"Spiritualistic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was her room? But he had come so far, and he needed her so—he must stay. For some dear, foolish woman's reason she must have lent her room for the use of a feminine busy-body; a political, higher-thought, pseudo-spiritualistic friend. (He must weed out her friends!) The trend of the work done in this room now his quick mind had seized upon—titles of books, papers, it was enough. Notices stuck in the Venetian Mirror (the desecration!) for meetings of this and that society, and all of them, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... a futile effort to find a satisfactory solution of the problem of the Hereafter. Again and again we see the unrest of the ever-questioning soul depicted in the drama and the literature of the day as it seeks enlightenment on the potentiality of the future life. The stage presents plays based on spiritualistic manifestations or upon supernatural healing or miraculous intervention. Many recent novels have either psychical phenomena for their central interest or plots evolved out of the miraculous in religion. As exponents of ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... struggles going on in England, took of them a singularly large-hearted and generous view. She referred with much admiration to Mr. Bradlaugh's work and to his Parliamentary struggle, and spoke warmly of the services he had rendered to liberty. Again, in pointing out that spiritualistic trance orations by no means transcended speeches that made no such claim, I find her first mention of myself: "Another lady orator, of deservedly great fame, both for eloquence and learning—the good Mrs. Annie Besant—without ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... the harbour, and a man was drowned. His body had not been recovered. On the evening of the accident, my friend, accompanied by a doctor, a professor, and the vice-president of the Court of Algiers, attended a spiritualistic meeting in the town. One of these "incarnation mediums" happened to be present. M. Courmes suggested that the drowned man should be called up. The latter answered to the call, entered the medium, whose voice ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... witness what happened to me Thursday last. After having lunched with a lady whom I had called "imbecile," I went to call on another whom I had said was "ninny"; such is my ancient French gallantry. The first one had bored me to death with her spiritualistic discourses and her pretensions to ideality; the second outraged me by telling me that Renan was a rascal. Observe that she confessed to me that she had not read his books. There are some subjects about which I lose patience, and, ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... it,' she says, 'because it was a way of recompensing my hosts, whose desire to keep me with them prevented their placing me in a convent. Finally I took up laundress work, thinking I might render myself independent and live as I liked without troubling about spiritualistic seances.'" ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... reappearance of the dead in disembodied form. Spirit may denote a variety of incorporeal beings—among them angels, fairies (devoid of moral nature), and personalities returned from the grave and manifested—seldom visibly—through spiritualistic tappings and the like. "The superstitious natives thought the spirit of their chief walked in the graveyard." "The ghost of the ancestors survives in the descendants." "I can call spirits ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... metaphysical Columbus, so Ravaisson, in his famous Rapport sur la philosophic en France au xix siecle, published in 1867, prophesied as follows: "Many signs permit us to foresee in the near future a philosophical epoch of which the general character will be the predominance of what may be called spiritualistic realism or positivism, having as generating principle the consciousness which the mind has of itself of an existence recognized as being the source and support of every other existence, being none other ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... person fears ridicule and keeps his own counsel about his occult experience. The other is the feeling that communications from departed relatives are too sacred and personal for public discussion. Tens of thousands of people have seen demonstrations at spiritualistic seances which, while possessing little evidential value from the scientific viewpoint, nevertheless have a legitimate place in the great mass of psychic phenomena. But more convincing is the evidence furnished in hundreds of homes where some member of the ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... an old earth, established his foul community at Oneida. There and then the Millerite madness sent whole congregations into the cemeteries, in white gowns, to await the sounding of the trump of Gabriel. There and then arose the great spiritualistic movement that began in Wayne County with the Fox family, became famous as the Rochester Knockings, and blossomed into communities in which "Free Love" grew out of "Individual Sovereignty." Then and there, ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... established in language and thought, philosophy began its work in order to explain how two such heterogeneous powers could act on each other—how the soul could influence the body, and how the body could determine the soul. Spiritualistic and materialistic systems of philosophy arose, and all this in order to remove a self-created difficulty, in order to join together again what language had severed, the living body and the living ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... mention sundry inexplicable wonders, such as those wherewith the spiritualistic papers are frequently full, only stating that I was one of those who investigated the case of the Rev. Mr. Vaughan's pew-opener, at St. James's, Brighton, whose daughter was thought to be "bewitched." Certainly, strange knockings accompanied ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... was thrown suddenly on the whole company. Every one seemed to feel embarrassed, and though no one dared to look at his neighbor, and the toast was immediately drank by all, yet there came a peculiar feeling over each person present, as if some spiritualistic influence were at work restraining their speech and laughter, aye and even forbidding them to ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... graceful sprays of winter berries. Also she worked him some slippers covered with little devils in black silk, which she said he must learn to tread under foot, though whether this might be a covert allusion to his spiritualistic experiences or merely a flight of fancy on her part, Godfrey did ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... of life. In its sphere is the higher unity of plot by virtue of which it integrates many lives in one main action. Such, then, is the nature of plot as intermediary between man and his environment, but deeply engaged in the latter, and not to be freed from it even by a purely spiritualistic philosophy; for though we say that, as under one aspect plot shadows forth the unseen world of the soul's life, so under the other it shadows forth the invisible will of God, we do not escape from the outward world. Sense is still the medium by which only man knows his brother man and ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... pleased about a new 'method' of using planchette. You know what planchette is, don't you? The little heart-shaped piece of wood spiritualists use, with a pencil fast to it, to take down their silly 'messages,' Some spiritualistic fake was visiting town conducting seances and he claimed he'd discovered some sort of method for inducing greater receptivity—or something like that. I don't know anything about spiritualism but little tags I've picked up from hearing Cousin Parnelia talk. Anyway, he was 'teaching' ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... superstitious? How is it possible that the souls of the dead should come and talk, and play the guitar? No! Some one is fooling them, or they are fooling themselves. And as to this business with Simon—it's simply incomprehensible. (Looks at an album.) Here's their spiritualistic album. How is it possible to photograph a spirit? But here is the likeness of a Turk and Leonid Fyodoritch sitting by.... Extraordinary ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... second is an idealistic philosophy (absolute idealism), which inevitably lands in Pantheism. The third is an intuitional or "faith-philosophy," which finally ends in Mysticism. The fourth is a rationalistic or "spiritualistic" philosophy, which yields pure Theism. The last is an empirical philosophy, which derives all religion from instruction, and culminates in ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... themselves;" also that spiritualism must be "made subject to the laws of common sense" and controlled by "common integrity," and if this truth "is at last materializing before the consciousness of the believers in spiritualistic phenomena some good may come ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... emphasised the physical condition of the Kid, as he was known to all and sundry, because I think it may have a bearing on the story I am going to relate. I am no expert in "ologies" and other things dealing with so-called spiritualistic revelations. I might even say, in fact, that I am profoundly sceptical of them all, though to say so may reveal my abysmal ignorance. So be it; my thumbs are crossed. This is not a controversial treatise on spiritualism, and all that appertains thereto. One thing, however, ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... to a spiritualistic seance at the L——'s salon. The Empress Josephine has consented to materialize in America after having visited the Continent. We saw her, and a more unempress-looking empress I cannot imagine. To convince a skeptic she displayed her leg to show how well it ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... instinctively joined each other in a small phalanx of scepticism. If there was any trick or deception to be discovered all looked to them to do it, and they were almost gleefully aware of their responsibility. Figuratively speaking, they each wore the scalps of many spiritualistic mediums, and both Professor van Huysman and Professor Hartley sensed a possible addition to their belts of scientific wampum which would not be the least of their trophies. It had been agreed to by Phadrig, with a quiet scorn, that they were to take any measures they liked to detect ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... up with some Spiritualistic notions after her mother's death; thought she held communications with her, and all that, Aunt ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... less accessible to us, and a knowledge of which may, in future, help us to exercise the same kind of control over the world of thought, as we already possess in respect of the material world; whereas, the alternative, or spiritualistic, terminology is utterly barren, and leads to nothing but obscurity and ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... indeed, it meant that another "apparition" was intended. But a more close investigation convinced me of trickery. Flung away into a corner was a small brush bearing traces of luminous paint, and in a heap of rubbish I discerned the very lid of a small tin of that effective spiritualistic medium. No further proof was needed. By lucky chance I discovered what appeared to be a clue to the reason of all this mystification. Loosened stones in the chimney and by the hearth suggested that a search had been made for something ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... presently, like a puff of smoke from a gun, in some kind of half-material body, an attenuated version of my material self? Should I find myself suddenly among the innumerable hosts of the dead, and know the world about me for the phantasmagoria it had always seemed? Should I drift to some spiritualistic seance, and there make foolish, incomprehensible attempts to affect a purblind medium? It was a state of unemotional curiosity, of colourless expectation. And then I realised a growing stress upon me, a feeling as though some huge human magnet was drawing me upward ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... "superior," "upper," "eminent," in the non-religious sense; in the religious sense it signifies a human spirit having obtained supernatural power after death. The dead are the "powers above," the "upper ones,"—the Kami. We have here a conception resembling very strongly the modern Spiritualistic notion of ghosts, only that the Shinto idea is in no true sense democratic. The Kami are ghosts of greatly varying dignity and power,—belonging to spiritual hierarchies like the hierarchies of ancient Japanese society. Although essentially superior to the living in certain respects, ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... the kind which grows out of strong similarities of nature. Apuleius passed for a magician: Tertullian was a firm believer in magic, and his conversion to Christianity was, he himself tells us, very largely due to confessions of its truth extorted from demons, at the strange spiritualistic seances which were a feature of the time among all classes. His conversion took place in the last year of Commodus. The tension between the two religions—for in Africa, at all events, the old and the new were followed with equally fiery enthusiasm—had already ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... Synoptic Gospels is a striking feature in St. John's Gospel. But these instances of omission can be more reasonably explained by the hypothesis that the author was content to omit facts with which the Christians around him were well acquainted, than by the hypothesis that he was a spiritualistic writer of the 2nd century who wished to make his Gospel fit some fanciful theory of his own. In fact, the latter hypothesis has proved a signal failure. The critics who say that the writer omitted the story ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... materialistic. Orthodox Christianism is essentially spiritualistic. The consistent socialist says: The basic necessities of life, and therefore its first concern, are foods, raiments, shelters, comfort and leisure. The consistent Christian says: Take no primary thought for these, but only for faith in and obedience to God, regarding all else ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... incarnations—too many to describe in detail. Each shape, or embodiment, has been a temporary residence only, which she has entered, lived in awhile, and made her exit from, leaving the substance, so far as I have been concerned, a corpse, worse luck! Now, there is no spiritualistic nonsense in this—it is simple fact, put in the plain form that the conventional public are afraid of. So ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... of the university. In 1778 he published his most famous work, Nouveaux elemens de la science de l'homme, in which he employs the expression "vital principle" as a convenient term for the cause of the phenomena of life, without committing himself to either a spiritualistic or a materialistic view of its nature. Taking the degree of doctor of civil law in 1780, he secured the appointment of counsellor to the Supreme Court of Aids at Montpellier, but he soon took up his residence in Paris, having been nominated consulting ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... physician regarded with particular detestation it was that of mediumship. All mediums, in his opinion, were knaves or fools and their so-called occult manifestations were either conjurers' trickery or self-created illusions of a hypnotic character. He had never attended a spiritualistic seance and had no intention of ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... of accepted history; it would seem, however, that the representation depends on the invention of a modern essayist, who transferred to the colonial period ideas derived from his acquaintance with the phenomena of contemporary spiritualistic seances, and that the habit of "trying projects," no doubt universal in colonial times, had nothing to do with the delusion in ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various |
