan, Iacchus; which, full tale, long ere the time Thou must with heed lay by, if thee await Not all unearned the country's crown divine. While yet within the woods, the elm is tamed And bowed with mighty force to form the stock, And take the plough's curved shape, then nigh the root A pole eight ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... finest ornaments of the city of Oas. Too-che was slim, her breasts were two mounds of magic, her eyes were pools of mystic green depths, her ...
— The Sun King • Gaston Derreaux
... power would be one founded on sympathy with the subject peoples on the broad ground of a common humanity. And for this the poet and his patron bore witness with a consistent and solemn, though often irreverent, earnestness. Ennius had early in life shown a tendency towards the mystic speculations of Pythagoreanism: traces of it are seen in his assertion that the soul of Homer had migrated into him through a peacock, [5] and that he had three souls because he knew three languages; [6] while the satirical notice of Horace seems to imply that he, like Scipio, regarded ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... of the Betrothed Excursion Perfidy A Spiritual Woman Mating A Love Song Brother and Sister After Many Days Blue Snap-Dragon A Passing Bell In Trouble and Shame Elegy Grey Evening Firelight and Nightfall The Mystic Blue ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... Jewish-German (judisch-deutsch) jargon, and the Biur, the commentary on the Bible mentioned above, produced by the co-operation of a galaxy of scholars and men of culture, was expected to sweep aside all mystic and allegoric interpretations of the Scriptures and introduce the rational and ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... RICHARD.—Abelard possessed perhaps the broadest and greatest mind of the whole of the Middle Ages. After these famous names must be mentioned Hugo de Saint-Victor, a somewhat obscure mystic of German origin; and the not less mystical Richard, who, thoroughly persuaded that God is not attained by reason but by feeling, taught exaltation to Him by detachment from self and by six degrees: renunciation, elevation, ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... tribes north of the Ohio River. In this they were successfully aided by Tecumseh, the Shawanee chief, and his brother, the Prophet. These were sons of a Creek mother and a Shawanee brave. By relationship, and by the rude eloquence of the former and the mystic arts and incantations of the latter, they brought into confederacy with Northern tribes—which they had organized as allies of the English in a last hope of destroying American power in the West—almost the entire Creek nation. These ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith
... Iphigenie. At first this medievalism was superficial, or at least external. Adventure, romance in the frankest sense, grotesque individualism—that is one element in medieval poetry, and with it alone Scott and Goethe dealt. Beyond them were the two other elements of the medieval spirit: its mystic religion at its apex in Dante and Saint Louis, and its mystic passion, passing here and there into the great romantic loves of rebellious flesh, of Lancelot and Abelard. That stricter, imaginative medievalism which re-creates the mind of the Middle Age, so that the form, the presentment ...
— Aesthetic Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... produce something, that we bring into the world something that was not choately there before; that at least we fashion or shape something anew; and we ought to feel the tie that binds us to all the toilers of the shop and field, not as a galling chain, but as a mystic bond also uniting us to Him ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of defeated gods, or of the worn-out evil passions that troubled old creation before the coming of man, and the fresh order of spiritual and carnal bewilderment. Why should I go on and seek further amazement, while from the lowest to the highest I can read not one of the mystic figures of the solitude around me? What is my relation to them, and theirs to me? Why should that beetle in the grass, upon whose back all the colours of the prism change and glow like supernatural fire, trouble me with the cause and motive of its beauty? Why ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... flight, and had with her a small box containing her valuables and nick-nacks. Among the most curious of these was a necklace composed of amulets, or charms, which, it will be observed, are all attributes of Isis and her attendant, Anubis, or of her husband Osiris, here considered as Bacchus. The mystic articles kept in the Isiac coffer were, says Eusebius, a ball, dice, (turbo) wheel, mirror, lock ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... articles. On the other hand, I distinctly recall having to wait one day in his chambers while Jimmy was shaving, and noticing accidentally a long, bulky envelope on his table, with the Saturday Review's mystic crest on it. It was addressed to Jimmy, and contained, I concluded, a bundle of proofs. That was so long ago as 1885. If further evidence is required, there is the undoubted fact, to which several of us could take oath, that, at Oxford, ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... of their position,—there have come to us but a few vague whisperings of what passed in Miriam's interview that afternoon with the sinister personage who had dogged her footsteps ever since the visit to the catacomb. In weaving these mystic utterances into a continuous scene, we undertake a task resembling in its perplexity that of gathering up and piecing together the fragments ora letter which has been torn and scattered to the winds. Many words of deep significance, many entire sentences, and those possibly ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... bitter to thee, pardon, If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live; And to give thanks is good, and to forgive. Out of the mystic and the mournful garden Where all day through thine hands in barren braid Wove the sick flowers of secrecy and shade, Green buds of sorrow and sin, and remnants grey, Sweet-smelling, pale with poison, sanguine-hearted, Passions ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... ways, descending, as we go, through an intricate labyrinth. We arrive in a large room, dimly lighted. Ghastly images are before us and around us, the mystic symbols of a horrid religion! The walls are hung with hideous shapes and skins of wild beasts. We can see the fierce visages of the grizzly bear, of the white buffalo, of the carcajou, of the panther, and the ravenous wolf. We can recognise the horns and frontlets of the elk, the ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... are nothing but chimeras of pride and prejudice, is, that in our day, we no longer witness that taste for ancient mystic gallantry, no more of those old fashioned gigantic passions. Ridicule the most firmly established opinions, I will go further, deride the feelings that are believed to be the most natural and soon both will disappear, ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... waters, the fire, and the air; and the living powers of them are Demeter, the Latin Ceres; Poseidon, the Latin Neptune; Apollo, who has retained always his Greek name; and Athena, the Latin Minerva. Each of these are descended from, or changed from, more ancient, and therefore more mystic, deities of the earth and heaven, and of a finer element of aether supposed to be beyond the heavens;* but at this time we find the four quite definite, both in their kingdoms and in their personalities. ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... of reading were cultivated in America as it is in France and Germany, I would not be surprised if some American Legouve or Strakosch were to add to his repertoire such productions of prose as this humorously poetic "Zeus's Sentence," or that mystic madrigal, ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,
... statement of the "Autocrat" appears to me at least as certain as that two and two make four. It may, indeed, contain some recondite and malignant reference which the stupid American divines know, and which I do not; it may be a mystic Shibboleth, indicating far more than it asserts; as at one time in Scotland it was esteemed as proof that a clergyman preached unsound doctrine, if he made use of the Lord's Prayer. But, understanding it simply as meaning that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... for the "it" of a fictitious aspiration, the approach to a Living Friend? Sanctity is in character and not in moods; Divinity in our own plain calm humanity, and in no mystic rapture ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... few years severe physical suffering had brought the unfortunate second king of the house of Ptolemy to this place to seek the aid of the ancient Egyptian gods, and, besides the philosophy, busy himself with the mystic teachings and magic arts of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... seest thou there, and with whom holdest thou communion? For then the light and subtile wrinkles weave their living mesh across thy spotless brow, like silken threads untwining by an unseen power from viewless coils, and thine eyes sparkle, freighted with mystic meanings, which none are able to interpret! Then thy grandam calls in vain, 'George, George!' and weeps, for thou heedest her not, and she fears thou dost not love her! Friends and relations then appeal to thee in vain, for thou seemest not ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... consummation and bliss", that the "Church expectant" and the "Church militant" are not two Churches, but the one Church of Christ in two places and in two states, on earth and in Paradise, fighting and waiting; that they have still "mystic sweet communion" in praise and worship and prayer—the Church in Paradise leading our worship as the choir leads the worship of ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... a somewhat mystic personage, who foresees every misfortune, {492} prophetically sees her son in the fearful monster's jaws; she veils herself shuddering ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... enthusiasm the greatest motive power of humanity, there remains something more to be considered. The man who could appreciate the value of the personal consolations brought by the Bible-woman to the poor and down-trodden, and the infinitely comfortable assurance of the mystic, firm as hypnotic conviction, that he is the direct associate and instrument of the Almighty, whether submissive or arrogant, from Stephen to the Bab, from Cromwell and Gordon to Bismarck and his Imperial ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... to their villages and showed them about to their fellow Pygmies. So, in a sense, the Pygmies of Societas "captured" me, and showed me about to their fellow denizens of this Land of Lilliput. They "discharged their arrows" (which they called "In-Vites", and each of which was branded with the mystic letters, R.S.V.P.) at me in swarms, and though they rather tickled than hurt, yet after a time their minute but multiplied prickings became no end ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 17, 1890. • Various
... God?" the interior meaning of the word "chastity;" the difference between chastity and asceticism; the unbroken line connecting ancient ideas of sex, with modern; the attitude of religious systems toward women; why women are supporters of the churches in modern days; the "mystic bride" and the mystical meaning; William James comments on the spiritual ecstacy of St. Teresa; Swedenborg on "Conjugal love;" trances; ecstacies; and visions of saints; the term "virgin," and its origin; the evolution ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... "To this mystic pool herdsman and monarchs alike receive summons and admission. The most Christian King must, for his own sake, accomplish his own sanctification; his sanctification provides for ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... accepted standards in sweeping, scrubbing and dusting. House-cleaning is becoming a specialized, skilled trade, performed by the visiting expert and his staff of professionally trained employes. Even if as yet these skilled and paid workers enter an ordinary home only at long intervals, when the mystic process of spring cleaning seems to justify the expense, the day is plainly in sight when the usual weekly cleaning will be taken over by these same visitors. At present the abruptness of the change is broken for us by the introduction into the market, and the use by ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... Behold the baits with which he fishes for souls, giving a poor space of earthly life in exchange for eternal happiness hereafter. Well said our blessed rule, 'Semper percutiatur leo vorans'.—Up on the lion! Down with the destroyer!" said he, shaking aloft his mystic abacus, as if in defiance of the powers of darkness—"Thy daughter worketh the cures, I doubt not," thus he went on to address the Jew, "by words and sighs, and periapts, and other ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... whose fame she had eagerly absorbed from afar, so you too, drawn by love of knowledge, came to Paris and found a much desired model of Jerusalem, sought for by many. For here David strikes his harp of ten chords, here with mystic touch he composes the psalms. Here Isaiah is read and in the reading his prophecies are revealed; here the rest of the prophets present their diverse strains of harmonious melody. Here the wisdom of Solomon is open for the instruction of those who have gathered ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... noisy commandings and scoldings, even less beating of the patient horses that have to carry such heavy loads in Russia. Instead of these, a gentleness and graciousness, something of that which one finds in artistic and mystic communities in Russia, in art and in pictures, but which one seldom meets with in public life. Here at New Athos breathes a true Christianity. It was strange how even the undying curiosity of the Russian had been conquered; for here I was not asked the thousand and one impertinent questions ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... a fairer opportunity offered for commencing this mystic tie than that which now presented itself to Catharine. After many and various thoughts, sleep had at length overcome the stout armourer in the chair in which he had deposited himself. His features, in repose, had a more firm and manly cast than Catharine ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... the mound, the thyme had flowered, the wind sighed in the grass. The azure morning had spread its arms over the low tomb; and full glowing noon burned on it; the purple of sunset rosied the sward. Stars, ruddy in the vapour of the southern horizon, beamed at midnight through the mystic summer night, which is dusky and yet full of light. White mists swept up and hid it; dews rested on the turf; tender harebells drooped; the wings of the finches fanned the air—finches whose colours faded from the wings how many centuries ago! Brown autumn dwelt in the ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... it.—And now let this singular person remain for a time unmentioned; yet, trust me, though flattery, avarice, and ambition may fail to gain him, a bait nevertheless remains, that shall make him as completely our own as any that is bound within our mystic and inviolable contract. Tell me then, how go on the affairs of the empire? Does this tide of Xiatin warriors, so strangely set aflowing, still rush on to the banks of the Bosphorus? and does Alexius still entertain hopes to diminish and divide the strength of numbers, which ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... time since the days of S. Thomas was the saint's scientific method more lacking. Everywhere there is need for a mystic doctrine, which in itself is neither hypnotism nor hysteria, and in its expression is neither superlative nor apostrophic, lest the hungered minds of men die of surfeit following ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... coordination of muscular effort. In the light of knowledge gained in later years, I can now see in that long, slouching, shuffling figure, in that tallow-colored face with the bloodless, loose lips and the wandering, mystic eyes of periwinkle blue—I can see in that girl-face framed by a trashy picture-hat, and in that girl-form wrapped in the old golf-cape, one of the earth's unfortunates; a congenital failure; a female creature doomed from her mother's womb—physically, ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... The mystic merging of Beatrice into ideal beauty is, of course, mentioned often in nineteenth century poetry, most sympathetically, perhaps, by Rossetti. [Footnote: See On the Vita Nuova of Dante; also Dante at Verona.] ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... this soundless music thrills me with its mysterious power, and sometimes it throws me into dejection, though I cannot tell why. To me, when what I firmly believe was the great anthem of this wonderful race, was played in the sky with spectral harmonies, there was, underlying all its mystic beauty, an infinite sadness, an impending sense of something ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... sparkling strain, full of riant laughter, recalls the sad students who wandered past, and then from amid the airy ripple of notes comes the sweet, mellow strain of the 'cello, which tells of love eternal amid the summer roses; how the tender melody sweeps on full of the perfume and mystic meanings of that night. Hark! is that the nightingale in the trees, or only the silvery notes of a violin, which comes stealing through the steady throb and swing of the heavier stringed instruments? ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... he had served his apprenticeship, and was meet for his opportunity. For eight long months he had stood in line, doing his duty quietly and well, asking no favor of anybody. And now at last Warwick had beckoned him and set the mystic star ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... travel-their having crossed the sea is, with us, so great a distinction. Our antiquaries abandon time for distance; our very fops glance from the binding to the bottom of the title-page, where the mystic characters which spell London, Paris, or Genoa, are precisely so many letters ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... these prison-like walls and gaze from my tempestuous distance upon those peaceful lives set apart from earth's rush and turmoil in a fair and blessed haven of the Lord. I longed to see those pure visionaries, pale spouses of Christ, and read upon illumined faces the unspeakable rapture of mystic union with the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... gloom with which she had made her first preparations for Lady Tressady. Yet she had made them. Is there really some mystic power, as the Christians say, in every act of self-sacrifice, however imperfect,—a power that represents at once the impelling and the rewarding God,—that generates, moreover, from its own exercise, the force to repeat itself? Personally such a point ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... when they crossed the bar and passed the little key inside the mouth of the river, but they sailed up the stream by the light of the stars, which gave mystic beauty to the smooth water and the shadowy outlines of the tropical forest that bordered the banks of the river. Captain Hull anchored the Irene for the night in Tussock Bay, at the head of the lower division of Harney's River, ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... more upon the broken tables, and ponder upon the strange signs written by time thereon. The insistent fall of the rain, the incisive blasts of the wind, coming again and again, though the centuries went, were registered here in mystic runes. The surface had weathered to a whitish-gray, but still in tiny depressions its pristine dark color showed in rugose characters. A splintered fissure held delicate fucoid impressions in fine script full of meaning. A series ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... these delicate wrappings for chalice and paten, she stitched her heart. To work at them was prayer. Jesus, and His Mother, and the Saints; it was with them she communed as her stitches flowed. She sat in a mystic, a heavenly world. And the silence and solitude of her work made one of its chief charms. And now to be asked to share it with a strange girl, who could not love it as she did, who would take it as hard business—never to be ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... there was, who dwelt In an old gray collage all alone— She turned her wheel the live long day— There was music, I ween, in its solemn drone. As she twisted the flax, the threads of thought Kept twisting too, dark, mystic threads— And the tales she told were legends old, Quaint fancies, woven ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... right.' Micklethwaite laughed in a new way, with scarcely any sound; a change Everard had already noticed. 'These two sisters—but I had better not speak about them. In my old age I have become a worshipper, a mystic, a man of dream ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... small islands, stretching out to the horizon on the right, and a boundless wilderness of trees on the left. Here were collected the ladies and gentlemen of Norway House, and a number of indescribable personages, apparently engaged in mystic preparations for the approaching feast. It was with something like awe that I entered the schoolroom, and beheld two long rows of tables covered with puddings, pies, tarts, stews, hashes, and vegetables of all shapes, sizes, and descriptions, ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity—an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn—a pestilent and mystic vapor, dull, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... There is a mystic fascination in precious stones and, gazing at them, Heyton yielded to that fascination and forgot for a moment, as his eyes dwelt on their flashing beauty, the need which had compelled him to steal them; but presently he ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... from my window have I seen the day Break o'er thy roofs and towers like a dream In mystic silver, mirrored by the Bay, Bedecked with shadow craft ... and then a gleam Of golden sunlight cleaving swiftly sure Some narrow cloud-rift—limning hill or plain With flecks of gypsy-radiance that endure But for the moment and are ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... inspired by a tropic forest is certainly greater than the mystic fear which any wooded wilderness of the North could ever have created. The brilliancy of colors that seem almost preternatural; the vastness of the ocean of frondage, and the violet blackness of rare gaps, revealing ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... Francis. However, he has sold to his editor a book entitled 'Les Blandices', which contains, he says, the description of all sorts of loves. He flatters himself that in it he has shown himself a criminal with some elegance. But far from harming his mystic undertakings, this book favors them in this sense, that, corrected by his later work, he will become honest and exemplary; and the gold that he has received in payment, which would not have been paid to him for a more chaste volume, will serve ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... my husband's fault if he formed a different opinion. And indeed I cannot but think that the holy saints themselves would have laughed if they had heard me reading aloud, in the voice and intonation which I had assumed for the meditations of St. Francis of Assisi, the mystic allusions to "certs," and "bookies," and "punters," and "evens," and "scratchings," which formed the substance of the sporting journals that ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... his oars and the crazy little bark shot out into the middle of the stream. At the entrance of the first labyrinthine winding he turned and looked back to see Godwyn standing upon the bank, the moonlight silvering his thin hair and high serene brow. In the mystic white light, against the expanse of solemn heaven, he looked a vision, a seer or prophet risen from beneath the sighing grass. He waved his hand to Landless, saying in his quiet voice, "Until to-morrow!" The boat made the turn, and the lonely ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... nature shall be in friendly co-operation. "I will cause the shower to come down in his season." We are to have mystic allies in sky and field. Nature sides with the man who sides with God. Our very garden becomes our helpmeet when we are cultivating the fruits of the Spirit. The heavens assume a friendly aspect when we are "marching to beautiful ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... had gradually been eliminating the Neo-Platonic, mystic element, and returning to pure Aristotelianism. In Averroes, who professed to be merely a commentator on Aristotle, this tendency reached its climax; and though he still regarded the pseudo-Aristotelian works as genuine, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... its windswept appearance. But other important buildings have been added; walks and driveways have been laid out; trees have been planted and have attained, on the southerly slope, a thick and heavy growth, and are beginning to get a hold upon the northerly side; the reservoir of the Mystic Water Works is established upon the summit of the hill, and, in effect, forms a part of the College grounds; so that, in the summer season, there is no more beautiful or attractive spot in the whole region about ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... stream has secret power Upon the human heart, And, as you drink, the mystic draught Shall joy or woe impart; 'T will give you pleasant ...
