"Occult" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about the great stove in the boarding-house office also possessed the charm of balsam fragrance. One told the other occult facts about the "Southeast of the southwest of eight." The second in turn vouchsafed information about another point of the compass. Thorpe heard of many curious practical expedients. He learned that one can prevent awkward air-holes in lakes by "tapping" ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... children: each will wish to see reproduced in them their own tastes and sentiments: and there is either a compromise, and only a half-satisfaction to either, or the wife has to yield—often with bitter suffering; and, with or without intention, her occult influence continues to ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... neighbors. I do not say the characteristic is so strong, or would be so hard to change as by the revealing development it must become; but it is there, alive, as an egg is alive; and by no means inoperative like a mere germ, but exercising real though occult influence on the rest of my character. Therefore, except the growing vitality be in process of killing these ova of death, it is for the good of the man that they should be so far developed as to show their existence. If the man do not ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... have nothing arbitrary, no central forces or occult properties of any other kind. We have nothing but matter and motion, and when the vortex is once started its properties are all determined from the original impetus, and no ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... the adaptation of the new photography to brain study. The relation of the new rays to thought rays is being eagerly discussed in what may be called the non-exact circles and journals; and all that numerous group of inquirers into the occult, the believers in clairvoyance, spiritualism, telepathy, and kindred orders of alleged phenomena, are confident of finding in the new force long-sought facts in proof of their claims. Professor Neusser in Vienna has photographed gall-stones ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... How dulce to 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 ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... had the peculiar gift, which developed into ever-increasing perfection as her hair grew whiter, of being able to express ideas by means of words which had no relation to them at all. Within three minutes, by three different remarks whose occult message no stranger could have understood but which forced itself with unpleasant clearness upon Edwin, Mrs Hamps had conveyed, "Janet Orgreave only cultivates Maggie because Maggie is the sister ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... invention of the singer. It has that abandon which usually characterizes the songs of workers in the occult among primitive folk. ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... ascribed. to Miss Keller, is a delicate one. This much is certain, she cannot have any sense that other people may not have, and the existence of a special sense is not evident to her or to any one who knows her. Miss Keller is distinctly not a singular proof of occult and mysterious theories, and any attempt to explain her in that way fails to reckon with her normality. She is no more mysterious and complex than any other person. All that she is, all that she has done, can be explained directly, except ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... management, at least in everything connected with illumination, that the entire charge of the lighting of the house was left in his hands,—even to that of its stores of wax and tallow and oil; and great was the pleasure he derived, not only from the trust reposed in him, but from other more occult sources connected with the duties of ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... interest in the nationality or the place of residence of those who conduct this traffic; though all the facts go to say that in some puzzle-headed way the common man commonly persuades himself that it does make some occult sort of difference to him; so that he is commonly willing to pay something substantial toward subsidising businessmen of his own nationality, in the way of a protective ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... public life and of scholastic theories, together with the love of occult and cabalistic science, and the craft of Provencal poetry, Dante received from his Florence of the thirteenth century the knowledge of this new, this exotic and esoteric intellectual love. And, as it is the mission of genius to gather into an ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... applied to divinities and emperors, which signifies "august aspect," "sacred presence," etc.... No literal rendering can suggest the effect, in the fifth line, of the latter reading. Kag['e] signifies "shadow," "aspect," and "power"—especially occult power; the honorific prefix mi, attached to names and attributes of divinities, may be ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... and yet widely read. His range included historical treatises concerning his favorite Pirates (Quaker though he was); fiction, with the same Pirates as principals; Americanized version of Old World fairy tales; boy stories of the Middle Ages, still best sellers to growing lads; stories of the occult, such as In Tenebras and To the Soil of the Earth, which, if newly published, would be hailed as contributions ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... is inordinately fond of young fools. That is why they are permitted to rush in where angels fear to tread—and survive their daring! This supreme protection, this unwritten warranty to disregard all laws, occult or apparent, divine or earthly, may be attributed to the fact that none but young fools dream gloriously. For such of us as pretend to be wise—and we are but fools in a lesser degree—we know that humanity moves onward only by the impellant ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... strange night thing that must have companioned him, invisibly, when he kept his nocturnal watches in the drawing-room, and that now partially revealed itself to him in the, perhaps, more acutely occult ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... the necke, is good against the Falling-sicknes: for [e] surely the vertue of an hearbe is great, but much more the vertue of a precious [*Page43.] stone, which is very likely that they are endued with occult and hidden vertues. ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... That Crane, actuated by some motive occult to Lanyard, had engineered this apparently adventitious rencontre for the purpose of throwing him and the Brooke girl together? Or, again, that Crane was innocent of guile in this matter—that other persons unknown, causing Lanyard to be traced to his lodgings, had framed that ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... of ears and queries of Sir Lukin put him to the test of his right to the remark; for it sounded of occult acquaintance with interesting subterranean facts; and there was a communication, in brief syllables and the dot language, crudely masculine. Immensely surprised, Sir Lukin exclaimed: 'Of course! when fellows live quietly and are careful of themselves. Ah! you may think you know a man ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... clawing, tearing griffins, the nightmare brood carved on the capitals, porches, and pulpits of pre-Franciscan churches, are surely not, as orthodox antiquarians assure us, mere fanciful symbols of the Church's vigilance and virtues: they express too well the far-spread occult Manichean spirit, the belief in ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... 