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Esoteric   Listen
noun
Esoteric  n.  (Philos.)
(a)
An esoteric doctrine or treatise; esoteric philosophy; esoterics.
(b)
One who believes, or is an initiate, in esoteric doctrines or rites.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Esoteric" Quotes from Famous Books



... being treated quite so insultingly DE HAUT EN BAS, from the height of esoteric art to the depth of general exoteric amateurism, replied, hotly, flushing and ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... this it would appear that some, at least, of the English clergy have adopted the Jesuit principle, practically so convenient, by which any one may have an esoteric religion for himself as the comfortable lining of the cloak, and an esoteric religion for other people as the outside of the cloak. Meanwhile these clergymen are deeply respected, whilst honest men whose opinions are not one whit more heretical are stigmatized as 'infidels,' and excluded ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... our most precious contributors, had it not been that we have seen some very unfair attempts to depreciate Mr. Longfellow, and that, as it seemed to us, for qualities which stamp him as a true and original poet. The writer who appeals to more peculiar moods of mind, to more complex or more esoteric motives of emotion, may be a greater favorite with the few; but he whose verse is in sympathy with moods that are human and not personal, with emotions that do not belong to periods in the development of individual minds, but to all men in all years, ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... meant to stand no nonsense from Kate. Other girls' big sisters had been known to assume superiority as their skirts lengthened, and to imply an esoteric something in their experience which younger sisters could not comprehend, and privileges which they might not share. But for them, the Madigans, though they were graciously willing to count Kate out of such outdoor ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson

... I've never been fired," I declared; "you make me determined to do or die." Then I asked: "Is it a kind of esoteric message?" ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James

... it from the esoteric stand-point of Christian exegetical analysis; and agglutinating the polsynthetical ectoblasts of homogeneous asceticism, I perceive at once the ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... Toland thought the idea had arisen among the people, like our witches, ghosts, and fairy stories, and subsequently defended by the philosophers, who sought to rule their passions by finding arguments for their superstitions, and thus the rise of their exoteric and esoteric doctrines were the first foundations of the belief in the immortality of the soul. The third letter is on "The Origin of Idolatry," or, as it might rather be called, a history of the follies of mankind. He traces the causes, the origin, and the science of superstition—its ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts

... of a symbol may be more or less obvious, and the esoteric meaning may be conveyed in a variety of ways. Galds has expressed his opinion about the legitimate uses of symbolism in his prefaces to Los condenados and Alma y vida, in passages capital for the understanding of his methods. In the ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos

... the auspices of SMITH, ELDER, hoping that they will prove "a source of interest and pleasure to the friends of the expedition." He need have no fears. Of course a paper produced under such conditions is in its nature esoteric, and many of its jokes are lost if you "don't know Jimson." But if you have previously read Scott's Last Expedition then you will "know Jimson"; you will feel that every man at Cape Evans in 1911 was a personal ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various

... of the most delightful music seems to be always approaching to figure, to pictorial definition. Architecture, again, though it has its own laws—laws esoteric enough, as the true architect knows only too well—yet sometimes aims at fulfilling the conditions of a picture, as in the Arena chapel; or of sculpture, as in the flawless unity of Giotto's tower at Florence; and often finds a true poetry, as in those ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater

... Zorastrianism on the Septenary Constitution of Man Brahmanism on the Sevenfold Principle in Man The Septenary Principle in Esotericism Personal and Impersonal God Prakriti and Parusha Morality and Pantheism Occult Study Some Inquiries Suggested by Mr. Sinnett's "Esoteric Buddhism" Sakya Muni's Place in History Inscriptions Discovered by General A. Cunningham Discrimination of Spirit and Not-Spirit Was ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... mutton chop and potato which so many millions of unimaginative Anglo-Saxons are content to swallow on each recurring day. And Mrs. Fay, her landlady, had a soul; and her skill in cooking was her pride and glory. Cookery was to her what poetry and the worship of Humanity, and Esoteric Buddhism are to others; and from the time when she began life as a kitchen-maid in a small hotel, she had followed her art with singleness of purpose and unflagging zeal. She felt it as a kind of degradation ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... this change is always easy and natural. Dogmas and creeds may remain the same, but progress consists in giving a spiritual or poetic interpretation to that which once was taken literally. The scheme of the Esoteric and the Exoteric is a sliding, self-lubricating, self-adjusting, non-copyrighted invention—perfect in its workings—that all wise theologians fall back upon in time ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... what may seem to them the unwise frankness of the paper on "The Nihilism of Socialism." To them I can only say that to me Socialism has always been essentially a revolutionary movement. Revolutionists, who attempt to maintain a distinction between their exoteric and their esoteric teachings, only succeed in making themselves ridiculous. But, even were the maintenance of such a distinction practicable, it would, in my judgment, be highly inexpedient. As a mere matter of policy, ever since I first entered the Socialist Movement, I have been a firm believer in the tactics ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte

... high position. The dear Vidame was a repositary for everybody's secrets, and the gazette of the Faubourg besides; nevertheless, he was discreet, and, like other gazettes, only said things that might safely be published. Again Victurnien listened to the Chevalier's esoteric doctrines. The Vidame told young d'Esgrignon, without mincing matters, to make conquests among women of quality, supplementing the advice with anecdotes from his own experience. The Vicomte de Pamiers, it seemed, had permitted himself much that it ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac

... itself in many things that Balzac did. One little incident will perhaps be sufficiently characteristic of many others. He had a belief that names had a sort of esoteric appropriateness. So, in selecting them for his novels, he gathered them with infinite pains from many sources, and then weighed them anxiously in the balance. A writer on the subject of names and their significance has given the ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... one Mapiao, a great Tahuku—which seems to mean priest, wizard, tattooer, practiser of any art, or, in a word, esoteric person—and a man famed for his eloquence on public occasions and witty talk in private. His first appearance was typical of the man. He came down clamorous to the eastern landing, where the surf was running very high; scorned all our signals to go round ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... esteemed them accordingly; but my companion, a connoisseur in such matters, pronounced them not the true quahaug (Venus mercenaria,—what a profanely ill-sorted name, even for a bivalve!) but the larger and coarser Cyprina islandica. The man to whom we imparted this precious bit of esoteric lore received it like a gentleman, if I cannot add like a scholar. "We call them quahaugs," he answered, with an accent of polite deprecation, as if it were not in the least to be wondered at that he should be found in the wrong. It was evident, at the same time, ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey

... by "theorists" is meant the constructors of elaborate and deceptive theorems in this matter. It is our opponents, the military mystics, who persistently shut their eyes to the great outstanding facts of history and of our time. And these fantastic theories are generally justified by most esoteric doctrine, not by the appeal to the facts which stare you in the face. I once replied to a ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell

... country where the practices of Druidry still lingered, and revived after the retreat of the Romans. The mediaeval romancers invented a legend that Merlin was a virgin- born child of Satan. In Tennyson he may be guessed to represent the fabled esoteric lore of old religions, with their vague pantheisms, and such magic as the tapas of Brahmanic legends. He is wise with a riddling evasive wisdom: the builder of Camelot, the prophet, a shadow of Druidry ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang

... perplexity. His illness, his unwonted holiday, the necessity of postponing a course of well-paid lectures, had combined to diminish his resources; and when Harviss offered him an advance of a thousand dollars the esoteric savour of the joke became irresistible. It was still as a joke that he persisted in regarding the transaction; and though he had pledged himself not to betray the real intent of the book, he held in petto the notion of some day being able to take the public into his confidence. ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... have nothing to proceed upon beyond a few disfigured fragments.[121] And yet Chaldaeism comprises a great mass of teachings; he whom we know as "the divine Zoroaster" had been preceded by twelve others, and esoteric doctrine was as well known ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal

... Lantern you know how much it depends on atmosphere. Once a disused warehouse in a section of the city which commerce had forsaken, the enthusiasm for the dance which arose about 1910, has made it a temple. It gains, too, by being a temple of the esoteric. The Hindoo Lantern is not everybody's lantern, and does not swing in the open vulgar street. You might live in New York a hundred years and unless you were one of the initiated and privileged, you might never ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King

... infinitely little; above all, bows to the ground before the red-wigged Bashaw, Flattener of the Earth, whom for Madame's sake and his own he is anxious to be well with. "Fall on your face nine times, ye esoteric of only Impure Science!"—intimates Maupertuis to mankind. "By all means!" answers M. de Voltaire, doing it with alacrity; with a kind of loyalty, one can perceive, and also with a hypocrisy grounded on love of peace. If that is the nature of the Bashaw, and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... the Chaldaeans, from the very earliest times to which the monuments carry us back, was, in its outward aspect, a polytheism of a very elaborate character. It is quite possible that there may have been esoteric explanations, known to the priests and the more learned, which, resolving the personages of the Pantheon into the powers of nature, reconciled the apparent multiplicity of gods with monotheism, or even with ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson

... The story of the Sarayashiki figures in most of the collections of wonder tales. The Gidayu of the "Banshu[u] Sarayashiki" by Tamenaga Taro[u]bei and Asada Itcho[u] finds no application. It deals with Himeji in Harima. As for the stories from an esoteric point of view, as illustrations of the period they have a value—to be continued in those more historical, and which deal with the lives and deeds of men of greater note and influence in this early Tokugawa court. The present ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... shortly before the Claudian conquest of Britain, says that the Druids profess to know the shape and size of the world, the movements of the stars, and the will of the Gods. They teach many secrets in caves and woods, but only to the nobles of the land. Of this esoteric instruction one doctrine alone has been permitted to leak out to the common people—that of the immortality of the soul—and this only because that doctrine was calculated to make them the braver ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare

... excellencies of marriage and virginity are combined, Catholic teaching is quite clear and decided; in this, as in other points, Patmore's untaught intuitions, and instincts—his mens naturaliter catholica—had led him, whither the esoteric teaching of the Church had led only the more appreciatively sympathetic of her disciples, from time to time, as it were, up into that mountain of which St. Ambrose says: "See, how He goes up with the Apostles and comes down to the crowds. For how ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... esoteric secret still in reserve; and for years it remained a secret to me. The bottle-sockets and pen-tray did not reach down to the level of the long drawer by nearly an inch. Measurement would prove that; but you would have said that ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... do without that I want the new great poet to sing of. I agree with William Morris that art is the one thing we all want, the expression of man's joy in his work. And the more that art retires into fine nuances and intellectual subtleties, the more that it becomes something esoteric and mysterious, the less I care about it. When Tennyson said to the farmer's wife, 'What's the news?' she replied, 'Mr. Tennyson, there's only one piece of news worth telling, and that is that Christ died for all men.' Tennyson said very ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson

... certainly not confined to those privileged by birth or wealth or social position. It was not the reward of magical favour or ascetic exercises, it was reached by the beaten path of the loyal citizen and the resolute student. There was about it no esoteric mystery or other-worldliness. And if to reach it was a high privilege its attainment brought with it the imperative duty of a descent into the ordinary world to instruct, to enlighten, to comfort and help and console, to play a part in the great ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various

... trifling. The name may belong to that ancient dialect from which are derived many of the names of the days and months in the native calendar, and which, as an esoteric language, was in use among the Maya priests, as was also one among the Aztecs of Mexico. Instances of this, in fact, are very common among the American aborigines, and no doubt many words were thus preserved which could not be analyzed to their ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various

... appeal to me; the pseudo-Grecian temple in the corner, with water cascading down its steps, the make-believe clouds which float across the ceiling, the tables of glass lighted from beneath—all this, ordinarily, seems trivial and banal; but occasionally, in an esoteric mood, I like Murray's, and can even find something picturesque and romantic in bright gowns, and gleaming shoulders, and handsome faces seen amid these bizarre surroundings. And then, of course, there is always the cooking, which leaves nothing to ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... for the ceremonies of initiation. Containing almost entirely esoteric work, it cannot be written. The Master should not only familiarize himself with it, but he should also diligently learn and explain to the candidate each truth symbolized by each step of the ceremonies through which he ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh

... birds. There is a moral training in clearness and tangibility. An occult impulse to vice is hidden in all vagueness and in all teachings meant to be heard but not to be understood. Nature is never obscure, never occult, never esoteric. She must be questioned in earnest, else she will not reply. But to every serious question she returns a serious answer. "Simple, natural, and true" should make the impression of simplicity and truth. Truth and virtue are but opposite sides ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan

... of this class used as adjectives mostly follow the same rule, as 'sporadic', 'dynamic', 'pneumatic', 'esoteric', 'philanthropic', 'emetic', 'panegyric'. As nouns the earlier introductions threw the stress back, as 'heretic', 'arithmetic', but later words follow the adjectives, as 'emetic', 'enclitic', 'panegyric'. As for 'politic', which is stressed as we stress both ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt

... about Mr. Hallam which, while it adds to the value of his writings, will, we fear, take away something from their popularity. He is less of a worshipper than any historian whom we can call to mind. Every political sect has its esoteric and its exoteric school, its abstract doctrines for the initiated, its visible symbols, its imposing forms, its mythological fables for the vulgar. It assists the devotion of those who are unable to raise themselves to the contemplation of pure truth by ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... her doubtingly, although the idea appealed to him. Outriding his admiration of the idea, however, was a recurrence of his old impression of Romola Borria. He knew that he never had been a match for her cunning, her esoteric knowledge ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... see nothing to justify the conclusion drawn from this passage by Isidore Geoffroy, that Buffon had modified his opinions, and was inclined to believe in a more limited mutability than he had done a few years earlier. His exoteric position is still identical with what it was in the outset, and his esoteric may be seen from the spirit which is hardly ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... for esoteric speculation. He had three rooms in a bachelor apartment on Forty-forth street, but he was seldom to be found there. The telephone girl had received the most positive instructions that no one should even have his ear without ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... because the victims prefer to suffer loss rather than have their names dragged into a publicity which, to say the least, would reflect on them discreditably. For these, and other obvious reasons, many kinds of secret crimes flourish and abound in the esoteric life of great cities. In New York, where money is often rapidly acquired, and where little curiosity is manifested as to the mode of its acquisition, there are naturally many facilities for putting black-mailing schemes into successful operation. Scores of persons, apparently ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe

... who talked too much but seldom stupidly, exhibited a powerful virtuosity in strange gestures, and pointedly designated herself as a "spin" (diminutive for spinster) apparently deriving from this conceit an amusement esoteric to her audience. Similarly, she indulged a mettlesome fancy for referring to her hostess as "dear Abigail." Her own maiden name was eventually disclosed as Mercedes—pronounced, by ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance

... on his mastery of that esoteric English by which the members of various sets, smart, sporting and other, conceal the meaning of what they say from outsiders, especially from foreigners who have acquired their knowledge of our language by painful study ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham

... reasonably suppose that soldiers in a "conquered" country, soldiers full of the belief that any opposition to Germanism was in itself a crime (see No. 344), paused to look beneath his surface eulogies of murder and lust for some esoteric meaning that may possibly underlie them? Can it be a mere coincidence that, in the first war which Germany has waged since Nietzsche entered upon his apostolate of ruthlessness, the German armies should have been animated, ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various

... systematically to empty itself at a certain time every day. This can be done in nearly every case without artificial assistance. It may take time but it is worth a little methodical persistence. The point is, you must do it; no "ism" or esoteric agency can do ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague

... Apostolic tradition, critically examined. This tradition lies before us in a series of Apostolic writings, and in a secret doctrine derived from the Apostles, (positive).[348] As exoteric it is comprehended in the regula fidei (positive),[349] as esoteric it is propagated ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... as the most romantic of all your possibilities; of the Campagna generally as an illimitable experience. One's rides certainly give Rome an inordinate scope for the reflective—by which I suppose I mean after all the aesthetic and the "esoteric"—life. To dwell in a city which, much as you grumble at it, is after all very fairly a modern city; with crowds and shops and theatres and cafes and balls and receptions and dinner-parties, and all the modern confusion ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... about their Bishop belongs to the esoteric part of their profession; so we will at once quit the dining-room at Milby Vicarage, lest we should happen to overhear remarks unsuited to the lay understanding, and perhaps dangerous ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... answer him by ruling out modern poetry from the argument. There was more good poetry, neither complex, nor erotic, nor esoteric, written before our generation than even a maker of anthologies is likely to read. But I am not willing to dodge the issue so readily. There is modern poetry for every reader who is competent to read ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... Babylonians and Egyptians, and that they made but very limited attainments. The early Greek philosophers, who visited Egypt and the East in search of knowledge, found very little to reward their curiosity or industry; not much beyond preposterous claims to a high antiquity, and an esoteric wisdom which has not yet been revealed. They approximated to the truth in reference to the solar year, by observing the equinoxes and solstices, and the heliacal rising of particular stars. Plato and Eudoxus spent thirteen ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... catch the excitement in the air, the strange, laden undercurrent of spiritual salvation-something esoteric, undefinable, the ecstasy of a million souls pulsing to the throb of a supreme moment. He drew back, ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... perpetually sacrificing to ideals. And what is more, quite superior, virtuous people, religious in the best sense of the word, are apt to have, besides the ostensible and perhaps rather obsolete one of churches and meeting-houses, another cultus, esoteric, unspoken but acted upon, of which the priests and casuists are ladies'-maids ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee

... was an account of how a farmer got the best of a bunco steerer in New York City, and was delivered in the esoteric dialect of the Bowery. It was not long before willing smiles gave place to long-drawn faces of comic bewilderment, and, although Copernicus set his best example by artificial grins and pretended inward laughter, he could evoke naught but silence ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye

... much," said Lionel, timidly (for what did he know about such esoteric matters?). "I suppose the money they might get from a novel would be of little consideration—but it would show that the book had ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black

... that weather-stained, faded old house appeared a throbbing seat of esoteric intelligence. It was as if a hundred invisible magnetic threads converged to a focus under that roof and incessantly clicked ouit the most startling information,—information which was never by any chance allowed to pass beyond the charmed ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... outward asceticism and material purifications. And the central object of their worship comes before us as a tortured, persecuted, slain god—the suffering Dionysus—of whose legend they have their own special and esoteric version. That version, embodied in a supposed Orphic poem, The Occultation of Dionysus, is represented only by the details that have passed from it into the almost endless Dionysiaca of Nonnus, a writer of the fourth century; and ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... some extent, but to a much larger extent transformed by him for original use. But technical as his style may be, it is simplicity itself when compared with the horrific styles which were, until the last few decades, alone thought adequate to express the profound and esoteric mysteries of modern philosophy. The philosophic jargon of the 18th. and 19th. centuries is now almost universally discarded, and with it preternaturally recondite and ineffectual modes of thought. Those who have achieved at least some of the new simplicity ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza

... knowledge from the Logos, and learns the law of correspondences by which the world is placed in unison with heaven. The word of God was wholly written by pure Correspondences, and covers an esoteric or spiritual meaning, which according to the science of Correspondences, cannot be understood. 'There exist,' says Swedenborg ('Celestial Doctrine' 26), 'innumerable Arcana within the hidden meaning of the Correspondences. Thus the men who scoff ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac

... seeker of pleasure and sensation, drifting from one type of amusement to the other in an intricately mixed cooperation and rivalry with members of her set. She followed every fad that infests staid old Boston, from the esoteric to the erotic. She became an accomplished dancer, ran her own car, followed the races, went to art exhibitions, subscribed to courses of lectures of which she would attend the first, dabbled in new religions, became enthusiastic: about social work for a month or two,—and became a professional at ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson

... Sir George in these days was very cordial, greeting him with that genial esoteric warmth which is always felt by one English country gentleman with a large estate for another equally blessed. Six months ago, when it was believed that Ralph had sold his inheritance to his uncle, Sir George when he met the young man addressed him in a very different fashion. As he entered ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... It was written one night between twelve and three, and cost the poet, he said, "hardly an effort." Indeed, it is the spontaneous ease and grace, the unfailing taste of Longfellow's lines, which are their best technical quality. There is nothing obscure or esoteric about his poetry. If there is little passion or intellectual depth, there is always genuine poetic feeling, often a very high order of imagination and almost invariably the choice of the right word. In this volume were also included the Village Blacksmith and ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... life than had obtained in the romantic fiction deriving from the medieval stories. The term "realism" as first applied was suitably descriptive; it is only with the subsequent evolution that so simple a word has taken on subtler shades and esoteric implications. ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... school. A further service that is far more unusual than difficult may be performed by the pupils who are not new, in the way of removing strangeness for those who are entering what seems to them a sort of new esoteric cult in the high school. The girls of the Washington Irving High School[55] of New York City recently put into practice a plan to give a personal welcome to each entering girl, and a personal escort for ...
— The High School Failures - A Study of the School Records of Pupils Failing in Academic or - Commercial High School Subjects • Francis P. Obrien

... has ventured freely into the domain of spiritual things, and has dealt, with more daring than knowledge, with esoteric mysteries. The great reading public knows little of these matters, because, as a rule, they have been expressed by writers whose works are too abstruse to catch the popular ear. It is only when they are handled by writers of imaginative fiction ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray

... questions which were not simply those of technique, but related to newer phenomena, such as the action of carbon, the nature and effects of high vacua; the principles of electrical subdivision; the value of insulation, and many others which, unfortunate to say, remain as esoteric now as they were then, ever fruitful themes ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... met him twice in a year, and D'Alembert's acquaintance with him was of the slightest. And there must, we should suppose, have been some difficulty in cordially admitting even a penitent member of the abhorred class of farmers-general among the esoteric group of the philosophic opposition. There was much point in Turgot's contemptuous question, why he should be thankful to a declaimer like Helvetius, who showers vehement insults and biting sarcasms on governments in general, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... Minnesingers occupy her first apartments, but the brilliant saloon is worthy of Wieland, whose Oberon forms it frieze; while the bedchamber gleams with the beautiful forms and pensive incidents of Goethe's esoteric pen. Schiller has filled the study with his stirring characters and his vigorous incidents. Groups from 'Wallenstein' and 'Wilhelm Tell' form the rich and unrivalled ceiling: while the fight of the dragon and the founding of the bell, the innocent Fridolin, ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli

... statement of the Mosaic law; for the cultured community of Alexandria, Jew and Gentile, a more elaborate exegesis, in which each character and each ordinance of the Pentateuch received a particular ethical value; and, finally, for the esoteric circle of Hellenic-Jewish philosophers, a theological and psychological study of the allegories of the law. Origen, the first great Christian exegete of the Bible and a close student of the Philonic writings, distinguished three forms of interpreting: the historical, ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich

... Newbiggin in Forfar, where for fourteen years he had his one and only charge, to Strathmiglo in Fife. The marriage was fruitful and a happy one, although there is a hint in the record of some religious difference upon which one would like to dwell if the subject were not too esoteric for this generation. The minister showed a certain indulgence, and so long as his wife lived he never employed the paraphrases in the solemn worship of the sanctuary. She was a woman of provident mind. Shortly after ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae

... the upper classes in rural districts are designated by the lower with so much true discrimination, were to eat a breakfast, and the non-quality were to eat a dinner. Two marquees had been erected for these two banquets: that for the quality on the esoteric or garden side of a certain deep ha-ha; and that for the non-quality on the exoteric or paddock side of the same. Both were of huge dimensions—that on the outer side was, one may say, on an egregious scale—but Mr. Plomacy ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... large awakened to a dazed realization of the head-way which the new idea had made. It had become a cult of the ruling-class, the esoteric religion of the state; everywhere its defenders sprang up—it seemed as if all the intellectual as well as the material power of the community was under its spell. To oppose it was not merely bad form—it was to incur a stigma of moral inferiority, to be ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... studies were inclined to consider this an esoteric form of advertisement, intended to convey to the initiated the information that A. STORM had gone into the beer business. But conjecture was set at naught by its fellow which appeared at its side on the day after its ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... the Semitic revelation, as the French revolution was a political revolt of the Celtic races. The disturbance will pass away; and we shall find that Abraham and Moses knew more about the universe than Hegel or Comte. The prophets of the sacred race were divinely endowed with an esoteric knowledge concealed from the vulgar behind mystic symbols and ceremonies. If the old oracles are dumb, some gleams of the same power still remain, and in the language of mere mortals are called ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... relying on tradition for its clearness? Jeremy Taylor was a true Father of the Church, and would furnish as fine a subject for a 'concordantia discordantiarum' as St. Austin himself. For the exoteric and esoteric he was ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge

... them. But my chief reason is that the present revival of theosophical enquiry throws a flood of light on Simon's teachings, whenever we can get anything approaching a first-hand statement of them, and shows that it was identical in its fundamentals with the Esoteric Philosophy of all the great religions of ...
— Simon Magus • George Robert Stow Mead

... with that singer who had an evening concert—had seen enough of her friend's handsome daughter to conceive for her an inclination of such violence and assurance as only Flavia could afford. The fact that Imogen had shown rather marked capacity in certain esoteric lines of scholarship, and had decided to specialize in a well-sounding branch of philology at the Ecole des Chartes, had fairly placed her in that category of "interesting people" whom Flavia considered her ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather

... sect is the Ta-jih-ching or sutra of the Sun-Buddha.[847] A distinction is drawn between exoteric and esoteric doctrine (the "true word") and the various phases of Buddhist thought are arranged in ten classes. Of these the first nine are merely preparatory, but in the last or esoteric phase, the adept becomes a living Buddha and receives full intuitive knowledge. In this ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot

... His esoteric project was the original project of Christopher Columbus, extended and modified. Columbus had hoped to establish a communication between our quarter of the world and India across the great western ocean. But he was stopped by an ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... fad. Those who did embrace its doctrines and read its books, and they were not a few of the second-rate humanists, cherished it as their fathers had cherished the neo-Platonism of Pico della Mirandola, as an esoteric philosophy. So little inclined were they to bring their faith to the people that they preferred to translate the Bible into better Greek or classical Latin rather than into the vulgar Tuscan. And just at the moment when it seemed as if a popular movement of some sort might result ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... do you think of Madame Blavatsky and her school of Theosophists? Do you believe Madame Blavatsky does or has done the wonderful things related of her? Have you seen or known of any Theosophical or esoteric marvels? ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... a subtle and conscientious people. Intellect with us had been brought to so fine an edge by the Shorter Catechism that it could detect endless distinctions, and was ever on the watch against inaccuracy. Farmers who could state the esoteric doctrine of "spiritual independence" between the stilts of the plough, and talked familiarly of "co-ordinate jurisdiction with mutual subordination," were not likely to fall into the vice of generalisation. When ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren

... the ancient forest the magnolias burn the perfect alban lucence of their lamps; white are their ivory cups like priestly linen, and fragrant with the tang of foreign citrons. An esoteric, mirrored swan slides by like Cleopatra's barge, while drums of color beaten by a maniac blend with old tints of Leonardo's dreams, colors that God might see if his own lightning blasted out ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen

... upwards along human spines was strangely fatal to human bodies—but Doggie found his bed very hard lying. And it smelt sour and sickly. For nights, in spite of fatigue, he could not sleep. His mates sang and talked and bandied jests and sarcasms of esoteric meaning. Some of the recruits from factories or farms satirized their officers for peculiarities common to their social caste and gave grotesque imitations of their mode of speech. Doggie wondered, but ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... again, smiling inscrutably. "Thank you, it's not the pink edelweiss. The scientific, the esoteric name, I've promised that I'll tell to no one; but the common people in my native country, who have heard of it, ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson

... But such esoteric combinations are not at all necessary for the postulation of wildly variant life forms. Earth itself was prolific in its variations; Earthlike planets were equally inventive. Carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, plus varying proportions of phosphorus, potassium, iodine, nitrogen, sulfur, calcium, iron, ...
— Cum Grano Salis • Gordon Randall Garrett

... This was the case with Firmicus Maternus who has written a bad treatise on astrology and finally fought the Error of the Profane Religions. However, the question always arises as to how much they can have known of the esoteric doctrines and the ritual ceremonies, the secret of which was jealously guarded. They boast so loudly of their power to disclose these abominations, that they incur the suspicion that the discretion of the initiates baffled their curiosity. In addition they were too ready to believe all the calumnies ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... disciples, in their orgies or secret worship, to practise gymnastics, dancing, music. In correspondence with his principle of imparting to men only such knowledge as they were fitted to receive, he communicated to those who were less perfectly prepared exoteric doctrines, reserving the esoteric for the privileged few who had passed five years in silence, had endured humiliation, and been purged ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... by an elect few who openly despise the unappreciative many. Art has become an occult profession requiring a long special education even to enjoy, and evolving a jargon of criticism which becomes more esoteric yearly. ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... evading the Factory Acts. To-night she was radiant in silk and jewelry, and her pert snub nose had the insolence of felicity which Agamemnon deprecated. Seeing her, you would have as soon connected her with Esoteric Buddhism as ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... sentiments (for some authors affirm his esoteric doctrines to have been dogmatic[152]), he brought forward these sceptical tenets in so unguarded a form, that it required all his argumentative powers, which were confessedly great, to maintain them against the obvious objections which were pressed upon him ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... propriety of a fanatical adherence to the text of the Folio of 1623. We differ, because we think that sense is not all that we have a right to expect from Shakspeare,—that it is, indeed, merely the body in which his genius creates a soul of meaning, nay, oftentimes a double one, exoteric and esoteric, the spiritus astralis and the anima caelestis. Had the passage been in verse, where the change might have damaged the rhythm, —had it been one of those ecstasies of Shakspearian imagination, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... gentle spinster, but not quite so far as Jeffrey Aspern, who was simply hearsay to her, quite as he was to me. Only she had lived for years with Juliana, she had seen and handled the papers and (even though she was stupid) some esoteric knowledge had rubbed off on her. That was what the old woman represented—esoteric knowledge; and this was the idea with which my editorial heart used to thrill. It literally beat faster often, of an ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James

... stone of society and indeed the very purpose of its existence. His Pessimism resembles far more the optimism which the so-called Books of Moses borrowed from the Ancient Copt than the mournful and melancholy creed of the true Pessimist, as Solomon the Hebrew, the Indian Buddhist and the esoteric European imitators of Buddhism. He cannot but sigh when contemplating the sin and sorrow, the pathos and bathos of the world; and feel the pity of it, with its shifts and changes ending in nothingness, its scanty happiness and its copious misery. But his melancholy ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... presented itself to the Japanese when it first arrived among them as a rival of Shinto and Confucianism. There can be no doubt that the form in which it became known at the outset was the Hinayana, or Exoteric, as distinguished from the Mahayana, or Esoteric. But how did the Japanese converts reconcile its acceptance with their allegiance to the traditional faith, Shinto? The clearest available answer to this question is contained in a book called Taishiden Hochu, where, in reply to a query from his father, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... the secret study of theology in order to find out why Godfrey was so convinced as to the teachings of the Bible. She was not old or mellowed enough to understand that the real reason must be discovered, not in the letter but in the spirit, that is in the esoteric meaning of the sayings as to receiving the Kingdom of Heaven like a child and the necessity of being born again. Therefore with a fierce intensity, thrusting aside the spirit and its promptings which perhaps are shadows of the only real truths, ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard

... thought with thought, teach him philosophy, Show him the purpose of our holy writ. Instruct him in the meaning of the Vedas, Reveal to him their esoteric sense. ...
— The Buddha - A Drama in Five Acts and Four Interludes • Paul Carus

... to point out what appears to me the defective morality, from an altruistic and practical point of view, of a system of which he is the principal exponent in this country, and which, under the name of Esoteric Buddhism, still seems to possess some fascination for a certain class ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant

... prohibited. Even the utterance of any word denoting Colour, except by the Circles or by qualified scientific teachers, was punished by a severe penalty. Only at our University in some of the very highest and most esoteric classes—which I myself have never been privileged to attend—it is understood that the sparing use of Colour is still sanctioned for the purpose of illustrating some of the deeper problems of mathematics. But of this I can only ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott

... or violent or heated. He could not but feel that theirs were vulgar experiences, and he sought some finer exercise for his exceptional quality. He pursued art or philosophy or literature upon their more esoteric levels, and realised more and more the general vulgarity and coarseness of the world about him, and his own detachment. The vulgarity and crudity of the things nearest him impressed him most; the dreadful insincerity of the Press, the meretriciousness ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells

... rather poetic and dreaming nature, I began to show a half wistful intensity of interest in things occult, mysterious and difficult. We left New York in 1882, and it was then that I read for diversion in my long ride to California, Colonel Olcutt's Esoteric Buddhism. ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap

... take my revenge with you." Madame de Bellegarde discoursed for some time longer in this sympathetic strain, with an eager abundance which seemed to indicate that her opportunities for revealing her esoteric philosophy were indeed rare. She hoped that Newman would never be afraid of her, however he might be with the others, for, really, she went very far indeed. "Strong people"—le gens forts—were in her opinion equal, all the world over. Newman ...
— The American • Henry James

... of other artists, you would put your finger on one of the most essential and enduring pleasures of the career of art. But in so far as you should have an eye to the commendations of the public or the notice of the newspapers, be sure you would but be cherishing a dream. It is true that in certain esoteric journals the author (for instance) is duly criticised, and that he is often praised a great deal more than he deserves, sometimes for qualities which he prided himself on eschewing, and sometimes by ladies and gentlemen who have denied themselves ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... explanation of this lies in my sustaining confidence that I was being handed out the genuine stuff. When a dramatist of Mr. VACHELL'S experience says that stage-life is thus and thus, well, I have to believe him. As a fact I seldom read so convincing a word-picture of that removed and esoteric existence. The title (not too happy) means the world beyond the theatre, that which so many players count well lost for the compensations of applause and fame; and the story is of a young and phenomenally successful actress, Jess Yeo, in whom the claims of domesticity and the love of her dramatist ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 29th, 1920 • Various

... She had not hitherto reflected on the esoteric meaning of the ceremony to which she had been ordered to submit as the introductory rite of her ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt

... Charles Napier. Though his ferocious temper repelled some, and his Rabelaisisms and kindred witticisms others, Sir Charles won the admiration and esteem of almost all who knew him. It was from him, to some extent, that Burton acquired the taste, afterwards so extraordinarily developed for erotic, esoteric and other curious knowledge. Napier intensely hated the East India Company, as the champions of his detested rival, Major Outram, and customarily spoke of them contemptuously as the "Twenty-four kings of Leadenhall Street," while Burton ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... physics has been guarded most jealously. For many thousands of years it has been the real occult and esoteric teaching, while the Oriental metaphysics has been open and exoteric. It could not be understood without the key, and the key was in the physics known only to "the tried and approved disciple." A little has leaked out—enough to whet the appetite of the true student ...
— Ancient and Modern Physics • Thomas E. Willson

... oon sontimong de delicacy, Corot ...," or some "Pour moi Corot est le plou ...," and then, his little raft of French foundering at once, scramble silently to shore again. He at least could understand; but to Pinkerton, I think the noise, the wine, the sun, the shadows of the leaves, and the esoteric glory of being seated at a foreign festival, made up the whole ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... perhaps a little, Maitland, one might believe, to some extent,[8] Professor Bury, Lord knows, neither that nor any other emotion comprehensible in man. To the don, indeed, the absence of the past is one of the factors in his fascinating, esoteric game: were some astounding document to appear that should make the origin and constitution of the mediaeval manor as clear as daylight, the problem would lose its interest, the agile don would find it too easy for him. The equipment of the ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell

... seven-times sneeze or at a howling dog at midnight. And the gentle sex, especially, would and did tell fortunes almost as jealously as play quadrille and piquet. Let us be courteous to them. Let us remember that Esoteric Buddhism, Faith Healing, and Psychic Phenomena were not yet enjoying systematic cultivation and solemn propagandism; and that relatively few dying folk were allowed to "go on with their dying" as part of a process of healing which ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson

... the young man, and he now saw how it was that dancers are better paid than great poets, and why the ballet forms in diplomatic circles an inexhaustible subject of conversation. By Apis! how great is the number of the esoteric, and how small the array of the esoteric frequenters of the theatre! There sit the stupid audience, gaping and admiring leaps and attitudes, studying anatomy in the positions of Lemiere, and applauding the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... knew well, long days and weeks of solitary brooding; therefore inventions, and, indeed, all unnecessary work, were in his case to be discouraged. Such solitary brooding also drew from the mind of Morris a vague mist of thought about matters esoteric which, to Mary's belief, had the properties of a miasma that crept like poison through his being. She wished for no more star-gazing, no more mysticism, and, above all, no more memories of the interloping woman who, in his company, had studied ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard

... are the mystics of Islam, and their poetry, while often externally anacreontic—bacchanalian and erotic—possesses an esoteric, spiritual signification: the sensual world is employed to symbolise that which is to be apprehended only by the inward sense. Most of the great poets of Persia, Afghanistan, and Turkey are generally understood ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... the belted and trinketed Eliza) and with a conviction of her own as to what their stay is going to amount to. On the basis of Lorraine's similar conviction about ours it would seem then that we ought to meet for an esoteric revel; yet somehow it doesn't come off. Sometimes I think I'm quite wrong and that he can't really be a child of light: we should in this case either have seen him collapse or have discovered what inwardly ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo

... Lyceum; and from his habit of delivering his lectures whilst walking up and down in the shady walks of this place, his school was called the PERIPATETIC. In the morning he lectured only to a select class of pupils, called ESOTERIC. His afternoon lectures were delivered to a wider circle, and were therefore called EXOTERIC. It was during the thirteen years in which he presided over the Lyceum that he composed the greater part of his works, ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith

... esoteric quality of their science is that it means something which no one else ever understood that it meant. In reality their breach with science is more radical than their breach with Christianity. They feel the contradiction in which most men are bound fast, who will let science have its way, up to a certain ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore

... sedulous search after fresh distinction to widen perpetually the space between itself and "vulgarity." The bond of a common faith, moreover, no longer held the race together. The last years of the nineteenth century were distinguished by the rapid development among the prosperous idle of esoteric perversions of the popular religion: glosses and interpretations that reduced the broad teachings of the carpenter of Nazareth to the exquisite narrowness of their lives. And, spite of their inclination towards ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... the Esoteric tests?" exclaimed Orion with an angry shrug. "Now go,—go and lie down. This hour, which should have been the sweetest of our lives, a stranger has embittered and darkened. You are not sure of yourself—nor I of myself. Anything more that we could say now ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... maidens anything at all of Botany? Or Mathematics cause a thrill erotic in the heart? Will flirting give a lady brains—if she hasn't got any?— Or solve the esoteric problems hid in Ray's Third Part? You may lose yourself completely in pursuing Etiology, Or safely throw yourself away upon a Cubic Rule; But nowhere else in nature will you find such useless "ology," As in a man who's dead in love ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock

... and where his mother lived and ruled, of the property he owned, the place and people to which—by half at least of his nature and much more than half his memory—he belonged, the comfort of this spiritual esoteric relation became but a meagre evasive thing. It was too unsubstantial. Doubts and fears encircled it. She grew heart-sick for some fresh testimony, some clear immediate assurance that time and absence had not staled or ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... 'slates'),—considering her literary reputation, I say, she was one of the most respectable women it is possible to imagine. She furnished correctly, dressed correctly, had severe notions of whom she might meet, went to church, and even at times took the sacrament in some esoteric spirit. And Jessie she brought up so carefully that she never even let her read "A Soul Untrammelled." Which, therefore, naturally enough, Jessie did, and went on from that to a feast of advanced literature. Mrs. ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells

... stated an event that, expressed in a much more extended narrative, forms an important part of the Esoteric Teachings of the Mystic Brotherhoods, and Occult Orders of the Orient, and which is also known to the members of the affiliated secret orders of the Western world. The story of THE MAGI is embedded in the traditions of the Oriental Mystics, and we shall here give you ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka

... efficiency. The fear of being maladroit departed from me. Ideas—delicate and subtle ideas—welled up in me one after another; I was bound to give utterance to them. I began to talk about my idol Chopin, and I explained to Diaz my esoteric interpretation of the Fantasia. He was sitting down now, but I still ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett

... meaning and yet carnally interpreted. Christian boldness and Christian liberty must be reconquered; it is the church which is heretical, the church whose sight is troubled and her heart timid. Whether we will or no, there is an esoteric doctrine, there is a relative revelation; each man enters into God so much as God enters into him, or as Angelus, [Footnote: Angelus Silesius, otherwise Johannes Soheffler, the German seventeenth century hymn-writer, whose tender and mystical verses have been popularized in England ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... accommodation—intending moral commonplaces when they seemed to be enunciating Christian dogmas. Another expression for this, used, e.g., by J. S. Semler, is "economy,'' which also occurs in the kindred sense of "reserve'' (or of Disciplina Arcani—a modern term for the supposed early Catholic habit of reserving esoteric truths). Isaac Williams on Reserve in Religious Teaching, No. 80 of Tracts for the Times, made a great sensation; see R. W. Church's comments in The Oxford Movement. Strictly, accommodation (2) or (3) ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... is, as we have intimated, a fast-growing esoteric literature of exposition and comment,— part of it simply the expression of the disciple's loyal homage, part of it designed to win and educate the reluctant Philistine intellect to the comforts of a true faith. ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn

... as to bring it into accordance with philosophical Pantheism; or, retaining both forms,—for they are not necessarily exclusive of each other,—she may use the first in dealing with the ignorant, and reserve the second as a sort of esoteric doctrine for minds of higher culture. Nor let it be said that we are either unjust or uncharitable towards the Romish Church, in suggesting the possibility of some such development; for what she has already done, and what ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

... tradition underwent a change; it was required to produce what it had not preserved. The Fathers had spoken of the unwritten teaching of the apostles, which was to be sought in the churches they had founded, of esoteric doctrines, and views which must be of apostolic origin because they are universal, of the inspiration of general Councils, and a revelation continued beyond the New Testament. But the Council of Trent resisted the conclusions which this language seemed to countenance, ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... Spiritual things must be spiritually discerned. The Bible has its literal and verbal message, appropriate in degree to those whose intellectual accomplishment rises no further than an ordinary story: but there is an inner meaning which the more advanced can appreciate. There is yet an esoteric meaning, a holy of holies, into which only the initiated and instructed can penetrate, and this only those whose spiritual vision is unfolded can discern. "Only those in whom the spirit is evolved can understand the spiritual ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt

... easy condescension, and kind forbearance towards our stupidity—which, to his order of mind, must have seemed little short of crime—would he forth-with, by the merest touch of his finger, make the incomprehensible as clear as daylight. The merchants valued him not less than we, his esoteric friends. His integrity was perfect; it was a law of nature with him, rather than a choice or a principle; nor can it be otherwise than the main condition of an intellect so remarkably clear and accurate ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... mysterious, cryptic, recondite, occult, esoteric, cabalistic, abstruse, unknown, latent; secluded, privy, withdrawn, retired, covert, private, sequestered; stealthy, underhand, clandestine, sly, surreptitious, confidential, undetected. Antonyms: overt, revealed, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... orgy of the senses was not the only form which the worship of Dionysus took in Greece. In connection with one of his legends, the myth of Dionysus Zagreus, we find traces of an esoteric doctrine, taught by what were known as the orphic sects, very curiously opposed, one would have said, to the general trend of Greek conceptions. According to the story, Zagreus was the son of Zeus and Persephone. Hera, in her jealousy, ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... given, "We have different modes of thought from yours—and the spiral signs are most in use with us: Some of our less advanced scientists forget that on your plane our mode of control is not understood by you. Lines are made of such esoteric meaning that, while we understand at a glance, it is impossible for those on your plane to perceive any words." Mr. Underwood here remarked: "There are numerous spirals—all modifications of the primary ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various

... ill-regulated Bedlam, but which, if the description be a faithful one, would for ever deprive the grave of its title to the epithet of silent. It may be good frenzy, but we doubt its being as good poetry. Of all this there may, we admit, be an esoteric view: but we speak of the work as it offers itself to the common eye. Both Maud and the lover are too nebulous by far; and they remind us of the boneless and pulpy personages by whom, as Dr. Whewell assures us, the ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... serves on both the land and the sea, in armies and navies; and while both the land and the sea branches are exacting in their demands, the sea or naval branch is the more exacting of the two; by reason of the fact that the naval profession is the more esoteric, the more apart from the others, the more peculiar. In all the naval countries, suitable youths are taken in hand by their governments, and initiated into the "mysteries" of the naval profession—mysteries that would always ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske

... by various writers that the story of Jacob and Esau as related in Genesis has an esoteric as well as an exoteric meaning—that Jacob has reference to the female creative energy throughout Nature, or, rather, to the great mass of people who in an early age of the human race believed in the superior importance of the female in ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble

... of Papias [210:2]. This explanation might have been left to itself if it had remained as a mere hypothesis of Overbeck's, but it has been recently accepted by Hilgenfeld. He speaks of these five 'exoteric' books, as attached to 'the five esoteric or genuine books;' and to this source he attributes not only the account of the four Maries, but also a notice relating to the death of St John which is given by Georgius Hamartolos on the ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... pronounce a decided opinion upon the much disputed question, whether, in addition to their Constitutions and Declarations, the Jesuits were provided with an esoteric code of rules known as Monita Secreta.[169] The existence of such a manual, which was supposed to contain the very pith of Jesuitical policy, has been confidently asserted and no less confidently ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... added for those who needed the knowledge that the name was pronounced Yahhy-Bahhy, and that the doctrine taught by Mr. Yahi-Bahi was Boohooism. This latter, if anyone inquired further, was explained to be a form of Shoodooism, only rather more intense. In fact, it was esoteric—on receipt of which information everybody remarked at once how infinitely superior the Oriental peoples ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock

... as successfully as he could have wished, and, "Not I, Naraini," he returned in English: a tongue which seemed somehow better suited for service in combating the esoteric influences at work upon his mind. "What's the next turn ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... is very important to grasp this. We have been told as much as can be told. Contrast with such a revelation the cave-muttered oracles of heathenism and their paltering double sense. Be sure that when God speaks, He speaks clearly and to all, and that in Christianity there is no esoteric teaching for a few initiated only, while the multitude ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... in what the good Cure of Meudon says about the 'herb Pantagruelion',—did the symbolism and esoteric meaning of all that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... priestly caste of Egypt and their wisdom. It is not to be believed that an Egyptian deity could inspire the Hebrews of Goshen with courage for the struggle against the Egyptians, or that an abstraction of esoteric speculation could become the national deity of Israel. It is not inconceivable indeed, although at the same time quite incapable of proof, that Moses was indebted to the Egyptian priests for certain advantages ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... entire length, from head to tail. But the art of the strokes is not all; the art of their combination is that which produces the enchantment, often so as to astonish the Japanese themselves. It is not surprising, indeed, considering the strangely personal, animate, esoteric aspect of Japanese lettering, that there should be wonderful legends of calligraphy relating how words written by holy experts became incarnate, and descended from their tablets to hold. converse ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn

... they were working-people, but because they were East-Siders. Their district was the great field of activity for the American University Settlement worker and fashionable slummer. The East Side was a place upon which one descended in quest of esoteric types and "local color," as well as for purposes of philanthropy and "uplift" work. To spend an evening in some East Side caf was regarded as something like spending a few hours at the Louvre so much so that one ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... him, ce cher Sir Evelyn? If I recall him! What a fortunate rencounter! I must have seen you some years ago at Vienna, miladi, though I had not then the great pleasure of making your acquaintance. But your face had impressed itself on my sub-conscious self!' (I did not learn till later that the esoteric doctrine of the sub-conscious self was Lady Georgina's favourite hobby.) 'The moment chance led me to this carriage this morning, I said to myself, "That face, those features: so vivid, so striking: I have seen them ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... and furious at the lack of feminine attention, said something suavely outrageous about modern women. He was immediately surrounded by several mature examples who adored to be safely smitten by the gelatinous and esoteric. ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers

... a peculiar pattern, known to us as "scobs." Mr. Stimcoe, who had received his education as a "querister" at Winchester (and afterwards as a "servitor" at Pembroke College, Oxford), habitually employed and taught us to employ the esoteric slang—or "notions," as he called it—of that great public school; so that in "preces," "morning lines," "book-chambers," and what-not we had the names if not the things, and a vague and quite illusory sense of high connection, on the strength ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... confined to the bookmen, but often possessed in a transcendent degree by those whose devotion to books is altogether subordinate to other avocations. Our common-school education may be said to bring the entire people upon a common plane. We are no longer the esoteric and the exoteric; we understand our rights in the common fund of sense and truth very well. We are not very patient with those who affect to know better than ourselves what we want and what we ought to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... respecting the four Maries which bears the name of Papias [210:2]. This explanation might have been left to itself if it had remained as a mere hypothesis of Overbeck's, but it has been recently accepted by Hilgenfeld. He speaks of these five 'exoteric' books, as attached to 'the five esoteric or genuine books;' and to this source he attributes not only the account of the four Maries, but also a notice relating to the death of St John which is given by Georgius Hamartolos on the authority of ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... asseverated he. "Cryptic, enigmatic, esoteric to the last degree. To begin with, how does the Signora Brandi, being an Austrian, come by so characteristically un-Austrian a name? Is that mysterious? And in the next place, why does an Austrian Signora Brandi so far forget what is due to her nationality as to live, not in Austria, but in Lombardy? ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland

... that he will always be a poet for the few; that his mystical, esoteric spirit, finding its proper expression in baffling imagery and elusive, other-worldly rhythms, will never be wholly congenial to the many. But his place is assured; for he had no traffic with the things of a day or the language of a day. The beauty which haunts ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James

... clearness of the estimation of primitive peoples is the cause that has prevailed on us to dwell so long on this point. That the cause of this want of prestige among savages is the lack of concentration in masses, not any esoteric peculiarity, is proved by the profound psychological appreciation of the distances created by nature, and still more by the expansion of tribal life into a barbarian one. The tenfold increase of the number of ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park



Words linked to "Esoteric" :   recondite, deep, exoteric, cryptical, secret, mystic, arcane, qabalistic, mystical, occult, abstruse, cryptic, private, sibylline



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