— Small Means and Great Ends • Edited by Mrs. M. H. Adams
... Richmond, the home of his childhood, the darkening clouds of which, viewed through the softening lens of years, may have shaded off to brighter tints, as the roughness of a landscape disappears and melts into mystic, dreamy beauty as we journey far from ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... into the curling smoke, one thin hand upraised, the long calico gown wrinkling about his spare body, the paper cap on his head, he would have looked like some alchemist of old, or weird necromancer weaving a mystic spell. Sometimes, as you watched his face, with the glow of the coals lighting up his earnest eyes, there would have flashed across his troubled features, as heat lightning illumines a cloud, some sudden brightness from within followed by a quick smile ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... higher pleasure in the philosophical discourse which calls for the deep sea line to reach bottom; but best of all, when one is in the right mood, is the contact of intelligences when they are off soundings in the ocean of thought. Mr. Oliphant is what many of us call a mystic, and I found a singular pleasure in listening to him. This dinner at Mr. Lowell's was a very remarkable one for the men it brought together, and I remember it with peculiar interest. My entertainer holds a master-key to London ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... are earnest and true, uncorrupted by the vices of self-interest, and unseduced by the pleasures of factitious life, then even nature, in all her wildness, is a teacher and an inspiration. The grand landscape, the rugged rocks, the mystic forests, and the lofty mountains, barren though they be, bring out higher sentiments than the smiling vineyard, or the rich orange- grove, or the fertile corn-field, where slaves do the labor, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... live in terror of ghosts," she cried, looking about apprehensively. "Would you believe it, sir, up to the time I was married I could not bear the thought of being left alone in the house for a single minute of the night. The darkness, the mystic flicker of the lights, the stillness seemed to swarm with spirits—Oh, you don't know how I suffered with ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... painted wooden walls, still sticky with pigment, there could be heard, all day, and sometimes far into the night, the buzz and whir of machinery and other more mystic sounds. The village was on tenter-hooks of curiosity, but there being no side windows to peer through, and a watchman of ferocious aspect stationed at the door, their inquisitiveness was, perforce, unsatisfied. Not even a sign appeared ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... you, a watchmaker and a petit bourgeois, should experience what many a saint has died without realizing! I salute you, mystic, descendent of ...
— Read-Aloud Plays • Horace Holley
... systems of Kant and Schelling; and in proportion as his speculative activity increased, his creative force declined. There is enough of the marvellous and the unexplained in "Christabel," and "The Ancient Mariner"; but the "mystic ruby" and the "blue flower" of the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... to greet The greater Infant's feet, The Mother standing by, with trembling passion Of devout admiration, Beholds the engaging mystic play, and pretty adoration; Nor knows as yet the full event Of those so low beginnings, From whence we date our winnings, But wonders at the intent Of those new rites, and what that strange child-worship meant. But at her side An angel doth abide, With such a perfect ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... de Leon's opponents expected to overwhelm him by the suddenness, vehemence, or volume of their attack, they must speedily have been disillusioned. The mystic poet proved to be a formidable fighting-man. Before very long it must have dawned upon the Inquisitionary deputies at Valladolid that they had caught a Tartar. Unversed in the ways of the world, Luis de Leon came of a legal stock, and was thoroughly at home in a ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... forces of organic nature. Foaming with light, the eddying waves flash in phosphorent sparks over the wide expanse of waters, where every scintillation is the vital manifestation of an invisible animal world.' Beneath the surface larger forms are seen, brilliantly illuminated, and lighting up the mystic depths of the sea. Fiery balls and flaming ribbons shoot past; and submarine moons shine with a soft and steady light amidst the crowds of meteors. 'While sailing a little south of the Plata on one very dark ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... succession, to abstain from intercourse with all mortal women, and to perform ceremonial worship to the moon every night, at the hour of that planet, in the open fields. This would make me fit to regenerate Madame d'Urfe myself in case Querilinthos, for some mystic reasons, might not be ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Mouse's voice pierced keenly through the air. I was right glad when the little creature came and sat on my knee, and in its affectionate way began to nibble at my finger-tips. It sat erect, its thin paws waving with a tiny, measured swing, and in its mystic voice, so infinitely small, so sweet and yet so majestically strong, began a song which no pen can transcribe. Knowing that the awakening must come, but unwilling to lose a moment of the dream, I, who with one finger could have crushed the little thing, ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... heterogeneous in their ethnic characteristics to furnish a soil for tribal instincts and passions. The passionate loves and hatreds of the clans, their pride of race, their deathless lealty; and more than all, and better than all, their religious instincts, faiths and prejudices; these, with the mystic, wild loveliness of heather-clad hill and rock-rimmed loch, of roaring torrent and jagged crags, of lonely muir and sunny pasture nuiks; all these, and ten thousand nameless and unnamable things united in the weaving of the spell of the Glen upon the hearts of its people. ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... is the exceptional soul which is alone affected—the seer of visions, the prophet. And it is not necessarily in connection with the ordinary worship, or customary sacrifice, that such instances of mystic communion with the gods are manifested. For the development of the mystical tendency of worship and sacrifice, we must look, not to the lowest, or to the earliest, stages of religious evolution, but to a later stage in the ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons
... with those frivolous productions of which Luigi Pulci has furnished the most peccant exemplar—a compendium of extravagances and incongruities the farthest removed from the models of a pure age, and resembling rather the grylli or conceits of a period when mystic meaning was held a warrant for monstrosity of form; with this difference, that while the monstrosity is retained, the mystic meaning is absent; in contemptible contrast with the great poem of Virgil, who, as I long held with Filelfo, before Landino had taken upon him to expound ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... a good commentator, with a subtle, refining, philosophical head, and you shall have the edification of seeing him draw the most sublime allegories and the most venerable mystic truths from my history of the noble Gargantua and Pantagruel. I don't despair of being proved, to the entire satisfaction of some future ape, to have been, without exception, the profoundest divine and metaphysician that ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... of the fair was still transacted at large throughout the hotel. From behind the mound of mutton chops a buyer shoved a roll of dirty one-pound notes round the potato dish, and after due haggling received back one, according to the mystic Irish custom of "luck-penny". On the sofa two farmers carried on a transaction in which the swap of a colt, boot money, and luck-penny were blended into one trackless maze of astuteness and arithmetic. On the wall above them a print in which Ananias and Sapphira were the central figures gave ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... that he possessed one, and was by no means the plain and simple character I had been led to believe was apparent to me from the first glimpse I had of these rooms; there being in every little object that marked his taste a certain individuality and purpose that betrayed a stern and mystic soul; one that could hide itself, perhaps, beneath a practical exterior, but which, in ways like this, must speak, and speak loudly too, of its ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... spectral bluff, that Hubbard and I, on a wet July night, had pitched our first camp of the other trip. In fancy I was back again in that camp and Hubbard was talking to me and telling me of the "bully story" of the mystic land of won- ders that lay "behind the ranges" he would have to take back ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... confirmed Balzacian?—to employ a former expression of Gautier in Jeune France on the morrow following the appearance of that mystic Rabelaisian epic, The Magic Skin. Have you experienced, while reading at school or clandestinely some stray volume of the Comedie Humaine, a sort of exaltation such as no other book had aroused ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... of the swamp, and the air about was horror—down, down, till the chilly waters stung her knees; and then with one grip she seized the oak, while the great hand of Elspeth twisted and tore her soul. Faint, afar, nearer and nearer and ever mightier, rose a song of mystic melody. She heard its human voice and sought to cry aloud. She strove again and again with that gripping, twisting pain—that awful hand—until the shriek ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... danger. The young man had long ago, it must be added, demanded of his grandfather the documents included in the legacy of Professor Swinnerton, and had spent days and nights upon them, growing pale over their mystic lore, which seemed the fruit not merely of the Professor's own labors, but of those of more ancient sages than he; and often a whole volume seemed to be compressed within the limits of a few lines of crabbed manuscript, judging from the time which it cost ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... abominable to her in the midst of the bowing bodies and the humming voices of prayer. Each time he struck at the mosque and uttered his piercing cry she seemed to hear an oath spoken in a sanctuary. She longed to stop him. This one blasphemer began to destroy for her the mystic atmosphere created by the multitudes of adorers, and at last she could no longer ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... Chickahominy, the enemy were continually watching our movements from lines of balloons floating high up in the air, anchored in place by stout ropes. They created quite a mystic and superstitious feeling among some of the most credulous. One night while a member of Company C, Third South Carolina, was on picket among some tangled brushwood on the crest of the hill overlooking the river, he created quite a stir by seeing a strange ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... basis for ethics. In the East, this idea has not appealed to the thinker in the sense in which the word Intuition is used in the West. The moralist in the East has based ethics on Revelation, or on Evolution, or on Illumination—the last being the basis of the Mystic. Intuition—which by moralists like Theodore Parker, Frances Power Cobb, and many Theists, is spoken of as the "Voice of God" in the human soul—is identified by these with "conscience," so that to base morality on Intuition ...
— The Basis of Morality • Annie Besant
... sake. But the highest grade of all is not reached, until men come to love even themselves only by relation to God; at this point, with the disappearance of all special and interested affection, the mystic goal is attained. ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... not so able as in old years to commune alone with Nature . . . Dim mystic sympathies with tree and hill reaching far back into childhood, a known landskip is to me an old friend, that continually talks to me of my own youth and half-forgotten things, and indeed does more for me than many an old friend that I know. An old ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... he was about to put himself into the hands of justice, that he might atone in a striking way for the crimes with which he was polluted. This man, endowed as he was with conspicuous abilities, had acquired a mystic eloquence in the cloister. He spoke with so much grace and persuasiveness that I was fascinated no less than the abbe. It was in vain that the latter attempted to combat a resolution which appeared to him insane; John Mauprat showed the most ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... belonging to the government." Addressing the Southerners, he said: "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you.... We are not enemies but friends.... The mystic cords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... upon his Snake with due and portentous ceremony and, according to Stephen, who was present, which I declined to be, that mystic reptile declared that Dogeetah, alias Brother John, would arrive in Beza Town precisely at sunset on the third day from that night. Now as he had divined on Friday, according to our almanac, this meant that we might hope to see him—hope exactly described ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... distracted with sorrow. When he seemed on the verge of insanity a friend, Bowling Green, took him to his own home and nursed him back to health, and the grief settled into that temperamental melancholy, which, relieved only by his humor, was part of the deep mystic there was in him, part of the prophet, the sadness that so early baptised him in the tragedy of life, and taught him to ...
— Life of Abraham Lincoln - Little Blue Book Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 324 • John Hugh Bowers
... her to Agnes, but again she was reluctant. And perhaps it was this aversion to acknowledge the dead, whose images alone have immortality, that made her own image somewhat transient, so that when he left her no mystic influence remained, and only by an effort could he realize that ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... the deep heaven without a cloud, Burning like molten gold. A red canoe Crosses with fan-like paddles and the sound Of feminine song, freighted with great-eyed maids Whose unzoned bosoms swell on the rich air; A lamp is in each hand; some mystic rite Go they to try. Such rites the birds may see, Ibis or emu, from their cocoa nooks,— What time the granite sentinels that watch The mouths of cavern-temples hail the first Faint star, and feel the gradual darkness blend Their august lineaments;—what time Haroun Perambulated Bagdat, ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... expedition, which Speke made with the king to the Nyanza, they landed on an island inhabited by a magician and his wife, who were supposed to be priests of of the water-spirit of the lake. His head was decorated with numerous mystic symbols, among them a paddle, the badge of his high office. He was dressed in a little, white, goat-skin apron, adorned by various charms, and, instead of a walking-stick to support his steps, he used a paddle. Though not an old man, he pretended to be so, walking slowly ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... origin of the bridal veil and similar concealments. The bridal veil is used, to take a few instances, in China, Burmah, Corea, Russia, Bulgaria, Manchuria, and Persia, and in all these cases it conceals the face entirely." (E. Crawley, The Mystic Rose, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Nimroud.[485] The more important of the two was actually touching that tower (Fig. 188). The character of the building is at once betrayed by the nature of its sculptures, which are religious rather than historical—figures of gods and genii, scenes of adoration and mystic theology. And it was not without a purpose that it was put into close juxtaposition with a zigguratt, an arrangement that proves it to have formed a part of a collection of buildings consecrated, by the prince whose dwelling covered the rest of the ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... first months of the war there was, we were told, in England and France a revival of "religion," and indeed many of the books then written gave evidence of having been composed in exalted, mystic moods. I remember one in particular, called "En Campagne," by a young French officer. And then, somehow, the note of mystic exaltation died away, to be succeeded by a period of realism. Read "Le Feu," which is most typical, which has sold in numberless editions. Here ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... her acquaintance, he certainly knew much about her. "On Wednesday we expect a third she-meteor," he wrote to Richard West, July 31, 1740. "Those learned luminaries the Ladies Pomfret and Walpole[9] are to be joined by the Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. You have not been witness to the rhapsody of mystic nonsense which these two fair ones debate incessantly, and consequently cannot figure what must be the issue of this triple alliance: we have some idea of it. Only figure the coalition of prudery, debauchery, sentiment, ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... it is necessary first to define "knowing," which cannot be done yet. But I will say, as a preliminary answer, that the feeling assumes an ideal of knowing which I believe to be quite mistaken. It assumes, if it is thought out, something like the mystic unity of knower and known. These two are often said to be combined into a unity by the fact of cognition; hence when this unity is plainly absent, it may seem as if there were no genuine cognition. For my part, I think such theories and feelings wholly mistaken: I believe ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... vagueness, of the memory gave it an added poignancy. He felt the mystic pang of the parent for a child which has just breathed and died. Why had it happened thus, when the least shifting of influences might have made it all so different? If she had been given to him then he would have put warmth in her veins ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... hum of the great city rising below her—at times even in theatres or crowded assemblies of men and women—she forgot herself, and again stood in the weird brilliancy of that moonlight night in mute worship at the foot of that slowly-rising mystic altar of piled terraces, hanging forests, and lifted plateaus that climbed forever to the lonely skies. Again she felt before her the expanding and opening arms of the protecting woods. Had they really ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... and when he did, told himself that he was too intelligent to believe in a literal heaven, a literal hell, and a personal God personally interfering in human affairs like any Jove or Odin. But the moment he rejected a concrete religion Vandover was almost helpless. He was not mystic enough to find any meaning in signs or symbols, nor philosophic enough to grasp vague and immense abstractions. Infinities, Presences, Forces, could not help him withstand temptation, could not strengthen him against the brute. He felt that somewhere, some time, ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... would fail to meet the great issue when it came! Madame Bretton was too much of a woman for that. Instead she had a long talk with her children and afterward a letter was dispatched to the relatives in that mystic land, America. Soon a reply came back. Madame Bretton had come of fine peasant stock, and her brother had carried with him into the new land of which he had become a citizen his native loyalty and bigness ...
— The Story of Silk • Sara Ware Bassett
... has been called "The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day" in order to emphasize as much as possible the practical, here-and-now nature of its subject; and specially to combat the idea that the spiritual life—or the mystic life, as its more intense manifestations are sometimes called—is to be regarded as primarily a matter of history. It is not. It is a matter of biology. Though we cannot disregard history in our study of it, that history will only be valuable ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... "obstetric." From this state of affairs one can only expect that psychoanalysis for many people who have taken a certain pose, in which they firmly believe, is a real torture, because according to the ancient mystic saying: "Give what you have, then shall you receive!" They must of their own free will offer as a price their beloved illusions if they wish to allow something deeper, more beautiful and more vast to enrich them. Only through the mystery of self-sacrifice does the self ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... his vision, and it reefed the high topsail that rustled over Columbus in the morning breezes of the Bahamas. It has held the sword with which freedom has fought her battles, and poised the axe of the dauntless woodman as he opened the paths of civilization, and turned the mystic leaves upon which Milton and Shakespeare inscribed their ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... voice died down to an inarticulate murmur and then stopped. A moment afterwards the curtains were drawn back, the shutters parted, and the windows thrown open. A flood of sunset light streamed into the room. The candles burnt yellow and went out. The mystic rites ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... their caterer, Hight GLUTTONY, set forth the smoaking feast. And by his side came on a brother form, With fiery cheek of purple hue, and red And scurfy-white, mix'd motley; his gross bulk, Like some huge hogshead shapen'd, as applied. Him had antiquity with mystic rites Ador'd, to him the sons of Greece, and thine Imperial Rome, on many an altar pour'd The victim blood, with godlike titles graced, BACCHUS, or DIONUSUS; son of JOVE, Deem'd falsely, for from FOLLY'S ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... the number of those qualified to bear arms, and the like details in reference to the population of the kingdom. These returns were annually forwarded to the capital, where they were submitted to the inspection of officers acquainted with the art of deciphering these mystic records. The government was thus provided with a valuable mass of statistical information, and the skeins of many-colored threads, collected and carefully preserved, constituted what might ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... fountain of life itself. It is spontaneous, generous, infinite. To its presence we are indebted for all that is good, true, and beautiful in Art and Nature. It endows humanity with countless virtues, and throws a mystic veil over our many faults. It is this feeling, this immutable law, which controls the destiny of the race. From its influence empires have fallen, scepters have been lost. Literature owes to Love its choicest gems. The poet's lay is sweeter when Cupid tunes the lyre. The artist's ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... sang the poet Schiller, and "Mother Nature" is the key-word of those modern poets who, in their mystic philosophy, consciously or unconsciously, revive the old mythologies. With primitive peoples the being, growing power of the universe was easily conceived as feminine and as motherly. Nature is the "great parent," the "gracious ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... mind grows faster and the heart more slowly; then wakes the storm in the forest of human relation, tempest and lightning abroad, the soul enlarging by great bursts of vision and leaps of understanding and resolve; then floats up the mystic twilight eagerness, not unmingled with the dismay of compelled progress, when, bidding farewell to that which is behind, the soul is driven toward that which is before, grasping at it with all the hunger of the new birth. The story ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... same with the young men on the other side of the Rhine, and there as here, they were escorted by their gods: Country, Justice, Right, Liberty, Progress of the World, Eden-like dreams of re-born humanity, a whole phantasmagoria of mystic ideas in which young men shrouded their passions. None doubted that his cause was the right one, they left discussion to others, themselves the living proof, for he who gives his ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... celebrated snuffs before the public a great variety of qualities and descriptions of tobacco, and of various ages, are introduced. Hardham, like the rest, never told his secret how the snuff was made, but left it as a heritage to his successors. It is very probable, therefore, that the mystic figures, 37, we have quoted represented the number of qualities, growths, and description of the 'fragrant weed' introduced by him into his snuff, and may be regarded as a sort of appellative rebus, or ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... be quite close when the digging went on; but Albert's uncle made us a mystic sign ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit |