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 mental process. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... took his place with her in a cotillon. Whether the breath of the Goddess of Love could intoxicate like the cup of Circe,—whether a woman is ever phosphorescent with the luminous vapor of life that she exhales,—these and other questions which relate to occult influences exercised by certain women we will not now discuss. It is enough that Mr. Bernard was sensible of a strange fascination, not wholly new to him, nor unprecedented in the history of human experience, but always a revelation when it comes over us for the first ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... these penmen require any fresh inflation; for never has there been a race of professors in any art who have exceeded in solemnity and pretensions the practitioners in this simple and mechanical craft. I must leave to more ingenious investigators of human nature to reveal the occult cause which has operated such powerful delusions on these "Vive la Plume!" men, who have been generally observed to possess least intellectual ability in proportion to the excellence they have obtained in their ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... 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 planchette, the ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... violence on me, and furthermore suggested that if they supposed they were able to prevent me they might try. Whereat the priest did discover a way of opening the door, and that was the only action in the least resembling the occult that any ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... hurry to reply. He was busy taking in a variety of pleasant impressions. Notwithstanding the severely cut riding habit and the hard little hat, he decided that he had never looked into a more attractively feminine face. For some occult reason, unconnected, he was sure, with the use of any skin food or face cream, this young woman who had the reputation of living out of doors, winter and summer, had a complexion which, notwithstanding its faint shade ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... astonishing in Godfrey being deep in thought. It seemed to him that the island was now under the empire of some occult power. The reappearance of this fire, the presence of wild animals, did not all this denote ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... live here?" asked Claudius, who was as yet in complete ignorance of the Countess's name, title, nationality, and mode of life, for Mr. Barker had, for some occult reason, left him ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... has begun life with a single-minded devotion to the science of experimental chemistry, very surprising in a young and handsome man with a brilliant future before him. A profound knowledge of the occult sciences has persuaded the Baron that it is possible to solve the famous problem called the "Philosopher's Stone." His own pecuniary resources have long since been exhausted by his costly experiments. His sister has next supplied him with ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... him was the occult tie between him and Miss Roots. Up to the day fixed for his departure he was drawn by an irresistible fascination to Miss Roots. His manner to her became marked by an extreme gentleness and sympathy. Of course it was impossible to believe ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... sequestered apartment: but, our Lady defend us! how pale you look;—surely, you are not ill?—La virgen nos valga.[32] Samuel Mendez shall be commanded here forthwith; for this same Samuel, you must know, is a very sapient leech, and well versed in occult medical science, though a very dog of a cursed unbelieving Jew;[33] he shall be sent for anon; there is no cause to fear him, for the infidel dare not use any of his poisonous drugs to such as you, my sweet lady. The Samaritano[34] would answer with his life any ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... gadding existence had come to an abrupt end. Nowadays she spent almost all her time at Crome, cultivating a rather ill-defined malady. For consolation she dallied with New Thought and the Occult. Her passion for racing still possessed her, and Henry, who was a kind-hearted fellow at bottom, allowed her forty pounds a month betting money. Most of Priscilla's days were spent in casting the horoscopes of horses, and she invested her money scientifically, as the stars dictated. She ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... indicated that but one quarter of the sheep found on the Rancho Palomar belonged to Loustalot, the remainder being owned by his foreman and employees. To Farrel, therefore, these sheep were awarded, and in some occult manner Don Nicolas Sandoval selected them from the flock; then, acting under instructions from Farrel, he sold the sheep back to Loustalot at something like a dollar a head under the market value and leased to the amazed Basque for one year the grazing privilege on ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... which the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... had not spoken one word since the disappearance of the sonnet—that sonnet which would have told her of her future; for had not Marescotti, by some occult power, read her secret? Alas! too, was she not about to reenter her gloomy home without catching so much as a glimpse of Nobili? Count Marescotti had no opportunity of saying a word to Enrica that was not audible to all. He did venture to ask her if she would ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... conception witchcraft and its demonstrations centered in the claim of power to produce certain effects, "things beyond the course of nature," from supernatural causes, and under this general term all its occult manifestations were classified with magic and sorcery, until the time came when the Devil was identified and acknowledged both in church and state as the originator and sponsor of the mystery, sin and crime—the sole father of the Satanic compacts ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... than common passion is necessary to paint landscape. The physical conditions there are so numerous, and the spiritual ones so occult, that you are sure to be overpowered by the materialism, unless your sentiment is strong. No man is naturally likely to think first of anatomy in painting a pretty woman; but he is very apt to do so in painting a mountain. ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin
... the same with Bonaparty—Nappoleon, you know. And I wasn't just so far wrong neither, as I shall readily prove to those of my distinguished audience who have been to college like myself, and learned to read Greek like their mother tongue. For what is the very name Apollyon, but an occult prophecy concerning the great conqueror of Europe! nothing can be plainer! Of course the first letter, N, stands for nothing—a mere veil to cover the prophecy till the time of revealing. In all languages ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... his chair and paced the floor, one hand clasped to his forehead, his small grey eyes carrying a dream-look as though he were seeking an occult enlightenment; then he sat down wearily, and spoke as if interpreting something ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... of reason is no occult power: it is simply the capacity for finding and establishing systems of means for the attainment of ends; or it may be defined as the power of acquiring experience and of self-applying this experience in the future ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... are due to 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 ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... existence is continuous and permanent, though its interactions with matter are discontinuous and temporary; and I conjecture that it is subject to a law of evolution—that a linear advance is open to it—whether it be in its phenomenal or in its occult state. ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... He ever permits them to be accomplished. It may not seem, from the general language held concerning them, or from any directly traceable results, that mountains have had serious influence on human intellect; but it will not, I think, be difficult to show that their occult influence has been both constant and essential to the progress of ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... slowly raised her head and fixed upon Parsifal her prayerful wet eyes. Either from his recent contemplation of the flowery lea, or some occult association of her personality with the past, the flowers of Klingsor's garden come into his mind. "I saw them wither who had smiled on me. May they not also be hungering for redemption now?... Your tears, too, are turned ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... the idea of the fatalistic power of inanimate things. We cannot think it possible to be just or good, not to speak of being cheerful, without looking at some physical fact and saying humbly "By your leave." We personify our tools and machines, and the occult symbols of trade, and then as abject idolaters we bow down before the work of our own hands. We are awe-struck at their power, and magnify the mystery of their existence. We only pray that they may not turn us out of house ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... here," continued the father, "told me a curious story. It seems that Mr. Crisp here has toiled and moiled for many years, keeping you in comparative luxury and idleness. Not a word, sir. It's an open secret. For some occult reason he likes to pay this price for your company. Having supported you so long, I presume he is prepared to support you to ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... door the Montague girl called to an approaching group who seemed to have heard by wireless or occult means the report of new activity in the casting office. "Hurry, you troupers. You can eat to-morrow night, maybe!" They hurried. She turned to Merton Gill. "Seems ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... love-scene itself—the scene in which the miracle of love is solemnized and celebrated. I thought that of all miracles, the miracle which had occurred that night, and was even then occurring, might be counted among the most wondrous. What occult forces, what secret influences of soul on soul, what courage on his part, what sublime immodesty and unworldliness on mine had brought it about! In what dreadful disaster would it not end! ... I cared ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... regarded as in some occult manner, which as yet has baffled detection, influencing the perfection of sporidia[P] In Rhytisma, found on the leaves of maple and willow, black pitchy spots at first appear, which contain within them a golden pulp, in which very slender corpuscles are mixed with an abundant mucilage. These corpuscles ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... eat 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 taste, and the early Greeks knew all about its power. Homer in the ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... and odd byways to knowledge. To him philosophy was to be something giving strange swiftness and double sight, divining the sources of springs beneath the earth or of expression beneath the human countenance, clairvoyant of occult gifts in common or uncommon things, in the reed at the brook-side or the star which draws near to us but once in a century. How in this way the clear purpose was overclouded, the fine chaser's head ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... act without reference to them. And there's no measuring the poisoned influence of that notion of future reward on the mind of Christian Europe, in the early ages. Half the monastic system rose out of that, acting on the occult pride and ambition of good people (as the other half of it came of their follies and misfortunes). There is always a considerable quantity of pride, to begin with, in what is called "giving one's self to God." As if one had ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... two men were going to prose about mines and shares, in those subdued half-mysterious voices, telling each other occult facts in half-expressed phrases, utterly dark to the outside world; but, while she was languidly wondering, a change in her lover's manner startled ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... 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). The track of the ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... gazing upon crystal—particularly upon an empty tumbler—I am able to throw myself into a trance in which I can communicate with departed spirits. A good drink does not die, you know: its soul hovers radiantly on the twentieth plane, and through the occult power of a medium those who loved it in life can get in touch with it once more. Through these trances of mine I have been privileged to put many bereaved ones in communication with their dear departed spirits. To hear the table-rappings and the shouts of ecstasy ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... fortnight together. But that is perhaps saying a little too much. Four men and three women, so that when they broke up there was one dame always attended by two cavaliers: strange to say, Fan was always the favoured one. For some occult reason no one contested the curate's right to have Constance all to himself on such occasions; for what right had he, a religious man, to monopolise this pretty infidel? Then, too, she was a widow, entitled by prescription to the largest share of attention; nevertheless, the curate was ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... desire to avoid legal consequences. I argue from this fact that the gang numbers persons of respectability—outward, of course, and merely outward, as the robbery proves. But I argue, second, that we must have been observed at Franchard itself by some occult observer, and dogged throughout the day with a skill and patience that I venture to qualify as consummate. No ordinary man, no occasional criminal, would have shown himself capable of this combination. We have in our neighbourhood, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Two ways have occurred to me of dealing with the matter," continued Dr. Cairn quietly. "One is to find that cavern and to kill, in the occult sense, by means of a stake, the vampire who lies there; the other which, I confess, might only result in the permanent 'possession' of Lady Lashmore—is to get at the power which controls ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... tell you, my friend, that for two years the sight of this girl had made a strange impression on me whenever I came across her. Without knowing why, I turned pale and my heart beat violently. I have a friend who studies the occult sciences, and he would call what I experienced "the affinity of fluids"; as for me, I only know that I was fated to fall in love with Marguerite, ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... of Naples, famous for skill in the occult sciences. He wrote a book on Physiognomy, seeking to trace in the human face resemblances to animals, and to infer similar ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... will stand beside that shrine, Occult, withheld, untrod, Whose lamps tremble continually With prayer sent up to God; And where each need, reveal'd, expects Its ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... on a table with a stand under it, and a back screen of black velvet or dark material. The latter materially assists by cutting off side lights and reflections. Steady gazing in complete silence is absolutely necessary, for unlike other occult phenomena, the distraction the attention of primary (ordinary) consciousness is a great disadvantage. Success depends chiefly upon idiosyncrasy or faculty in the gazers, for "Seers" are very often men and women of imperfect education, in fact they seem "born ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... 