"Elixir" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ponderous and imposing machinery of antique physic; in which every remedy contained a multitude of far-fetched and heterogeneous ingredients, as elaborately compounded as if the proposed result had been the Elixir of Life. In his Indian captivity, moreover, he had gained much knowledge of the properties of native herbs and roots; nor did he conceal from his patients, that these simple medicines, Nature's boon to the untutored savage, had quite as large a share of his ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... grandeurs of the visible True; but it is not the thing itself, it is something better: it is an ideal combination of its principal forms, a luminous tint made up of its brightest colors, an intoxicating balm of its purest perfumes, a delicious elixir of its best juices, a perfect harmony of its sweetest sounds—in short, it is a concentration of all its good qualities. For this Truth, and nothing else, should strive those works of art which are a moral representation of life-dramatic ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... has won The credit from the table of the Sun For earth and sea; this cost On you is altogether lost Because you feed Not on the flesh of beasts, but on the seed Of contemplation: your, Your eyes are they, wherewith you draw the pure Elixir to the mind Which sees the ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... agitated by the fear of losing the King's heart by ceasing to be attractive to him. Men, you know, set great value on certain things, and I have the misfortune to be of a very cold temperament. I, therefore, determined to adopt a heating diet, in order to remedy this defect, and for two days this elixir has been of great service to me, or, at least, I have thought I felt its good effects." The Duchesse de Brancas took the phial which was upon the toilet, and after having smelt at it, "Fie!" said she, and threw it into the fire. Madame ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... hero, sought refuge from the hard facts of commonplace life by retiring into a visionary world. He delights in propounding much the same questions as those which tormented poor Septimius, though, for obvious reasons, he did not try to compound an elixir of life by means of a recipe handed down from Indian ancestors. The strange mysteries in which the world and our nature are shrouded are always present to his imagination; he catches dim glimpses of the laws which bring out strange harmonies, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... had reached the zenith of his glory, when suddenly he was attacked by a species of insanity, consisting of an indescribable fear of death. Chemical artifices were practised in Egypt from the earliest times; and hence Ptolemy took every imaginable pains to find the elixir of life; but it was all in vain, for his strength was rapidly decreasing. Once, like Louis XI., he was looking from a window of his palace upon the seacoast, and seriously meditated upon the subject of his longing; it must have been in winter-time, when ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... man beside her clamped his jaws together harshly and held his tongue imprisoned behind his teeth. His chest lifted and shook as he sucked down a deep breath. There, near her, the glory of the hills outrolled before him, the keen snap of the elixir of love, the deathless, in his blood, life seemed hard, brutally hard. Everything was hard, and wrong. He had come down here for practical purposes, he had come needing every ounce of his energies for those purposes, yet, day by day, and minute by minute, he was being ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... old age, I shall owe the blessing in a great measure to the discovery, years ago, that I am hired not by the job, but by the day. If you, dear friend, will receive this truth into a good and honest heart, and believing, abide in and live by it, you will find it the very elixir of life to ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... valuable, docile and manageable; comfortable, happy and contented by still further improving their condition, which can only be done by studying their nature, and not by the North and South bandying epithets—not by the quackery which prescribes the same remedy, the liberty elixir, for all constitutions. The two races, the Anglo-Saxon and the negro, have antipodal constitutions. The former abounds with red blood, even penetrating the capillaries and the veins, flushing the face and illuminating the countenance; the skin white; ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... to do with such a serious case as this before, but I have obtained from the Patriarch of the Taoist Church a small vial of the Elixir of Life, which has the marvellous property of prolonging the existence of whoever drinks it. We shall try it on the King and, as there is no sign of vital decay, let us hope that it will be effective ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... I flattered myself for a while; but now begin to fear that I have indulged expectation which neither reason nor experience can justify. When we see men grow old and die at a certain time one after another, from century to century, we laugh at the elixir that promises to prolong life to a thousand years; and with equal justice may the lexicographer be derided, who being able to produce no example of a nation that has preserved their words and phrases ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson
... untouched by commonplace sympathies, himself a lover of the liquid happiness he dispenses, and filled with a fine scorn of all those lesser felicities conferred by love or fame or wealth or any of the roundabout agencies for which his fiery elixir ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... thee the hidden stone, the Manna lies; Thou art the great Elixir rare and Choice; The Key that opens to all Mysteries, The Word in ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... put white shoes on my feet, I paid a visit to the Amritsur or reservoir of the elixir of immortality from whence the city derives its name. It is a reservoir of about 135 feet square, built of brick, and in the centre is a pretty temple dedicated to Gourogovind Sing. A footpath leads to it; it is decorated both within and ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... with a voice of joyous mockery that carried at once defiance and respect to a distant man. "The health of Louis of Nevers!" he said, and drained his green wine as cheerfully as if it had been the elixir of the gods. ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... his ears and turned his head with marked friendliness. Lem looked across the creature's rough neck to the firm, strong outlines of "the range," showing clearly in the moonlight; he drew his lungs full of the keen, thin air. But neither "the strength of the hills," nor the elixir of the air, could restore his equanimity. He could not throw off the weight that oppressed him. There was no shirking the truth. He was deadly afraid of Bub Quinn; the sight of that lowering face at the window had caused in him a horrible physical shrinking; the ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... went thither were inspired with the desire to escape from the thralldom of the past, and to nourish their souls with that pure and exquisite freedom which can afford to ignore the ease of the body, and all temporal luxuries, for the sake of that elixir of immortality. This, according to my thinking, is the innermost core of the American Idea; if you go deep enough into surface manifestations, you will find it. It is what differentiates Americans from ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... youth granted to middle age," I continued,—"in vino juventus, one might say; and may you, my dear young friend, long remain so proudly independent of that great Elixir—though I confess that I have met no few young men under thirty who have been excellent critics of ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... innumerable, vivid, but faintly connected points. "I begin to see," thought Ian, "how things travel together, like with like!" His body was rested, recovered, his mind invigorated. He had had with him for long days the very elixir of solitude. Relations and associations that before had been banked in ignorance came forth and looked at him. "You surely have known us before, though you had forgotten that you knew us!" He found that ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... feat in life, the wonder of his generation, was this same Council of Constance; which proved entirely a failure; one of the largest wind-eggs ever dropped with noise and travail in this world. Two hundred thousand human creatures, reckoned and reckoning themselves the elixir of the intellect and dignity of Europe. Two hundred thousand—nay some, counting the lower menials and numerous unfortunate females, say four hundred thousand—were got congregated into that little Swiss ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... familiar with the works of the great masters when he had not visited Italy, so little could a beer drinker assert that he had seen beer rightly drunk when he had not been in Munich. All over the world beer is regarded as a refreshment, but in Munich it is the elixir of life, the fabled fountain of youth and happiness. It is looked upon as nourishment by the lower classes, who drink for dinner two masses[E] of it, with soup and black bread. For the price of the beer they could ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... reaches us to make it worth while worrying about this matter. Yet a nice attention to detail may prove that the cob has some secret affinity with cider, for a Missouri meerschaum never tastes so well as after three glasses of this rustic elixir. ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... and of that alkermes which makes the person tasting it think he is in an Oriental pharmaceutic laboratory. "The idea is," he said, "not so much to treat Hyacinthe as to astound her by giving her a sip of an unknown elixir." ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... that the force had bivouacked there the night before. And here, too, deep down in a rocky dell, he found a well of clear, bright, sweet, cool water! He flung himself down, plunged his face in the delicious liquid, and sucked in large draughts of the life-inspiring elixir. When he could drink no more he filled his water-bottle, and then, removing his pith helmet, he unbound the bandage which he had tied over his head. It had of course stuck, and the attempt to remove it was painful, but by wetting it freely he ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... the Castilian roses. He throbbed with a sudden exultant premonition that he stood on the threshold of an historic future, with a pagan joy in mere existence, a sudden rush of desire for the keen wild happiness of youth. Such is the elixir of California in the ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... any fresh, exhilarating breath from it, but a lazy, languid atmosphere, brooding over the waste of sands; or even if there be a sulky and bitter wind blowing along the promenade, it still brings no salt elixir. I never was more weary of a place in all my life, and never felt such a disinterested pity as for the people who come here for pleasure. Nevertheless, the town has its amusements; in the first place, the daylong and perennial one of donkey-riding along the sands, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... speckl'd toad, And from his chaps a foam doth spawn, Such as the loathed three heads yawn; Defies his foe with a fell spit, To wade through death to meet with it; Then in his self the lymbeck turns, And his elixir'd poyson urns. Arachne, once the fear oth' maid Coelestial, thus unto her pray'd: Heaven's blew-ey'd daughter, thine own mother! The Python-killing Sun's thy brother. Oh! thou, from gods that didst descend, With a poor virgin to contend, Shall seed of earth and hell ere ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... changes in turn, with the rod of Circe, men into brutes and animals into men: it even disposes of Life or of Death, and can bestow on its adepts riches by the transmutation of metals, and immortality by its quintessence and elixir, compounded of gold ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... bother me, and I'll fix your foot in two or three minutes so it won't hurt again," Mrs. Vernon declared. "The elixir's famous and I haven't known it to miss. I always carry some when we camp in the woods." She turned to her son. "Tell Barbara how soon I cured you when you ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... coin in sickliest indolence,—ball-room amours, combats of curled knights, pilgrimages of disguised girl-pages, romantic pieties, charities in costume,—a mass of disguised sensualism and feverish vanity—impotent, pestilent, prurient, scented with a venomous elixir, and rouged with a deadly dust of outward good; and all this done, as such things only can be done, in a boundless ignorance of all natural veracity; the faces falsely drawn—the lights falsely cast—the forms effaced or distorted, and all common ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... however looking at James Douglas; "our cousin Gilles is in ill odour with the commonalty. He is a philosopher and makes smells with bottles. But there is neither harm nor witchcraft in it. He is only trying to discover the elixir of life. So the silly folk think him a wizard. I know him better. He is a brave soldier and my good cousin. I will not have ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... conducted to date have been characterized by incompleteness and a failure to be sufficiently comprehensive to eliminate the element of individual idiosyncrasy from the results obtained. Accordingly, it is possible to select statements from literature to the effect either that coffee is an "elixir of life," or ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... of morning, was now shooting his bright shafts of light across the mountain plain, and cheering the hearts of the Sons of the Vikings. The air was fresh and cool; and it seemed a luxury to breathe it. It entered the lungs in a pure, vivifying stream like an elixir of life, and sent the blood dancing through the veins. It was impossible to mope in such air; and Ironbeard interpreted the general mood when ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... it was so cowardly and cruel. He had been convicted, in the early part of the reign, of treason, and committed to the Tower. There he languished twelve years, amusing himself by writing a universal history, and in seeking the elixir of life; for, in the mysteries of chemistry, and in the mazes of historical lore, as in the intrigues of courts, and dangers of camps, he was equally ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... an Italian, like many other alchemists of that period, had spent years in search of the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life. His vain experiments to transmute the baser metals into gold reduced him to poverty and want. His quest after these secrets had led him to study deeply the nature and composition of poisons and their antidotes. He had visited the great universities and other schools ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... gaze up at her—peasants, horse-fanciers, shop people, clerks on a holiday, with here and there a person of less humble station, but she bent to her work with a will, encouraged by the example of the Circassian lady next to her who was selling in brown bottles an elixir which was a cure for all things except love and the goiter. The sword-swallower next them was already busy, and the Homme Sauvage, a hirsute person, whose unprofessional mien was both kind and peaceable (as Yvonne ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... that is, a liquid which would dissolve everything, and they hoped out of this liquid to be able to crystallize gems. And then, having obtained gold and gems, the third thing they desired was "a vital elixir" to prolong their lives indefinitely to enjoy the gold and gems they had manufactured. These were the modest aims of alchemy. Well now—although you may say such notions sound very foolish—let me tell you that great practical discoveries had their origin ...
— The Story of a Tinder-box • Charles Meymott Tidy
... wise by watching, but her sister the body, of coarser materials, needs the support of repose. Thou must sleep; and that thou mayest do so to refreshment, thou must take a draught mingled with this elixir." ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... the life in all things. The same wind, coming to me across two miles of salt marsh, had in its cool, salty aroma a life-giving principle that set the pulse to bounding and renewed vigor. It had gathered up from the marsh this tonic of the tides, this elixir vitae which all the doctors of the world have sought in vain. Some day some one of them, wiser than the rest, will distil its potency from the cool salt of sea tides, and humanity, poor hitherto, will ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... went to bed at night, when he rose in the morning, as he went through his day, the thought of death was always with him. He could not get away from it. Ah—if only he could find the "Elixir of Life," he ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... little stream, the most beautiful in the world just then to Dick and his friends. Clear and cold, the color of silver in the moonlight, it rushed down from the mountains. On one side knelt the men in blue, and on the other the men in gray, and the pure water was like the elixir of heaven to ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and repose. He never once turned to look at us, though few pass that way; but kept his eyes fixed upon a vision of surpassing beauty, where the vivid coloring was startling to the eye and the morning air like an elixir. Nothing but the great summer hotel of the future—it will surely come some day and stand right there—can rob the spot of its ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... Flicker's wife," and that not in the manner of Spenser, which you yourself had stigmatised—and the "Man of Ross,"—I doubt whether I should this last. It is not too late to save it. The first proof is only just come. I have been forced to call that Cupid's Elixir "Kisses." It stands in your first volume as an Effusion, so that, instead of prefixing The Kiss to that of "One Kiss, dear Maid," &c., I have ventured to entitle it "To Sara." I am aware of the nicety of changing even so mere ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... little, he knows what he is about. One might write a play: an old chemist invents the elixir of life—take fifteen drops and you live for ever; but he breaks the phial from terror, lest such carrion as himself and his wife might live for ever. Tolstoy denies mankind immortality, but my God! how much that is personal there is in it! The day before yesterday I read his "Afterword." Strike ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... I was so run down that I could not spank the baby. After taking three bottles of your Elegant Elixir I am now able to thrash my husband in addition to my ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... whom others despair as not beyond the reach of hope. Christ looks upon a world of men smitten with madness, and in whose breasts awful poison is working, with the calm confidence that He carries in His hand an elixir, one drop of which inoculated into the veins of the furious patient will save him from death, and make him whole. 'The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin.' 'He will not break,' and that means He will restore, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... spirits, and had a lot to tell each other. For she and I are not among those who fill the mind with garbage; we make a better use of that divine and adorable endowment. We invite Thought to share, and by sharing to enhance, the pleasures of the delicate senses; we distil, as it were, an elixir from our golden moments, keeping out of the shining crucible of consciousness everything that tastes sour. I do wish that we could have discussed at greater length, like two Alchemists, the theory and practice of ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... where to lay her head; but she was young and strong, and would not realise how tired she was till the strain of her anxiety was over, and she was borne up by love, which is quite the most wonderful elixir in the world against all weariness of mind or body. Nevertheless she leaned on Cucurullo's arm as they climbed the ascent, for it was very steep, and the last part of it was the long flight of steps which still leads up from the Tre Cannelle and comes out close to the little church of San Silvestro, ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... scientific logic, it was altogether within the limits of possibility to discover this long-sought medium; "but," he added, "a philosopher who should go deep enough to acquire the power would attain too lofty a wisdom to stoop to the exercise of it." Not less singular were his opinions in regard to the elixir vitae. He more than intimated that it was at his option to concoct a liquid that should prolong life for years, perhaps interminably; but that it would produce a discord in Nature which all the world, and chiefly the quaffer ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... into their boats, nor were they longer satisfied to hang back one or more hundred yards as formerly—that elixir had quite captured their hearts, and they scrambled to keep in close proximity to the magical "floating coffin," as they denominated the cedar canoe, as if they could scent future feasts along the line of that which they had ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... sea again, having failed in the chief object of the expedition, which was to obtain a cargo of the medicinal sassafras-tree, from the bark of which, as well known to our ancestors, could be distilled the Elixir of Life. ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... supply of it to the house every second morning. Addison fitted up a little "water room" in the farmhouse L, and we kept water there in large bottles, cooled, for drinking. The water seemed to do us good, for we were all unusually healthy that summer. "Here's the true elixir of health," the old Squire often said as he drew a glass of it and sat down in the pleasant, cool ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... wire, my friend, I will explain to you how that was probably created and, right or wrong, there is nobody on this earth at present who can prove my theory to be mistaken. Be sure that a medieval alchemist, searching in vain for elixir vitae, or the philosopher's stone, chanced upon this infernal synthesis and fusion. For him, no doubt, it proved a philosopher's stone in earnest, for the Borgia always extended a generous hand to those who could assist their ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... monasteries had changed into apothecary or liqueur workrooms. They sold recipes or manufactured products: the Citeaux order, chocolate; the trappists, semolina; the Maristes Brothers, biphosphate of medicinal lime and arquebuse water; the jacobins, an anti-apoplectic elixir; the disciples of Saint Benoit, benedictine; the friars of Saint ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... inherit! Oh, the alchemy which doth change Dross of body and dregs of spirit Into sanctities rare and strange! My flesh is feeble, and dry, and old, My darling's beautiful hair is gray; But our elixir and precious gold Laugh at ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... dramatically, but are painfully accurate in details, and may still be read for information as well as for pleasure. The 'Zanoni' species is undeniably interesting. The weird traditions of the 'Philosopher's Stone' and the 'Elixir of Life' can never cease to fascinate human souls, and all the paraphernalia of magic are charming to minds weary of the matter-of-factitude of current existence. The stories are put together with Bulwer's unfailing cleverness, and in all external respects neither Dumas nor Balzac has done anything ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... the looker after new things, cannot continue to look for them in books and crucibles, but must seek them on the breathing stage of life. Pinches, buffets, the glow of hope, the shock of disappointment, furious contention with obstacles: these are the true elixir for all vital spirits, these are what they seek alike in their romantic enterprises and their unromantic dissipations. When they are taken in some pinch closer than the common, they cry, 'Catch me here again!' and sure enough you catch ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "there is no medicine in Japan to cure your lord's disease, but in India there is an elixir which is a sure antidote. If we could get that, ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... truth has always had its hidden spring in a desire for the marvelous. The search for the philosopher's stone has done as much for chemistry as the legend of the elixir of life for exploration and geographical discovery. From the excitements of these suggestions of the occult, the world settled down into a reasonable understanding of the facts of which they were but the ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... some minds, and it will display itself in whatever arena they are engaged. In politics the man they vote for is almost a god. In mechanics, they have invented a machine which shall ensure "perpetual motion;" in chemistry, the elixir of life, or a cure for all the ills of human life; in morals, the kingdom of heaven is speedily coming through the intervention of their ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... parted, and Haward, a happy man, went with raised face through the stillness and the moonlight to his lodging at Marot's ordinary. No phantoms of the night disturbed him. He had found the philosopher's stone, had drunk of the divine elixir. Life was at last a thing much to be desired, and the Giver of life was good, and the summum ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... like. With two fingers of it inside you you would bury your face in your hands and cry because there wasn't anything more worth while around for you to lick than little Jim Jeffries. Yes, sir, the stuff in that second barrel was distilled elixir of battle, money and high life. It was the color of gold and as clear as glass, and it shone after dark like the sunshine was still in it. A thousand years from now you'll get a drink like that across ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... the uneducated in the company of the educated; the poor in the company of the rich; the young lady in the company of the one who is superior to her, and into whose heart she wishes to distil a drop or two of Cupid's elixir. ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... was beholding a genius at work: a giant engaged upon labor too stupendous for irreverent contemplation. And from him and his music she gained the medicine her bruised heart and broken nerves most needed. For Ivan, in the growth of his great love for her, unconsciously brewed an elixir of power from which each drank, daily. So, by unavoidable degrees, both were led unconsciously into a land from which few can emerge still solitary. Yet that was what the gods eventually decreed for this ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... felt, there are two tales that equally exemplify this class, "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" and "The Christmas Banquet." In the first the ghastliness of the reversal of the course of life backward, as the guests drink the elixir of youth, while it suggests the paltriness of our pleasures, is a powerful lesson in the beneficence of that daily death whereby we resign the past; this rejuvenation violates nature, and so shocks us, and by the very shock we are reconciled with nature, ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... have attempted much, have seldom failed to perform more than those who never deviate from the common roads of action: many valuable preparations of chymistry are supposed to have risen from unsuccessful inquiries after the grand elixir: it is, therefore, just to encourage those who endeavour to enlarge the power of art, since they often succeed beyond expectation; and when they fail, may sometimes benefit the world even by ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... chair closer to hers that he might better impress upon her what she was to say to Melchior. He began by telling her that she could never understand the full meaning of what had happened but that she must take his word for it, he had discovered an elixir whose effect was most wonderful and would change the whole course of events. From now onwards, lying would be impossible, the reign of truth was at hand and deceit had been routed ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... soft rush of the river, the scent of the shrubs, the golden sunset, occasionally the musical clatter of hoofs on the road, the gentle noises of the fishers fishing, the plop, plop of a platypus disporting itself mid stream, came to me as sweetest elixir in my ideal, dream-of-a-poet nook among ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... thought served for an elixir. But with whom would my father abide during my absence? Captain Bulsted and Julia saved me from a fit of remorse; they had come up to town on purpose to carry him home with them, and had left a message on my table, and an invitation ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... balm of Gilead—an elixir of life—a sojourn at the fountain of youth and happiness for me to get away from the chaperoning of Eulalie for a ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... imprisoned undiminished within it, and beating and fluttering impotently to get out, at all the doors and windows. So the medical people gave me opium—a preparation of it, called morphine, and ether—and ever since I have been calling it my amreeta draught, my elixir,—because the tranquillizing power has been wonderful. Such a nervous system I have—so irritable naturally, and so shattered by various causes, that the need has continued in a degree until now, and it would be dangerous to leave off the calming remedy, Mr. Jago says, except ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... (of which my own works begin to form no inconsiderable part) be abolished even from the history of man! For a fool of this monstrosity of dulness, there can be no salvation: and the fool who looked for the elixir of life was an angel of reason to the fool who looks ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Well, one must live. Remember that I am young and you are old. I have no place in the world except the place I make for myself. I cannot live in a pig-sty amongst the snows like Naudheim. I cannot find the whole elixir of life in thoughts and solitude as he does. There are other things—other things ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... which symbolize the change. One of these ceremonials is washing. As the new-born babe is washed, so must the new-born initiate be washed; and as by primitive man (and not without reason) BLOOD was considered the most vital and regenerative of fluids, the very elixir of life, so in earliest times it was common to wash the initiate with blood. If the initiate had to be born anew, it would seem reasonable to suppose that he must first die. So, not unfrequently, he ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... during the preceding controversy, "as you seem to agree so ill with each other, I trust you will unite in adopting my course. Let us begin with this cordial; we will then vary the stimulus, if necessary, by means of the elixir, and you will see the salutary effects immediately. A loss of blood would still farther increase the debility of the patient; and I appeal to your candour, Dr. Shuro, whether you ever practised venesection in such ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... are past when benevolent fairies arrive just at the important moment, and by a tap of the wand or a phial of elixir, change the coarsest features, the most unfavourable complexion, into a dazzling image of everything most lovely, most beautiful. Nor had she the good luck of certain young ladies of whom one reads quite often, who improve so astonishingly in personal appearance between fifteen ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... 18.-The King's recovery. Proceedings on the Regency-bill. Enmity between Lord Bute and Mr. Grenville. Rumoured changes. State of parties. Lord Byron's acquittal. The Duke of Cumberland's illness. Daffy's Elixir. Poor-bill. lord Hinchinbrook's marriage—388 ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... Philippa its draught of Love's elixir, and she drank it lingeringly, unwilling to lose a drop. And in some curious way the potion wrought a change in her. She adopted a new personality. It was not that of Phil—the Phil she had undertaken to represent, for she would have had recollections of old days to linger over with ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... South-Sea Ballad; or, Merry Remarks upon Exchange-Alley Bubbles. To a new Tune called "The Grand Elixir; ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... of what use to me is this meat and drink which is before me? I have no need of it, I can do nothing other than sip of the holy beauty of my Lord." And immediately we are so pressed the earthly cup must be set down, and in very great ecstasy we sup in spirit with the Lord. The unnameable Elixir of God is the Wine, and Love ...
— The Romance of the Soul • Lilian Staveley
... to make the ataxic walk, to bring consumptives back to life, as it were; even to give hours of lucidity to the insane? And at the thought of this discovery of the alchemy of the twentieth century, an immense hope opened up before him; he believed he had discovered the universal panacea, the elixir of life, which was to combat human debility, the one real cause of every ill; a veritable scientific Fountain of Youth, which, in giving vigor, health, and will would create an ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... sublimated in the vessel (the swan flies up); on further heating a vivid play of colors appears (peacock tail or rainbow); finally the substance becomes red and that is the conclusion of the main work. The red substance is the philosopher's stone, called also our king, red lion, grand elixir, etc. The after work is a subsequent elaboration by which the stone is given still more power, "multiplied" in its efficiency. Then in "projection" upon a baser metal it is able to tincture immense amounts of it to gold. [In the stage of projection the red tincture is symbolized ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... Carlyle might have put it, is the Hero as Artist. When we have admitted this, all dregs and sediments of the analytical alembic sink to the bottom, leaving a clear crystalline elixir of the spirit. About the quality of his genius opinions may, will, and ought to differ. It is so pronounced, so peculiar, so repulsive to one man, so attractive to another, that, like his own dread statue of Lorenzo de' Medici, "it ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... Pennington, and worse still, what was unworthy of my love for Naomi. But more than all, a wild scheme had come into my mind; I would that night go to Pennington and try to see Naomi. The thought acted upon me like some strange elixir; to hear Naomi's voice, to feel her hand in mine, were a joy beyond all words. How I was to do this I did not know; what difficulties I should meet I did not consider. The thought that I should see her was enough for me, and I shouted for very joy. The hour ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... Convalescence, sudden good fortune, a belated love, and even the April sunshine or morning air, bring about a certain rejuvenescence in man prophetic of what is not ideally impossible—perpetuity and constant reinforcement in his vital powers. Had nature furnished the elixir of life, or could art have discovered it, the whole face of human society would have been changed. The earth once full, no more children would have been begotten and parental instincts would have been atrophied for want of ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... kinder to me than I deserve," he said. "Be kinder still, and forget what I have been talking about. No! no more about me; I am not worth it. We'll change the subject, and never go back to it again. Let's do something. Work, Crayford—that's the true elixir of our life! Work, that stretches the muscles and sets the blood a-glowing. Work, that tires the body and rests the mind. Is there nothing in hand that I can do? Nothing ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins
... of his State, when she relented and permitted him to console himself in her presence. And although, as the weeks passed and she saw Senator North from the gallery of the Senate only, or for a few impersonal moments in the crowd, and the elixir in her veins lost its strength, still she felt that life was sufferable once more. She had endeavoured to put Mrs. North from her mind, but more than once she caught herself wishing that some one would mention ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... in the three departments of science,—chemistry, botany, and geography. As in the case of gunpowder, the Arabs transmitted these discoveries to the West, and along with them the Chinese doctrine as to the twofold objects of alchemic studies,—the elixir of life and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... is, he is ever there. This place was mine; Leander, now 'tis thine, Thou being myself, then it is double mine, Mine, and Leander's mine, Leander's mine. O, see what wealth it yields me, nay, yields him! For I am in it, he for me doth swim. Rich, fruitful love, that, doubling self estates, Elixir-like contracts, though separates! Dear place, I kiss thee, and do welcome thee, As from Leander ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... Nirvana philosophy, which, however, is unacceptable to him (p. 111). The Oriental scenes that are brought before our mind, both in this poem as well as in "Memnon" (vol. vii. p. 5 seq.), are of course portrayed with poetic feeling as well as scholarly accuracy. The haji who owns the wonderful elixir,—which, by the way, is said to come from India (p. 33),—and who interprets each vision that the poet lives through from the standpoint of the pessimistic sceptic, shows the influence of 'Umar Xayyam. In fact he indulges sometimes in unmistakable reminiscences ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... mineral acids, which contain little or no fixed air, have been tried in the scurvy with little success, I would answer, that I doubt that in those trials they have never been sufficiently diluted; for it is easy to conceive, that in the small quantity of water the elixir of vitriol, for instance, is commonly given, that austere acid can scarce get beyond the first passages; considering the delicate sensibility of the mouths of the lacteals, which must force them to shut and exclude so pungent ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... regard to my favourite studies. My father was not scientific, and I was left to struggle with a child's blindness, added to a student's thirst for knowledge. Under the guidance of my new preceptors I entered with the greatest diligence into the search of the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life; but the latter soon obtained my undivided attention. Wealth was an inferior object, but what glory would attend the discovery if I could banish disease from the human frame and render man invulnerable to any but a violent death! Nor were these my only visions. ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... as if it were some elixir from which he expected to gain new strength, and turned back upon his tramp. As he passed through his bedroom his gaze longingly sought the bed and his steps wavered toward it. His eyelids yearned for sleep and his strength was ebbing. With a stiffening of his muscles ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... dried and saturated with linseed oil, it was frequently well rubbed, and the {59} chair stands to this day, like some of the valuable discoveries made by the alchemists when in search of the Elixir Vitae, or the Philosopher's Stone, an example of a fortunate and unexpected disclosure made when not directly in search of it. I have since learnt that a fluid possessing the above-named detergent qualities, is to be purchased at some of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 194, July 16, 1853 • Various
... perceptibly thinner. Her manner was restless. A day or two of rain had prevented the usual walks. When it cleared up again, the season had taken a stride. Still more glorious was the array of tree and flower, and their indescribable freshness suggested the idea that they were bathed in the mysterious elixir of life, and that if one touched them, eternal youth would be the reward. Professor Theobald gazed at Hadria with startled and enquiring ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... unmarried people. Both they and we are bound for Herzing when we die, the spinsters to howl in the moor and we men in the wood. That is what the lads and lasses say of us;" and he gave a dry little laugh. "Ask my opinion of the water, and I'll answer you straightforward. It's an elixir, a perfect elixir;" and he repeated the sentence with the proud consciousness of using a dictionary word. "As for the house, the master and the old maid, judge for yourselves, or ask ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... be ranked among the greatest of short-story writers. Like Irving, Hawthorne did not take the air line directness of narration demanded by the modern short story; but the moral truth and beauty of his tales will long prove their elixir of life, after the passing of many a modern short story which has divested itself of everything except the mere interest ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... became invariable that at a certain distance on our homeward way the rower relinquished rowing, the steerer stopped steering, and the boat drifted down-stream with the gentle flow, while two-thirds of its occupants tasted of the elixir— ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... at me, great man," returned Vauvinet, once more jovial and caressing; "you've turned La Fontaine's fable of 'Le Chene et le Roseau' into an elixir—Come, Gubetta, my old accomplice," he continued, seizing Bixiou round the waist, "you want money; well, I can borrow three thousand francs from my friend Cerizet instead of two; 'Let us be friends, Cinna!' hand over your colossal cabbages,—made to trick the public like a gardener's ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... into perfection. It restores that which is fallen and degenerated to its primary Beauty, Excellence and Perfection. It is {230} the Divine Stone, the White Stone with a Name written on it, which none knows but him that hath it . . . the Divine Elixir whose transforming power and efficacy nothing ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... the Doctor. "I'm the talking man here. Yes! gentlemen," addressing the attentive cowboys, "I can cure anything that touches the ground—biped, quadruped, or centipede—glanders, botts, greased hoofs, heaves, blind staggers, it makes no odds. My universal, self-acting, double compound elixir of equestrian ointment will perform a cure in each and every case. It is cheap! It is sure! It is patented! It is the best, and it is here. You may roll up, you may tumble up, you may walk up, any way to get up, or send your money up, and you will receive a two-quart bottle of this precious ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... here, here at this furnace, I have it already preparing, the only sure safeguard against all such idle fears; and as I have succeeded with the help of wisdom in turning unsightly things into gold, so I shall not fail in producing that elixir for which so many mighty minds have heretofore sought and laboured, ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... and the sweet word "dear," from her lovely lips, entered his heart, and ran through all his veins like some rapturous but dangerous elixir. He did not say to himself, "She is a widow with a child, feels old with grief, and looks on me as a boy who has been kind to her." Such prudence and wariness were hardly to be expected from his age. He had admired her at first sight, very nearly loved ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... Lord is the strength of our body, The gladness of Jesus, the balm for our pain, His life and His fulness, our fountain of healing, His joy, our elixir for body and brain. ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... of Cagliostro, or his animosity," I answered; "never was, Evelyn, as you know. The best way to disarm him is to confront him boldly. He is like a lion in that alone. I wish, though, he would give me a little of his elixir of life, for dear papa; he has never looked himself since that attack, though better, certainly,—oh, decidedly better, of course, than I dared to hope at one time ever to see him again. Yet ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... those large, felt-covered bottles of Life-water, I am sure we should never have won through. But this marvelous elixir, drunk a little at a time, always re-invigorated us and gave us strength to push on. Also we had some food, and fortunately our spare oil held out, for the darkness in that tunnel was complete. Tommy became so exhausted that at length we must carry him by turns. He would have died had it ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... glorious foe as you are, and I give you fair warning that I am going to try on you my own secret and special thrust Captain Fracasse—the crowning glory of my art, the 'ne plus ultra' of my science—the elixir of my life. It is known only to myself, and up to this time has been infallible. I have never failed to kill my man with it. If you can parry it I will teach it to you. It is my only possession, and I will leave it to you if you survive ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... guilty ever) Been murderers of so much paper, Or wasted many a hurtless taper; No Indian drug had e'er been famed, Tobacco, sassafras not named; Ne yet of guacum one small stick, sir, Nor Raymund Lully's great elixir. Ne had been known the Danish Gonswart, Or Paracelsus, with ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... may be purchased that which warms the pinched stomach. With it may be bought an elixir, so strong and magical, it may breed defiance even of Nanette. Sir Fool, I have concluded to accept life and the small ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... will have reason to be considering me dull in the uptake, but I see through the mud wall now. And so the knowledge that ye have no equal at hiding your deeds o' darkness even in the licht o' the railway-yard was as good to ye as Daffy's Elixir. And when micht we reckon on getting notification from what I may presume to ca' ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... diet, accompanied with the horizontal position, and bottles of boiling water to the feet. At the same time the patient should suck through a quill, every hour, half a wine-glass of water in which 10 or 15 drops of the elixir of vitriol has been mixed, and, till further advice has been procured, keep a towel wrung out of cold water on the chest or stomach, according to the seat of ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... was not yet lost. The Padre's words and attitude acted like a wonderful elixir upon Chiquita. They buoyed her up, lifted her soul from the dust where it had ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... hospital, she seemed moving in a dream, as one, intoxicated by some elixir, might move unheeding among event and accident and vexing life and roaring multitudes. And all the while the river flowing through the endless prairies, high-banked, ennobled by living woods, lipped with green, kept surging in her ears, inviting her, alluring her—alluring ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... by some, been improperly confounded with the Freemasons, the word lux was used to signify a knowledge of the philosopher's stone, or the great desideratum of a universal elixir and a universal menstruum. This ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... ecclesiastical bribes and threats. As alchemy in its first form, seeking for the philosopher's stone and the transmutation of metals, had given way to alchemy in its second form, seeking for the elixir of life and remedies more or less magical for disease, so now the latter yielded to the search for truth as truth. More and more the "solemnly constituted impostors" were resisted in every field. A great line of physicists and ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... and air This year is the hundredth year, 200 I feed my fire with a sleepless care, Watching my potion wane or wax: Elixir of Life is simmering there, ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... thee. That decent man Is doom'd by me to lose his place again To-morrow morning when he wakes from out His hoggish slumber. Yet I care not. [Re-enter GAOLER with a leathern bottle and two glasses.] Ho! This is the stuff to warm our vitals, this The panacea for all mortal ills And sure elixir of eternal youth. Drink, bonniman! [GAOLER drains a glass and shows signs of instant intoxication. SAV. claps him on shoulder and replenishes glass. GAOLER drinks again, lies down on floor, and snores. SAV. snatches the bunch of keys, laughs long ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... faculty, but still little more than an overgrown, care-free boy in his outlook on life. Glimpses there had been over into the Promised Land of manhood, but the brimming cup of college work and play quaffed in health-giving heartiness is the elixir of youth. The speculative habit of the boy slept in the college undergraduate. The days were full, each of the things of itself, and if Tom looked forward to the workaday future,—as he did by times,—the boyish impatience to be at it was gone. ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... on Cowper like an elixir: "From a scene of the most uninterrupted retirement," he writes to Mrs. Unwin, "we have passed at once into a state of constant engagement. Not that our society is much multiplied; the addition of an individual has made all this difference. Lady Austen and we pass our days alternately ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... Phosphorists). Tegner here declares that the poet "with heavenly joy embraces life," that "he knows no weak lament" (at its misery), "no dissonance which is not dissolved" (in harmony). His temple stands in light and flame; and at its base a fountain gurgles, a draught from which is an elixir of strength and a panacea for ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... that we had in our cellar some fine claret; a few magnums of Leoville, '74, a present from a millionaire friend. We never drank it except upon great occasions. Ajax suggested a bottle of this elixir, not entirely out of charity. Such tipple would warm a graven image into speech, and my brother is inordinately curious. Our guest had nothing to give to us except his confidence, and that he ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... time to the study of chemicals, and was active in attempting to re-establish the teachings of Hippocrates and Galen. He was one of the first of a long line of alchemists who, for several succeeding centuries, expended so much time and energy in attempting to find the "elixir of life." The Arab discovery of alcohol first deluded him into the belief that the "elixir" had at last been found; but later he discarded it and made extensive experiments with brandy, employing it in the treatment of certain diseases—the first record of the administration of this liquor as a medicine. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... question applies with the same cogency to Coleridge. Coleridge began in rheumatic pains. What then? This is no proof that he did not end in voluptuousness. For our part, we are slow to believe that ever any man did or could learn the somewhat awful truth, that in a certain ruby-colored elixir there lurked a divine power to chase away the genius of ennui, without subsequently abusing this power. True it is that generations have used laudanum as an anodyne (for instance, hospital patients) who have not afterward courted its powers as a voluptuous stimulant; but that, be sure, has arisen ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... best to meet these needs, demands a knowledge to which most of us have been indifferent. If there is excess or lack of any necessary element, that excess or lack means disease, and for such disease we are wholly responsible. Food is not the only and the universal elixir of life; for weak or poor blood is often an inheritance, and comes to one tainted by family diseases, or by defects in air or climate in general. But, even when outward conditions are most disastrous, perfect food has power to avert or alter ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... value to the efficacy of those healing measures for Ireland, to know that the whole British Constitution was boiled down to make one of them, and every right and liberty brayed in the mortar to furnish even one dose of this precious elixir.' And then ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... soufflent des Florides L'entrainent vers la France et ses bords pluvieux. Un pecheur accroupi sous des rochers arides Tire dans ses filets le flacon precieux. Il court, cherche un savant et lui montre sa prise, Et, sans l'oser ouvrir, demande qu'on lui dise Quel est cet elixir noir ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... cup of wine sparkles like a diamond. Gentlewomen (I am sworn to put them in first) and gentlemen, around, in place of a bad prologue, I drink this good draught to your health here, Canary, the very elixir and spirit of wine. [DRINKS.] This is that our poet calls Castalian liquor, when he comes abroad now and then, once in a fortnight, and makes a good meal among players, where he has 'caninum appetitum'; marry, at home ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... The elixir in Patrick carried him higher than mountain crests. Adiante illumined an expanded world for him, miraculous, yet the real one, only wanting such light to show its riches. She lifted it out of darkness with swift ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Syphilis is very virulent, and prevails amongst the troops. Ophthalmia and rheumatism are common complaints. Thus Mourzuk is not quite one of those oases, or Hesperian gardens, where the happy residents quaff the elixir of immortal health and virtue. Contrarily, it is a sink of vice and disease within, and a sere foliage of palms and vegetation without, overhung with an ever forbidding ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... out of something coarse, something Godlike. It is 'sentiment', in my sense of the term—sentiment jealously hidden, but genuine, which extracts the venom from that formidable Thackeray, and converts what might be corrosive poison into purifying elixir. ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various |
