"Occult" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had been able to follow, Mrs. Veda Blair's story had dealt mostly with a Professor and Madame Rapport and something she called the "Red Lodge" of the "Temple of the Occult." ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... the lotus in some occult fashion, are straightway bewitched and held willing captives. I have looked up the lotus, about which so much is said or sung and so little definitely known, and find it is a prickly shrub of Africa, bearing a fruit of a sweet ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... but the silent one before him gave unuttered command for silence. The conflict was on. Not a conflict of gleaming blades; not a conflict of cunning, neither of Senatorial oratory, nor contention of the wise gone mad. In the arena of the occult was the conflict on between such forces as move constellations and give birth to worlds. And the one force was white and the one was black. The one was the will of God leading by way of man's reason to Liberty and Life. The other was perversion leading by ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... growing anxiety communicated itself in some occult way to the other members of her household, even to Loll, to whom she gave daily lessons in reading, writing and arithmetic. The little fellow was at this time moved to write and illustrate a book on some ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... the horrors of the underworld were, for her, congregated together in him. She trembled at the memory of having been in his arms, shut up alone with him in the flat by the river. She attributed to him nameless powers. Something mysterious in him, something occult, had reduced her apparently to the level of an imaginative child, who peoples the night with spectres and conceives of terrors she ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... every applicant a proof of some special deed of ferocity before admission, the most guilty of their champions veiling their crimes under the specious pretexts of vegetarianism, the scientific investigation of supernatural phenomena, vulgarly called ghost-catching, political economy, and other occult and dull studies. But though not yet admitted a neophyte of this body, the prisoner has taken one necessary step towards initiation, in learning the special language spoken at all the meetings of these incendiaries: for this body differs from the other two in using a sort of cant language ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris
... alluded to in the monumental records of either nation, and they are supposed to have represented the sun, the moon, the stars, and various other powers, to which were delegated by the unseen and occult supreme deity the oversight of this world. They presided over cities and the elements of Nature, like the rain, the thunder, the winds, the air, the water. Some abode in heaven, some on the earth, and some ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... refined and extended the illusion that she had been transported out of the world by some occult agency. The wonderful creature that had taken her up out of her abandoned misery before the sordid shop-shutter appeared now in a fairy costume glittering with jewels. And the gnomes, the monsters and goblins appearing about her were all fabulous creatures, as the girl herself ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... glanced up, and his gaze flickered over Jim like summer lightning, inspiring in the young man so strong a feeling of repulsion that it almost amounted to nausea. There was something horribly magnetic in the look, and Jim felt that this man possessed some strange occult power which was ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... luscious and over-sweet, or fat, as oil, vinegar, verjuice, mustard, salt; as sweet things are obstructive, so these are corrosive. Gomesius, in his books, de sale, l. 1. c. 21, highly commends salt; so doth Codronchus in his tract, de sale Absynthii, Lemn. l. 3. c. 9. de occult, nat. mir. yet common experience finds salt, and salt-meats, to be great procurers of this disease. And for that cause belike those Egyptian priests abstained from salt, even so much, as in their bread, ut sine perturbatione ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... through his thick curls. But he was still mute; he was still ruefully chewing the cud of the epithet green. What occult horrid meaning did the word convey to ears polite? Why should ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... that a body should act upon the earth at the distance of the sun or moon, as we find it to conceive an end to space or time, or two straight lines inclosing a space. Newton himself had not been able to realize the conception, or we should not have had his hypothesis of a subtle ether, the occult cause of gravitation; and his writings prove, that although he deemed the particular nature of the intermediate agency a matter of conjecture, the necessity of some such agency appeared to him indubitable. It would seem that, even now, the majority ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... conscious dignity of secretaries of state; and "book" a bale or a parcel as though they were signing a treaty, or granting an amnesty. The meanest employe seems to think himself invested with certain occult powers. His civility savours of government patronage; and his frown is inquisitorial. To his fellows, his address is abrupt and diplomatic. He seems to speak in cipher, and to gesticulate by some rule of freemasonry. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various
... disease which might soon have carried him off, if he had not been shot?" There was evidently one jury man who didn't want to waste life, and was willing to stake a general average, as the jury always does in a civil case, deciding not according to the evidence but reaching the verdict by some occult ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... more from the people, and to place it in a distinct class. The French lawyer is simply a man extensively acquainted with the statutes of his country; but the English or American lawyer resembles the hierophants of Egypt, for, like them, he is the sole interpreter of an occult science. ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... pile which she had spread in sequence for perusal. She smiled to herself in mournful amusement. For she scarcely questioned the probability that her friend would in due course become disillusioned of a very ordinary individual—he certainly sounded a little like an adventurer—who for some occult reason had been idealised by this great-souled, wayward and utterly foolish creature. How many shattered idols had not Lady Bridget picked up from beneath their over-turned pedestals and consigned to ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... the one Pash was saying, "a very remarkable lady—if I may use so democratic a term in the connection—to whom the limits of Time and Space are empty words, and before whose supreme Will the most portentous Forces of Occult Nature mutely confess themselves her attending slaves—" But at that moment the rolling drums of Kiang-ti's thunder drowned his words, although he subsequently raised his voice above it to entreat that any knives or other articles of a bright and attractive kind ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... together. It was perfectly true that Isabel, who was keen almost to the point of brilliance in the application of mathematics to such practical matters as finance and real life, had never academically been anything but a hopeless dunce, while Helen, who had penetrated so far into the upper occult that the mind shuddered to follow, was notoriously incapable of making her personal accounts balance within fifty per cent. It was an understood situation that always amused ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... constitutional must be right and abidable; that one's feelings never should joggle our better understanding when these little curiosities come in the way. He admits, however, that they are strange attendants coming up once in a while, like the fluctuations of an occult science. With him, the constitution gives an indisputable right to overlook every outrage upon natural law; and, while it exists in full force, though it may strip one half the human race of rights, he has no right to complain so long as it does not interfere with him. It strikes ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... the pure blood of English gentlemen in Virginia has produced not only the gentlemanly vices of pride, treachery, and falsehood in the leaders, but the ignoble faults of crime and debasement in the 'poor trash'—that some occult influence of climate has advanced an entire community at the North far above the position of its progenitors—that while the gentle Cavalier has been overcome by the seductive charms of luxury and repose, the ignoble Puritan has thrown off his degrading antecedents, and has obtained the control ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... necessity, this occult but permanent connection, this periodical recurrence in the progressive development of forms, phenomena, and events, which constitute 'nature', obedient to the first impulse imparted to it. Physics, ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... carry charms about their persons to preserve them from accidents; one of which was shown to us, printed (at Batavia or Samarang in Java) in Dutch, Portuguese, and French. It purported that the writer was acquainted with the occult sciences, and that whoever possessed one of the papers impressed with his mark (which was the figure of a hand with the thumb and fingers extended) was invulnerable and free from all kinds of harm. It desired the people to be very cautious of taking any ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... the power to fill space or resist pressure, what are these, he asks, but our own sensations or remembered sensations of touch, which have got associated, embodied together, agglomerated round some occult cause? What, after all, he exclaims, do we know of matter but as a something which possesses certain influences over us?—a something which is utterly unrepresented to us by the senses. And now this word "substance," ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... Royal had not been authorised to employ his occult skill in producing any objects but the self-supplying dinner-tables, though it was rumoured that his industry was not entirely confined to these. He certainly sold the Crown Prince a sword with which he could face undismayed the fiercest of bears and boars, while the old Court Chamberlain ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... not been able to point out with certainty a single active cause apart from the operation of mind. We discern nothing but regularity and similarity of sequences; and the attribution of these effects to some occult qualities in the atoms or molecules in which they are manifested is wholly hypothetical, and even, when closely examined, is inconceivable. For this reason we affirm, that the theory of our author, professing to account for the whole work ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... of this man, the promoter of the Manchurian Syndicate, and, if report spoke truly, the possessor of an influence over the young Czar which could be attributed only to some occult art. ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... whose hobby (besides reading fantasy) was the occult, who volunteered to entertain me with automatic writing and the ouija-board. Now, I share Lovecraft's scepticism towards the supernatural, regarding it as at best a means of amusement. When the question arose of what spirits we should try to lure to our ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... broken spoon which he had found somewhere—the gift being a purely spontaneous mark of approval and affection—who for this reason was known as The Spoonman and the vast and immeasurable honour of departing for Precigne pour la duree de la guerre. If ever I can create by some occult process of imagining a deed so perfectly cruel as the deed perpetrated in the case of Joseph Demestre, I shall consider myself a genius. Then let us admit that the Three Wise Men were geniuses. And let us, also and softly, admit that it ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... smothered in cream and sherry (piping hot) daintiest possible wafers of bread-and-butter embracing leaves of pale lettuce, a hollow-stemmed glass effervescent with liquid sunlight of a most excellent bouquet, and then another: these served not in the least to subdue his occult jubilation. ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... the principle of the inclined plane, could undoubtedly move and elevate and place in position the largest blocks that enter into the pyramids or—what seems even more wonderful—the most gigantic obelisks, without the aid of any other kind of mechanism or of any more occult power. The same hands could, as Diodorus suggests, remove all trace of the debris of construction and leave the pyramids and obelisks standing in weird isolation, as if sprung into being through ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... the lake renders impossible the supposition that evaporation alone, however considerable within the tropics, could remove as much water as the rivers furnish." In the sequel, the author himself seems to abandon what he terms "this occult case, the hypothesis of an aperture.") By felling the trees which cover the tops and the sides of mountains, men in every climate prepare at once two calamities for future generations; want of fuel and scarcity of water. Trees, by the nature of their perspiration, and the radiation ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... of His triumph, here, For, is not His celestrial glory clear In Freedom for all men? First, gaseous rays In Maryland, then rounded firm full blaze In the Republic, it draws every sphere Of Human welfare, whether far or near, From depths occult to ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... opinion, the Englishmen now upon the stage could carry off their three bottles, at need, with as steady a gait as any of their forefathers. It is not so very long since the three-bottle heroes sank finally under the table. It may be (at least, I should be glad if it were true) that there was an occult sympathy between our temperance-reform, now somewhat in abeyance, and the almost simultaneous disappearance of hard-drinking among the respectable classes in England. I remember a middle-aged gentleman telling me (in illustration of the very slight importance attached to breaches of temperance ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... the theosophists to the crystal-gazers and the palmists, all these occult practices are, in reality, merely the result of a more or less intensified desire to ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... varieties of practice, but also of the laying on of hands together with prayer as a substantive rite unconnected with baptism. The seven deacons were so ordained. And this rite of laying on hands, which was in antiquity a recognized way of transmitting the occult power or virtue of one man into another, is used in Acts ix. 17, by Ananias, in order that Paul may recover his sight and be filled with the Holy Ghost. Saul and Barnabas equally are separated for a certain missionary work by imposition of hands with prayer and fasting, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... of them, sliced and buttered, with a pot of tea. Kenko lay on the table, and the red-headed philosopher who runs the lunchroom spotted him. I have always noticed that "plain men" are vastly curious about books. They seem to suspect that there is some occult power in them, some mystery that they would like to grasp. My friend, who has the bearing of a prizefighter, but the heart of an amiable child, came over and picked up the book. He sat down at the table with ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... tribes of Mexico and Central America into organized opposition against the government and the religion which had been introduced from Europe; whose members had acquired and were bound together by strange faculties and an occult learning, which placed them on a par with the famed thaumaturgists and theodidacts of the Old World; and which preserved even into our own days the thoughts and forms ...
— Nagualism - A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History • Daniel G. Brinton
... would draw no conclusions which do not follow from self-evident premisses, and would affirm nothing which he did not clearly and distinctly perceive, and who had so often taken to task the scholastics for wishing to explain obscurities through occult qualities, could maintain a hypothesis, beside which occult qualities are commonplace. What does he understand, I ask, by the union of the mind and the body? What clear and distinct conception has he got of thought ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... diversion, the boys, for they were boys at heart, although men in stature, set out to hunt a house; and were successful in finding one that suited their notions. Very soon it was furnished in Oriental style, and an inner room was fitted up with various occult instruments, calculated to inspire the minds of the vulgar with a wholesome dread. It was agreed that Barrington should make very little change in his wardrobe, and merely dye his hair and whiskers, and add a richer brown to his complexion, to give a ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... delicacy of sentiment. To have learnt to know of such, to have been of service to one or two of such—is not this ample return? I could not get to St. James' Hall to hear your friend's symphony at the Henschel concert. I have been reading Mme. Blavatsky's latest book, and getting quite interested in occult philosophy. Unfortunately I have to do all my reading in bed, and I don't find the book as soothing a soporific as most new books. For keeping one awake I find Theosophy as bad ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... Comtesse de Rudolstadt, continues her European tour. She reaches Berlin, and we find her at the Court of Frederick II. We now have Voltaire, La Mettrie, the Sans-Souci suppers, Cagliostro, Saint-Germain and the occult sciences. Frederick II sends Consuelo to prison. There appears to be no reason for this, unless it be that in order to escape she must first have been imprisoned. Some mysterious rescuers take a great interest in Consuelo, and transport her to a strange dwelling, ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... bitterly. This is not an unheard-of situation, but it has caused considerable discomfort and worry, since there is a very definite threat of famine. There have been numerous attempts to obtain rain by occult means, and I have been personally approached on the matter. For some time, the villagers in the immediate area of the station have regarded me as a sorcerer, and I have been asked to cast a spell to ...
— Indirection • Everett B. Cole
... managed it Selwyn never knew, but she contrived to invade Jane's kitchen and perform the office of tea-making without offending her in the very least. Nay, more, by some occult process known only to herself, she succeeded in winning Jane's capacious heart, and from that moment onwards, the autocrat of the kitchen became her devoted satellite; and later, when Sara started to make drastic ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... can excite no surprise in any one at all skilled in the history of human nature; but this is altogether inadequate to account for that preternatural eagerness with which men seek after this wonderful plant. In fact, there appears to be some occult charm connected with it—some invisible spirit, which, be it angel, or be it devil, has never yet been, and perhaps never will be, satisfactorily explained. To those who have never revelled in this habit, and consequently can neither comprehend ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... Feversham. "But I see you arrived at the opportune moment,—when Tisdale was talking. There's something occult about the personality of that man. And she, Mrs. ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... permit to use the graveyard, signed by Selectmen Batson Reeves and Philias Blodgett. The grim experiment was to wind up the professor's engagement. In the mean time he was to give a nightly entertainment at the hall, consisting of hypnotism and psychic readings, the latter by "that astounding occult seer ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... that old Tausend-Kunstlerin (witch of a thousand tricks) is in the position of parent? I guess as much. He said he had connived with her, one who is the actual though occult ruler of the filthy region. We have had to pay her blackmail regularly, like the other artists, for we are obliged to go home after midnight. Well, if he is in their hands, it is among congenial spirits. Tell me your name and as much of your affairs as you please ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... witch-hazel is the zauber-streuch, or the magic-tree, and it is probable that both witch and wych are from the Anglo-Saxon wic-en, to bend. It is curious, at any rate, that while in olden times a witch was called wicce, the mountain-ash, which, as we have seen, has supposed occult virtues, was formerly called wice. Whether this root has any connection with another name by which the magic wand is known—viz., the wishing-rod—may be doubted, but there is clearly a close connection ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... always to be in secret communion with his marked abdominal prominence, showed that she was gaining part of what she played for. Wise youths who buy their loves, are not unwilling, when opportunity offers, to try and obtain the commodity for nothing. Examinations of her hand, as for some occult purpose, and unctuous pattings of the same, were not infrequent. Adrian waxed now and then Anacreontic in his compliments. Lucy would say: "That's worse ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... not care whether the region they propose to search has been scientifically tested and thought to contain gold. They adhere to the miner's adage, "Gold is where you find it"; and they seem to have some occult power of divination for they have uncovered fabulous fortunes in regions which, like Cripple Creek, had been declared "barren of gold." Yet, as the old settlers say, "Prospectors never get anything out of ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... "facts" is, in some ways, crucial. I have spoken with Jesuits and Plymouth Brethren, mathematicians and poets, dogmatic republicans and dear old gentlemen in bird's- eye neckcloths; and each understood the word "facts" in an occult sense of his own. Try as I might, I could get no nearer the principle of their division. What was essential to them, seemed to me trivial or untrue. We could come to no compromise as to what was, or what was not, important in the life of man. Turn as we pleased, we ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... she seemed not to be sufficiently separated by marks of race. She had tumbled up from childhood among native servants, who were almost her sole companions, and who had taught her curious things. She knew their stories and songs, and believed in more of their occult beliefs than any but ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... chemistry, or the art of making gold, by almost the unanimous consent of the adepts." Dr. Webster says, "The orthography of this word has undergone changes through a mere ignorance of its origin, than which nothing can be more obvious. It is the Arabic kimia, the occult art or science, from kamai, to conceal. This was originally the art or science now called alchemy; the art of converting baser metals into gold." Webster says the correct orthography ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 211, November 12, 1853 • Various
... Scotland recalls the fact that an unusual number of eclipses happen to have been visible in that country, and the occult bent natural to the Scottish character has traditionalised a few of them in such terms as the "Black Hour" (an eclipse of 1433), "Black Saturday" (the eclipse of 1598 which has been alluded to above), and "Mirk Monday" (1652). ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... but wouldn't it be possible, Godfrey, to explain all this by hypnosis, or occult influence, or ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... belief confirmed. The horrors that he witnessed in the dreary laboratory were to a certain extent salutary; he was conscious of being involved in an affair not altogether reputable, and for many years afterwards he clung bravely to the commonplace, and rejected all occasions of occult investigation. Indeed, on some homeopathic principle, he for some time attended the seances of distinguished mediums, hoping that the clumsy tricks of these gentlemen would make him altogether disgusted with mysticism of every kind, but the remedy, though ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... characteristic manners, the Oneidas eating like gentlemen and talking together in their low and musical voices; the Wyandotte gobbling and stuffing his cheeks like a chipmunk. The Stockbridge Mole, noiseless and mum as the occult and furry animal which gave to him his name, nibbled sparingly all alone by himself, and read in his Algonquin Testament ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... his Buttocks, to ridicule the most noble Order of the Gridiron. But their Spectacles is a most ungrateful Reflection on the Memory of that great Man, whose indefatigable Application to his Business, and deep Study in that occult Science, rendred him Poreblind; to remedy which Misfortune, he had always a 'Squire follow'd him, bearing a huge Pair of Spectacles to saddle his Honour's Nose, and supply his much-lamented Defect of Sight. But whether such an Unhappiness did not deserve rather Pity ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... such bliss is diffusive; it seemed as if all the living creatures around understood. In the thick, green branches the birds began to twitter the secret, and certainly the wise, wise bees knew also, in some occult way, of the love and joy that had just been revealed. A wonderful humming and buzzing filled the hives, and the air vibrated with the movement of wings. Some influence more swift and secret than the birds of ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... importance and necessity of a virtuous education, in fitting him for the discharge of his duties. To the Fellow Craft, the study of the liberal arts and sciences is earnestly recommended; and indeed, that sacred hieroglyphic, the knowledge of whose occult signification constitutes the most solemn part of his instruction, presupposes an acquaintance at least with the art of reading. And the Master Mason is expressly told in the explanation of the forty-seventh problem ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... or make any personal effort to rebel against it, is no part of my faith,—therefore at such moments I had always yielded instantly and obediently as I yielded now. I was not allowed to fathom the occult source of my happiness, but the happiness remained,—and when I retired to rest it was with more than ordinary gratitude that I said my usual brief prayer:—For the day that is past, I thank Thee, O God my ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... given that there has lately arrived in this city (Dublin) the famous Mrs. Cherry, the only gentlewoman truly learned in the occult science of tossing of coffee grounds; who has with uninterrupted success for some time past practiced to the general satisfaction of her female visitants. Her hours are after prayers are done at St. ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... feature. Even those who never in the racing of horses felt any concern could not help but take in the outcome of this one a curious interest. The audacity of the prophecy, the very absurdity of it, presupposing, as it did, occult power, was in itself amusing. And when the curtain rose on the Suburban it was evident that to thousands what the Man Who Could Not Lose had foretold was a ...
— The Man Who Could Not Lose • Richard Harding Davis
... much on occult subjects, and corresponded ceaselessly with a certain school of esoteric philosophy, reaching at last a lofty serenity which approached content. He wrote me that the men of the lumber camp spoke of him as a "queer old cuss," but that disturbed him not at all. To me, ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... fellow withal, and would willingly do any kind action that did not seriously interfere with his comfort, or make too heavy a draft upon his pocket. His self-indulgence, which was quite blameless, unless surfeit is a fault, was the basis of an interest in occult themes, which was the means of even higher diversion to Minver. He liked to have Rulledge approach Wanhope from this side, in the invincible persuasion that the psychologist would be interested in these themes by the law of his science, though he had been assured again and again that in ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... headlong into the consumption of Wesleyan missionaries in the Sandwich Islands. Then she had to find her glasses, and considerable delay was incurred by putting them on upside down. All this while the Rector sat glaring at her as if in some occult way she were responsible for the disaster in ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... what a cloud of witnesses existed, and how careful their observations had been. This impressed my mind very much more than the limited phenomena which came within the reach of our circle. Then or afterwards I read a book by Monsieur Jacolliot upon occult phenomena in India. Jacolliot was Chief Judge of the French Colony of Crandenagur, with a very judicial mind, but rather biassed{sic} against spiritualism. He conducted a series of experiments with native fakirs, who gave him their confidence because he was a sympathetic man and spoke ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in the modern sense, and the fabled manifestations of the same. He loses no opportunity of trying to peer behind the curtain, and of seeking—honestly enough—to formulate those various pseudo-sciences, politely called occult, which have now fallen into ridicule and disrepute with all except the charlatan and the dupe, who are always with us. Where he occupies in the De Subtilitate one page in considering those things ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... appearance through mirrors, and we soon make the necessary alterations to put our bodies in harmony with existing formalities. Then, why not study more seriously the mental images reflected from the mirror of the soul upon our minds through the occult processes within us? ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... was certain that one day or another John Baxter must find it. How he became infected with the collector's greed and acquired the occult knowledge that feeds that malady it would take too long to tell. Yet it may be said that the yearning amateur was about the only potent ingredient in the mild composite that was John Baxter. His eyes, skin, hair, and raiment had never seemed of any particular colour, nor did he as a whole ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... existence. To regulate this fatal rivalry, and restrain this emulation of despair, the peasantry, enrolled in secret societies, found refuge in an inexorable code. He who supplanted another in the occupation of the soil was doomed by an occult tribunal, from which there was no appeal, to a terrible retribution. His house was visited in the night by whitefeet and ribbonmen—his doom was communicated to him, by the post, in letters, signed by Terry Alt, or Molly M'Guire, or he was suddenly shot, ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... beyond words to express in their intuitive knowledge of human nature and the differentiation between man nature and woman nature. They are capable of using the outward and apparent motives of humanity for an effect, and secretly of plying the subtlest and most occult. ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... difficulty may be due to any one of a number of causes. It may be due to a lack of poetic appreciation on the part of the teacher, leading to poor judgment in selecting and presenting poetry. It may be due to the feeling that there is something occult and mysterious about poetry that puts it outside the range of common interests, or to the idea that the technique of verse must in some way be emphasized. The first step in using poetry successfully with children is to brush away all these and other extraneous matters and to realize that poetry ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... he could obtain upon occult phenomena, Wallace found that there was such a mass of testimony by men of the highest character and ability in every department of human learning that he thought it would be useful to bring this together in a connected sketch of the whole subject. This he did, and sent it to ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... 1782 (Harley Street).—The truth is, Mr. Johnson has some occult disorder that I cannot understand; Jebb and Bromfield fancy it is water between the heart and pericardium—I do not think it is that, but I do not know what it is. He apprehends no danger himself, and he knows more of the matter ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... sinking into volcanic depths, below even the depth of the sea! The highest object was the hut, and that had dropped inch by inch under water before his own eyes. Thrown up to the surface by occult volcanic influences, the island had sunk back, under the same influences, to the obscurity from which ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... that very unequal company I have before mentioned met; the former of these is apparently impracticable. Let Socrates, for instance, institute a discourse on the nature of the soul, or Plato reason on the native beauty of virtue, and Aristotle on his occult qualities—What must become of our dancing-masters? Would they not stare at one another with surprise, and, most probably, at our philosophers with contempt? Would they have any pleasure in such society? or would they not rather wish themselves in a dancing-school, ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... He lived in the latter half of the thirteenth century; was a student of the "occult sciences," and also skilled in theology and medicine. He is referred to by Walter Scott as ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... aspired to eminence in the exact sciences, to the loftiest flights of imagination, or to the discovery of means by which the institutions of men in society might be rendered more beneficial and faultless, at that time wasted the midnight oil in endeavouring to trace the occult qualities and virtues of things, to render invisible spirits subject to their command, and to effect those wonders, of which they deemed themselves to have a dim conception, but which more rational views of nature have taught us to regard as beyond our power to effect. ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... of it now. It is that wilderness into which I stumbled. It overlooks the terrain in Alsace where for fifty years the Hun has been busy day and night with his sinister, occult operations. Its entrance, if there be any save by the way of avalanches—the way I entered—must be guarded by the Huns; its only exit into Hunland. That is Les Errues. That is the region which masks the ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... cold winds which rush upon us in spring from the passes of the Apennines, or to that sudden transition from the cool gloom of our houses to the dazzling brightness of our summer sun, by which the lippi are said to have been made so numerous among the ancient Romans; or, in fine, to some occult cause which eludes our superficial surmises. But I pray you be seated: Nello, ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... almost every generation, in almost every country, in almost every city. She is not a typical adventuress, she is not a genius. The reason for her strong power is occult. The nameless charm is found as often in homely, clumsy, dull, old masculine women as in the ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
... in a piercing scream, as Estrella came to herself and understood. Always the rawhide had possessed for her an occult fascination and repulsion. She had never been able to touch it without a shudder, and yet she had always been drawn to experiment with it. The terror of her doom had now added to it for her all the vague and premonitory terrors which heretofore she ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... to chapel, and oddly enough, Mr. Maydig, who took a certain interest in occult matters, preached about "things that are not lawful." Mr. Fotheringay was not a regular chapel goer, but the system of assertive scepticism, to which I have already alluded, was now very much shaken. The tenor of the sermon threw ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... learned folks, we alone are brought into contact with tangible facts in the way that you are. You know well enough that it is one thing to write a history of chairs in general, or to address a poem to a throne, or to speculate about the occult powers of the chair of St. Peter; and quite another thing to make with your own hands a veritable chair, that will stand fair and square, and afford a safe and satisfactory resting-place to a frame of ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... were once conversing. The one scoffed at innate ideas, instinctive principles, and occult causes: the other was a believer in natural gifts, and an active fabricator of suppositions. Suggest but the slightest hint and he would erect a hypothesis which no argument, at least none that he would listen to, could ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... time you have protected your honor solely by the exertion of a power entirely occult. Hereafter the wheels of your conjugal machinery must be set going in sight of every one. In this case, if you would prevent a crime you must strike a blow. You have begun by negotiating, you must end by mounting ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... philosopher who firmly resolved to make no deduction except from self-evident principles, and to affirm nothing but what he clearly and distinctly perceived, and who blamed all the Schoolmen because they desired to explain obscure matters by occult qualities, should accept a hypothesis more occult ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... an occult influence which weighs on the mind of William II, an influence which, while it points the way to action, blinds him to its consequences. The dead hand is ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... conclude as follows: If there is a form of Christianity now in the world which is accused of gross superstition, of borrowing its rites and customs from the heathen, and of ascribing to forms and ceremonies an occult virtue; a religion which is considered to burden and enslave the mind by its requisitions, to address itself to the weak-minded and ignorant, to be supported by sophistry and imposture, and to contradict reason and exalt ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... when they act on the same matter, the constituent gases of the air? Their differences proceed from some displacement of those constituents, from the way they act on the elements which are their affinity and which they return, modified by some occult and unknown process. If we knew what the process was, science and art would both be gainers. Whatever ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... they had been deluded by false predictions or ensnared by magic;[150] princes were governed in their political movements by astral calculations;[151] a grave minister details with complacency, although without comment, various anecdotes of the operation of the occult sciences,[152] and even makes them a study; while a European monarch, strong in the love of his people and his own bravery, suffers the predictions of soothsayers and prophets to cloud his mind and to shake his purposes, even while he declares his contempt ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... passage is from the works of Cornelius Agrippa, a well-known professor of occult philosophy, and is indeed introductory to a treatise upon it. The writer is quite aware that his work may be scandalizing, hurtful, and even poisonous to narrow minds, but is sure that readers of a superior understanding will get ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... inerrancy Hostility to the revision of King James's translation of the Bible The law of unity Working of these laws seen in the great rabbinical schools The law of allegorical interpretation Philo Judaeus Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria Occult significance of numbers Origen Hilary of Poitiers and Jerome Augustine Gregory the Great Vain attempts to check the flood of allegorical interpretations Bede.—Savonarola Methods of modern criticism for the first time employed by Lorenzo Valla ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... took your candy," piped Eddy, in a loud, declamatory voice which was not the tone of humble repentance. The boy, as he spoke, eyed the man with defiance. It was as if he blamed him, for some occult reason, for having his own property stolen. The child's face became, under the forced humiliation of the apology, revolutionary, anarchistic, rebellious. He might have been the representative, the walking delegate, of some small cult of rebels against the established order of regard for ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... would seem, look upon our eager aspiring humanity much like the patient masters of an idiot school, watching it go on forever seeking without finding, while they sit in seclusion keeping the keys of the occult.[49] All of which would be very wonderful, if true. It is, however, only one more of those fascinating fictions with which mystery-mongers entertain themselves, and deceive others. Small wonder that thinking men turn from such fanciful folly with mingled feelings of pity and disgust. Sages ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... winter, when the weather conditions were perfectly adjusted to meet certain occult exactions he had come to require, Yancy could be induced to go into the woods and there labor with his ax. But as he pointed out to Hannibal, a poor man's capital was his health, and he being a poor man it behooved him to have a jealous care of himself. He made use of ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... should grace the occasion," Chris agreed, placing his hand on Planchette. "Let me try. And not one of you must laugh or giggle, or even think 'laugh' or 'giggle.' And if you dare to snort, even once, Uncle Robert, there is no telling what occult vengeance may be wreaked ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... trees. Not much more than its parapet appears behind the foliage. By those offices, on fine evenings, I find one of our ancients, Captain Tom Bowline. Why he favours the road there I do not know. It would be a reasonable reason, but occult. The electric trams and motor buses annoy him. And not one of the young stokers and deck-hands just ashore and paid off, or else waiting at a likely corner for news of a ship, could possibly know the skipper and his honourable records. They do not know that once, in that office, Tom was ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... looked after him in silent speculation. "So!" she spoke half to herself. "Jean's the woman reporter." And for some occult reason she smiled. ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... the ancient world had its peculiar Mysteries, dedicated to the occult worship of some especial and favorite god, and to the inculcation of a secret doctrine, very different from that which was taught in the public ceremonial of devotion. Thus in Persia the Mysteries were dedicated to Mithras, or the Sun; ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... when she read this. Josie was a girl of her own age, but she was the daughter of one of the most celebrated secret service men in the employ of the United States government, and John O'Gorman had trained Josie from babyhood in all the occult details of his artful profession. It was his ambition that some day this daughter would become a famous female detective, but he refused to allow her to assume professional duties until she had become thoroughly qualified to excel. He did ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... vague quotation was to Sister Hiler, there was an occult sympathy in the tone in which this was offered that lifted her for an instant out of her narrower self. She raised her eyes to his. The personal abstraction of the devotee had no place in the deep dark eyes that were lifted from the cradle to hers with a sad, discriminating, ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... sea," and who is famous in the annals of Massachusetts, where he was at one time a resident, as the first man who dared petition the General Court for liberty of conscience. The full title of the book is Three Books of Occult Philosophy, by Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Knight, Doctor of both Laws, Counsellor to Caesar's Sacred Majesty and Judge of the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... aim or purpose through the perpetual dusk of the spectral wood that clothes the sides of the hill near its foot. It was perhaps an effect of such surroundings that my mind early acquired a shade of melancholy. Those studies and pursuits which partake of the dark and occult in nature most strongly ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... Reform was foiled, as Burke put it, because the turnspit in the king's kitchen was a member of parliament. Such sinecures and the pensions on the civil list or the Irish establishment provided the funds by which the king could build up a personal influence, which was yet occult, irresponsible, and corrupt. The measure passed by Burke in 1782[2] made a beginning in ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... and quite the cleverest man at his profession that I ever had the privilege to meet. He might have made a large fortune in England, but he got into some trouble and had to leave the country. It was much the same in India. Bentwood had a positive genius for the occult and underground. After a time very few white people cared to associate with him and he became the companion of the dervishes and the mullahs and all that class, whose secrets he learned. I believe he is the only European who ever went through ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... return we find him writing to Sandy, communicating "some receipts," and asking for pills that had been ordered. Thus we have arrived at the early influences which drew the young Catholic squire towards the art of healing and the occult sciences. The latter he dabbled in all his life. In the former his ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... vive occult to mortal eyes, Dorm on the herb with none to supervise, Carp the suave berries from the crescent vine, And bibe the flow ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... reconstruction of the history of philosophy; and important in furnishing necessary data to psychology. No labor can be more fruitless than the search in mythology for true philosophy; and the efforts to build up from the terminology and narratives of mythologies an occult symbolism and system of allegory is but to create a new and fictitious body ...
— On Limitations To The Use Of Some Anthropologic Data - (1881 N 01 / 1879-1880 (pages 73-86)) • J. W. Powell
... was deserted and the priest came to be looked on as a sorcerer because he had, so they said, driven out an evil spirit from a woman who was possessed, and although fearing him the peasants came to respect him for this occult power as well as for the unimpeachable ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... of St Peter, and Claude was thus carried, in the way of trade, to the city which might well have been the goal of his ambition. According to other writers of art histories, Claude abandoned the kneading-trough and the oven; and it was as a runaway apprentice that by some occult means he reached Rome. And when he had arrived he entered into the service of a landscape painter of good repute, to whom he was colour-boy as well as cook. The last is the account, so far, which Claude gave of himself to a friend, and it is hardly likely either that he misrepresented ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... themselves whilst feigning to bestow it on the papacy, in readiness for the coming decisive task which their genius foresaw in the approaching social upheavals. And thus there might perhaps be some truth in what Don Vigilio, with a shiver of mystery, related about their occult sovereignty, a seizin, as it were, of the government of the Church, a royalty ignored ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... sex to the most exalted positions and the most esoteric degrees being a remarkable feature of this great secret society (413. 33). Indeed, Aztec tradition, like that of Honduras, speaks of an ancient sorceress, mother of the occult sciences, and some of the legends of the Nagualists trace much of their art to a mighty ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... Church as much as against the King. From the struggle with Sacheverell down to the struggle for Catholic emancipation, Toryism and High-Church principles were associated against Whigs and Dissenters. By that kind of dumb instinct which outruns reason, the Whig had learnt that there was some occult bond of union between the claims of a priesthood and the claims of a monarchy. The old maxim, 'No bishop, no king,' suggested the opposite principle that you must keep down the clergy if you would limit the ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... published, a small Catalogue of old Books: will be forwarded on receipt of a postage stamp; or various Catalogues containing numerous Works on the Occult Sciences, Facetiae, &c. may be had on application, or by forwarding six postage stamps, to G. BUMSTEAD, 205. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 6. Saturday, December 8, 1849 • Various
... of her occult powers make the guests, both men and women, realise that the beautiful Princess is someone with very special gifts, which one or two of them would like to learn more about. But in the very process of the ensuing teach-in, more things happen than had been bargained for, ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... diviners may see Fates they cannot avert in some figure occult, He foresaw in a moment each evil result Of the quarrel now imminent. There, face to face, 'Mid the ruins and tombs of a long-perish'd race, With, for witness, the stern Autumn Sky overhead, And beneath them, unnoticed, the graves, and the dead, Those two men had met, as it were on the ridge ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... You have seen it often in the eyes of those Italian faces you like. It is most obvious in the eye. As we look on such eyes, we think on the tiger, the serpent, beings who lurk, glide, fascinate, mysteriously control. For it is occult by its nature, and if it could meet you on the highway, and be familiarly known as an acquaintance, could not exist. The angels of light do not love, yet they do ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... thousands every year. The visitors to the great shrine at Kizuki of Izumo number about 250,000 annually. "The more prosperous the season, the larger the number of pilgrims. It rarely falls below two hundred thousand." In his "Occult Japan," Mr. Lowell has given us an interesting account of the "pilgrim clubs," The largest known to him numbered about twelve thousand men, but he thinks they average from one hundred to about five hundred persons each. ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... the affection, as well as the treatment to be followed; then he was to examine No. 2, and to give certain instructions as to its further use. Balzac asked his mother to touch the flannels only with paper, so as not to interfere with their effluvia. This belief of his in magnetism of an occult kind was an inheritance. His mother, it has already been said, was a mystic. Her books of this doctrine comprised more than a hundred volumes of Saint-Martin, Swedenborg, Madame Guyon, Jacob Boehm, and others. All these ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... disinclined to believe in the occult sciences. I dinna haud a'thegither wi' Salverte. There was mair in them than Magia naturalis, I'm thinking. Mesmerism and magic-lanterns, benj and opium, winna explain all facts, Alton, laddie. Dootless they were ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... fairly stated that the nature of this sanative tea is not from any combination of the animal or mineral kingdom, but a collection of the most salutary native and exotic herbs that are produced in the vegetable empire of nature. These have not been collected by the fanatic devotees of occult qualities, but by the scientific researches and personal experience of a character that is equally and justly admired for his philosophical, medical, and botanical knowledge. The discoverer, Dr. Solander, of this tea, inquired into the virtues of ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith
... had to stand the fire of criticisms almost too puerile to be noticed. It is gravely pointed out that men are of different heights and weights, that they vary in muscular power and mental cultivation—as if either Rousseau or Jefferson was likely to have failed to notice this occult fact! Similarly the doctrine of the contractual basis of society is met by a demand for the production of a signed, sealed, and delivered contract, or at least for evidence that such a contract was ever made. But Rousseau says—with a good sense ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... Buffum, who passes the Panama for the benefit of those who would buy absolution. Or, if you prefer, salvation being free, what we place in the Panama is an honorarium for Deity or his agent, just as our noted authors never speak at banquets for pay, but accept the honorarium that in some occult and mysterious manner is left on the mantel. Sunday, with its immunity from work, was devised for slaves who got out of all the work they ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... Death a Benefactor World Progress The Origin of Evil Vibration Life Churches Money Makers Life in Nature Heaven Nature Spirits Experience Spiritualism Phenomena Mediumship The Migrations of our Race The Discipline of Life Homogeneity of the Race Of God Of Jesus The Gods Knowledge of Occult Law Evanescence of Mere Beliefs The Fount of Inspiration for All Man versus Death Fear of Death Test of Character Character Forming Man the Final Earth Product Superstitions Self-Justice Symbolism Love ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... one evening when his watch was done sauntered Con. His professional curiosity had been stirred by these occult bartenders at whose bar none drank, and who daily drew upon Kenealy's store of liquors to follow their consuming ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... they were kept waiting in a pouring rain for something to happen, they knew not what. The R. T. O., a young Imperial officer, blase with his ten months of war in England, had some occult reason for delaying their departure. So, while the night grew every moment wetter and darker, the men sat on their kit-bags or found such shelter as they could in the tiny station, or in the lee of the "goods trains" blocking the railroad tracks, growing ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... that, for some reason, Mr. Samuel had decided to accept her claim; and that for some reason equally occult he meant to give the clergyman no choice ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... This had not occurred to her before. But love is not to be turned from its object by trifles. She was all that we have more than once described her to be; but she was not a meta-physician or a philosopher, capable of comprehending and explaining occult mysteries. Enough for her if she loved Miles and Miles loved her, and then, even if he did not deserve her love, she would remain true—secretly but unalterably true—to him as the needle is to ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... dream" or "brown study." False "psychic development." Use of hypnotic drugs strongly condemned. Scientific psychological methods stated and taught. The laws of attention and concentration of the mind. How Clairvoyance develops by this method. The true occult instruction ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... Loquela per Gestum Digitorum, sive de Indigitatione. So much discussion had indeed been carried on in reference to the use of signs for the desideratum of a universal mode of communication, which also was designed to be occult and mystic, that Rabelais, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, who, however satirical, never spent his force upon matters of little importance, devotes much attention to it. He makes his English philosopher, Thaumast "The Wonderful" declare, "I will dispute by signs only, without ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... at that. Hence the green border on the flag. He was the head of a great House of Straits Arabs, but as loyal a subject of the complex British Empire as you could find east of the Suez Canal. World politics did not trouble him at all, but he had a great occult power amongst ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... them for scientific data. They were good observers of astronomical phenomena, careful recorders of such observations, and mathematicians of no small repute. Unfortunately, they mixed with their really scientific studies those occult pursuits which, in ages and countries where the limits of true science are not known, are always apt to seduce students from the right path, having attractions against which few men are proof, so long as it is believed that they can really ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... associated with pancakes. The pancake bell is still rung in many places, and for some occult reason it is the season for some wild football games in the streets and lanes of several towns and villages. At St. Ives on the Monday there is a grand hurling match, which resembles a Rugby football contest without the kicking of the ball, which is about the size of a cricket-ball, made of cork ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... rich gold mine in Mexico is known by the picturesque and mysterious name of The Four Fingers. It originally belonged to an Aztec tribe, and its location is known to one surviving descendant—a man possessing wonderful occult power. Should any person unlawfully discover its whereabouts, four of his fingers are mysteriously removed, and one by one returned to him. The appearance of the final fourth betokens ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... courtyard, started when he caught sight of him, so transfigured did he appear. Under his thick, damp hair his eyes shone with quiet celestial joy, and the fleshless face, the colour of ivory, wore that expression of occult spirituality which flowed from the brushes of the Quattrocento. How could that face harmonise with peasant's attire? In his heart Don Clemente congratulated himself upon a thought which he had conceived during the night, and had already communicated to the Abbot, namely, ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... providing information on or promoting illegal or questionable access to or use of communications equipment and/or software." SmartFilter offers the following categories: Anonymizers/Translators; Art & Culture; Chat; Criminal Skills; Cults/Occult; Dating; Drugs; Entertainment; Extreme/Obscene/Violence; Gambling; Games; General News; Hate Speech; Humor; Investing; Job Search; Lifestyle; Mature; MP3 Sites; Nudity; On-line Sales; Personal Pages; Politics, Opinion & Religion; Portal ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
... not be omitted. A doctor is, with them, a person of importance and esteem, but his province seems rather to charm away occult diseases than to act the surgeon's part, which, as a subordinate science, is exercised indiscriminately. Their excellent habit of body*, the effect of drinking water only, speedily heals wounds without an exterior application which with us would take ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... that occult rot, I don't doubt," groaned Roger. "Charley, stay till the fellows come. ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... points every way and always right. It is good for us now and then to converse with a world like Mr. White's, where Man is the least important of animals. But one who, like me, has always lived in the country and always on the same spot, is drawn to his book by other occult sympathies. Do we not share his indignation at that stupid Martin who had graduated his thermometer no lower than 4o above zero of Fahrenheit, so that in the coldest weather ever known the mercury basely absconded into the bulb, and left us to see the victory slip ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... of all the earlier reasoners, the arch uniter of actual politics with enthusiastic reveries—the hero of a thousand legends—a demigod in his ends and an impostor in his means—Pythagoras of Samos —conceived and partially executed the vast design of establishing a speculative wisdom and an occult religion as the keystone of ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ruses and expedients to which his position lent itself. Orde, sublimely unconscious, deployed the magnificent resources of strength, energy, organisation, and combative spirit that animated his pioneer's soul. The occult manoeuverings of Newmark called out fresh exertions ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... great catastrophe! Was it not much more probable that the earliest inhabitants of Ireland and Egypt had originally migrated from Atlantis, carrying its language, and ways and customs with them? Moreover, since the Atlanteans were so deeply versed in magic and everything appertaining to the occult, this migration would account for the mysticism that has always been so closely associated with Egypt and Ireland, and for the psychic faculty so strongly observable in the ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... did not like the pastor. A few monks whom Patience had unmasked hated Patience. Hence, both pastor and pupil were persecuted. The ignorant monks did not scruple to accuse the cure to his bishop of devoting himself to the occult sciences in concert with the magician Patience. A sort of religious war broke out in the village and neighbourhood. All who were not for the convent were for the cure, and vice versa. Patience scorned to take part in this struggle. One morning he went to see his friend, with tears ...
— Mauprat • George Sand |
