"Magical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this seclusion, partly by reason of its extreme beauty, partly, it may be, because the present owners are more than charming and gracious in their pressing hospitality, Sta. Catarina seems to preserve an element of the poetic, almost magical; and as I drove with the Cavaliere Valguanera one evening in March out of Palermo, along the garden valley of the Oreto, then up the mountain side where the warm light of the spring sunset swept across from Monreale, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... was always a charming retreat, but we now see everywhere, in addition to its former beauties, the magical influence of a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... to forget—(in a low voice). But they were happy days; there was something magical ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... hero who figures in the romantic tales connected with the adventures of Charlemagne and his paladins, a knight of pure and true blood; had a magical horn called Olivant, with which he ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... have a potent, a magical token, A talisman, ever resistless and true, A charm that is never evaded or broken, A witchery certain the heart to subdue, 'T is this; and his armory never has furnished So keen and unerring, or polished ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... women were almost equally magnificent. The eyes of the spectators were dazzled by dresses trimmed with precious stones. Never had there been seen such profusion of light, flowers, perfumes, and diamonds. In this magical setting, fashionable beauties, with their dresses worked with silver and gold foil, their turbans of Eastern stuffs, their jewels and ancient cameos, appeared like sultanas. It was a most sumptuous ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... face, but the fierce heat consumed the arrow ere it had finished its intended course; then another arrow was sped, but that also was consumed; and another, and still another, till only one remained in his quiver, but this was the magical arrow that had never failed its mark. Ta-wats, holding it in his hand, lifted the barb to his eye and baptized it in a divine tear; then the arrow was sped and struck the sun-god full in the face, and the sun was shivered into a thousand fragments, ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... other altogether new article of cookery, and that the study and care used will be amply repaid by the palatability and healthfulness of all foods. A can of Crisco is no Aladdin's Lamp, which merely need be touched by a kitchen spoon to produce magical dishes. But any woman is able to achieve excellent results by ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil
... and when the well-known envelope arrived high holiday was immediately proclaimed by the recipient of it. He did not show Ingram these letters, of course, but the contents of them were soon bit by bit revealed. He was also permitted to see the envelope, as if Sheila's handwriting had some magical charm about it. Sometimes, indeed, Ingram had himself a letter from Sheila, and that was immediately shown to Lavender. Was he pleased to find that these communications were excessively business-like—describing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... gaze upon a vast space, the limits of which extended far beyond my vision. An atmosphere of magical luminousness permeated the entire field of view. I was amazed to see no trace of animalculous life. Not a living thing, apparently, inhabited that dazzling expanse. I comprehended instantly, that, by the wondrous power of my lens, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... world we were going to see in that bright future "when we were men;" we spent our Saturdays and vacations in the miniature explorations of the rocky hills and caves, and dark cedar woods around our homes, to gather ocular helps to a better comprehension of that magical land which we were convinced began just beyond our horizon, and had in it, visible to the eye of him who traveled through its enchanted breadth, all that "Gulliver's Fables," the "Arabian Nights," and a hundred books of ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... her cry. His words rolled on in that wonderful, varying music which, whether in tenderness or in wrath, gave to his voice a magical power—fascinating, hushing, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... breweth her evil decoctions! See how the smoke from her fire broodeth on woodland and meadow! Grant that the sun cometh out to smother the smudge of her caldron! She hath been forth in the night, full of her spells and devices, Roaming the marshes and dells for heathenish magical nostrums; Digging in leaves and at stumps for centipedes, pismires, and spiders, Grubbing in poisonous pools for hot salamanders and toadstools; Charming the bats from the flues, snaring the lizards by twilight, Sucking the scorpion's egg ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... Fiend once evolved from the obscurest depths of his inner consciousness a truly fearful and alarming plan. In this gentleman's somewhat feeble intellect there floats a sort of hazy reverence for a mysterious force denominated by him "kimustry." And to this occult power he appears to ascribe a magical potency, that recalls memories of the ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... enjoying mischievously the magical effect of an approaching vessel that might bring penalty to thieves. At last the Chiefs, running in breathless haste, called out to me, "Missi, Missi, do tell us, is the ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... been made good by a cunning hand that had allowed no glaring newness to be visible; a hand that had matched old tiles, and patched old walls, and planted creepers, and restored an almost magical order and comfort ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... with the great events occurring around them, absolutely became heroes; and it was with a strange, wild throbbing of excitement I listened to the details of movements and marches, whose objects I knew not, but in which the magical words, Corunna, Vimeira, were mixed up, and gave to the circumstances an interest of the highest character. How proud, too, I felt to be the companion-in-arms of such fellows! Here they sat, the tried and proved ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... generally forced to consider its object as deprived of life; indeed, the functions of living creatures cannot be fully analyzed without being first deprived of life. Science gives us its subject with the most rigorous exactitude, with the most scrupulous fidelity; but, alas! often without that magical kindler of love and sympathy, life. Art gives us its subject with vivid coloring, motion, palpitating life—often, indeed, by associative moral symbolism adding a still higher life to simple being, filling it, as in Burns's lines to the Daisy, with ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... stories of the witches of Thessaly, and of their ability to bring the moon down to the earth by their spells and incantations; which latter notion was probably based on the circumstance, that these women used to invoke the Night and the Moon as witnesses of their magical operations. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... the witchcraft!" said Wilhelm; "the magical power of the ale! Now begins the bacchand! Give your hand to the prettiest girl, and she will immediately give you ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... us seems to have effected a breach, and only waits the co-operation of the laggard sea-breezes to sweep down and take the beleaguered city by assault. An ineffable calm sinks over the landscape. In the magical moonlight the shot-tower loses its angular outline and practical relations, and becomes a minaret from whose balcony an invisible muezzin calls the Faithful to prayer. "Prayer is better than sleep." But what is this? A shuffle of feet on the pavement, a low hum of voices, a twang of some diabolical ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... "Cover up your magical picture, then," replied her friend, "else I never can look away from it. It is strange, dear Hilda, how an innocent, delicate, white soul like yours has been able to seize the subtle mystery of this portrait; as you surely must, in order to reproduce it so perfectly. Well; ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... simple words on Barnes was almost magical. The dull colour streamed into his sallow cheeks, he shook all over with excitement. His voice, when he spoke, was almost hysterical. He had been so near to despair. This indeed had ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... trees hung above piled fragments of the great Domitian villa whose ruins lay everywhere beneath our feet; its olive gardens sloping to the west, and open to the sun, open, too, to white, nibbling goats, and wandering bambini; its magical glimpse of St. Peter's to the north, through a notch in a group of stone-pines; and, last and best, its marvelous terrace that roofed a crypto-porticus of the old villa, whence the whole vast landscape, from Ostia and the mountains of Viterbo to the Circaean ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the scintillant, magical sheen, their moccasins rhythmically crunching the snow and their breaths wreathing mysteriously from their lips in sprayed opalescence. Neither spoke, nor cared to speak, so wonderful was it all. At their feet, under the great vault of heaven, ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... has been to float between the shores of the Bosphorus will often glance back with mingled feelings of regret and satisfaction to the memory of those magical waters. This splendid strait, stretching from the harbour of Constantinople to the mouth of the Euxine, may be about twenty miles in length, and its ordinary breadth seldom exceeds one mile. The old Greek story tells that one might hear the birds sing ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... a lovely boy, with rounded limbs, and a merry, roguish expression. He has golden wings, and a quiver slung over his shoulder, which contained his magical and unerring arrows; in one hand he bears his golden bow, and in the ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... alike the lower lake and the icy splendours of the 'Valais depths profound.' What made the charm of the narrow prospect was, first, the sense it produced in the spectator of hanging dizzily above the lake, with infinite air below him, and, then, the magical effects of dawn and evening, when wreaths of mist would blot out the valley and the lake, and leave the eye of the watcher face to face across the fathomless abyss with the majestic mountain mass, and its attendant retinue of clouds, as though they and he ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of the minstrel has never a tone As sad as the song in his bosom to-night, For the magical touch of his fingers alone Can not waken the echoes that breathe it aright; But oh! as the smile of the moon may impart A sorrow to one in an alien clime, Let the light of the melody fall on the heart, And cadence his grief into ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... and Chris' rifles sent thirty-two bullets zipping and singing in amongst the trees. Before the convicts recovered from their surprise, forty-eight more leaden messengers whined through the air above them. The effect was magical, the convicts ceased their fire, and puzzled and alarmed by the sudden leaden hail, sought shelter behind the largest trees they ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... perhaps two or three vague ideas and a few scattered phrases. The growing of this body into its full stature and perfect shape was the same thing as the gradual self-definition of the meaning. And this is the reason why such poems strike us as creations, not manufactures, and have the magical effect which mere decoration cannot produce. This is also the reason why, if we insist on asking for the meaning of such a poem, we can only be answered ...
— Poetry for Poetry's Sake - An Inaugural Lecture Delivered on June 5, 1901 • A. C. Bradley
... anxious to return and have an interview with the old fellow with horns on his head?" Mr. Brown asked, and I observed a wonderful change in his bearing all at once, which I could only attribute to putting on clean clothes, or due to the magical influence of my flask. I was inclined to the latter opinion, and therefore tasted the liquor for the purpose of seeing if I could not ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... their usual impetuosity, whooping and screaming, but they met such a raking fire from the disciplined troops that they fell back in disorder. Just then the men at the howitzer opened fire. The effect of this field-piece on the children of the plains was magical—almost ludicrous. A veritable ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... the street far below there came a fusillade of shots and a babel of shouts and counter-shouts. The roof of the house next door filled again with a magical swiftness, and the low wall facing the street became black with the backs of those craning over. There appeared to be great doings in ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... drew in their fragrance eagerly, and attempted to seize them with its soft split hoofs. Having thus quieted his suspicious subject, the operator proceeded to tie a BLUE HYACINTH to the end of the pole and held it out towards the wild animal. The effect was magical. Its eyes filled as if with raindrops, and its lips trembled as it pressed them to the flower. After this it was perfectly quiet, and brought a measure of corn to the man-tamer, without showing the least disposition to strike with the feet ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Ibrahim Pasha, Lady Hester said that he was a bold, bad man, and was possessed of some of those common and wicked magical arts upon which she looked down with so much contempt. She said, for instance, that Ibrahim’s life was charmed against balls and steel, and that after a battle he loosened the folds of his shawl and shook out the bullets ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... essayed another trick. He brought out a bottle, apparently empty, and said that it was a magical flask. ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum
... be aware that this redoubted chieftain is, even in the present days of enlightenment, as famous among his illiterate countrymen for his magical powers as for his patriotism. He says himself—or Shakespeare says it for him, which is much ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell
... that only one Councillor besides the Bishop was given them, and this was Cuthbert Grant, now settled down from the period of his Bois-brules impulsiveness to be the Warden of the Plains, with an influence over the Metis, that can only be described as magical. ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... that a man named Johann Faust, renowned for his learning and credited with magical powers, actually did exist—probably about 1490 to 1540. (He was therefore a contemporary of Paracelsus, and also of Luther, Charles V., Henry VIII. and Raphael.) Several notices of this Dr. Johann Faust occur in writers of the period. One of the ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... evidently possessed some magical power, because, as soon as he had spoken, he felt wonderfully at ease; and directly afterwards he experienced a flash of joyful amazement at the discovery that he could be inspired to such noble and truthful utterance. He watched ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... a form of skill which has always been as magical to me as it seemed to him, was charmingly boyish, and Colin turned over his sketch-book, and showed him the notes he had made as we went along. One of a stump fence particularly delighted him—those stump fences made out of the roots of ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... than if it had glittered, while other portions of the scene were partly obscured, but not gloomy,—on the contrary, very cheerful,—it was a picture that never can be painted nor described, nor, I fear, remembered with any accuracy, so magical was its light and shade, while at the same time the earth and everything upon it were white; for the ground is entirely ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... undertaken, she chanced to enter in his company, in order to pass the night, a dwelling, the funeral of whose dead master was being conducted with melancholy rites. Here, desiring to pry into the purposes of heaven by the help of a magical espial, she graved on wood some very dreadful spells, and caused Hadding to put them under the dead man's tongue; thus forcing him to utter, with the voice so given, ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... under a sheltering rock canopied and hung with fern, the two rested once more, wrapped in one cloak, close beside the water, which was quiet again, and crossed by the magical lights and splendid shadows of the dying sunset. Nelly had been full of plans when they sat down, but the nearness of the man she loved, his arm round her, his life beating as it were in one pulse with hers, intoxicated, and for a time silenced ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... utmost beauty as quickly as may be.' 'I picked flowers in the mud; keep them in remembrance of me,' he will write in a day of foreboding. A most significant trait is this—in the tedium of trench days, or when imminent peril silences the idle tongues, he gathers the greatest number of these magical flowers. In those moments when speech fails, his soul is serene, it has free play, and we hear its own fine sounds. Hitherto we had heard the repetition of the word of courage and of brotherhood uttered by all our gathering armies. But here, in battle, face to face with ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... remarkable stories are certainly almost magical. One refers to her seeing the doings of relations, another to her seeing a friend's doings.[13] "The figures do not appear" (she says, referring to the B—— apparitions) "before 6.30 at the earliest; there is little light on their surfaces—they ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris
... tarry like his", etc.; the construction of the comparison is, "as when Solomon willed that armies of angels, legions of devils, etc., should rush into sight and pile him a palace straight"; the reference is to the legends of the Koran in regard to Solomon's magical powers. ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... out the Madeira. Quin takes his master's wig, beturbans him, brings rose-water for his hands, cosmetics for his face. Quin is everywhere. Quin does everything. It is magical. ...
— The Harlequinade - An Excursion • Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker
... those strange sights exhibited in the theatre. Hence men go on to search out the hidden powers of nature (which is besides our end), which to know profits not, and wherein men desire nothing but to know. Hence also, if with that same end of perverted knowledge magical arts be enquired by. Hence also in religion itself, is God tempted, when signs and wonders are demanded of Him, not desired for any good end, but merely to make ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... cast upon any object. There was something in the decent propriety of all that was visible in the bed-chamber; in the soft obscurity of its atmosphere; in the gentle and musical sound that alone interrupted its magical stillness, impressive enough, it might have been imagined, to have awakened some hesitation in the bosom of the boldest libertine ere he deliberately proceeded to intrude on the unprotected slumbers of its occupant. No such feeling of indecision, ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... said that a miscarriage is obtained. It would seem that the rubbing is the only treatment which is directly effective. The papaya, which is a very digestible fruit, can hardly be of assistance, but may be eaten from some magical idea of its resemblance to a foetus. The mixture drunk is perhaps designed to be a tonic to the stomach against the painful ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... of heaven, which from afar Comes down upon the waters; all its hues, From the rich sunset to the rising star, Their magical variety diffuse: And now they change; a paler shadow strews Its mantle o'er the mountains; parting day Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues With a new color as it gasps away, The last still loveliest, till—'tis gone—and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... M. de Trailles had thoroughly bewitched me. I had given him my promise that I would introduce him the next day to our Papa Gobseck. The words 'honor,' 'virtue,' 'countess,' 'honest woman,' and 'ill-luck' were mingled in his discourse with magical potency, thanks to that golden ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... to view with magical rapidity. Rounding some bossy cape, the eye is called away into far-reaching vistas, bounded on either hand by headlands in charming array, one dipping gracefully beyond another and growing fainter and more ethereal in the distance. The tranquil channel stretching river-like ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... murmur among the trees. He leaves the railway behind, and finds the hills barer the farther he travels south. At last the monotonous, slightly undulating desert stretches before him, and he feels the magical attraction of the Sahara drawing him deeper and deeper into its great silence and solitude. All the colours become subdued and greyish-yellow, like the lion's hide. Everything is yellow and grey, even the dromedaries which carry him, his tent and baggage, from well to well. He can hardly tell why ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... across the great open space that the moon made white as it was. And when the shadows took him I still heard the faint sound of his flute, calling to his heart and to the distant Oreida through the magical stillness of the night. ...
— Smain; and Safti's Summer Day - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... were roughly dressed, and some of them were pale and worn as if with long sickness or exhausting toil. Yet this ship and these passengers startled the whole English-speaking world. Swift as electricity could fly, the magical word GOLD went forth like a brazen eagle across the continent to turn the faces of millions of earth's toilers toward a region which, up to that time, had been unknown or of ill report. For this ship contained a million dollars in gold: these seedy passengers carried great bags of nuggets ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... what words they both referred, when the sound of wheels broke in upon the silence. The effect upon Hanaud was magical. He thrust ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... conversion in the autumn of 1861 of a defeated rabble and a multitude of raw militia into a splendid fighting machine. The very excellence of this achievement was part of his undoing. It was so near to magical that it imposed on himself, gave him a false estimate of himself, hid from him his own limitation. It imposed also on his enemies. Crude, fierce men like the Vindictive leaders of Congress, seeing this miracle take place so astoundingly soon, leaped at once to the conclusion ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... words than it is for the youth who has enchantingly rendered the gentle poetry of Ben Jonson's "Sad Shepherd," or for him who has walked the boards as Southey's Wat Tyler. His association, however, is quite as clinging and magical as is the child's although he can only say, "Gee, I wish I could always feel the way I did that night. Something would be doing then." Nothing of the artist's pleasure, nor of the revelation of that larger world which surrounds and completes our own, is lost to him because a careful technique ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... fulfil a certain contract registered in hell's chancery, as I have now done these three hundred years. And the condition is this, that every year I present unto the Demon one who hath at my persuasion assigned his soul to him in exchange for power, riches, knowledge, magical gifts, or whatever else his heart chiefly desireth; nor until this present year have I perilled the fulfilment of my obligation. Seest thou these scrolls? They are the assignments of which I have spoken. It would amaze thee to scan the subscriptions, and perceive in these ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... or passage. Thus I conjecture: for I have, upon innumerable occasions, observed him suddenly stop, and then seem to count his steps with a deep earnestness; and when he had neglected or gone wrong in this sort of magical movement, I have seen him go back again, put himself in a proper posture to begin the ceremony, and, having gone through it, break from his abstraction, walk briskly on, and join his companion. A strange instance ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... which she beholds has before been presented to her in a dream or a revery. In the nobleness of genuine, confiding, reverential love, rather than impute to your beloved a levity of sentiment that would seem to you a treason, you accept the chimera of 'magical fascination.' In this frame of mind you sit down to read the memoir of a mystical enthusiast. Do you begin now to account for the Luminous Shadow? A dream! And a dream no less because your eyes were open and you believed yourself awake. The diseased imagination resembles those mirrors ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... visible to her. At that moment, to her infinite surprise and alarm, she saw an extraordinary change come over his features. Their expression of greedy cunning was replaced, with a suddenness that appeared almost magical, by one of pain and terror; and scarcely had Rita had time to observe the transformation, when he lay upon the ground, struggling violently, but in vain, against some unseen power, that drew him towards the wall. ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... craving would not have seized him for this eager beguiling, this soothing benevolence. Yet here it was in his hand; and even as it lay in his cold fingers—how cold they were, and his head how burning!—the desire for it surged up in him. And, as though the thing itself had the magical power to summon up his troubles, that it might offer the apathy and stimulus in one—even as it lured him, his dangers, his anxieties, the black uncertainties massed, multiplied and aggressive, rose before him, buffeted him, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... determined not to trust to our eyes alone. We all ran towards it—Cudjo, the boys, and myself,— and in a few seconds we stood upon its edge—upon the edge of what appeared to be a large lake, formed as if by some magical influence! ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... Mexico were penetrated, as well as the borders of the rich but rugged isthmus, which connects the American continents. In 1512, Florida was discovered by a romantic old knight, Ponce de Leon, who, instead of the magical fountain of health, found his grave there. [110] Solis, another navigator, who had charge of an expedition, projected by Ferdinand, [111] to reach the South Sea by the circumnavigation of the continent, ran down the coast as far as the great Rio de la Plata, where he also was ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... Mystery of the concealment of God in Nature, a mystery that was sometimes presented under the symbol of a self-scattering, sometimes under the symbol of a magical sleep, ...
— The Gnosis of the Light • F. Lamplugh
... to help them. 'So he called for his horse, mounted, rode to Dartmoor, and hunted about till he found a very fine spring. Having fixed on one that would suit his purpose, he gave a smart lash to his horse's side, pronouncing as he did so some magical words, when off went the animal as fast as he could gallop, and the stream followed his heels all the way into the town.' It is not possible here to pick more legends from the group, excepting one which was certainly told among the people a few ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... King of Thebes, and husband of Niobe; famous for his magical power with the lyre by which the stones were collected for the building of the city.—Hor., "De Arte Poetica," 394.—W. ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... pine—here it was, all spread out before me like a map, not a cloud, not a shadow to soften the outline—there was Mont Blanc, a great alabaster pyramid, with a glacier running down each side of it; there was the Arve, and there was the Arveiron, names most magical in song, but ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... they entirely forgot to hail a bus, and strolled leisurely along, oblivious of deepening dusk and fog. Little they cared what anybody thought, for they were enjoying the happy hour that seldom comes but once in any life, the magical moment which bestows youth on the old, beauty on the plain, wealth on the poor, and gives human hearts a foretaste of heaven. The Professor looked as if he had conquered a kingdom, and the world had nothing more to offer him in the way of bliss. While Jo trudged beside him, feeling ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... church anthems. Always before his mind was a great city where he knew he would find the most beautiful music—the music of his dreams. That city was Vienna, but it lay far away. Josef looked down at his ragged clothing and wondered if he would ever see that magical city. ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... D'Anghieria, Pietro Martire. Dantapura. Dante, number of MSS., does not allude to Polo; Convito. D'Anville's Map. Darabjird. Darah. Darapur. Dardas, stuff embroidered in gold. Dariel, Pass of (Gate of the Alans). Darius, the Golden King. Dark Ocean of the South. Darkness, magical. —— land of, how the Tartars find their way out; the people and their peltry; Alexander's legendary entrance into; Dumb trade of. Darraj, black partridge, its peculiar call. Daruna, salt mines. Darwaz. Dasht, or Plain, of Baharak. Dashtab, hot springs. Dasht-i-Lut (Desert of Lut). Dashtistan ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... magnificent curling ostrich feathers, soft and snowy as camellias. She nodded twice or thrice patronizingly to the little boy, who looked up from his dinner or from the pictures of soldiers he was painting. When she left the room, an odour of rose, or some other magical fragrance, lingered about the nursery. She was an unearthly being in his eyes, superior to his father—to all the world: to be worshipped and admired at a distance. To drive with that lady in the carriage ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Thenardiers. These booths were all illuminated, because the citizens would soon pass on their way to the midnight mass, with candles burning in paper funnels, which, as the schoolmaster, then seated at the table at the Thenardiers' observed, produced "a magical effect." In compensation, not a star was ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... windy weather, but now dawned on the earth one of those still, golden times of November, full of dreamy rest and tender calm. The skies above were blue and fair, and the waters of the curving bay were a downward sky—a magical under-world, wherein the crimson oaks, and the dusk plumage of the pine, and the red holly-berries, and yellow sassafras leaves, all flickered and glinted in wavering bands of color as soft winds swayed the glassy ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... great men, and to the disparagement of Henry by Jefferson as a lawyer and statesman, when he was the most admired and popular man in Virginia, and "had only to say 'Let this be law,' and it was law,—when he ruled by his magical eloquence the majority of the Assembly, and when his edicts were registered by that body with less opposition than that of the Grand Monarque himself from his subservient parliaments." Had he shown any fitness for military life, Patrick Henry would doubtless have been intrusted with an ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... ten pounds would do—- that, and a pint of wine. I have a bottle of inky-pinkie in my pocket. (Approaches Goloshan.) By the hocus-pocus and the magical touch of my little finger; heigh ho! start ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... more than any single person to force the nation's entrance into the war; an American dental surgeon who abandoned an enormously lucrative practice in Rome to establish at the front a hospital where he has performed feats approaching the magical in rebuilding shrapnel-shattered faces; a Florentine connoisseur, probably the greatest living authority on Italian art, who has been commissioned with the preservation of all the works of art in the war zone; an English countess who is in charge of an X-ray car which operates within range of the ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... early period of his life, he was distinguished by the same fascination of manner that has since proved so magical in winning him an unbounded personal popularity. It is wronging him, however, to call this peculiarity a mere effect of manner; its source lies deep in the kindliness of his nature, and in the liberal, generous, catholic sympathy, that embraces all who are worthy of it. Few men possess ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... between the Lady Macbeth and the Medea, as between the Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci and the Medusa of the Greek gems and bas reliefs. In the painting, the horror of the subject is at once exalted and softened by the most vivid coloring, and the most magical contrast of light and shade. We gaze—until, from the murky depths of the background, the serpent hair seems to stir and glitter as if instinct with life, and the head itself, in all its ghastliness and brightness, appears to rise from the canvass with the glare of reality. In the Medusa ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... in terms of sensuously delightful tone-color. The transitional passage of the Recapitulation (measures 231-253) illustrates Schubert's fondness for modulation just for its own sake; we care not what the objective point of the music may be—enthralled, as we are, by the magical shifts of scene. In the Second Movement, likewise, the chief beauty—especially of the second theme—consists in the lyric quality, in the color of the solo instruments, the oboe, clarinet and horn, and in the enharmonic changes, e.g., where, in measures ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... bowels. Then the barley water was warmed, the bananas mashed, beaten to cream, and mixed in with the barley water. A soothing nutrient lotion was thus prepared, and as much as the patient could bear comfortably was injected in the bowel and retained as long as possible. The effect was magical. The pain subsided, and the ...
— Food Remedies - Facts About Foods And Their Medicinal Uses • Florence Daniel
... the Gipsies were now the only persons addicted to such wickedness; but this is not the case; for it is well known that almost every town is cursed with an astrological, magical, or slight-of-hand fortune-teller. There are two now in Southampton; and their wretched abodes are visited not only by vain and ignorant servants, but often by those who belong to the higher circles, and not unfrequently by those ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... it!) we already know enough to affirm that while in the very earliest art the shape-element and the element of representation are usually separate, the two get gradually combined as civilisation advances, and the shapes originally interesting only inasmuch as suggestions (hence as magical equivalents) or things, and employed for religious, recording, or self-expressive purposes, become subjected to selection and rearrangement by the habit of avoiding disagreeable perceptive and empathic activities and the desire of giving scope to agreeable ones. Nay the whole subsequent ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... The effect was magical. There was a sudden pause in the fighting at the bridge. Then rose a mighty answering cry from our McDonnells outside; while the garrison, caught thus between the two fires, looked this way and that, not knowing against which ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... admire his serenity, while his home was the livelier for the coming of this meteoric being. Her complexion was dazzlingly bright. Her eyes, usually blue, would flash black, as did those of Chatham in moments of excitement. Her features, too, had a magical play of expression, lighting up at a pleasing fancy, or again darting forth scorn, with the April-like alternations that irradiated and overclouded the brow of her grandsire. Kinglake, who saw her half a century later in her Syrian fastness, was struck ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... the folding-doors in the lobby, and in a stentorian voice shouted some word, which Ellerey did not catch. Its effect was magical. Immediately there arose a loud hum of voices, the clinking and clatter of innumerable glasses and plates, and the rattle of dice and dominoes. Then Theodor let the door swing to again, muffling the sounds of this living hive, and led the way into ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... lovely words. Nay, even the kiss Of mortal love that maketh man divine This light cannot outshine: Nay, even poets, they whose frail hands catch The shadow of vanishing beauty, may not match This leafy ecstasy. Sweet words may cull Such magical beauty as time may not destroy; But we, alas, are not more beautiful: We cannot flower in beauty as in joy. We sing, our mused words are sped, and then Poets are only men Who age, and toil, and sicken.... This maim'd tree May stand in leaf when ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... worship, often Sorcery of the worst description. (3) Guhya-Vidya, knowledge of the mystic powers residing in Sound (Ether), hence in the Mantras (chanted prayers or incantations) and depending on the rhythm and melody used; in other words a magical performance based on Knowledge of the Forces of Nature and their correlation; and (4) Atma-Vidya, a term which is translated simply "Knowledge of the Soul," true Wisdom by the Orientalists, but which ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky
... vegetables and moving like rafts over the waters. All round the margin, and occasionally far out in the lake, they saw little towns and villages half buried in foliage; and the whole scene seemed to them so new and wonderful that they could only compare it to the magical pictures of the old romances. Midway across the lake the army halted at the town of Cuitlahuae, which was not large, but was remarkable for the beauty of its buildings. The curiosity of the Indians increased as the Spaniards proceeded, ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... he. So she lent him her baby, and he took it down to the river and held it under the water for a few minutes, saying magical words all the time; and then a full-grown Indian jumped out of the water, with a feather head-dress, and beaded blankets, and a bow and quiver slung over ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... strike root into the ground. This circumstance is said to obtain in many of the alpine grasses, whose seeds are perpetually devoured by small birds. The Festuca Dometorum, fescue grass of the bushes, produces bulbs from the sheaths of its straw. The Allium Magicum, or magical onion, produces onions on its head, instead of seeds. The Polygonum Viviparum, viviparous bistort, rises about a foot high, with a beautiful spike of flowers, which are succeeded by buds or bulbs, which fall off and take root. There is a bulb, frequently ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... alluded to the beauty of Charles Kean's diction. His voice was also of a wonderful quality—soft and low, yet distinct and clear as a bell. When he played Richard II. the magical charm of this organ was alone enough to keep the house spellbound. His vivid personality made a strong impression on me. Yet others only remember that he called his wife "Delly," though she was Nelly, and always spoke as if he had a cold in his head. How strange! If ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... opened the cab door for them himself, and gave them the gaze of wondering approval which he reserved for these fair daughters. To him their growth, development, and beauty seemed something magical, incomprehensible. He had left them in the lank, homely, tooth-shedding period, at the time he placed them in school, and when he returned to see them graduated, here were two blooming maidens on the very borderland of charming womanhood. ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... Jeffrey Masters. The change in him had been rapid. It was almost magical. Always one who lacked something of the softer human qualities, he yet must have been counted a man of balance. If sympathy, sentiment, were never his strong points, he was by no means lacking in loyalty, kindliness, rightness of ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... avoided all these, and above all her honourable office of bridesmaid—she would most gladly have done so. A sudden yearning for the perfect peace, the calm eventless days of her old life at Mill Cottage, had taken possession of her. In a moment, as if by some magical change, the glory and delight of that brilliant existence at the Castle seemed to have vanished away. There were the same pleasures, the same people; but the very atmosphere was different, and she began to feel like those other girls whose dulness of ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... what had he done, who had provoked such relentless and far-seeking revenge? Ask Nemesis,—or, at that hour when evil spirits are allowed to roam over the earth and magical invocations are made, go and interrogate the tree ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... series of pilgrimages which the soul, separated from the body, was believed to accomplish in the various divisions of the lower regions, are related in this book. It contained also a collection of prayers for the use of the deceased in the other world, and of magical formulae intended to secure the preservation of the mummy from decay, and to prevent its possession by an evil spirit, till the ultimate return of the soul of the deceased. Many of these rituals are also found written, not in hieroglyphics, but in hieratic characters, which are an ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... charm to deprive Baraka of his life. A court of inquiry having been convened, with all the parties concerned in attendance, K'yengo's mistake was discovered, and Bombay was lectured for his folly, as he had a thousand times before abjured his belief in such magical follies; moreover, to punish him for the future, I took Baraka, whenever I could, with me to visit the king, which, little as it may appear to others, was of the greatest consequence to the ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... million livres (more than three and a half million dollars) income each year. It must be remembered that the streets of Paris about this time were crowded with a rabble of beggars. But of this the dwellers in such magical palaces and parks saw but ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... were never right in their views as to how the vastly greater image than their own should be treated. They measured Napoleon and his loftier qualities by their own tumultuous limitations, which prevented them from seeing how wide the gulf was between him and the ordinary man. He was a magical personality, and they failed to ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... returned, bringing with him what Alda took for a dressing-case, and Cherry for a drawing-box, but which proved to contain a wonderful genie to save the well-worn fingers many a prick. To Lance he first administered the magical words, 'All right,' and then making an opportunity, he put five sovereigns into his hand. Lance's first impulse was, however, not to thank, but to exclaim, 'Then Poulter has ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... women. My hands were unconsciously extended as if to fend them off, and each of them seized a hand, pulled me to the round bench at the back of the control cabin. They stroked my cheeks, began to murmur their "magical" phrases in their mysterious mystic secret words, and my wits began to float into a very genuine paradise where their two faces, side by side, became flower and fruit and tree ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... Blimber's young friends" sat tightly glued to their chairs. Then the Doctor would approach with Agag-like delicacy, and, extending his hand to the shyest and most loutish boy, would say, "Must you go? Can't you stay?" and the party broke up with magical celerity. Such, at least, was our ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... the language becomes more touching through the depths of her sensibility. She lends so much life to every scene, that the auditor becomes witness of the transaction. Her powers of instructing and delighting are almost magical; and her artless fascination leaves on every heart those deep traces which even time can ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... half-humorous dramas, which one moment transport us to Peru, and the next to Kamschatka, and soon after into the times of chivalry, while the sentiments are all modern and lachrymose, is invariably a certain sprinkling of the romantic, which we recognize even in the most insipid magical operas. The true significance of this species was lost with us before it was properly found; the fancy has passed with the inventors of such chimeras, and the views of the plays are sometimes wiser ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... believe, and the right ones for children to hear—the wonderful things that used to be done, up in the sky, and down under the ocean, and inside the mountains. If the boys and girls do not find out now, while they are young, all about the strange, mysterious, magical life of the days when the whole world was young, it is ten to one that they will never find out about it at all, for the most of us do not keep ourselves like children always, though surely we have all been told ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... with all her glories of art tinged with the glamour and witchery of the Arabian Nights, a Venice whose blue waterways reflected stately palms and golden minarets. Other souls, like myself, less simple and sufficiently salted to know that these Turnerian dreams are generally the magical accidents of changing light and seldom the result of any intrinsic interest in the places themselves—even they had a grievance when they saw the real Basra. Was this the Venice of the East, this squalid ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell
... own voice, moaning in his ears, had a magical effect upon him. He lifted his head, gazed about him, and then flushed deeply. His nerveless cowardice had all at once become unbelievable to himself. With a shamed frown he straightened himself, and stood thus for a long minute, engrossed ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... beyond its own knowledge was placed in all I said. In England the gypsy woman, who at home ridicules her own fortune-telling and her dupes, still puts faith in a gusveri mush, or some "wise man," who with crystal or magical apparatus professes occult knowledge; for she thinks that her own false art is an imitation of a true one. It is really amusing to see the reverence with which an old gypsy will look at the awful hieroglyphics ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... was entrusted with the guardianship of the imperial signet ring, which was possessed of magical properties. While in his care it was stolen. When Solomon granted an audience to animals, and even insects, the ant, it is related, brought as an offering a blade of grass and rebuked Asaf for having guarded the royal ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... that when we hear it give one of the symphonies of Beethoven or Mendelssohn, there is little left to be desired. Bulow is a wonderful conductor, a little man, all nerve and fire, and he seems to inspire every instrument. It is worth something to see him lead an orchestra: his baton is magical; head, arms, and the whole body are in motion; he knows every note of the compositions; and the precision with which he evokes a solitary note out of a distant instrument with a jerk of his rod, or brings a wail from the concurring violins, like the moaning ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... TALISMAN, a magical figure of an astrological nature carved on a stone or piece of metal under certain superstitious observances, to which certain wonderful effects are ascribed; is of the nature of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... way back I walked as near the fence of the King's House as I dared, and saw witch-doctors passing in and out in their hideous official panoply. This told me that here also Goza had spoken the truth—the king was performing magical ceremonies, which meant that it would be impossible to approach him. In every direction I met with failure. The Fates were against me; it lay over me like a spell. Indeed I grew superstitious and began to think that Zikali had bewitched me, as he was said to have the power to do. ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... suspiciously; for every time that magical word was used he chose to think all eyes must be turned in his direction; just as though he should be placed in the ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... the road from Sorrento to Naples, that wonderful path along the high, rocky shores of the Mediterranean, must remember it only as a wild dream of enchantment. On one side lies the sea, shimmering in bands of blue, purple, and green to the swaying of gentle winds, exhibiting those magical shiftings and changes of color peculiar to these waves. Near the land its waters are of pale, transparent emerald, while farther out they deepen into blue and thence into a violet-purple, which again, towards the horizon-line, fades into misty pearl-color. The shores rise above ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... which probably derived its magical character from Celtic traditions: it was long the boundary of Briton and Saxon.—These places are introduced, as being near the scene of ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... one is tempted habitually to dwell." It is thus that the noble character always acts; we become insensibly elevated by him, and cannot help feeling as he does and acquiring the habit of looking at things in the same light. Such is the magical action and reaction of ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... I was returning from visiting a sick friend, I was delighted by the effect produced by the frost. The earth, the trees, every stick, dried leaf, and stone in my path was glittering with mimic diamonds, as if touched by some magical power; objects the most rude and devoid of beauty had suddenly assumed a brilliancy that was dazzling beyond the most vivid fancy to conceive; every frozen particle sent forth rays of bright light. You might have imagined yourself in Sinbad's valley ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... the track." She paused, gazing first at Jeff's troubled face, and then at the scene about them. The enchantress, Spring, had touched all things with her magical fingers The time had ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... By the magical power of "ifs," "buts," "perhaps's," "what do we know," etc., heaped together, a shapeless and unconnected system is formed, perplexing mankind, by obliterating from their minds, the most clear ideas and rendering uncertain truths most evident. By reason ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... absence of the mighty orator, the timid Assembly expunged the fifth resolution and modified the others. The Governor, however, dissolved the House for daring to pass at all the resolutions. But he could not dissolve the spirit of Henry nor the magical effect of the resolutions which had been offered. By his intrepid action Henry took the leadership of the Assembly out of the hands which ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... that they had better not speak about the matter; yet she was generally the first to begin, and Mary would bring out the map, and they both would pore over it, the elder lady through her spectacles, as if they could there discover by some magical power where Ned was, and the point the "Hope" had reached. They were cheerful and happy, though nothing occurred to vary the monotony of their everyday life, until the post one morning brought a letter ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston
... madrigal he had promised her? But even the slight effort necessary for writing the lines thus in hot haste seemed intolerable to him here in the wide and opulent garden, blossoming under the September sunshine in a sort of magical Spring. Why disturb these rare and delicious emotions by a hurried search after rhymes? why reduce this far reaching sentiment to a brief ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... events of the day the dancing began. Dona Jacoba could be very gracious when she chose, and she moved among her guests like a queen to-night, begging them to be happy, and electrifying them with her brilliant smile. She dispelled their awe of her with magical tact, and when she laid her hand on one young beauty's shoulder, and told her that her eyes put out the poor candles of Los Quervos, the girl was ready to fling herself on the floor and kiss the tyrant's feet. Elena watched her anxiously. ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... Nipen;—perhaps the same. Then there was the good god Balder (the white god), who made everything bright and beautiful, and ripened the fruits of the earth. This god Balder was the sun. Then there were the three magical women, the Fates, who made men's lives happy or miserable. Did you ever hear how these giants and Fates were worshipped before Jehovah and Christ were known ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... hidden vale among the Alleghany Mountains. The perfume of the flowers of the forest is more sweet and subtle than the heavy scent of tropical blossoms. No lily-field in Bermuda could give a fragrance half so magical as the fairy-like odour of these woodland slopes, soft carpeted with the green of glossy vines above whose tiny ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... its expression. Should these limitations discourage anyone? Not in the least, but rather the reverse. The fact that the cure is in the nature of a growth, is evidence that it is normal and permanent, rather than magical or capricious. Limitations are present, but they can ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... superb; the Madeira and sherry beyond praise; and the cigars excellent Havanas, which at that time were rarely seen, and cost fabulous prices. Think, old army comrades, starving on a quarter of a pound of rancid bacon during that summer of '64—think of that magical bill of fare, ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... to make use of our prayers as of a kind of jargon, and as those do who employ holy words about sorceries and magical operations; and as if we reckoned the benefit we are to reap from them as depending upon the contexture, sound, and jingle of words, or upon the grave composing of the countenance. For having the soul contaminated with concupiscence, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... permitted a single man to move a gun, and move with it as far as he could go by the rules—a foot, that is, if he was an infantry-man, and two feet if he was a cavalry-man. We abolished altogether that magical freedom of an unassisted gun to move two feet. And on such rules as these we fought a number of battles. They were interesting, but not entirely satisfactory. We took no prisoners—a feature at once barbaric ...
— Little Wars; a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books • H. G. Wells
... Bordj she turned in the palanquin and looked down upon the desert, motioning to the camel-driver to leave the beast for a moment. She put her arm through Androvsky's and made his eyes follow hers across the vast spaces made magical by the sinking sun to that darkness of distant palms which, to her, would be a sacred place for ever. And as they looked in silence all that Beni-Mora meant to her came upon her. She saw again the garden hushed in the heat of noon. She saw Androvsky at her feet on the sand. She ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... of my age I did not fear them. So I entered the waggon as he bade me, and very neat and trim it was. Here a man produced a curious red suit of clothes, rather too small for me; but still a lot better than Bill's rags. He begged me to put it on, which I did. I know now that it was the red magical suit in which the gipsies dress their magical puppets on St. John's Eve; but as I did not then know this, I put it on quite willingly, wishing that it ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... occasionally perfectly clear and they sometimes fell so far without a break that they vanished in feathery white spray. A projecting ledge at times might gather this spray again to form a second cascade before the river level was reached. The scene was quite magical and considering the general aridity for a large part of the year, it appeared almost like ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... Christ. He put Him on the level of a new dancer or singer; he looked on His miracles as a species of conjuring or magic; and he expected from Him the same entertainment as he might have obtained from any wandering professor of magical arts. ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... and a Runic stone is any memorial, table, or column, on which Runic characters are inscribed, as a tombstone, a boundary mark. There are sixteen of these characters, forming an alphabet, which were used by the ancient Scandinavians, and were thought by them to possess magical properties, and willow wands inscribed with them were used by the pagans of the north in their magic rites. Sticks were used as almanacs, to keep the account of the days and months, and also constituted the day-books ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... earth.' Shelley had sat at the feet of Godwin, and represented that vague metaphysical dreaming to which the Utilitarians were radically hostile. To the literary critic, Shelley's power is the more remarkable because from a flimsy philosophy he span an imaginative tissue of such magical and marvellous beauty. But Shelley dwelt in an ethereal region, where ordinary beings found breathing difficult. There facts seemed to dissolve into thin air instead of supplying a solid and substantial base. His idealism meant unreality. His 'trumpet' did not in fact stimulate ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... except that none of them have concave or hollowed faces, and they are used in the same way. There were three forms of the game: To hurl or roll a disk farther than an opponent; to strike a pole or other mark set up; and to test the inherent magical powers of the stones by rolling them in such a way that they would collide, the object in this case being to see which one might prove victorious by breaking the other or forcing it out of its course. A suitable arena for the contest was prepared by carefully leveling and smoothing ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... it was to Venice that day! What magical airs we rode through, and what a thieving old trickster was time, as he always becomes when one wishes hours to be long! I think Poor Jr. had made himself forget everything except that he was with her and that he must be a friend. He committed a thousand ridiculousnesses ...
— The Beautiful Lady • Booth Tarkington
... article with mountebank doctors. In Henry the Eighth's day, ridiculous little images made from Bryony roots, cut into the figure of a man, and with grains of millet inserted into the face as eyes, the same being known as pappettes or mammettes, were accredited with magical powers, and fetched high prices with simple folk. Italian ladies have been known to pay as much as thirty golden ducats for one of these artificial mandrakes. Readers of Thalaba (Southey) will remember the fine scene in which Khawla procures this ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... power of words, by simple faith Licensed to take the meaning that we love! 120 Vauxhall and Ranelagh! I then had heard Of your green groves, [M] and wilderness of lamps Dimming the stars, and fireworks magical, And gorgeous ladies, under splendid domes, Floating in dance, or warbling high in air 125 The songs of spirits! Nor had Fancy fed With less delight upon that other class Of marvels, broad-day wonders permanent: The ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... ordinary Lodge meeting, there was an evocation of the demon Zaren, who appeared under the form of a monstrous three-headed dragon completely cased in steel, and, endeavouring to devour his evoker, was restrained by the magical pentagram, ultimately vanishing with the ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... you," she went on; "he did not like the way you regarded his magical story and his thought-reading. Were I you, I should have no further communications with him. ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... holidays. I love you for what you are, and for what you're as certain to be as—as a rosebud is certain to be a full-blown rose. I love you as my father loved my mother. I shall love you always." His manner was calm, matter-of-fact; but there was in his musical, magical voice a certain quality which set her nerves and her blood suddenly to vibrating. She felt as if she were struggling in a great sea—the sea of his love for her—struggling to reach the ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... traveller who appropriates the magical properties over which the sons of a dead magician are quarrelling is widely distributed, and frequently occurs as a mere incident in a story; as, for example, in that of Hasan of El Basrah in the Thousand ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... bombs bursting into myriads of flowers, into fizzing snakes, into fields of burning gold, into showers of jewels that made the night splendid for a second and faded. They were not fireworks to him; they were a magical phantasmagoria that renewed the incoherent and violent emotions of his youth; again he was in the chaos of the battle, or he was dreaming by his camp-fire, or he was pacing his lonely round on guard. His heart leaped again with the old ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... helmets looked like vizors, and they seemed cased in armour from the plume to the saddle. Not a shot was fired till they were within thirty yards, when the word was given, and our men fired away at them. The effect was magical. Through the smoke we could see helmets falling, cavaliers starting from their seats with convulsive springs as they received our balls, horses plunging and rearing in the agonies of fright and pain, and crowds of the ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... can form his opinion as to the religion of the White Kendah and their pretensions to a certain degree of magical skill. Of this magic I will make only one remark: If it existed at all, it was by no means infallible. To take a single instance, Harut and Marut were convinced by divination that I, and I only, could kill Jana, which was why they invited me to ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... said to these doings—Item, what our Lord God said; and lastly, of the magical experiment performed upon George Putkammer and Diliana, in ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... return from Kauai to her sister's court at Kilauea. In this affair Lohiau and Wahineoma'o contended on the side of Hiiaka, while Pele-ula was assisted by her husband, Kou, and by other experts. But on this occasion the dice were cogged; the victory was won not by human skill but by the magical power of Hiiaka, who turned Pele-ula's kilu away from the target each time she threw it, but used her gift to compel it to the mark when the kilu was ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... air. For of all things there is none so sweet as sweet air—one great flower it is, drawn round about, over, and enclosing, like Aphrodite's arms; as if the dome of the sky were a bell-flower drooping down over us, and the magical essence of it filling all the room of the earth. Sweetest of all things is wild-flower air. Full of their ideal the starry flowers strained upwards on the bank, striving to keep above the rude grasses that pushed by them; genius ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... became insupportable. As for the robbers, these gentlemen, who always keep a sharp look-out, and rarely endanger their precious persons without some sufficient motive, and who, moreover, seem to have some magical power of seeing through stone walls and into portmanteaus, were no doubt aware that our luggage would neither have replenished their own nor their ladies' wardrobes, and calculated that people who travel for pleasure are not likely to carry any great quantity of superfluous coin. Besides ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... difference of the embodied Self and the highest Self, viz. Bha. Gita XVIII, 61, 'The Lord, O Arjuna, is seated in the heart of all beings, driving round by his magical power all beings (as if they were) mounted ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... not on the level of the ancient city, which recoils from modern footsteps and goes downward towards the dust of those who made it famous, but by the ruined temples and columns whose rent seams were shaped anew into graceful perfection by the magical light, by the wilderness of the ruined Caesar's palace, until we looked wonderingly into the intricacy of arch and corridor and column of which was built the arch-temple of Paganism, the Coliseum. The moonlight ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... intelligence in the eyes of the Babe—the solemn silence and dignified humility of the three Wise Men prostrate at His feet—the holy, unspeakable calm breathed over the whole work—the combined impression of all this was magical. The brethren bowed the knee before the picture, and the superior, deeply affected, pronounced a blessing on the artist. 'No mere human art,' he said, 'could have produced a picture like this. A power from on high has ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... not as a partner but a potential enemy; such men as Mr. Blatchford, Mr. Bart Kennedy, or the late Emil Reich. But there is a distinction to be made. Few even of these, with the admirable and indeed almost magical exception of Dr. Sarolea, saw Germany as she was; occupied mainly with Europe and only incidentally with England; indeed, in the first stages, not occupied with England at all. Even the Anti-Germans were too insular. Even those who saw most of Germany's plan saw too much ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... Paris would be at his feet. But how to regain it? "Oh, for one minute of that beauty!" cried the little man; "what would he not give to appear under that enchanting form!" The magician hereupon waved his stick over his head, pronounced some awful magical words, and twisted him round three times; at the third twist, the men in company seemed struck with astonishment and envy, the ladies clasped their hands, and some of them kissed his. Everybody declared ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... marvels that came to pass. With inconceivable punctuality the butterflies hastened to meet the magical call of the captive. With tortuous flight they arrived one by one. All came from the north. This detail is significant. A week earlier there had been a savage return of the winter. The bise blew tempestuously, ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... the cold water than it seemed to have a magical effect on the unconscious man. He gasped two or three times, while a tremor ran through his whole frame. Then ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren |