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 ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... prudence they might last ten days longer. "That is," said Mr. Oakhurst, sotto voce to the Innocent, "if you're willing to board us. If you ain't—and perhaps you'd better not—you can wait till Uncle Billy gets back with provisions." For some occult reason, Mr. Oakhurst could not bring himself to disclose Uncle Billy's rascality, and so offered the hypothesis that he had wandered from the camp and had accidentally stampeded the animals. He dropped ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... The occult quality in the air did not depart with the coming of night, though the winds no longer alternated, the warm blasts ceasing to blow, while the cold came steadily and with increasing fierceness. Yet it was warm and ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... himself up in Chicago as a Persian Magus, teaching Yogi breathing exercises and occult sex-lore to the elegant society ladies of the pork-packing metropolis. The Sun God, worshipped for two score centuries in India, Egypt, Greece and Rome, has a new shrine on Lake Park Avenue, and the prophet gives tea-parties at which his disciples are fed on lilac-blossoms—"the ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... further illustrations, there can be no doubt that the therapeutic virtues of these so-called lightning plants may be traced to, in very many cases, their mythical origin. It is not surprising too that plants of this stamp should have been extensively used as charms against the influences of occult powers, their symbolical nature investing them with a potency such as was possessed ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... caught the bear. The Lamas mistook me for a Hindoo doctor, owing to the color of my face, which was sunburnt, and had long remained unwashed. I wore no disguise. They thought that I was on a pilgrimage round the Mansarowar Lake. They appeared anxious to know whether illnesses were cured by occult science in India, or by medicine only. I, who, on the other hand, was more interested in getting information than in giving it, turned the ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... eldest son, Tecumapease, the only daughter, and Sauwaseekau; the younger children were Nehasumo, Laulewasikaw, and Kumshakaw. The two last were twins; and twins were held in superstitious awe by the Indians, who feared them as possessed of occult power, and frequently put one or both to death. In this instance no such fate befell the children. Kumshakaw evinced none of the dreaded attributes, and lived to a ripe old age, but Laulewasikaw, by his practice of magic and claims of supernatural knowledge ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond
... from behind the rock at the back of the cavern, the first figure, which I had believed up to now really to be the negro cook's ghost or spirit, permitted for some occult purpose or other to revisit the earth, also jumped up out of the corner, dropping ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... psychic research that we particularly discussed. Van Maarden was the greatest scholar in the Mystic, the Occult, the Spiritualistic that I have ever met. He claimed to be able to go out of the body at will and see what any friend was up to at any time, in any out-of-the-way place ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... and fish, the bird, the brute, Of every kind occult or known (Each exquisitely form'd to suit Its humble lot, and that alone), Through ocean, earth, and air ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... at first, there was considerable liberality on the part of the officials (all paid for), and both Raleigh and Percy had each a garden to cultivate and walk in, and a still-room or laboratory in which to study and perform their ' magic.' Hariot was the master of both in these occult sciences. The ' furnace ' and the ' still' were at first Raleigh's chief amusement and study. Assaying and transfusing metals, distilling simples and compounds, concocting medicines, and testing antidotes, with exercises in chemistry and ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... higher problem of the essence or origin of life. Who can explain what is the essence of the attraction of gravity? No one now objects to following out the results consequent on this unknown element of attraction; notwithstanding that Leibnitz formerly accused Newton of introducing "occult qualities and ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... rags and tatters of a storm, and Valentin regarded it with a wistfulness unusual in such scientific natures as his. Perhaps such scientific natures have some psychic prevision of the most tremendous problem of their lives. From any such occult mood, at least, he quickly recovered, for he knew he was late, and that his guests had already begun to arrive. A glance at his drawing-room when he entered it was enough to make certain that his principal ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... unessential; it may come and go, may settle or be fanned away. It has life and it is not without law; it has an obvious life, and a less obvious law. But with Greece abides the obvious law and the less obvious life: symmetry as apparent as the symmetry of the form of man, and life occult like his unequal heart. And this seems to be the nobler and ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... acts like an incantation. Its merit lies less in its obvious meaning than in its occult power. There would seem, at first sight, to be no more in his words than in other words. But they are words of enchantment. No sooner are they pronounced, than the past is present and the distant near. New forms of beauty start ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... decorated with ribbons and crosses, wield their pens with all the 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. But to the uninitiated he is explanatory to a scruple, as though ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various
... cause the child to have red marks on the face or any part of the body. The causes producing naevi materni have probably been the origin of such marks, rather than the idea entertained by the Chinese that the father, having performed an action by some occult mode, influences the child yet unborn. A case is said to have occurred in which ill effects were obviated, or rather obliterated, by the red papers being torn down, after the birth of the infant, and soaked in water, when as the red ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... magic lore. She drew magic circles, saw visions of people in a glass, possessed numerous charms and incantations, and, above all, kept a wonderful magic book. She attempted to find lost money, to tell the future, and to cure disease; indeed, she had a varied repertoire of occult performances. ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... of those laws of occult force, the power of which we feel while we are totally ignorant of its rules, we fix upon the noonday as the time for some of ...
— Breakfasts and Teas - Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions • Paul Pierce
... would offend; and, therefore, this philosopher, in more places than one of his books, gives the reader some caution about it. He bids him beware of confounding this name with what the ancients called occult qualities, but to be satisfied with knowing that there is in all bodies a central force, which acts to the utmost limits of the universe, according to the ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... keeping with the general eccentricity of his person. His broad brow showed certain protuberances which Gall identifies with poetic genius. His clear and full blue eyes had the brusque vivacity which may be noticed in searchers for occult causes. The nose, probably perfect in early life, was now elongated, and the nostrils seemed to have gradually opened wider from an involuntary tension of the olfactory muscles. The cheek-bones were very prominent, which made the cheeks themselves, already ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... heading him off, and remembering something I had read not long before, 'it is indeed a wonderful, subtle thing. We live in the midst of the unknown. Unseen forces drag us hither and thither. At times we are brought face to face with the occult, the eerie, the gruesome. Charcot says in his superb work on the subject that—er—that—well, we will hardly go into it now. Some other time. The matter is a profound one, and not to be touched upon lightly. How is my old friend ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... subject he seemed to remember nothing of the matter; that whenever anybody of any weight has questioned him as to his devotion to these two persons, his replies have shown so complete an absence of ideas and of sense of his own interests, that there obviously must be some occult cause at work to which the petitioner begs to direct the eye of justice, inasmuch as it is impossible but that this cause should be criminal, malignant, and wrongful, or else of a nature to come under medical jurisdiction; unless ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... not see her face, but he knew very well in some occult manner that she had parted with some at least of her usual composure. As a matter of fact she was nervous ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... opinion, next these may be reckoned such as with their new inventions and occult arts undertake to change the forms of things and hunt all about after a certain fifth essence; men so bewitched with this present hope that it never repents them of their pains or expense, but are ever contriving how ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... lived in London one Simon Forman, M.D., to whom we are indebted for our earliest notice of THE WINTER'S TALE. He was rather an odd genius, I should think; being an adept in occult science and the arts of magic, and at the same time an ardent lover of the stage; thus symbolizing at once with the most conservative and the most radical tendencies of the age: for, strange as it may seem, the Drama then led the van of progress; ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... helplessly amid these Alpine rigors. It was surely a legitimate question whether a railroad were possible in the face of such embarrassments; and it is fair to attribute the adverse action of Congress to these considerations, rather than to occult and scarcely ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... once were on the back of a sheep grazing on some distant hillside. The chair in which you sit once swayed in the forest midst the soughing winds. The pen with which I am writing once was imbedded deep in some far-away mountain range. But that occult genius—the human brain, conceived the idea of creating that wool, and wood, and ore into a higher state of usefulness, and at this juncture was compelled to acknowledge the infinite necessity of a co-worker; hence, the brain employs the hand as an external agent to put into force ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given
... that he was indebted. Strictly speaking, his association with the matter dated from the night of his meeting with the mysterious cabman in West India Dock road. Or had the curtain first been lifted upon this occult drama that evening, five years ago, as the setting sun reddened the waters of the Imperial Canal and a veiled figure passed him ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... out that the real "Paracelsus" cannot be understood without considerable excursions into the occult sciences, and he is quite right as to the illumination these provide, in proportionate degree as they are acquired by the reader; as a matter of course they enlarge his horizon, and offer him clues ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... reminds us that we cannot understand the real Paracelsus without reference to the occult sciences so largely cultivated in his day, as also to the mental atmosphere which produced them; and he quotes in illustration a passage from the writings of that Bishop of Spanheim who was the instructor of Paracelsus, and who appears as such in the poem. The passage ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... to utter these words, until at length the growing volume dominated the whole room and mastered the manifestation of all that opposed it. For just as he understood the spiritual alchemy that can transmute evil forces by raising them into higher channels, so he knew from long study the occult use of sound, and its direct effect upon the plastic region wherein the powers of spiritual evil work their fell purposes. Harmony was restored first of all to his own soul, and thence to the room and ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... monumental solution of the problem of existence first published in "The Rosicrucian Cosmo Conception" in November, 1909, more than a year before the expiration of the first decade of the twentieth century. This book marked a new era in so-called "occult" literature, and the many editions which have since been published, as well as the thousands of letters which continue to come to the author, are speaking testimonies to the fact that people are finding in this ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... 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 ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... tremendously relieved 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 ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... visible," she designated "the cottage in the hills where dolichos is bleached." The main tower she called the Broad Vista Tower. The lofty tower facing the east, she designated "the variegated and flowery Hall;" bestowing on the line of buildings, facing the west, the appellation of "the Hall of Occult Fragrance;" and besides these figured such further names as: "the Hall of peppery wind," "the Arbour of lotus fragrance," "the Islet of purple caltrop," "the Bank of golden lotus," and the like. There were also tablets with four ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... to hover a long while between the two worlds, it was thought, but the real spring was coming on, and all nature was reviving. She had never quite wanted to die, so at the lowest ebb she seemed to will herself back to life by some occult power. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... 