"Dervis" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... distance from Bagdad a dervis, celebrated for his holiness, passed his days tranquilly in agreeable solitude. The surrounding inhabitants, in order to have an interest in his prayers, eagerly brought to him every day provisions and presents. The holy man thanked God incessantly for the ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... politeness to me—from compassion to my ignorance; but, though I am ignorant, you do not tire me, I assure you. Did you ever condescend to read the Arabian tales? Like him whose eyes were touched by the magical application from the dervise, I am enabled at once to see the riches of a new world—Oh! how unlike, how superior to that in which I have lived!—the GREAT world, as ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... to me this part of the proceedings was far and away the most entertaining. Of course, being, as I said, ignorant of the language, I could not understand the matter of the improvisations; but as for the manner, just imagine a mad North American Indian, a howling and dancing Dervise, an excited Shaker, a violent case of fever-and-ague, a New York auctioneer, and a pugilist of the Tom Hyer school, all fused together, and you may form some faint idea of a Welsh bard in the agony of inspiration. Such roaring, such eye-rolling, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... by no means improbable that I shall go in the spring; and if you will fix any place of rendezvous about August, I will write or join you.—When in Albania, I wish you would inquire after Dervise Tahiri and Vascillie (or Bazil), and make my respects to the viziers, both there and in the Morea. If you mention my name to Suleyman of Thebes, I think it will not hurt you; if I had my dragoman, or wrote Turkish, I could have given you letters of real service; but to the English ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... shall conclude this essay with a story which I have some where read in an account of Mahometan superstition. A dervise of great sanctity one morning had the misfortune, as he took up a crystal cup, which was consecrated to the prophet, to let it fall upon the ground and dash it in pieces. His son coming in some time after, he stretched out his hand to bless him, ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... hell is this fellow driving at, Paret?" he demanded. "It sounds to me like the ranting of a lunatic dervish. If he thinks so much of us, and the way we run the town, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... centres of bigotry. For ages Turkestan remained a land of mystery. No European was sure for a moment of life if he ventured to cross its borders. Vambery, the traveller, penetrated it disguised as a dervish, after years of study of the language and habits of the Mohammedans, yet he barely escaped with life. It is pleasant to be able to say that this state of affairs has ceased. Russia has curbed the violence of the fanatics and the nomads, and the once silent and mysterious ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... apparent defences of the town, they demanded clamorously to be led to the assault. Napoleon consented. Kleber, who was of gigantic stature, with a head of hair worthy of a German music-master or of a Soudan dervish, led his grenadiers to the edge of the breach and stood there, while with gesture and voice—a voice audible even above the fierce and sustained crackle of the musketry—he urged his men on. Napoleon, standing on a gun in the nearest ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... defenseless and feeble! Such is not the work that wise masters confide to fierce slaves. But that is the least of the reasons which exclude them from my choice, and fix my choice of assistant on you. Do you forget what I told you of the danger which the Dervish declared no bribe I could offer could tempt him ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... question. What interests us is only one aspect which they have in common, the surrender of the sense of personality. That is based on formal relations of the elements of consciousness, and the explanation of its disappearance applies as well to the whirling dervish as to the converts ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... playing, fell into a foaming fury, and hollow prophecies issued from him, sublimely eloquent and inordinately rapid, so that on his recovery he went about crying, "Repent! Repent! I was a mocker and a sinner. Repent! Repent!" The Moslems themselves began to waver. A Turkish Dervish, clad in white flowing robes, with a stick in his hand, preached in the street corners to his countrymen, proclaiming the Jewish Messiah. "Think ye," he cried, "that to wash your hands stained with the blood of the poor and full of booty, or to bathe your feet which ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... and began dancing, keeping capital time to the music. The faster Cudjoe played the faster she danced, till every limb and muscle seemed in movement. Round and round she went in front of the hideous fetish: no dervish of the East could have danced more furiously. Presently she was joined by a man, who danced in the same manner round and round her. One after the other, the whole of the women, with partners, took a part in the performance; ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... Under the influence of the intense excitement of this critical interval it is to be feared that the performance degenerated from a high-toned concert and variety show into something very like a Howling-Dervish exhibition. But, at any rate, it answered its purpose until, after a period that seemed like a dozen eternities, the West-bound overland express with a tremendous roar and rattle drew up beside them, in response to the waving ...
— Deserted - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... sell for, and call the increase profit. Then comes the time when the magnet ceases to draw, or the forestallers, having, in their greed, grasped more than they can keep, offer too much for the failing market, and all at once the thing stops, and the dervish-dance ends in coma, in cold forms and still ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... Barcelona, in the age of Zabara, Abraham ibn Chasdai did the best he could with his misogynist material, but he could get no nearer to a compliment than this, "Her face has the shimmer of a lamp, but it burns when held too close" ("Prince and Dervish," ch. xviii). The Hebrew attacks on women are clever, but superficial; they show no depth of insight into woman's character, and are far less effective ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... Like those dervish fanatics who find ecstasy in vertigo, so thought, turning on itself, exhausted by the stress of introspection and tired of vain effort, falls terror-stricken. So it would seem that man must be a void and that by dint of delving unto himself he reaches the last turn ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... singing, "Safe in the Arms of Jesus." If he had given heed to one-half we said to him, he would have been safer in our hands than in those of his imaginary protector. He turned out a thief, an unmitigated liar, a dancing dervish, and, through all our experiences of six weeks with him, his chief reading was his Bible and Sunday-school books. The experience, however, was not lost on Theodore—he has never suggested a boy since, and a faithful daughter of ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... 1826. But the spirit of infatuation had seized the Sultan, or a secret hope that the Western Powers would in the last resort throw over the Court of St. Petersburg led him to hurry on hostilities by a direct challenge to Russia. A proclamation which reads like the work of some frantic dervish, though said to have been composed by Mahmud himself, called the Mussulman world to arms. Russia was denounced as the instigator of the Greek rebellion, and the arch-enemy of Islam. The Treaty of Akerman ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... turned with him. He might be coming nearer in his ceaseless curves, but Dick could not tell. Although he was the hub of the circle, he began to have a dizzy sensation, as if the world were swimming about him. He became benumbed, as if his head were that of a whirling dervish. ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... many a Highland home, framed with rude art, You'll find his portrait, rough-hewn, stern and square; It's graven in the Fuyam fellah's heart; The Ghurka reads it at his evening prayer; The raw lands know it, where the fierce suns glare; The Dervish fears it. Honor to his name Who holds aloft the shield of ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... good fellow by the suggestive name of Sunday who works the religious graft. Sunday is the whirling dervish up to date. He and Chapman and their cappers purposely avoid any trace of the ecclesiastic in their attire. They dress like drummers—trousers carefully creased, two watch-chains and a warm vest. Their manner is free and easy, their attitude familiar. The way ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... at his palace gate, Sits, while in line his pages round him wait; When a poor dervish, staff and sack in hand, Straight would have entered IBRAM'S palace grand. 'Old man,' the pages asked, 'where goest thou now?' 'In that hotel,' he answered, with a bow. The pages said,—'Ha! dare you call hotel A palace, where the King of Balkh doth dwell?' IBRAM the King next to the dervish spoke: ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... accentuated his absurdities. All London rang with them. He was the Court Fool of Mayfair, the buffoon of the inner circles of the Metropolis, and, by degrees, his painted fame, jangling the bells in its cap, spun about England in a dervish dance, till Peckham whispered of him, and even the remotest suburbs crowned him with parsley and hung upon his doings. All the blooming flowers of notoriety were his, to hug in his arms as he stood upon his platform ...
— The Folly Of Eustace - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... their shots were thrown away. Several of the dervishes had fallen, but the process of clearing away the hedge proceeded with alarming rapidity. The work was, however, speedily abandoned at the face where Edgar was stationed, for at each crack of his rifle a dervish fell. Leaving three of the men to defend that face the rest joined the defenders at the sides, the sheik taking the command on one side, Edgar on the other. The fire now became more steady, the sheik enforcing his orders by vigorous blows with the ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... brought him an Indian summer of inspiration and success. 'The Rose of Persia' (1900), if not upon the level of his early masterpieces, contained better music than he had written since the days of 'The Gondoliers,' and at least one number—the marvellous Dervish quartet—that for sheer invention and musicianship could hardly be matched even in 'The Mikado' itself. There was a great deal of charming music, too, in 'The Emerald Isle' (1901), which Sullivan left unfinished at his death, and Mr. Edward ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer can work alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he is employed; but when he comes home at night he cannot sit down in a room alone, ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... this low, depraved parasite, the African black seemed quite a striking figure,—a scamp, if you like, yet full of character. He was a dervish, with drunken habits and a fierce nature when under the influence of drink, but with many good points when sober. On one occasion an Englishman was attacked by a crowd of Persians, and was in danger of losing his life, when this man, ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Meshed in an unlucky hour, and determined to leave it. Dressed as a dervish I joined a ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... is placed on dancing alone. This latter is the case with the 'devil dancers' of Ceylon. In Africa the witch doctor discovers who has been guilty of sorcery by the aid of inspiration furnished during a dance. The whirling dance of the Eastern dervish is well known. Dancing also figures in the Bible. The Jews danced around the golden calf (Ex. xxxii. 19) in a state of nudity. David, too, danced naked before the Lord. Dancing was also part of the religious ceremonies attendant on the worship of Dionysos or Bacchus.[28] Along with the drinking ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... there is a younger or a jollier-feeling fellow in the room than I am, though I may not conduct myself like a dancing dervish. But I own you may be right about the books, for there are many sorts of intemperance, and a library is as irresistible to me as a barroom to a toper. I shall have to sign a pledge and cork up the only bottle that tempts ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... Hamadan, plodding our way through little tramped-down paths, with snow three feet deep on either side. By way of being cheerful we went to see two tombs. One was an old, old place, where slept "the first great physician" who ever lived. In it a dervish kept watch in the bitter cold, and some slabs of dung kept a smouldering fire not burning but smoking. These dervishes have been carrying messages for Germans. Mysterious, like all religious men, they travel through the ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... promise of a great sovereign. But Rica is informed that you cannot tell about these western kings until you know of their mistress and their confessor. "Under a young prince these exercise rival powers; under an old one, they are united. The strength of a young king makes the dervish weak; but the mistress turns both strength and weakness to account." [Footnote: ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... so, it was a poor compliment to Paradise. Or did he simply use a pious, impressive form of speech to awe the spectators, and give them the notion that he had as much traffic with God as any African mystery-man or Mohammedan dervish? ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... All that had gone before was merely preparatory, a blood-warming, so to say; the real thing now took place. He stood up on his hind legs and shot into the air, alighting on his four feet as if to pierce the earth. He whirled like a howling dervish, grunting, snorting—unseeing, and almost unseen in a nimbus of dust, strap ends, and flying pine needles. His whirling undid him. We seized the rope, and just as the pack again slid under his feet we set shoulder to the rope and threw him. He ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... and by which Potgieter's men were again mistaken for a portion of Rawlinson's column. The error was discovered, but not too late. The Boer attack, which for sheer reckless bravery could hardly be surpassed, and which has been compared to the Dervish charge at Omdurman, was made in the open against a considerable force, was repelled; and Potgieter fell dead at the head of his commandos. Rawlinson hurried up to the sound of the firing and drove away the ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... Ambition to the life on ground, Still, I can profit by late found But precious knowledge. Mind is best— I will seize mind, forego the rest, And try how far my tethered strength May crawl in this poor breadth and length. Let me, since I can fly no more, At least spin dervish-like about (Till giddy rapture almost doubt I fly) through circling sciences, Philosophies and histories Should the whirl slacken there, then verse, Fining to music, shall asperse Fresh and fresh fire-dew, till I strain ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke |
