"Potion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... disclosed Of outward joy, this bulk of life we feel, Is not something, but something interposed. Only what in this is not this is real. If this be to have sense, if to be awake Be but to see this bright, great sleep of things, For the rarer potion mine own dreams I'll take And for truth commune with imaginings, Holding a dream too bitter, a too fair curse, This common sleep of men, ...
— 35 Sonnets • Fernando Pessoa
... said the Egyptian, impetuously. 'Fear nothing, Glaucus shall be thine. Yet how, when thou obtainest it, canst thou administer to him this potion?' ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... related the tale of the magnanimous Alexander drinking off the potion, in scorn of the slanderer, to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... The potion was nothing more nor less than a table spoonful of brandy, which Bobby, who had conscientious scruples about drinking ardent spirits, at first refused to take. Then Tom argued the point, and the sick boy yielded. The dose made him sicker yet, and ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... and nothing further could be said or done on the instant. And, moreover, such love-making as had taken place did in truth seem to have been perpetrated altogether on the side of the young man. Therefore it was that Madame Staubach spoke with a gentle voice as she prescribed to Linda some pill or potion that might probably be of service, and then went forth ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... eagerly of the potion, put the cup on the mantelpiece, and then tilted his head to the right so as to submerge the affected tooth. In this posture he remained, awaiting the sweet influence of the remedy. The girls, out ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... birdie, And a snake the hissing viper, And the ruffe a fish in water. And I know that hard is iron, And that mud when black is bitter. Painful, too, is boiling water, And the heat of fire is hurtful, Water is the oldest medicine, Cataract's foam a magic potion; 200 The Creator's self a ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... did? Shall I tell you? Yes, I will. I crept upstairs to my quiet little room, tugged the box from its hiding-place under the bed, drew out my dresses—my lovely, lovely brocades—and put them on! Then I spoke the potion speech, beginning in a whisper, but getting louder as I went on, and always looking at myself in the glass. I had blown out the candle, and there was no light in the room but the moon that was shining on my face, but I was glowing, my very soul was afire, and when I ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... The green isle deg. where she was bred, deg.130 And her bower in Ireland, For the surge-beat Cornish strand Where the prince whom she must wed Dwells on loud Tyntagel's hill, deg. deg.134 High above the sounding sea. 135 And that potion rare her mother Gave her, that her future lord, Gave her, that King Marc and she, Might drink it on their marriage-day, And for ever love each other— 140 Let her, as she sits on board, Ah, sweet saints, unwittingly! See it shine, and take it up, And to Tristram laughing ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... malady the colic, for toothache, headaches, or for removing warts, and taking motes out of the eyes; let it suffice to inform our readers that she was well stocked with them; and, that in addition to this, she, together with her husband, drank a potion made up and administered by an herb-doctor, for preventing for ever the slightest misunderstanding or quarrel between man and wife. Whether it produced this desirable object or not, our readers may conjecture, when we add, that the herb-doctor, after having taken a very liberal ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... peace, now descends from a balloon and demands the release of Betty. It has been the will of Wotan that Merglitz and Betty should meet on earth and hate each other like poison, but Zweiback, the druggist of the gods, has disobeyed and concocted a love-potion which has rendered the young couple very unpleasant company. Wotan, enraged, destroys them with a ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... despatch him. Seeing this, Magny, with the most dreadful self-abasement, after dragging himself round the room on his knees from one officer to another, weeping and screaming with terror, at last desperately drank off the potion, and was a corpse in a few minutes. Thus ended ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... pretext and another she put off taking her glass for nearly five minutes, but he eyed her too frequently to allow her to throw the potion under the grate. It became necessary to take one sip. This she did, and found an opportunity of absorbing it ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... The doctor said to Djalma, before he left him: 'Your wound is doing well, but the fatigue of the journey might bring on inflammation; it will be good for you, in the course of to-morrow, to take a soothing potion, that I will make ready this evening, to have with us in the carriage.' The doctor's plan was a simple one," added Faringhea; "to-day the prince was to take the potion at four or five o'clock in the afternoon—and fall into a deep sleep—the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... think no Englishman of Goethe's genius and sensibility would have described a maiden, whom it was his intention to represent, though frail on one point, yet lovely and gentle-hearted, as capable of being induced to give her poor old mother a sleeping potion. "It will do her no harm." But the risk!—affection gives the wisdom of the serpent where there would else be but the simplicity of the dove. A true Englishman would have felt that such an act, so bold and undaughterly, blighted at once the lily flower, making it "put on darkness" ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... are in the church in the wilderness have usually for an after-draught to that bitter one that went before. Thus, as tender mothers give their children plums or sugar to sweeten their palate after they have drunk a bitter potion, so God gives his children the cups of salvation and consolation after they have suffered awhile: "For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation aboundeth ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... the potion unhesitatingly, immediately sinking back on his pillow in a quiet sleep; when the girl, sitting down by the side of the bed, watched the long-drawn, quivering respirations that came from the white, parted lips of the ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... I forget the last night of painful and protracted suffering. The miserable woman who pretended to assist me in watching, had taken some stupefying potion, and I watched alone, as David expressed it, longing for the first ray of the morning. At length, the day dawned, and I was relieved by good old Mr. Moore. As he entered, I said to him, "Poor Juda is still living, and is a great sufferer; will you not pray for her?" He replied, "I ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... and lewd entreaties. Well, I have promis'd her to kill the earl; And yet, I hope ye will not think I'll do it.[474] Yet I will sound the depth of their device, And see the issue of their bloody drift. I'll give the earl, unknown to any man, A sleepy potion, which shall make him seem As if he were stark dead, for certain hours: But in my absence no man shall report That for my dame's sake I did ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... beside my thigh The faulchion keen, with death denouncing looks, Rush'd on her,—she, with a shrill scream of fear, Ran under my raised arm, seized fast my knees, And in winged accents plaintive thus began:— 'Who, whence thy city, and thy birth declare,— Amazed I see thee with that potion drenched, Yet unenchanted: never man before Once passed it through his lips and lived the same. * * * * Sheath again Thy sword, and let us on my bed recline, Mutual embrace, that we may trust henceforth Each other without jealousy or fear.' The goddess spake, to whom I thus ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... upon hobbling away to the postoffice, where in due time he was discovered by certain members of the Brampton Club nailing to the wall a new engraving of Abraham Lincoln, and draping it with a little silk flag he had bought in Boston. By which it will be seen that a potion of the Club were coming back to their old haunt. This portion, it may be surmised, was composed of such persons alone as were likely to be welcomed by the postmaster. Some of these had grievances against ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... in) and something from the Lancet is extracted, a long article against quackery—and, as I say, this is the first and only sentence I read—'There is scarcely a peer of the realm who is not the patron of some quack pill or potion: and the literati too, are deeply tainted. We have heard of barbarians who threw quacks and their medicines into the sea: but here in England we have Browning, a prince of poets, touching the pitch which defiles and making Paracelsus the hero of a poem. Sir E.L. Bulwer writes puffs for the water ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... Grown to manhood, he determined to compel his father to restore his brothers and sisters to the light of day, and is said to have been assisted in this difficult task by the goddess Metis, who artfully persuaded Cronus to drink a potion, which caused him to give back the children he had swallowed. The stone which had counterfeited Zeus was placed at Delphi, where it was long ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... a potion, Made of Concentrated Ages, Made of Many Mingled Feelings— Highest Hope and Deepest Terror— Mixed our best and worst together, Reverence and Love and Service, Coward Fear and rank Self-Interest— Gave him this when he was little, Pumped it in before the Person Could examine his ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... 9th of September, 1598, the two women, supping with the old man, mixed some narcotic with his wine so adroitly that, suspicious though he was, he never detected it, and having swallowed the potion, soon fell ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... first precautions, the doctor left the room, to prepare, himself, a calming potion. The next day, Monsieur de Sucy was better, but the doctor still watched ...
— Adieu • Honore de Balzac
... not before. Nevertheless, here I must part with you; here in this now sad place, where I was so happy as first to meet you: but I shall long for the ninth of May; for then I hope again to enjoy your beloved company, at the appointed time and place. And now I wish for some somniferous potion, that might force me to sleep away the intermitted time, which will pass away with me as tediously as it does with men in sorrow; nevertheless I will make it as short as I can, by my hopes and wishes: ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... expression and his manner in accordance with his deposition or his resumption of these spectacles, seems to me to be childish to a degree, and tends towards turning this simple tale into a kind of fairy story, in which the spectacles play the part of a magic potion or charm, such as Mr. W. S. GILBERT would use in his Creatures of Impulse, his Fogarty's Fairy, and his Sorcerer, whenever he wishes to bring about a sudden and otherwise inexplicable transition from one mental ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... this was what is popularly called "a sell." Mbundu is the decoction of the scraped bark which corresponds with the "Sassy- water" of the northern maritime tribes. The accused, after drinking the potion, is ordered to step over sticks of the same plant, which are placed a pace apart. If the man be affected, he raises his foot like a horse with string-halt, and this convicts him of the foul crime. Of course there ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... were liberated, an old nurse with bushy eyebrows came and fetched him away in a carriage. His extremely fair complexion, his nurse, and his bottle of medicine, which suggested a vague analogy with the sleeping-potion in the tragedy, caused him to be called Juliet. Certainly Romeo's sweetheart hardly suffered more; she was not, at least, a standing joke in Verona. Remembering these things, I hastened to say to Pickering that I hoped he was still the same good fellow ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... small chap, you may suppose they can never make enuff of him. These are all the upper servants, of coarse, I shan't lower myself by notusing the infearyour crechurs; such as the owsmade, coke, edcett rar, but shall purceed drackly to the other potion of the fammaly, beginning with the old guv'nor (as Pee-taw cawls him), who as no idear of i life, and, like one of his own taller lites, has only dipped into good sosiety. Next comes Missus:—in fact, I ot to have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 24, 1841 • Various
... that the Queen's knowledge of medicine was accompanied by an acquaintance with the black art, for on the eve of her daughter's departure she entrusted to Brengwain, a lady of Ysonde's suite, a powerful philtre or love potion, with directions that Mark and his bride should partake of it on the night of their marriage. While at sea the party met with contrary winds, and the mariners were forced to take to their oars. Tristrem exerted ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... the Witch was to make the boy drink a potion which quickly sent him into a deep and dreamless sleep. Then the Tin Woodman and the Woggle-Bug bore him gently to the couch, placed him upon the soft cushions, and drew the gossamer hangings to shut him from all ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... Texan, as he poured a liberal potion. The other helped himself sparingly and raised ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... unimportant, yet in amount not trivial. How often is her spirit borne down, and her frame attenuated by the accumulation of these minor troubles. Like the patient in the restlessness of fever, she needs some composing potion to allay, and give ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... he sent Lychas for the vestments which he had occasion to use in a sacrifice which it was his intention to offer. Deianira, jealous on account of his passion for Iole, sent him either a philtre or love potion, which unintentionally caused his death, or else a tunic smeared on the inside with a certain kind of pitch, found near Babylon, which, when thoroughly warmed, stuck fast to his skin; and this it is, most probably, which has been termed by poets ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... cried fiercely, pointing to Niphrata's white and rigid form, . . "Poisoned by some deadly potion devised of devils, to twist and torture the quivering centres of the brain! Accursed work!—Will none undo it?" and springing forward nearer the Shrine, he raised his angry, impassioned eyes to the dark, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... when the latter is burnt. But the implicit metaphor in the use of the terms likens substances to the human body, their production and destruction implies liability to disease, and thus prepares the way for the notion of the elixir, which is first a potion giving long life, and curing bodily ailments, and only after some time a remedy for diseased metals—the ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... tell you what happened the other night. Incredible as it may sound, my wife, in order to prove her devotion to me and to free me from further annoyance on her part, offered to take poison; and but for my interference (fool that I was to stay her!) would have drained the phial containing the deadly potion. The weakness was momentary, and I reproached myself for it when too late. But it convinced me that a firmer hand than mine must be employed in ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... circumvailated by ages of decaying matter in the damp swamps on every hand. But when, an hour later, Company K's whole street was aroused by peal on peal of Abderian laughter, Jack and Nick were found helpless in their bunks, and Barney was engaged in presenting a potion ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... examination, the doctor arrived. I show him my drunkards; and at once he recognizes that I have guessed correctly, and that these men have been put asleep by means of one of those narcotics of which certain thieves make use to rob their victims. A potion, which he administers to them by forcing their teeth open with a knife, draws them from this lethargy. They open their eyes, and soon are in condition to reply to my questions. They are furious at the ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... evil heart. (4) Sigurd is received with great honor, for his coming had been announced to Gudrun in dreams, which had in part been interpreted to her by Brynhild. The mother, knowing of Sigurd's relations to the latter, gives him a potion which produces forgetfulness, so that he no longer remembers his betrothed, and accepts the hand of Gudrun, which the king offers him at the queen's request. The marriage is celebrated with great pomp, and Sigurd remains permanently attached to ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... of an abstract unity, and in the inorganic aggregation of heterogeneous scientific activities which are connected with one another only by the name "Philology." It must be freely admitted that philology is to some extent borrowed from several other sciences, and is mixed together like a magic potion from the most outlandish liquors, ores, and bones. It may even be added that it likewise conceals within itself an artistic element, one which, on aesthetic and ethical grounds, may be called imperatival—an element that acts in opposition to its purely scientific behaviour. Philology ...
— Homer and Classical Philology • Friedrich Nietzsche
... sleeps! What a benediction that drug is! But I don't want any of it. It scares me; it is a devil's potion. [Sits near the cradle and reads ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... said, "the names and every thing you know. I go to mix a potion which may help you. Bethink you, till I come again, of all the details of your sin, that you may speak honestly and ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... Ceiling with his Head. There I lay conceal'd, or rather buried for some Time; tho' taken all imaginable Care of, and furnish'd with all the Necessaries of Life by that venerable, and loyal Priest. In the mean Time, his Apothecary enter'd at Break of Day into my Apartment, with a Potion in his Hand, compos'd of Opium, black Hellebore, Aconite, and other Ingredients still more baneful. Whilst this mercenary Officer of the King's Vengeance was thus employ'd, another as inhuman as himself, went to your Lodgings ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... a pound in advance, an' I'll bring it to you.' And on that understanding the bargain was made, and the time fixed for the delivery of the potion. The intervening time was filled in by the astute wizard journeying to a neighbouring town and procuring from a chemist a sleeping draught, which he paid for out of Mrs. Busker's sovereign. He turned ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... of Juliet drinking the potion, according to the system, as her mother explained, of the famous Signor Ruggieri—a scene of high fierce sound, of many cries and contortions: she shook her hair (which proved magnificent) half-down before the performance was over. Then she declaimed several short poems by Victor ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... me on drink! it gies us mair Than either school or college; It kindles wit, it waukens lear, It pangs us fou o' knowledge. Be 't whisky-gill or penny-wheep, Or onie stronger potion, It never fails, on drinkin deep, To kittle up our ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... seated by the side of their father on a cushion on the floor. One of them apparently was ill, and the other was pouring out some physic from a bottle into a bowl to give to it. The expression on their countenances amused us. The little invalid was turning away his head, unwilling to take the potion; while the other seemed to be entreating that he might not have too much of it. It was a family picture, however, which gave us a very fair idea of the terms on which ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... and swimming, and above all, I feel such an intolerable sinking in my spirits, that, without the assistance of two or three cordials, and some restorative soup, I am confident I never could get through the morning. Now, doctor, I have such confidence in your skill, that there is no pill or potion you can order me which I will not take with pleasure, but as to a change in my diet, that is impossible.' 'That is,' answered the physician, 'you wish for health without being at the trouble of acquiring it, and imagine that all the consequences of an ill-spent life are to be washed away ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... with my apothecary, to poison me; 'tis so; knowing that I meant to take physic to-day: as sure as death, 'tis there. Jupiter, I thank thee, that thou hast. yet made me so much of a politician. [Enter Minos. You are welcome, sir; take the potion from him there; I have an antidote more than you wot of, sir; throw it on the ground there: so! Now fetch in the dog; and yet we cannot tarry to try experiments now: arrest him; you shall go with me, sir; I'll tickle you, pothecary; I'll give you a glister, i'faith. ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... be Brangaine, and give the love potion," Lady Anningford went on. "Although it does not come into the 'Idylls of the King,' it should do so. It is just because Tennyson was so fearfully, respectably Early Victorian! I have been looking ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... visited this house, each seeking in her own peculiar way the elixir of life, which is beauty, or the potion of love, which is beauty's handmaiden. There were remedies plus remedies; the same skin-food was warranted to create double-chins or destroy them; the same tonic killed superfluous hair or made it grow on bald spots. A freckle to eradicate, a wrinkle ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... whole lifetime of happiness within reach of his hand, which he had spurned for that vile creature! Now she had admitted that she did not love him, that she loved another. And he, the coward, still longed for her. In heaven's name, what potion had she ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... to entertain himself upon that Foundation, but goes on to still new Enquiries. Thus, tho you know he is fit for the most polite Conversation, you shall see him very well contented to sit by a Jockey, giving an Account of the many Revolutions in his Horses Health, what Potion he made him take, how that agreed with him, how afterwards he came to his Stomach and his Exercise, or any the like Impertinence; and be as well pleased as if you talked to him on the most important Truths. This ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... need strength, not encouragement." And filling the glass nearly to the brim he downed the huge potion ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... of the potion upon Wyat was extraordinary. The whole scene seemed to dance around him;-the impish figures in the lake, or upon its bank, assumed forms yet more fantastic; the horses looked like monsters of the deep; the hounds like wolves and ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... her gestures as she paced restlessly along the little strip of moonlit path. The speech before she takes the potion was the least satisfactory of all; the ghastliness and horror of it are beyond her resources as yet; she could not infuse them with that terrible beauty which Desforets would have given to every line. But where is the ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... stage of theism, is sorcery. Incantation, dancing, fasting, bodily torture, and ecstasism are practiced. Every tribe has its potion or vegetable drug, by which the ecstatic state is produced, and their venerable medicine-men see visions and dream dreams. No enterprise is undertaken without consulting the gods, and no evil impends but they seek to propitiate the gods. All daily life, to the minutest ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell
... assigned a natural cause, and I bowed my fevered head to the punishment of my imprudence. An old and dignified physician was summoned to my bed-side, who felt my pulse, ordered confinement to my room, and the swallowing of a horrible looking potion, which nearly filled a common-sized tumbler. A few days care, he said, would restore me, and with his own hands he mixed my dose, placed it beside me upon a table, and departed. I venerate a kind and skillful ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... and he was whole again. It was wonderful, marvellous, it was a miracle. This was the everrecurrent miracle of his life, at the knowledge of which he was lost in an ecstasy of relief and wonder. And she, subject, received him as a vessel filled with his bitter potion of death. She had no power at this crisis to resist. The terrible frictional violence of death filled her, and she received it in an ecstasy of subjection, in throes ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... accounted a most Secret Hyperphysico-magical Saturn, and not known, unless to some Cabalistick Christian only. We judge him the most happy of all Physicians, who hath the knowledge of this pleasant Medicinal potion of our Mercury, or of the Medicine of the Son of our Esculapius resisting the force of death, against which there is no Panacea otherwise produced in Gardens. Moreover, the most wise GOD doth not reveal his Gifts of Solomon promiscuously to all Mortals. They indeed seem ...
— The Golden Calf, Which the World Adores, and Desires • John Frederick Helvetius
... loss of blood, and confused from the effects of the blow on his head, even to feel the sensation of wonder. He drank the potion, and closed his eyes again, and went off into a sleep which lasted for many hours. It was not until the next day that he thoroughly awoke. The leech continued to attend him and, at the end of four days, he was able ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... when the sex which we instinctively attribute to cities, finds itself too large in its actuality for a Directoire ideal, there are means, there are methods, of reduction. Is there no remedy, then, for municipal excess of size? Is there no harmless potion or powder by which a city may lose a thousand inhabitants a day, as the superabounding fair loses a pound of beauty? Is there nothing for New York analogous to rolling on the floor, to the straight-front corset, to the sugarless, starchless diet? Come, ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... consider the constituent parts and properties of the most common things we are in the habit of daily using, and their poisonous and destructive natures, we should recoil at the deadly potion, and shrink from the loathsome draught we are about to take. That which we consider the most delicious and exhilarating portion of our common beverage, porter, contains carbonic acid gas, commonly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... rare skill I can. Pour out thine oil," this to the servant, "and set forth the herbs. Mix thou a bitter potion and I will administer a prayer." From a wallet the physician took a small paper which he rolled into a pill between the palms of his hands. The pill he dipped in a bowl. "This is to dispel evil spirits," he explained. "Make fast his head while I ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... actions fall short of our volitions, so certainly is man painfully aware of various imperfections and shortcomings. What he feels he attributes to the infant. Avowedly to free themselves from this sense of guilt the Delawares used an emetic (Loskiel), the Cherokees a potion cooked up by an order of female warriors (Timberlake), the Takahlies of Washington Territory, the Aztecs, Mayas, and Peruvians, auricular confession. Formulize these feelings and we have the dogmas of "original sin," and of "spiritual regeneration." The order of baptism among ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... loudly asserted that Cromwell had stooped to the senseless and dastardly wickedness of mixing noxious drugs with the food of a young girl whom he had no conceivable motive to injure. [221] A few years later, the rapid decomposition of Cromwell's own corpse was ascribed by many to a deadly potion administered in his medicine. The death of Charles the Second could scarcely fail to occasion similar rumours. The public ear had been repeatedly abused by stories of Popish plots against his life. There was, therefore, in many minds, a strong predisposition to suspicion; and there ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... night Juliet drank off the potion. She had many misgivings lest the friar, to avoid the blame which might be imputed to him for marrying her to Romeo, had given her poison; but then he was always known for a holy man: then lest she should awake before the time that Romeo ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... of Gudrun's dream, the magic potion of Grimhild, the wedding of Sigurd consequent on that potion; of the wooing of Brynhild for Gunnar, her marriage to him, of the quarrel of the Queens, the brooding grief and wrath of Brynhild, and the interview of Sigurd with her—of all this, the most dramatic and best-considered ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... MORTIMER, always resolutely opposed to him, who was sentenced to death, and placed for safe custody in the Tower of London. He treated his guards to a quantity of wine into which he had put a sleeping potion; and, when they were insensible, broke out of his dungeon, got into a kitchen, climbed up the chimney, let himself down from the roof of the building with a rope-ladder, passed the sentries, got down to the ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... is a great responsibility," she moaned to herself. "If the Sieur were only here, or the doctor!" She woke her presently and administered the potion. But it ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... now gave way to good humour and fun,— "Much harm to my friend," said the Patient, "is done; Your Ape pill and potion has put to the rout, And cured me, I thank him, at once of the Gout." He then to the Monkey made reverence profound, Who salam'd ...
— The Monkey's Frolic - A Humorous Tale in Verse • Anonymous
... prospect of the future must be as bad as the experience of the past. When things are in that lamentable condition, the nature of the disease is to indicate the remedy to those whom Nature has qualified to administer in extremities this critical, ambiguous, bitter potion to a distempered state. Times and occasions and provocations will teach their own lessons. The wise will determine from the gravity of the case; the irritable, from sensibility to oppression; the high-minded, from disdain and indignation ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... thoroughly to understand, but which it is easy to see afforded clever scoundrels the means of persecuting, defrauding, or killing any whom they chanced to dislike, or who stood in their way. Of course it was very easy to make the potion strong enough to kill, or to dilute it with rice-water until it ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... with which the air is rife! The spirit of joyous motion; The fever, the fulness of animal life, Can be drain'd from no earthly potion! The lungs with the living gas grow light, And the limbs feel the strength of ten, While the chest expands with its madd'ning ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... instruments, professing the exercise of these arts, were used to 'set the name of Christ before their ligatures, and enchantments, and other devices, to seduce Christians to take the venomous bait under the covert of a sweet and honey potion, that the bitter might be hid under the sweet, and make men drink it without discerning to their destruction.' The heretics of the primitive, as well as of the middle, ages were accused of working miracles, and propagating their accursed doctrines by magical or infernal art. Tertullian, ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... I paid for; an hour's long misery waning Ended, as I agoniz'd hung to the point of a cross, Hoping vain purgation; alas! no potion of any 5 Tears could abate that fair ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... With which soporific potion he bade her goodnight; and Faith went to her room marvelling what could have put into Mr. Linden's head just those particular words; and whether he had a quality of vision that could see through flesh and blood; and a little in doubt ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... remaining child. The lad was accordingly purchased by the gentleman who distributed oranges in the prison, and was sent to Canada, according to promise. Mr. Grossman was addicted to strong drink, and Aunt Debby had long been in the habit of preparing a potion for him before he retired to rest. "I mixed it powerful, dat ar night," said the laughing mulatto; "and I put in someting dat de gemmen guv to me. I reckon he waked up awful late." Mr. Dinsmore, a maternal ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... unthrifty and wastifull spending, voluptuousness of life and palpable sensuality brought Pericles, Callias, the sonne of Hipponicus, and Nicias not only to necessitie, but to povertie and beggerie. Who, after their money waxed scant, and turned to a very lowe ebbe, they three drinking a poysoned potion one to another (which was the last cuppe that they kissed with their lippes) passed out of this life (as it were from a banquet) to ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... coming, Heartsease!" he whispered as he quaffed the potion that he reckoned would bear him ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... that can so much command His blood and his affection? Well, I see I strive in vain to cure my wounded soul; For every cordial that my thoughts apply Turns to a corsive and doth eat it farther. There is no taste in this philosophy; 'Tis like a potion that a man should drink, But turns his stomach with the sight of it. I am no such pill'd Cynick to believe, That beggary is the only happiness; Or with a number of these patient fools, To sing: "My mind to me a kingdom is," When the lank hungry belly barks ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... feverish, dozing and muttering in uneasy dreams, as he lay back in the old rocking-chair, and Mary Potter, with Sam's help, got him to bed, after administering a potion which she was accustomed to use in all complaints, from mumps to ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... strength again; see his long-lost appetite return: see his clammy features blossom into health. Give them to some sufferer whose foul blood has burst out in * * till his skin is covered with sores; who stands, or sits, or lies in anguish. He has been drenched inside and out with every potion which ingenuity could suggest. Give him these PILLS, and mark the effect; see the scabs fall from his body; see the new, fair skin that has grown under them; see the late leper that is clean. Give them to him whose angry humors have planted rheumatism in his joints and bones; move him and he ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... doctor, and at once went in search of him. With some difficulty I persuaded him to get out of the hole in which he was working, and go to see my friend. We had a few simple medicines among our supplies, and from some of these the ex-doctor prepared a potion for Ned, which he declared would be "mucho bueno," and that the patient would be all right in "tres dias," at the most. The result, however, failed so justify his expectations, for Ned became no better, although there was no marked change for the worse. It went on in this way for ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... mouthful, in which I find nothing more than in the first, a third, which gives me rather less than the second. It is time to stop; the potion is losing its magic. It is plain that the object of my quest, the truth, lies not in the cup but in myself. The tea has called up in me, but does not itself understand, and can only repeat indefinitely with a ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... Let me see't, and thou shalt see what I'll say to thee. [He gives him money.] Well, follow my counsel, and, I'll warrant thee, I'll give thee a love-powder for thy wench, and a kind of nux vomica in a potion shall make her come ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... "Give me the potion," I said. "If the worst comes to the worst it will save having my hair cut, and that I think is one of the most hateful duties of a civilised man. How do you take ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... awoke in him. I believe that it was exactly because the cup, mixed to his taste, was handed to him that he was able to see that there was nothing that was invigorating about the potion. It was not the community life primarily which drew him to Mirfield; it was partly that his power of speech awoke, and more strongly still ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... at the most skillful druggists' in the capital, a powerful sleeping potion, and mixed it with the wine, which made it taste very sweet. In a few minutes all the demons had dropped off asleep, and their snores sounded like the rolling thunder of ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... could do this; and that with no rash potion, But with a ling'ring dram, that should not work Maliciously like poison: but I cannot Believe this crack to be in my dread mistress, So sovereignly being honourable. ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... indispensable to the temper of equable cheerfulness of which I have been speaking. Apart from that consciousness, you may have plenty of excitement, but no lasting calm. The contrast between the drugged and effervescent potion which the world gives as a cup of gladness, and the pure tonic which Jesus Christ administers for the same purpose, is infinite. He says to us, 'I forgive thy sins; by thy faith I save thee; go in peace.' Then the burdened heart is freed from its oppression, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... drunk but a few drops of the narcotic potion, was awakened by this cry which echoed through his soul; he arose as though moved by a spring, flung off his coverings, and with that promptitude of action that God has bestowed upon mothers in moments of danger, event up to his daughter's ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... in the abstract, are, no doubt, most wise; But, in the concrete, Girl, they're mysteries! He's not with thee, At all less wise nor more Than human Lover is with her he deigns to adore. He finds a fair capacity, And fills it with himself, and glad would die For that sole She.' 'Know'st thou some potion me awake to keep, Lest, to the grief of that ne'er-slumbering Bliss, Disgraced I sleep, Wearied in soul by his bewildering kiss?' 'The Immortals, Psyche, moulded men from sods That Maids from them might learn the ways of Gods. Think, would a wakeful Youth his hard ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... had 5 received by their victuals and drink, which were very nourishing, disposed me to sleep. I slept about eight hours as I was afterward assured; and it was no wonder, for the physicians, by the emperor's order, had mingled a sleeping potion in the hogsheads ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... from my experiments, to be the last ingredient required; and late one accursed night, I compounded the elements, watched them boil and smoke together in the glass, and when the ebullition had subsided, with a strong glow of courage, drank off the potion. ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... in excess. Her spirits drooped, her art was laid aside, and much of the cheerfulness of home was lost to her. There was a child, but it was stillborn, and not long after this disaster, it was found that Mrs. Rossetti had taken an overdose of her accustomed sleeping potion and was lying dead in her bed. This was in 1862, and after two years only of married life. The blow was a terrible one to Rossetti, who was the first to discover what fate had reserved for him. It was some days before ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... more he reappeared on the threshold of the door, but only to say in a low tone, "There is no need to be alarmed if the child does not wake for some hours yet. She has had a safe sleeping-potion given her. It ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... quarter do they lie? Theirs have the same effect with other weak and ill-applied medicines; they have only set the humours they would purge more violently in work, stirred and exasperated by the conflict, and left them still behind. The potion was too weak to purge, but strong enough to weaken us; so that it does not work, but we keep it still in our bodies, and reap nothing from the operation but ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... to be praised, 42 to roof and foundation may the fire ascend and to (work) evil may those seven never draw near. 43 Like a broad scimitar in a broad place bid (thine) hand rest; and 44 In circling fire by night and by day[2] on the (sick) man's head may it abide. 45 At night mingle the potion and at dawn in his hand let him raise (it). 46 In the night a precept[3] in a holy book,[4] in bed, on the sick man's head let them place.[5] 47 The hero (Merodach) unto his warriors sends: 48 Let the Fire-god seize on the incubus. 49 Those baleful seven may he remove ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... the island of Ceos a hemlock-potion was offered in public by the magistrate to those who could give valid reasons for quitting this life. And how many heroes and wise men of ancient times have not ended their lives by a voluntary death! To be sure, Aristotle says "Suicide is a wrong against ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... such woeful confusion of good and evil? Because the wise Master did. Because he said that God was Love. Because he taught that he who loves not, knows not God. And because, oh, wonderful spiritual alchemy! because Love is the magical potion which, dropping like heavenly dew upon sinful humanity, dissolves the vice, the sorrow, the carnal passions, and transmutes the brutish mortal into the image and likeness of the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... was she large-souled enough to acquire such tolerance toward Francis Ravenel? Leaning on the window-ledge, looking into the clouded darkness of the night, awaiting the hour to give her father the potion that for a time relieved his pain, she went over tenderly, bit by bit, the summer that had passed, that flower-scented, love-illumined summer for which she felt she was to pay with ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... specialist from Manchester Square gave it out that there was no chance for Prince Eugen unless the natural vigour of his constitution should prove capable of throwing off the poison unaided by scientific assistance, as a drunkard can sleep off his potion. Everything had been tried, even to artificial respiration and the injection of hot coffee. Having emitted this pronouncement, the great specialist from Manchester Square left. It was one o'clock in the morning. By one ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... No wonder, then, that they made a straight wake for the whale's mouth —the bar —when the wrinkled little old Jonah, there officiating, soon poured them out brimmers all round. One complained of a bad cold in his head, upon which Jonah mixed him a pitch-like potion of gin and molasses, which he swore was a sovereign cure for all colds and catarrhs whatsoever, never mind of how long standing, or whether caught off the coast of Labrador, or on the weather side of an ice-island. ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... whose base reaches to the foundation of the temple and whose top rises to the summit of the dome. I was there buried in a manner; but was saved by the mage; and supplied with all the necessaries of life. At break of day his majesty's apothecary entered my chamber with a potion composed of a mixture of henbane, opium, hemlock, black hellebore, and aconite; and another officer went to thine with a bowstring of blue silk. Neither of us was to be found. Cador, the better to deceive the king, pretended to come and accuse us both. He said that thou hadst taken the road ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... says Wade. "Your potion, Miss Damer, has completed the work of your surgery. I can afford ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... Medea, grasping his arm. "Do not you see you are lost without me as your good angel? In this gold box I have a magic potion which will do the dragon's business far more effectually than ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... conversation had taken was by any means agreeable to him. He appeared to wish to withdraw himself, but there seemed to be some unknown power that, as it were by enchantment, retained him in his place, and made him consent to drink to the dregs the bitter potion which ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... entrance of Port Royal harbour, where we dropped anchor in the afternoon. I found that I had been absent exactly nine months and three days. In spite of my tatter-demalion appearance and my consciousness that I was much like the wretched apothecary who supplied the love-lorn Romeo with the fatal potion, as soon as I got on shore I hastened up to pay my respects to Sir Peter Parker. He received me, as I knew he would, with the greatest kindness, and when I apologised for my ragged appearance he laughed and assured me that he would much rather see an ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... I took care the sleeping potion should be strong enough to produce profound slumber ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
... went to M. Bidard's. The cupboards were searched carefully. The potion which Rosalie had thought to be mixed with burning stuff was still there, just sampled. It was put ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... Mr. Rudolph, I said to myself, 'Ah! but this is the coalheaver doctor, this black man; he can feel their pulse without soiling his hands!' But never mind, color is skin deep; he seems to be a first-rate hand, all the same. He ordered a potion for Madame Morel, which relieved ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... attending a personage of exalted rank has always to drink half the potion he prescribes as a test of ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... in his last words have recommended the care of two of his harlots (one of whom being in bed beyond him, his queen being elsewhere) to the care of his brother. And so, having drunk his death in a popish potion, he died unlamented. For his character, in all respects in nature, feature and manners, he resembled the tyrant Tiberius; and for all the numerous brood of bastards begot on other men's wives, he died a childless poltroon, having no legitimate heir to succeed him of his ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... greatly interested in the study of narcotic drugs, I procured a mixture which was almost tasteless and without peculiar odour, and of which a small quantity would in less than a minute throw an ordinary man into a state of unconsciousness. The potion was, however, no more dangerous in its effects than that quantity of ardent spirits which would cause entire insensibility. After the lapse of several hours, the person under the influence of the drug would recover consciousness without assistance. But in order to provide ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton
... full of odoriferous flowers and fruits, and a palace of all worldly contents," that could possibly be devised, music, pictures, variety of meats, &c., and chose out a certain young man, whom with a [6403]soporiferous potion he so benumbed, that he perceived nothing: "and so fast asleep as he was, caused him to be conveyed into this fair garden:" where after he had lived awhile in all such pleasures a sensual man could desire, [6404]"He cast him into a sleep again, and brought him forth, that when ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... however, was rather grave than sad; resigned than melancholy. He was serious but perfectly composed; nay, there was even a chastened cheerfulness in his manner. He looked like one who had accepted the cup presented to him; had already exhausted most of the bitter potion, and was calmly prepared to drain ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... are intermixed in a bewildering fashion. Sireno is obliged, for reasons not stated, to leave the country for a while, and on his return finds his lady-love married by her parents to his rival Delio. In his despair he seeks aid from the priestess of a certain temple, and receives from her a magic potion which drives from him all remembrance of his passion. This very simple and somewhat unsatisfactory story is interwoven with a multitude of episodes and incidental narratives, pastoral and chivalric, and the whole ends with the ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... not go till midnight, so we had a long melancholy evening before us; but the doctor had given Colin some mysterious potion containing rest, and presently, as I sat by his side in the gray twilight, he fell into a deep sleep—a sleep, alas! of fire and wandering talk. It was pitiful to hear him, poor fellow—living over again in dreams the road we had travelled, or ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... your highness to be careful of what food you partake and what beverages you drink. The same hand which mixed the potion for your grandfather may be ready to administer a similar one to ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston |