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 ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... following essay, DR. F. HARTMANN, an enlightened author of the Theosophical and Occult school, presents the mystic or Oriental view of man, in an interesting manner, deducing therefrom a philosophy of the healing art. My readers will no doubt be interested in his exposition, and, as the ancient ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... classified according to subject, though not chronologically. He wrote novels of society, of history, of mystery, and of romance. In all he was successful, and perhaps felt as much interest in one as in another. In his own life the study of the occult played a part; he was familiar with the contemporary fads in mystery and acquainted with their professors. "Ancient" history also attracted him, and he even wrote a couple of volumes of a 'History of Athens.' In all his writing there is a tendency to lapse into ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... I cried, as we rode on, feeling for some occult reason very angry with the Man of Wrath. "And her wretched husband doesn't care a rap, and will probably beat her to-night if his supper isn't right. What nonsense it is to talk about the equality of the sexes when the women ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... things are completed in it, its age is accomplished; and the last and general fever may as naturally destroy it before six thousand, as me before forty. There is therefore some other hand that twines the thread of life than that of nature: we are not only ignorant in antipathies and occult qualities; our ends are as obscure as our begin- nings; the line of our days is drawn by night, and the various effects therein by a pencil that is invisible; wherein, though we confess our ignorance, I am sure we do not err if we say, it is the ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... small act of yours and ours: there is no doubt to me, now that I taste the real grain, but all Europe will henceforth have to rely more and more upon your Western Valleys and this article. How beautiful to think of lean tough Yankee settlers, tough as gutta-percha, with most occult unsubduable fire in their belly, steering over the Western Mountains, to annihilate the jungle, and bring bacon and corn out of it for the Posterity of Adam! The Pigs in about a year eat up all the rattlesnakes ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... of sounding the secret purposes of the Protestant princes of Germany, in regard to the great contest of the age. In this mission, young as he was, he acquitted himself, not only to the satisfaction, but to the admiration of Walsingham, certainly a master himself in that occult science, the diplomacy of the sixteenth century. "There hath not been," said he, "any gentleman, I am sure, that hath gone through so honourable a charge with ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... had applied for had not yet arrived; she seemed to remain as hopelessly entangled in the web of war as ever, watching, without emotion, the old spider. Death, busy all around her, tireless, sinister, absorbed in his own occult affairs. ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... neighbourhood of Augsburg. These vagabonds gave out that they were exiles from Lower Egypt, and pretended to know the art of predicting coming events. It was soon found out that they were much less versed in divination and in the occult sciences than in the arts of ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... mysteries unknown to us. I am not going in to the horrid old question of "followers." I don't mean cousins from the country, love-stricken policemen, or gentlemen in mufti from Knightsbridge Barracks; but people who have an occult right on the premises; the uncovenanted servants of the house; gray women who are seen at evening with baskets flitting about area-railings; dingy shawls which drop you furtive curtsies in your neighborhood; ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... common delusion that the mesmerist or hypnotizer counts for anything in the experiment. The operator, whether priest, physician, charlatan, self-deluded enthusiast, or conscious imposter, is not the source of any occult influence, does not possess any mysterious power, and plays only a very secondary and insignificant part in the chain of phenomena observed. There exist at the present time many individuals who claim for themselves, and some who make a living by so doing, a peculiar property or ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... the other that I felt more satisfaction in listening to you than I have ever done when this subject has been the theme. That so many thousands of educated and intelligent people should yield their belief to so bold a delusion as this must be, if there be no occult cause at work, is inconceivable. By occult cause I mean, of course, nothing at all analogous to hidden trickery, but to the interference of some power with which the earth has been hitherto unacquainted. If it were not taking too great a liberty, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... me do I believe she had any apprehension. She does not know even now, I am confident, the Samurai's blunder—if blunder it was. As she said, she was merely not sleepy, although there is no telling in what occult ways she may have received though not ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... in many oriental lands. It is worthy of note that we have no record of these men from the east offering gifts to Herod in his palace; they did, however, impart of their treasure to the lowly Infant, in whom they recognized the King they had come to seek. The tendency to ascribe occult significance to even trifling details mentioned in scripture, and particularly as regards the life of Christ, has led to many fanciful suggestions concerning the gold and frankincense and myrrh specified in this incident. Some have supposed a half-hidden symbolism therein—gold ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... unceasingly flows towards all being, in order to support its central fire, [Symbol: Fire]. The exaltation of the latter leads to the fire test, the idea of which Wirth seems to take in strictly occult form, in the manner of Eliphas Levi. Finally, a circulation takes place, in that the individual will seeks like a magnet to draw the divine will, always falls down again, rises, however, and so on in cycles, till both meet in the "philosophical fire." It is the cycle of ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... as Mary crossed the hall. All eyes followed her with interest as she went. It was as though an echo of her talk with the Inspector had by some occult means already spread through the little household. Through the half-open green baize door leading to the servants' quarters some unseen person was bawling down the telephone in a heated controversy with the exchange about a long-distance call to London. And ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... not by the Supreme Being, but by a secondary agent, who is but His WORD the [Greek: Λογος], and by types which are but his ideas, aided by an INTELLIGENCE, or WISDOM [Greek: Σοφια], which gives one of His Attributes; in which we see the occult meaning of the necessity of recovering "the Word"; and of our two columns of STRENGTH and WISDOM, which are also the two parallel lines that bound the circle representing the Universe: that the visible world is the image of the invisible world; that the essence of the Human Soul is the image of ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... days with a perceptible air of detachment from the tribulations of home. It had made her, fortunately, very pretty—still prettier than usual: it sometimes happened that at moments when Grace was most angry she had a faint sweet smile which might have been drawn from some source of occult consolation. It was perhaps in some degree connected with Peter Sherringham's visit, as to which the girl had not been superstitiously silent. When Grace asked her if she had secret information and if it pointed to the idea that everything would be all right ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... statements are true, and yet it is quite possible for people who do not normally see astrally to misunderstand them. Every order of physical matter has its corresponding order of astral matter in constant association with it—not to be separated from it except by a very considerable exertion of occult force, and even then only to be held apart from it as long as force is being definitely exerted to that end. But for all that the relation of the astral particles one to another is far looser than is the case with ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... common people and see them in various phases of their lives I say to myself, as St. Francis Xavier said of them more than three hundred years ago, "This nation is the delight of my soul." The critic, the hypercritic, is everywhere. He suspects everybody and everything. He can find occult motives and psychological reasons for everything. I confess I am a trifle tired of the critic, especially the psychological critic, in reference to Japan. I view the people there as they are to-day, and I have ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... existence. Then his wandering recollections took shape, and he remembered the face and the form and the haunting mystery of the expression, and he felt for a moment as though he had been permitted to peer into the cabalistic darkness of an awful mystery, though he failed wholly to perceive its occult significance—if significance ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... around dwellings, conditions which, when neglected, had led to the outbreaks of epidemic disease from the days of Moses to the present time. But while the results had been patent, it was only in recent years that a clew had been obtained to the occult conditions in air and water to enable their comparative healthful purity to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... characters written upon them; and in the box which they first took up was a powder similar to that which Mynheer Poots had given to Amine. There were many articles and writings, which made it appear that the old man had dabbled in the occult sciences, as they were practised at that period, and those they hastened to ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... like Michael Scott, had learned "the art of glammorie In Padua beyond the 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 Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... fleet or to blow the seven forts of Cronstadt into the air. The revelations of the spy went for nothing; and, after the cutlasses of the lads in blue-jackets had been sharpened to a razor-like degree of keenness, those blades, for some occult reason, were not allowed to cut deep enough; the only cutting—and running into the bargain—being done by the Russian fleet, which, safely ensconced in the harbour of Cronstadt, defied us from behind the walls of fortresses which we did not care to bombard. ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... the sky. A mob had dethroned the God of Sickness, and banished his effigy in a paper junk, launched on the river at night, in flame. A geomancer proclaimed that a bamboo grove behind the town formed an angle most correct, germane, and pleasant to the Azure Dragon and the White Tiger, whose occult currents, male and female, run throughout Nature. For any or all of these reasons, the town was delivered. The pestilence vanished, as though it had come but to grant Monsieur Jolivet his silence, and to add a few score uncounted living wretches to the dark, mighty, imponderable ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... palm trees. Oh, Jonesville yarn! you never expected to be knit amid seens like this. I can knit and admire scenery first rate, and my blue and white yarn seemed to connect me with Jonesville in some occult way, and then I knew Josiah would need his socks before we ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... a book-walled room and grow bloodless with dreaming over insoluble problems. And yet a friend of mine told me that these towns, and especially California towns, were filled with seers and prophets. The occult flourishes in the high, dry atmosphere, those of the faith say. Don't you permit Clarke to destroy your love of nature, Miss Lambert; you belong to the sane and sunny world, and he has no right to bring his gloomy conceptions ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... the echo in the solitude of his thought and his pain. His skepticism announced the dissolution of this theologico-metaphysical world, and inaugurated the reign of the arid True, of the Real. His songs are the most profound and occult voices of that laborious transition called the nineteenth century. That which has importance is not the brilliant exterior of that century of progress, and it is not without irony that he speaks of the progressive destinies of mankind. That which has importance ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... example that morning by breakfasting by candle-light. Here were thirty minutes lost. He quickened his pace up and down in front of the hotel, as if his own rapidity of movement would possibly exert some occult influence in hastening the loiterers; but another quarter of an hour ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... made greater advances in the tone developing technic of their instrument than the violin teachers. One reason is, that as a class they are more intellectual. And then, too, violin teaching is regarded too often as a mystic art, an occult science, and one into which only those specially gifted may hope to be initiated. This, it seems to me, is a fallacy. Just as a gift for mathematics is a special talent not given to all, so a natural technical talent exists in relatively few people. ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... another reason for not noticing the beauty of the scene. He was not only troubled, he was seriously embarrassed. The hint thrown out by his little brother about the Koshare had struck him; for it led to the inference that the child had knowledge of secret arts and occult practices of which even he, Okoya, although on the verge of manhood, had never received any intimation. Far more yet than this knowledge, which Shyuote might have obtained through mere accident, the hint at unpleasant relations between Okoya and ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... say that you are led, in that case, to your conclusion by exactly the same train of reasoning as that which a man of science pursues when he is endeavouring to discover the origin and laws of the most occult phenomena. The process is, and always must be, the same; and precisely the same mode of reasoning was employed by Newton and Laplace in their endeavours to discover and define the causes of the movements of the heavenly bodies, ...
— The Method By Which The Causes Of The Present And Past Conditions Of Organic Nature Are To Be Discovered.—The Origination Of Living Beings • Thomas H. Huxley
... eye. He was no analyst of handwritings, yet it came to him instantly that this note was from a pretty woman. To see that it was from a woman was simple, but that he knew—and he did know—that she was pretty, savors of the occult. More than this: there was something about it that thrilled him. Suddenly, and without reason, he knew that it came ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... of law did not await the discharge of the thunderbolt. As Mr Dean expressed it, he was too 'cute for that. By some occult means, known only to legal men, he discovered what was in the air, took time by the forelock, and retired into privacy—perhaps to the back settlements of Peru—with all the available cash that he could righteously, or otherwise, scrape together. ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... shape our little successive phases of existence, were certainly in a kindly mood that "lovely night in June." The two Professors had retired to Franklin Marmion's sanctum for the discussion of whisky and soda and the possibilities of physical manifestations of the Occult. Mrs van Huysman was frankly and comfortably sleeping in the deep, amply-cushioned armchair, and the two young men were almost as frankly pining for ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... of them foresaw the assassination of McKinley. Most of them, however, are gifted in curing diseases. The typical letter reads as follows: "There is a young man living here who seems to be endowed with a wonderful occult power by the use of which he is able to diagnose almost any human ailment. He goes into a trance, and while in this condition the name of the subject is given him, and then without any further questions he proceeds to diagnose his case fully and ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... for another quarter of an hour, would be impossible, on such tenterhooks was he. To stay—for what? Only to listen to more slanderous hints, of the kind he had heard before. As it was, he did not believe he could face her frankly, should she still come. He felt as if, in some occult way, he had assisted at a ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... made up from papers published in "The Athenaeum," with additions by the author. Soon after opening it we come to names with which we are familiar, the first of these, that of Cornelius Agrippa, being connected with the occult and mystic doctrines dealt with by many of De Morgan's correspondents. But the name most likely to arrest us is that of Giordano Bruno, the same philosopher, heretic, and martyr whose statue has recently been erected in Rome, to the great horror of the Pope and his prelates in the Old World ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... any day. So each morning, after vainly proposing that they play truant, he would go away alleging important business, an appointment, or illness, just at the very moment when his companions were going to their classes. But by some occult, thaumaturgic art Tadeo passed the examinations, was beloved by the professors, and had before ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... most aristocratic in the country, it was, I think, a matter of pride that no member of it had ever been in trade nor politics, nor suffered any kind of distinction. Mohun was a trifle sentimental, and had in him a singular element of superstition, which led him to the study of all manner of occult subjects, although his sane mental health safeguarded him against fantastic and perilous faiths. He made daring incursions into the realm of the unreal without renouncing his residence in the partly surveyed and charted region of what we ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... he is innocent of each act imputed." But secret sinners must not be disclosed, for, once the blush of shame is set aside, they will indulge the more in sin, as Augustine says (De Verbis. Dom.; cf. Serm. lxxxii). Consequently, Christ's body is not to be given to occult sinners, even if they ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... was not content. It is certain that there are in man two occult powers engaged in a death-struggle: the one, clear-sighted and cold, is concerned with reality, calculation, weight, and judges the past; the other is athirst for the future and eager for the unknown. When passion sways man, reason follows him weeping and warning, him of his danger; ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... Natura" is the oldest, the most powerful, and the most occult, of the secret societies of Italy. Its mythic origin reaches the era of paganism, and it is not impossible that it may have been founded by some of the despoiled professors of the ancient faith. As time advanced, the brotherhood ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... an invisible influence residing in the sun; and even those philosophers who had been accustomed to the rigor of true scientific research, and who possessed sufficient mathematical skill for the examination of the Newtonian doctrines, viewed them at first as reviving the occult qualities of the ancient physics, and resisted their introduction with a pertinacity which it is ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... and coral, and apply to the belly the plaster of bread, the stomach cerate, or bread dipped in hot wine; or take oil of mastich, quinces, mint, wormwood, each half an ounce; of nutmegs by expression, half a drachm; chemical oil of mint, three drops. Coral hath an occult property to prevent vomiting, and is therefore ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... human and terrestrial affairs, was through long usage firmly established in the public mind. Indeed, at this time, astronomy was regarded as a handmaid to astrology; for, with the aid of astronomical calculation, the professors of this occult science were enabled to predict the positions of the planets, and by this means practised their art with an ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... some sense of the occult revealed my presence, for she turned swiftly, with a sharp gasp of the breath, and looked straight into my eyes. The recognition was instant, bewildering, a shock which left her speechless, choking back the cry of alarm which rose into her ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... where? Evelyn's mouth was thin and it drooped at the ends.... But she was only twenty; at five-and-twenty, at thirty, she might be possessed by new ideas, new passions.... The moment we look into life and examine the weft a little, what a mystery it becomes, how occult the design, and out of what impenetrable darkness the shuttle passes, weaving a strange pattern, harmonious in a way, and yet deducible to none of our laws! This little adventure, the little fact of his becoming Evelyn's lover, was sown with every eventuality.... If, instead of his winning her to ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... it were, turned on all the power in a supreme effort to reach them. What if he had failed again? Such was the misgiving that beset him, after the service, as he got out of his surplice, communicated by some occult telepathy . . . . Mr. Parr was awaiting him, and summoning his courage, hope battling against intuition, he opened the door into the now empty church and made his way toward the porch, where the sound of voices warned him that several persons were lingering. The nature of their congratulations ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a woman of rare culture and research, my daughter and I had become interested in the school of theosophy, and read "Isis Unveiled," by Madame Blavatsky, Sinnett's works on the "Occult World," and "The Perfect Way," by Anna Kingsford. Full of these ideas, I soon interested my cousins in the subject, and we resolved to explore, as far as possible, some of these Eastern mysteries, of which we had ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... am completely ignorant of Egyptian matters, language, writing, history, secrets, medicines, poisons, occult powers—all that go to make up the mystery of that mysterious land. This disease, or condition, or whatever it may be called, from which Mr. Trelawny is suffering, is in some way connected with Egypt. I have had a suspicion of this from ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... For some occult reason the word "cheese" always excites Parliamentary merriment. Mr. GEORGE ROBERTS'S announcement that the Board of Trade had made arrangements by which a quantity of this commodity would be available for public use next week was greeted with the customary laughter. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... say a word or to make a gesture that could suggest the idea that he had had the slightest share in the events of the day; and it was remarkable that of all those who came to hand in their reports, there was not one who did not seem to divine his thoughts, and exercise care not to compromise his occult power by open obedience. All reports were made to the King. The Cardinal then traversed, by the side of the Prince, the right of the camp, which had not been under his view from the height where he had remained; ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... had ever been put in charge of the sanitation of a District. He was cursed by the ignorant in the Muktiarbad bazaar and at Panipara village itself, but so far his person had been respected, as it was known by some occult means that he secretly ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... with its characteristic questions, categories, and formulae. Of course, there are, and equally, of course, physical laws will not cover biological facts; nor will biological laws cover psychological ones. This is not due to any occult cause, but to the simple fact that as each group of phenomena has its characteristic features, each set of laws are framed to cover the phenomena presented by that group. Otherwise there would be no need of these special laws. It is astonishing how paralysing is the effect ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen |
