"Mystical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... endowment of light and lustre simply, and the mystical curve of the lids. For so they could look only because the heart was disengaged from them. They were but ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... mystical bear-gardens, Where elders, deputies, church-wardens, And other members of the court, Manage the Babylonish sport. 1852 BUTLER: Hudibras, Pt. i., ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... fingers. The first auditor whom Messire Miles d'Isliers, doctor in decretals, saw arrive every Monday morning, all breathless, at the opening of the gates of the school of the Chef-Saint-Denis, was Claude Frollo. Thus, at sixteen years of age, the young clerk might have held his own, in mystical theology, against a father of the church; in canonical theology, against a father of the councils; in scholastic theology, against ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... disintegration of the house itself, through what is called "dry rot," but is paradoxically the result of dampness. Edgar Allan Poe, in his weird story, "The Fall of the House of Usher," has given a mystical interpretation of the dissolution of an old homestead which really has a scientific explanation that might be found ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... the same conclusions as myself, after having attacked me, though not so fiercely, as Mr. Romanes has done. In 1879 he said in the Examiner (May 17) that the teleological view put forward in Evolution, Old and New, was "just the sort of mystical nonsense from which" he "had hoped Mr. Darwin had for ever saved us." And so in the Academy on the same day he said that no "one-sided argument" (referring to Evolution, Old and New) could ever deprive Mr. Darwin of the "place ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... Butler, his eyes becoming yellow and fixed. And, as Boyd carelessly repeated the rapid and mystical appeal, "Oh!" he said coolly. "So that is what you ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... the church, still publicly ignored Grundtvig. But privately a few of them expressed their opinion about the work. Thus a Pastor P. Hjort wrote to Bishop Mynster, "Have you read Grundtvig's Songs of the Danish Church? It is a typical Grundtvigian book, wordy, ingenious, mystical, poetical and full of half digested ideas. His language is rich and wonderfully expressive. But he is not humble enough ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... said I, "we philosophers must give an occasional dip into the mystical, and say something apparently absurd for the purpose of explaining that we mean nothing in particular by it. It gives common people an idea of our sagacity, to find how clear we come out of our apparent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... subtle and searching than his own, and, being disinclined to accredit this greater sagacity to a more competent intelligence, he takes refuge behind the doctrine that it is due to some impenetrable and intangible talent for guessing correctly, some half mystical super sense, some vague (and, in ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... of Mohammed is not calculated to appeal to the highly poetic mind of India. It is too severe and prosaic in its character. The mind of India delights in mystical elaborations and in the multiplication of fanciful incarnations and other divine manifestations. The Allah of Islam is almost as remote and as unknowable a deity as is the Brahm of the Vedantist. But in the absence ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... manifestation in this, the believers will answer him that the true mark and sign whereby a man may be known to hold the truth is the observance of certain forms, the performance of certain ceremonies, more or less mystical, more or less symbolical, of some esoteric meaning. That a man should be baptized, should wear certain marks on his forehead, should be accepted with certain rites, is generally the outward and visible sign of ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... is seated in the heart, and the heart is, as I may call it, the main fort in the mystical world, man. It is not placed in the head, as knowledge is; nor in the mouth, as utterance is, but in the heart, the seat of all, "I will put my fear in their hearts." If a king will keep a town secure ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... pulled and pushed out on the platform beside the track, where a freight-car marked for the Hill Country division of the road, with devices intelligible to the train-men, had been shunted down by a pony engine in obedience to mystical semaphoric gesticulations, from the brakeman risking his life for the purpose among the rails, addressed to the engineer keeping his hand on the pulse of the locomotive, and his head out of the cab window to see how near he could come to killing the ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... Manibogh, Michabo or Great Hare of the American indigenes with Osiris Unnefer ("Hare God"). These are the lines upon which investigation should run. And of late years there is a notable improvement of tone in treating of symbolism or idolatry: the Lingam and the Yoni are now described as "mystical representations, and perhaps the best possible impersonal representatives of the abstract expressions paternity and maternity" (Prof. Monier Williams in "Folk-lore Record" vol. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... protector. "No one has more respect for the Christian religion than I have; but really, when it comes to intruding it into private life——" What was pure paganism in the politics of Melbourne became a sort of mystical cynicism in the politics of Disraeli; and is well mirrored in his novels—for he was a man who felt at home in mirrors. With every allowance for aliens and eccentrics and all the accidents that must always eat the edges of any systematic circumference, it may still be ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... of Boehme-ism on 'the fierce sectaries of Lower Germany,' on Anabaptism, and on the illuminati of the ultra Puritans in England, bringing forth Independent Fifth Monarchy men, George Fox, Flood, Law, and Pordage. The seeds of this mystical heresy were obscurely transmitted to New England, which has always had some 'GOD-Smith,' or Mathias with his 'Impostures,' lurking among the vulgar. I have no doubt that, through traditional influence at least, a Joe Smith and the beginning of Mormonism might ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... theologian, he constantly breathes one engrossing sentiment. With him, Christianity was the love of God and its morality was the love of the neighbor. Judged by occasional expressions, his piety might seem too ascetic and mystical—too urgent of penance and self-crucifixion—too enthusiastic in emotion, perilling the sobriety of reason in the impassioned fervors of devotion—sometimes bordering upon that overstrained spiritualism, which, in its impulsive flights, is so apt to lose its just balance and ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... Browning. Childe Roland is nothing more than a gallop over the moorlands of imagination; and the skies of the soul, when it was made, were dark and threatening storm. But one thing is plain in it: it is an outcome of that passion for the mystical world, for adventure, for the unknown, which lies at the ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... was a real ship, you old dotard!" said the skipper gruffly and looking angrily at him. "Of course it was," he added, while our new acquaintance looked at us, unable, naturally, to understand the mystical allusion; but Captain Applegarth soon turned his roving thoughts into another direction by asking him a second question. "How long did you keep in sight of your vessel after leaving her, colonel, do ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... charcoal, which he had ordered to be brought, and going round them with a solemn pace, cast in a strong and grateful perfume; then collected in himself, with downcast eyes, and his hands upon his breast, he ran three times about the horse, making as if he pronounced some mystical words. The moment the pots sent forth a dark cloud of pleasant smell, which so surrounded the princess, that neither she nor the horse could be discerned, watching his opportunity, the prince jumped nimbly up behind her, and reaching his hand to the peg, turned it; and just as the horse ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... his Christianity seems to have been Ecclesiastical, in the technical sense of the word. He seems to have had a much clearer and firmer hold than Justin had of the truth that Christ instituted, not merely a philosophy or system of teaching, but a mystical body or visible Church, having its gradations of officers corresponding to the officers of the Jewish Ecclesiastical system, and its orderly ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... He has followed Hardy about persistently. Hardy appeared to fear him greatly, which accounts for his ceaseless roving. This man may and may not have accomplished some long-planned revenge at Branchville. He appears to be somewhat mystical, but I felt it my business to investigate every ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... expression—something in his manner of enunciation—which at first interested, and afterwards made me very uneasy—something which, for want of a more definite term at present, I must be permitted to call queer; but which Mr. Coleridge would have called mystical, Mr. Kant pantheistical, Mr. Carlyle twistical, and Mr. Emerson hyperquizzitistical. I began not to like it at all. Mr. Dammits soul was in a perilous state. I resolved to bring all my eloquence into play to save it. I vowed to serve him as St. Patrick, in the Irish chronicle, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Christ, the one great and eternal High Priest. They are priests because they are in Christ. And not only priests, but kings as well. And not only kings and priests, but prophets as well. All these blessed privileges are theirs, solely by virtue of their union and fellowship with Christ, who, in a mystical and spiritual sense, makes them to be partakers of His own priesthood, His own royalty, and His own ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark
... the roof terrace, to experiment with the stone of a mango. I was wrapt in my task of dipping and drying—but the grown-up reader will probably not wait to ask me the result. In the meantime, I little knew that Satya, in another corner, had, in the space of an hour, caused to root and sprout a mystical plant of his own creation. This was to bear ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... at Clement, and her eyes had a mystical, impersonal look, as though she saw him afar off, not as an individual but as a type of some admirable elemental creature. He could not fathom her attitude toward him, but he thought he saw in her every action the expression of ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... doubly true in the home of the Boy of whom I speak. He was the first-born, the darling of his parents, a lad beloved by all who knew him. His mother hung on him with mystical joy and hope. He was the apple of her eye. Deep in her soul she kept the memory of angelic words which had come to her while she carried him under her heart—words which made her believe that her son would be the morning-star of Israel and a light unto the Gentiles. So she cherished ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... accept new doctrinal designations. Arians they might be, but they preferred to be known as standing by a 'Scriptural Christianity.' For, whatever new books might be written, the Bible remained their chief study and their support in discussion. Keen, rational rather than mystical, yet deeply interested in moral progress and human elevation, these American divines were much of a mind with their English brethren whose path lay in the same direction. One of the most influential preachers was Charles Chauncey (1706-87); who for sixty years ...
— Unitarianism • W.G. Tarrant
... thus expressed the same sentiment before him: "The foliage of a newly-clothed tree, to the eye of a discerning man, displays a whole volume of the wondrous works of the Creator." Another Persian poet, Jami, in his beautiful mystical poem of Yusuf wa Zulaykha, says: "Every leaf is a tongue uttering praises, like one who keepeth crying, 'In the name of God.'"[24] And the Afghan poet Abdu 'r-Rahman says: "Every tree, every shrub, stands ready to ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... can tell where to find a clue to many an old pagan creed, because that (distinctly from all mere admiration of the beauty belonging to nature’s works) I acknowledge a sense of mystical reverence when first I look, to see some illustrious feature of the globe—some coast-line of ocean, some mighty river or dreary mountain range, the ancient barrier of kingdoms. But the Red Sea! It might well claim my earnest gaze by force of the great Jewish migration which connects ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... be around a farm at lambing time without smiling to recall the cunning of Jacob? Already were all these things weary and old and romantic when Virgil wrote and admonished the husbandman of times and seasons, of plows and harrows, of mattocks and hurdles, and the mystical winnowing fan of Iacchus. ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... wholly upon their relation to Him as members of His "mystic body, the Church." It is in this respect only that they are "one with Him;" and there can be no identity of Christ with "little children" but by virtue of the same relation, that is, as they are members of His mystical body, the Church; of which membership baptism is now, as circumcision was then, the initiatory rite.... The benefits of this Sacrament require to be briefly exhibited. Baptism introduces the adult believer into the covenant of grace and the Church ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... Greeks-why could not Americans at this day inculcate the doctrines of Jesus to these educated heathen? It was a bold and daring experiment, but he was willing to try it. The All-wise worked his wonders in a mysterious way. In this irrelevant and somewhat mystical style, Brother Spyke continues nearly an hour, sending his audience into a highly-edified state. We have said mystical, for, indeed, none but those in the secret could have divined, from Brother Spyke's logic, what was the precise nature of his mission. His speech ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... so vague and accommodating, when even war is a vast impersonal business, nationality seems to have slipped into the place of honor. It has become the one eloquent, public, intrepid illusion—illusion, I mean, when it is taken for an ultimate good or a mystical essence, for of course nationality is a fact. It is natural for a man to like to live at home, and to live long elsewhere without a sense of exile is not good for his moral integrity. It is right to feel a greater kinship and affection for what lies nearest to one's self. But this necessary ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... been very close to Charlie Reynolds, though he had liked the flamboyant Good Guy. Now, it was all a long ways back, besides. Nelsen didn't feel exactly grief. Just an almost mystical bitterness, a shock and an uncertainty, as if ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... faith," and may take its place among the most charming and pathetic of all those numberless effusions of genius in which individual feeling is but the echo of the universal heart. But the poem on "The Ideal and Life" is highly mystical and obscure;— "it is a specimen," says the critic we have just quoted, "of those poems which were the immediate results of Schiller's metaphysical studies. Here the subject is purely supersensual, and does not descend to the earth at all. The very tendency of the poem is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... view the world sub specie aeterni is to view it as a whole—a limited whole. Feeling the world as a limited whole—it is this that is mystical. ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein
... has been the saving of the principal French historians, notably of Michelet. It has furnished them with the key by which alone the history of their country could be made plain. Nothing is easier than to ridicule or deny so mystical a thing. Taine, by temperament intensely anti-national, ridiculed it as he ridiculed the mysteries of the Faith; but with this consequence, that his denial made it impossible for him to write the history of his country, and compelled him throughout his work, but especially in his history ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... and I come, my children. Forget not, ye Romans, that I say so much. When the seed needs rain it falls. Sarishan, brothers and sisters all." And with this strange speech, mystical to the last, she rode away into the setting sun, on the gray donkey, looking more like an almshouse widow ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... directness of speech is accompanied by an equally clear and simple presentment of his thought; we have, perhaps, no poet who writes more consistently and earnestly with his eye upon his subject. An allegorical or mystical treatment is alien from him: he handles awkwardly the few traditional fables which he introduces. He is also wholly free from Italianizing tendencies: his classicalism even is that of an English student,—of a schoolboy, indeed, ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... with her hands lightly clasped on her knees, and her eyes always—always—to the lovely prospect that was like a mighty ocean in which the waves were blue, mystical kopjes; and over which the first clouds, that heralded the approach of the rainy season, shed entrancing lights and shadows. Ailsa sat a little behind, and her eyes roved back from the view that had grown into her being and become part of her life to the ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... are three revelations, which correspond with one another like the petals of a mystical rose. The third, which deals with the divine judgment upon Jerusalem, corresponds with the fifth, which contains God's judgment upon {279} Rome. Here we see the triumph of God over corrupt ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... Pope, in the Queen's name, which states, "that the bearer, Mr. William Johnstone, a layman, had ten years previously imbibed the new doctrines; that after much distress of mind, he earnestly longed to be reunited to the mystical body of Christ, but no opportunity had hitherto presented itself. Wherefore James Earl of Arran, Governor of our kingdom, supplicates that his Holiness the Pope might receive the said William into the bosom of the Church." This letter is dated the 18th ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... Mysticism could not guard against mental disease, while Pietism enjoyed a long season of healthful life. The latter was far too much engaged in relieving immediate and pressing wants to fall into the gross errors which mark almost the entire career of the former. Pietism was mystical in so far as it made purity of heart essential to salvation; but it was the very antipodes of Mysticism when organized and operating against a languid and torpid Church with such weapons as Spener and his coadjutors employed. Boehme and Spener were world-wide apart in many respects; ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... Assisi, or of Catherine of Siena, without wishing that, for the furtherance of his own ideals, he might be even as they; or who can contemplate unmoved the steadfast veracity and true heroism which loom through the fogs of mystical utterance in George Fox. In all these great men and women there lay the root of the matter; a burning desire to amend the condition of their fellow-men, and to put aside all other things for that end. If, in spite of all the dogmatic helps or hindrances in which they were entangled, ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... tales, like that about the gates of Khaybar, are told of his strength. Lastly, he was the only Caliph who bequeathed anything to literature: his "Cantiloquium" is famous and he has left more than one mystical and prophetic work. See Ockley for his "Sentences" and D'Herbelot s. D. "Ali" and "Gebr." Ali is a ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... at exaggerated devotion, even if it were extravagant or superstitious, provided he thought it sincere. Countess G——, paternal aunt of Countess G——, the greatest beauty of Romagna in 1800, had fallen into such extreme mystical devotion, through the brutal jealousy of her husband, that she died in the odor of sanctity. This lady wrote to her brother, Count G——, at Genoa, saying how happy she was, and giving no end of praise to "the ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... absence from the tannery. But it happened that he was present on that Lord's Day when, with a solemn and dreadful sound, the Tongues first spoke in that dingy Chapel in Regent Square, and no man who heard that Sound ever forgot it! The mystical youth from America was shaken to his very soul. He stayed on in London for nearly a year, immersing himself in those tides of emotion which swept saner minds than his from the somewhat dry land of ordinary human experience. That no personal revelation ...
— The Voice • Margaret Deland
... be defined as the brooding soul of the world, cannot fail of its oracular promise as to Woman. "The mothers," "The mother of all things," are expressions of thought which lead the mind towards this side of universal growth. Whenever a mystical whisper was heard, from Behmen down to St. Simon, sprang up the thought, that, if it be true, as the legend says, that Humanity withers through a fault committed by and a curse laid upon Woman, through her pure child, or ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... have been called a living concordance; and on the margin of his copy of the Book of Martyrs are still legible the ill spelt lines of doggrel in which he expressed his reverence for the brave sufferers, and his implacable enmity to the mystical Babylon. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Now, don't be rhapsodical here. Next to Mr. Mac Quedy is Mr. Skionar, a sort of poetical philosopher, a curious compound of the intense and the mystical. He abominates all the ideas of Mr. Mac Quedy, and settles everything by sentiment ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... seen in the registers used by fathers and sons, and not always with a slight difference, as some have stated, to secure identification. What should be noted also is that other trades used precisely similar marks and for a like object, so that the idea of their having a mystical meaning, or being utilized for any other object but ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... indeed, upon the hem of his raiment; but this was of the heaven, heavenly. He had seasons when he could endure to think of no other feature of his hope than this: and sometimes, in the ecstacy of prayer, it had even seemed to him to behold that day when his mistress—his mystical lady (now hardly in her ninth year, but whose solemn smile at meeting had already lighted on his soul like the dove of the Trinity)—even she, his own gracious and holy Italian art—with her virginal ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... each other, as they did in Egypt and the East. The king was not the god of the people; it were much more correct to designate him as the proprietor of the state. Accordingly the Romans knew nothing of special divine grace granted to a particular family, or of any other sort of mystical charm by which a king should be made of different stuff from other men: noble descent and relationship with earlier rulers were recommendations, but were not necessary conditions; the office might be lawfully filled by any Roman come to years of discretion and sound in body and mind.(4) The king ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... I was mystical and imaginative religious to the very finger-tips, and with a certain faculty for seeing visions and dreaming dreams. This faculty is not uncommon with the Keltic races, and makes them seem "superstitious" to more ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... well known that Yorick had never a good opinion of the treatise which Phutatorius had wrote de Concubinis retinendis, as a thing which he feared had done hurt in the world—and 'twas easily found out, that there was a mystical meaning in Yorick's prank—and that his chucking the chesnut hot into Phutatorius's...—..., was a sarcastical fling at his book—the doctrines of which, they said, had enflamed many an honest ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... follow a Man like a Lap-dog. Being thus left alone, he fixed his Eyes on the Sun, then rising with resplendent Majesty, and afterwards turned to the Statue, but could see no Change in the Stone.—Surely, says he to himself, there is some mystical Meaning in this! This Inscription must be an AEnigma, the hidden Meaning of which I will endeavour to find; for a Philosopher would never expect a Stone to be turned to Gold; accordingly he measured the Length of the Shadow, which the Statue gave on the Ground by the Sun shining on ...
— Goody Two-Shoes - A Facsimile Reproduction Of The Edition Of 1766 • Anonymous
... she wore a species of sightly handkerchief like a turban upon her head and about her person those mystical swathings in which old ladies of the African race delight. But she most pleasured our sense of beauty and moral fitness when, after the last pan was washed and the last pot was scraped, she lighted a potent pipe, and, taking ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... resolves and daring thoughts, was blessed with that tenderness of soul which is sometimes linked with an ardent imagination and a strong will. The traveller was an orphan, more than that, a solitary orphan. The sweet sedulousness of a mother's love, a sister's mystical affection, had not cultivated his early susceptibility. No soft pathos of expression had appealed to his childish ear. He was alone, among strangers calmly and coldly kind. It must indeed have been a truly gentle disposition that could have withstood such ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... head with names and years, but that only sharpens my hunger.' In one form or another it recurs in practically every novel.[12] Certain of the later portions of this book, especially the chapter entitled 'Her Path in Shadow' are delineated through a kind of mystical haze, suggestive of some of the work of Puvis de Chavannes. The concluding chapters, taken as a whole, indicate with tolerable accuracy Gissing's affinities as a writer, and the pedigree of the type of novel ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... Nature is mythical and mystical always, and works with the license and extravagance of genius. She has her luxurious and florid style as well as art. Having a pilgrim's cup to make, she gives to the whole, stem, bowl, handle, and nose, some fantastic shape, as if it were to be ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... for the extract from Arnold. I have no idea that Adam was "a mystical allegory," and you know that I believe every man to be his own devil, and a very sufficient one for all purposes of ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... we find Alexander Hamilton taken in charge by certain mystical kinsmen. Evidently he was well cared for, as he grew into a handsome, strong lad—small, to be sure, but finely formed. Where he learned to read, write and cipher we know not; he seems to have had one of those active, alert minds that can acquire ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... in some genuine tradition of his words, as they were caught and treasured by some disciple more susceptible than the rest to the mystical and contemplative element in Jesus. These words, handed down through congenial spirits, and deeply brooded; these ideas caught by minds schooled in the blending of Hebraic with Platonic thought,—minds accustomed to rely on the contemplative imagination as the ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... Maurice, but in certain ways he went further than that noble-hearted, if somewhat mystical, divine. It would have been an absurdity to ask my father whether it would not be better to give up Christianity and try instead the faith of Christ. That was always his faith. For him religion meant a way of life, a spiritual ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... course—of the famous Bruce, in whose honour he had named his son Yakoff.[51] He was the sort of man who is called "very good-natured," but of a melancholy temperament, fussy, and timid, with a predilection for everything that was mysterious or mystical.... "Ah!" uttered in a half-whisper was his customary exclamation; and he died with that exclamation on his lips, two years after ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... He was a thin little man about fifty years of age, with a face as white as that of an old woman, chilled by priestly austerities, and hollowed by all the sufferings which he espoused. Two black eyes, ardent with faith yet softened by an expression more mysterious than mystical, animated that truly apostolical face. He was smiling as he mounted the steps of the portico, so little did he believe in the enormity of the cases about which his penitent sent for him; but as the hand of the duchess was an open palm for charity, ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... up his head with: "Ha!—O'Hara"; announced his immediate departure with only a secretary and two lords-in-waiting, left a mystical note for Loveday, saying that he had decided to go alone in quest of Margaret, and went almost secretly, only the salute informing the Boodah as he steamed away. In reality he was in haste to face O'Hara, and the yacht's bows turned, not eastward, ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... human equality is in a sense mystical. It is not apparent to the senses, nor can it be logically demonstrated as an inference from anything of which the senses can take cognizance. It can only be stated accurately, and left to make its appeal to men's minds. It may be stated theologically by saying, as the ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... these recesses we were jumbled, over such pavement as I hope you may never tread upon; and, after parading round it, went out at the same arch whence we came in. This procession seemed at first very mystical, but it was too soon accounted for by our postillions, who confessed they had lost their way. A council was held amongst them in form, and then we struck into another labyrinth of hideous edifices, habitations ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... balance is justly preserved, though it was but an unstable equilibrium, and therefore during the time of Abelard we find the widest diversity of speculation and freedom of thought which continue unhampered for more than a hundred years. The mystical school of the Abbey of St. Victor in Paris follows one line (perhaps the most nearly right of all though it was submerged by the intellectual force and vivacity of the Scholastics) with Hugh of St. Victor as its ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... joined he was compelled to take an oath (sacramentum) similar to the one required of recruits in the army, and there is no doubt that an indelible mark was likewise branded on his body with a hot iron. The third degree of the mystical hierarchy was that of "soldier" (miles). Thenceforward the initiate belonged to the sacred militia of the invincible god and fought the powers of evil under his orders. All these ideas and institutions ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... hours of trial. She disliked the idea of leaning for help on something which in her hours of vigor she rejected. A refuge, an explanation,—no, it was not possible! The story of the atonement, the rewards, the mystical attempt to explain the tragedy of life, its sorrow and pain,—no, it was childish! So the word "religious" had something in it repellent, sickly, and self-deceptive.... Suddenly the words stood out sharply ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... the simple seriousness and sweetness so characteristic of the answers children make to questions asked them regarding things in any degree mystical. The other small girls listened as sweetly and as seriously. Then, with one accord, they returned to the gay delights of the occasion. They were a laughing, prattling, eagerly happy little party, and of them all not one was more ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... of Solomon is a fine poem—but its mystical reference to religion lies too deep for a common understanding: if you read it, therefore, it will be rather as matter of ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... another world. For, be it observed, Smith possesses all the qualities and exercises all the tricks of the necromancers during the middle ages. His speech is ambiguous, solemn, and often incomprehensible—a great proof to the vulgar of his mystical vocation. ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... of such talks as did seem to penetrate the question was this, that among these stop-the-war people there are really three types. First there is a type of person who hates violence and the infliction of pain under any circumstances, and who have a mystical belief in the rightness (and usually the efficacy) of non-resistance. These are generally Christians, and then their cardinal text is the instruction to "turn the other cheek." Often they are Quakers. If they are consistent they are vegetarians and wear ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... solemn eventide, All flushed and mystical and blue, When the late bird sings And sweet-breathed garden-ghosts walk sudden and wide, Hesper, that bringeth all good things, Brings me a dream of you. And in my heart, dear heart, it comes and goes, Even as the south ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... always liable to be discredited by the facts of artistic production; and while prose is actually found to be a coloured thing with Bacon, picturesque with Livy and Carlyle, musical with Cicero and Newman, mystical and intimate with Plato and Michelet and Sir Thomas Browne, exalted or florid, it may be, with Milton and Taylor, it will be useless to protest that it can be nothing at all, except something very tamely and narrowly confined to mainly practical ends—a kind of "good round-hand;" as useless as the ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... rather unhappy, and I see you have lost all the feeling of romance that you had before the war. You make a great mistake if you think you can be romantic without religion. Sometimes I think that with both of us the secret of success, when we find it, is the mystical element in us: something flows into us that enlarges our personalities, and when it ebbs out our personalities shrink; I should call your last two letters rather shrivelled. Beware of losing yourself in the personality of another being, man ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... remains the question, what is writing? Ah, there's the rub: a very comfortable definition would it be, if every pen-holder and pen-wiper could truly claim that kingship of the universe—that imagery of his Maker—that mystical, marvellous, immortal, intellectual, abstraction, manhood: but, what then is WRITING? Ye tons of invoices, groaning shelves of incalculable legers, parchment abhorrences of rare Charles Lamb, we ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... results obtained by Science are won by no mystical faculties, by no mental processes other than those which are practised by every one of us, in the humblest and meanest affairs of life. A detective policeman discovers a burglar from the marks made by ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... me," he said. "If you visit him he will merely shield himself behind the mystical business, or assure you that he is making no profit on his sales. Kilfane had ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... course she had followed. Harvey could not question her sincerity, but she seemed to him a trifle morbid. It might be natural reaction, in a temper such as hers, against the monstrous egotism by which her life had been subdued and shadowed. She inclined to mystical views; mentioned Christina Rossetti as one of her favourites; cared little or nothing for the louder interests of the time. Impossible to detect the colour of her thoughts with regard to Cecil; she spoke of him ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... branches, deriving thence life for ourselves? Hear Paul saying 1 Cor. 10, 17; Rom. 12, 5; Gal. 3, 28: We are all one body in Christ; although we are many, we are, nevertheless, one in Him; for we are all partakers of that one bread. Does he perhaps think that the virtue of the mystical benediction is unknown to us? Since this is in us, does it not also, by the communication of Christ's flesh, cause Christ to dwell in us bodily? And a little after: Whence we must consider that Christ is in us not only according to ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... stories, perhaps the most mystical is that of the Quest of the Holy Grail, and it has features peculiar to itself. Nuns take the place of fair ladies; there are hermitages instead of castles; and the knights themselves, if they do not die, become monks ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay
... that when Mr. Gladstone invites us to call our love of inequality "the complement of the love of freedom or its negative pole, or the shadow which the love of freedom casts, or the reverberation of its voice in the halls of the constitution," we must surely answer that all this mystical eloquence is not in the least necessary to explain so simple a matter; that our love of inequality is really the vulgarity in us, and the brutality, admiring and worshipping ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... the prophetic quality. Many men object to this definition of the preacher as being profane. It appears to make secular or mechanicalize their profession, to rob preaching of its sacrosanctity, leave it less authority by making it more intelligible, remove it from the realm of the mystical and unique. This objection seems to me sometimes an expression of spiritual arrogance and sometimes a subtle form of skepticism. It assumes a special privilege for our profession or a not-get-at-able defense and ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... blacksmith with his hammer, the skilled artificer at his trade, the student at his subject, the good man in his course of life, and the bad man in his, do equally show that use becomes second nature. And so, in passing, let me say what incalculable importance there is in our getting habit, with all its mystical power to mould life, on the side of righteousness, and of becoming accustomed to do good, and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... toilsome, yet the periods of rest in which he indulged were not taken because of fatigue. He rested to look, to listen, to feel. What the vast silent world meant to him had always been a mystical thing, which he felt in all its incalculable power, but ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... the whole rationalist theory, whether of the deist or the orthodox variety: it was so opposed that it could find scarcely any sympathy at the time; and for that reason it indicates one characteristic of the contemporary thought. To omit the mystical element is to be cold and unsatisfactory in religious philosophy, and to be radically prosaic and unpoetical in the sphere of literature. Englishmen could never become mystics in the technical sense, but they were beginning to be discontented with ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... some idea of the character of their poetry, at the same time there is reason to believe that a good deal of it is traditional, and may date its origin from a very remote epoch. Some of their dances have also a very peculiar mystical character about them, and these they very unwillingly exhibit ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... who doubt this. There are men who believe that democracy, as a form of Government and a frame of life, is limited or measured by a kind of mystical and artificial fate that, for some unexplained reason, tyranny and slavery have become the surging wave of the future—and that freedom is ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... being so grateful at my having mentioned him in what I fear was a very patronizing and, indeed, almost supercilious way, as having written an occasional good poem. I am much struck by Robinson's two poems which you sent Mother. What a queer, mystical creature he is! I did not understand one of them—that about the gardens—and I do not know that I like either of them quite as much as some of those in "The Children of the Night." But he certainly has got the real spirit of poetry in him. ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... he had met and loved a simple peasant woman, unlettered, but with sound and serviceable common sense, and with the beauty of perfect honesty shining in her big Norse-blue eyes. It was then and it is now a wonder to me how in that mystical brain of his, replete with abstractions, generalizations, idealizations, he placed his love for wife and children; strong and tender as it was, one could appreciate at once that he had no sense of the burden of practical life which his ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... perpetual vision. Hence also we find that his devotion is not only tender and sympathetic, but passionate and warm. His fervour in prayer arrives at such a pitch as to produce copious tears. The language of Spain's mystical writers, especially that of the elegant Santa Teresa de Jesus, contains the same expressions as those which are used in addressing profane objects of the affections. One of her most celebrated spiritual songs differs in nothing from those which might have been written by Ovid ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... incarnations of Vishnu. The number is stated in some Puranas as twenty-two, twenty-four, or even twenty-eight. Seven incarnations of Siva are not generally recognized (see Monier Williams, Religious Thought and Life in India, pp. 78-86, and 107-16). For the theory and mystical meaning of avatars, see Grierson, J.R.A.S., 1909, pp. 621-44. The word avatar means 'descent', scil. of the Deity to earth, and covers more than ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... last Hallowe'en where starlight and dew Made mystical marriage on flower and leaf, That she led me with looks of a love that I knew, And lured with the voice of ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... in regard to the meaning of Omar's poetry. Some writers have insisted on a mystical interpretation and M. Nicholas goes so far as to state his opinion that Omar devoted himself "avec passion a l'etude de la philosphie des Soufis." On the other hand Von Hammer, the author of a History of the Assassins, refers to Omar ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Virgin appears personally to pronounce her 'good judgment.' In Moscow, during the prepetrean period, performances of nearly the same character, chosen especially from the Old Testament, were also in great favour. Apart from such plays, the world was overflooded with mystical writings, 'verses'—the heroes of which were always selected from the ranks of angels, saints and other heavenly citizens answering to the devotional purposes of the age. The recluses of our monasteries, like the Roman Catholic monks, passed their time in translating, copying, and even producing ...
— "The Grand Inquisitor" by Feodor Dostoevsky • Feodor Dostoevsky
... realised now?" she asked. "I have often fancied that it is the want unanswered here which is most fully satisfied hereafter. It makes the new life all the fresher and sweeter, you see. They wanted a home; but home is not a place, it is a state. There can be no home at all if there is not that mystical house, 'not made with hands,' where spirits blend and ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... which the possession of a gem of marvelous beauty and great value has upon several sharply differentiated characters is the thread with which this dramatic tale of events is woven. The combination of the mystical, the imaginative and the realistic makes very unusual reading. The diamond has the power of making its owner love it not for what it means in money, but for itself; it also has in it a lurking devil which portends evil happenings. The series of incidents which these qualities ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale
... circumstances, so natural and so trivial, were gravely listened to as proofs, or, at least, as affording strong suspicions that Rebecca had unlawful correspondence with mystical powers. ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... essays that would have been voted brilliant had they dealt with things less extravagant than Universal Harmony and Fraternal Happiness; with verses that all admitted to be highly polished and melodious, but something too mystical in meaning for the understanding of an every-day world; with music, whereof he was conceded an interpreter ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... the sides of the great tent, either standing or sitting on the ground or on cushions, and awaiting the moment when it should be their turn to perform some service, as motionless as though spellbound by the mystical words of a magician. They only made signs to each other with their eyes and fingers, for they knew that the queen did not choose to be disturbed when she was being read to, and that she never hesitated to cast aside anything or anybody that crossed her ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... green cloth all round the top. A gay pagoda-shaped canopy of many hues was erected overhead. A long white wand leaned up against the wall. To the right stood a bench laden with mysterious jars, glittering bowls, gilded cones, mystical globes, colored glass boxes, and other properties. To the left stood a large arm-chair covered with crimson cloth. All this was very exciting, and I waited breathlessly ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... exemplaire), a unique Mallarme. Catholicism being the adopted religion of the Decadence—for its venerable age, valuable in such matters as the age of an old wine, its vague excitation of the senses, its mystical picturesqueness—Des Esseintes has a curious collection of the later Catholic literature, where Lacordaire and the Comte de Falloux, Veuillot and Ozanam, find their place side by side with the half-prophetic, half-ingenious Hello, the amalgam of a monstrous mysticism and a casuistical sensuality, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... I, "I am nine,—a very mystical number nine is too, and represents the Muses, who, you know, were always attendant upon Venus—or you, which is the same thing; so you can no more dispense with my company than you can with that ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... unpunished. Wolf suspected that the time was not far distant when yonder monarch at the window, who had won so many victories, would have a reckoning with the Smalcalds, the allied Protestants of Germany, and his vivid imagination surrounded him with an almost mystical power. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... subjects. This mythological and fabulous creation, composed as it was of scattered and discordant parts, then became a source of future punishments and rewards, in which divine justice was supposed to correct the vices and errors of this transitory state. A spiritual and mystical system, such as have mentioned, acquired so much the more credit as it applied itself to the mind by every argument suited to it. The oppressed looked thither for an indemnification, and entertained ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... on the contrary, how insignificant he was and how insignificant every one is in this world where beings, agitated like grains in a van, are mixed and separated by a shake of the rustic or of the god. This idea of the agricultural or mystical van represented measure and order too well to be exactly applied to life. It seemed to him that men were grains in a coffee-mill. He had had a vivid sensation of this the day before, when he saw Madame Fusellier ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... him onwards, they hope, along the high road to excitement, fame, power and riches. He warns us against our readiness to believe in myth and metaphysics, demonstrating how Man will believe anything, even the most mystical or incomprehensible religion or ideology, provided it is preached by his leaders. History, as seen by Taine, is one long series of such adventures and horrors and nowhere was this more evident than in France before, during and after the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Gospel because therein good and virtuous works are frequently commended to us. Whom did he consult? The Spirit. Theodore Beza has dared to carp at, as a corruption and perversion of the original, that mystical word from the twenty-second chapter of Luke, this is the chalice, the new testament in my blood, which (chalice) shall be shed for you [Greek: potaerion ekchunomenon], because this language admits of no explanation ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... Description of the most High and Glorious God, and. his Angels, and the Resurrection, and the Rewards and Punishments of a future State. Now Asal us'd to make a deeper Search into the inside of Things, and was more inclin'd to study Mystical Meanings and Interpretations. But as for his Friend Salaman, he kept close to the literal Sense, and never troubled himself with such Interpretations, but refrain'd from such curious Examination and Speculation of things. However, notwithstanding this Difference, they both were constant ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail
... from childhood. The fact that most of my books have treated of fantastic subjects,—somewhat in the manner of Edgar Allan Poe—has made me more susceptible for all that world which lies beyond and about the world of every-day life. I have sought after,—and yet feared—the mystical; cool and lucid as I can be at times, I have always had an inclination for the enigmatical, ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... so called, was utterly abolished. The corruptions of the Church had all grown out of one root—the notion that the Christian priesthood possesses mystical power, conferred through ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... ambition of having him rise in his profession and through the ideal of making his home an earthly paradise; through loneliness when he was away and joy whenever he came back,—upon her whole life had rested the wintry benediction of that mystical phrase: ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... regulations they are too ignorant to understand. As I have elsewhere confessed, I have myself been responsible for ridiculous incantations with burning sulphur, experimentally proved to be quite useless, because poor people are convinced, by the mystical air of the burning and the horrible smell, that it exorcises the demons of smallpox and scarlet fever and makes it safe for them to return to their houses. To assure them that the real secret is sunshine ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... any rate it was quite evident I was set down as a good subject, from the moment of my appearance. Even the somnambule testified to this, though she would not then consent to be put into a trance in order to give her opinion its mystical sanction. ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... paintings, Titian was disturbing him, Titian the III Genius of Oil Painting. His Pictures—one in particular, the Canterbury Pilgrims (far above Stothard's)—have great merit, but hard, dry, yet with grace. He has written a Catalogue of them with a most spirited criticism on Chaucer, but mystical and full of Vision. His poems have been sold hitherto only in Manuscript. I never read them; but a friend at my desire procured the "Sweep Song." There is one to a tiger, which I ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... are family quarrels; how pleasant to God are family unity and peace, and mutual trust, and duty, and helpfulness. And if you think that I speak too strongly on this point, recollect that I do no more than St. Paul does, when he sums up the most lofty and mystical of all his Epistles, the Epistle to the Ephesians, by simple commands to husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and servants, as if he should say,—You wish to be holy? you wish to be spiritual? Then fulfil these plain family duties, for they, too, are sacred and divine, and ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... she was in the position of a bad woman, the more she struggled to be a good one. She flew to religion as a refuge. There was no belief in her religion, no faith, no creed, no mystical transports, but only fear, and shame, and contrition. It was fervent enough, nevertheless. On Sunday morning she went to The Christians, on Sunday afternoon to church, on Sunday evening to the Wesleyan chapel, and ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... delights to represent the great monastic meditators, and those selected at a later period by Thorwaldsen for the Apostles. The long, almost rigid folds of the face, in harmony with those of his vestment, had the charm which the middle-ages bring into relief in the mystical statues placed beside the portals of their churches. Gravity of thought, word, and accent, harmonized in this man and became him well. Seeing his dark eyes hollowed by austerities and surrounded by a brown circle; seeing, too, his forehead, yellow as some old ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... simply understood the cloudy region of the air, which is not one of the permanent parts of the universe, nor of the principal divisions of the world. The above three reasons are given by Rabbi Moses [*Perplex. ii.], and to these may be added a mystical one derived from numbers and assigned by some writers, according to whom the work of the second day is not marked with approval because the second number is an imperfect number, as receding from the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas |
