"Somnambulism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Somnambulism and Cramp. By Baron Reichenbach. Translated from the German, by John S. Hittell. New York. Calvin Blanchard. 12mo. pp. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... More like somnambulism than waking reality was now the life of Florence Hamilton. No duty was unperformed, so exertion spared to conduce to the comfort of the now diminished family circle. No words of repining or regret were uttered—no ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... "I read in a book the other day that great talent in action—in fact the book said genius—is a kind of somnambulism. The artist performs great feats, in a dream. We must not wake him up, lest he should ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... such fears expressed by her papa and mamma since of late Violet had several times risen and strayed about the house in a state of somnambulism. ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... that insane persons underwent an accession of their disorder twice in every month, at the epochs of the new and full moon. Lastly, a thousand observations of this sort made upon malignant fevers and somnambulism tend to prove that the Queen of Night has a mysterious influence upon ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... is begun. Fantastic phantasms fly before the light— Pale, gibbering ghosts and ghouls and goblin fears: Man who hath walked in sleep—what thousands years? Groping among the shadows of the night, Moon-struck and in a weird somnambulism, Mumbling some cunning cant or catechism, Thrilled by the electric magic of the skies— Sun-touched by Truth—awakes ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... circumstances, but sturdily paraded its unkempt glories, and frequently asserted itself in ungrammatical language. My window—a rear room on the ground floor—in this way derived blended light and shadow from the court. So low was the window-sill, that had I been the least predisposed to somnambulism, it would have broken out under such favorable auspices, and I should have haunted McGinnis's Court. My speculations as to the origin of the court were not altogether gratuitous, for by means of this window I once saw the Past, as through a glass darkly. It ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... faculty belonging to all human beings,—a faculty which may be evoked by other methods, or by the voluntary action of the subject, or by the spontaneous action of the brain, as in those who in sleep pass into the state of somnambulism, and go forth in the night, walking in dangerous places with perfect safety, but in an ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... continued the pastor, thoughtfully, "certain persons have had visions of the spiritual world through the complete detachment which somnambulism produces between their external form and their inner being. 'In this state,' says Swedenborg in his treatise on Angelic Wisdom (No. 257) 'Man may rise into the region of celestial light because, his corporeal senses being abolished, the influence of ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... are asking me these questions," he said, "for I believe that the more fully and more exactly I answer them, the better for you and the better for me. Victor Hugo, in one of his romances, speaks of the pensive somnambulism of the animals. 'Somnambulism,' sometimes pensive and sometimes playful, is the very phrase I should use in characterising your condition when you first came here and down to your recovery from that strange illness. But this ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... the worry of their waking hours, and return to their couch still asleep, present cases analogous to mine in so far as their unconscious mental activity leaves an outcome and expression obvious to the senses. Another parallel would be that of a sleep-walking artist who should when in a state of somnambulism execute a picture. But neither case would be identical in principle with mine. The artist and the mathematician would both have executed in their sleep what they had laid the foundation of when awake. I, on the other hand, would, should I transfer my aerial sitter to canvas, simply paint ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... stirring of his imagination implied by this supreme poetic effort, the solitude of the Villa Magni, and the elemental fervour of Italian heat to which he recklessly exposed himself, contributed to make Shelley more than usually nervous. His somnambulism returned, and he saw visions. On one occasion he thought that the dead Allegra rose from the sea, and clapped her hands, and laughed, and beckoned to him. On another he roused the whole house at night by his screams, and remained terror-frozen in the trance produced by an appalling vision. ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... account of the fearful night that she had passed, with an interest that held me breathless to the end. A terrible dream, which had impressed a sense of its reality on the sleeper by reaching its climax in somnambulism—this was the obvious explanation, no doubt; and a rational mind would not hesitate to accept it. But a rational mind is not a universal gift, even in a country which prides itself on the idol-worship of Fact. Those good friends who are always better acquainted with our faults, failings, and weaknesses ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... her innocence, when they see her in this state of somnambulism, in which she crosses a very ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... distance, those to whom I have related my night's adventure have one and all been sceptical, and accounted for the whole by supposing me to have been half asleep, or in a state resembling somnambulism. All I can say is, that my own impressions are directly contrary to this supposition; and that I feel as sure that I saw the figure that sat before me with my bodily eyes, as I am sure I now see you with them. Without affecting ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... not change in proportion as the cells of the body are renewed; rather it increases with physical unconsciousness, as in somnambulism. ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... in this "spasmodic" day to vindicate our great poet from the supposition of having written in a state of somnambulism,—to show that he was even an artist, without reference to schools. The scope of our observations is to exhibit him in that light; we wish to insist that he was a man of forethought,—that, though possessing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... prescribed for herself nettle-broth; at the third, catnip. The crises became mitigated, then disappeared. It was truly a miracle. The nasal addigitation did not succeed with the others, and, in order to bring on somnambulism, they projected the construction of a mesmeric tub. Pecuchet already had even collected the filings and cleaned a score of bottles, when a ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... that I've just dropped under yonder tree? It's an hour and a half yet before the stage passes: do you think, do you imagine for a single moment, that I can tolerate you until then, eh? Why don't you speak? Are you asleep? You don't mean to say that you have the audacity to add somnambulism to your other weaknesses? you're not low enough to repeat yourself under any such ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... would unwind from her like the cloud which she felt them to be. The family had long fallen into the habit of treating her as a child, playing some imaginary character. She seemed less demented than walking in a dream, her faculties asleep. It was somnambulism rather than madness. She had not the expression of insane people, the shifty eyes, the cunning and perverseness, ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... wickedness the pernicious effects of Socialism. A dozen new theories were afloat. Constant had committed suicide by Esoteric Buddhism, as witness his devotion to Mme. Blavatsky, or he had been murdered by his Mahatma or victimised by Hypnotism, Mesmerism, Somnambulism, and other weird abstractions. Grodman's great point was—Jessie Dymond must be produced, dead or alive. The electric current scoured the civilised world in search of her. What wonder if the shrewder ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... watch her father closely, would perhaps have to lock the door of his room. Why had he gone to the chapel? So far as she knew he was not in the habit of going there; indeed, she did not remember having seen him go there in his waking moments. She knew nothing of somnambulism; but she imagined that he had gone in that direction by mere chance, that if he had happened to find any impediment in his way he might as easily ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice |
