"Sorcery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hadn't," she said. "Don't you see it was only my sorcery, as you call it, that took us there? I meant us ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... in hampering and denouncing scientific discoveries.... Witchcraft in its modern form emerges clearly in the 15th century.... Great prevalence of witchcraft during the 16th and 17th centuries in Protestant and Catholic countries, alike.... Trial of those suspected of sorcery. Tortures to force confession. The witches' mark. Penalties, burning alive, strangling, hanging. Tens of thousands of innocent persons perished.... Those who tried to discredit witchcraft denounced as 'Sadducees' and atheists.... The psychology of intolerance. ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... he had left the court he saw the Lady of the Lake. He went straight to her, and with his sword lightly smote off her head before King Arthur, for he knew her as the untruest lady living, one that by enchantment and sorcery had been the destroyer of ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler
... true, That for long time with glamour had been blind. Hiding the hideous rage within her breast, With girlish simpleness of folded hands, Auroral blushes, and sweet, shamefast mien, She spoke: "Behold, my love, I have cast forth All magic, blandishments and sorcery, For I have dreamed a dream so terrible, That I awoke to find my pillow stained With tears as of real woe. I thought my belt, By Vulcan wrought with matchless skill and power, Was the sole bond between us; this being doffed, I seemed to ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... chapters on negro sorcery are the most astonishing in the book, displaying on the part of this otherwise hard and practical nature a credulity almost without limit. After having related how he had a certain negro sent out of the ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... goods; and after that sent for two witch-wives, Heidi and Hamglom, and gave them money to raise against Frithiof and his men so mighty a storm that they should all be lost at sea. So they sped the witch-song, and went up on the witch-mount with spells and sorcery. ...
— The Story Of Frithiof The Bold - 1875 • Anonymous
... were full of spells, And all her words of sorcery; And in some way they seemed to say "Oh, come ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... woven net so strong by magic that the thread will hold the most powerful creature fast, and then we can chain up the thief so that he cannot escape again?" The magician said it was possible, and took three large spiders, which he made so strong by sorcery that no creature could escape from their meshes, and put them in a little box, which he gave to Sharpeye, saying, "Place these spiders wherever you like, and point with your finger where they shall spin their net, and they will immediately spin a cage ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... which thou mayst improve thy fields if they will not produce well or if any evil thing is done to them by means of sorcery or witchcraft: ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... Ancestor-worship, Hero-worship, and Demonology of primitive savages, are all, I believe, different manners of expression of their belief in ghosts, and of the anthropomorphic interpretation of out-of-the-way events, which is its concomitant. Witchcraft and sorcery are the practical expressions of these beliefs; and they stand in the same relation to religious worship as the simple anthropomorphism of children, or ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Selah Withers was accused of sorcery in the evil days of that delusion. A careless expression in one of her letters, that "ye Parson was as lyke to bee in league with ye Divell as anie of em," had got abroad, and given great offence to godly people. There was no doubt that some odd "manifestations," as they would be called nowadays, ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... power of Will and Yoga"—self-control—may ignore Ethics. Here the paths separate, and are called "the Right-hand Path" and "the Left-hand Path," determining the "White" and the "Black Magician," about whom so much is said in all ancient scriptures and traditions regarding "Sorcery" and "Black Magic," of which Egypt and Rome and Modern Mediumship ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... protection, such as monks, students, crusaders, widows, orphans, and the helpless. Then all cases where the rites of the Church, or its prohibitions, were involved came ordinarily before the church courts, as, for example, those concerning marriage, wills, sworn contracts, usury, blasphemy, sorcery, heresy, and so forth. ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... mysticism and magic in complicated observances, and the latter into the most appalling licentiousness. The worship of the Sakti, or female principle, has become a most elaborate system. The beings adored are "the most outrageous divinities which man has ever conceived."[30] Sorcery began early in India; but it is in connection with this system that it attains to full development. Human sacrifices are a normal part of the worship when fully performed. We cannot go farther into detail. It is profoundly ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... bodies to the tune, and humming, almost below their breath, a low dreamy air. When they caught sight of Don Pedro they scowled at him, and some of them looked terrified, for only a few weeks before he had had two of their tribe hanged for sorcery in the market- place at Seville, but the pretty Infanta charmed them as she leaned back peeping over her fan with her great blue eyes, and they felt sure that one so lovely as she was could never be cruel to anybody. So they played on very gently and just touching the cords of the zithers ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... reincarnated in the mind of a man who could breathe into them the fire of life, caught from sun and wind, their ancient deities, and send them, forth to the world to do greater deeds, to act through many men and speak through many voices. What sorcery was in the Irish mind that it has taken so many years to win but a little recognition for this splendid spirit; and that others who came after him, who diluted the pure fiery wine of romance he gave us with literary ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... magicians. These were made more rigid under Constantius, his son, but suspended under Julian. These persecutions were renewed by Valentinian, spasmodically carried on to a slight extent, and then lapsed. During the period that elapsed between the sixth and thirteenth centuries the executions for sorcery ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... came under my safe-conduct; I shall never forgive you that trespass. Sir, said Balin, me forthinketh of your displeasure, for this same lady was the untruest lady living, and by enchantment and sorcery she hath been the destroyer of many good knights, and she was causer that my mother was burnt, through her falsehood and treachery. What cause soever ye had, said Arthur, ye should have forborne her in my presence; therefore, think not the contrary, ye shall repent it, for such another ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... of the great lakes, her favorite haunt, hung the enchanted stillness, the misty glamour of the purple-cloaked witch—Indian Summer; whose sorcery veiled the dazzling face of the sun, and changed the silver lustre of Selene into the vast, solemn red blot that stared wonderingly at its own weird image ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... what is known as chemical sorcery; so that when Claribel Sudds came next day at two o'clock he showed her a small box filled with compounds ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... lord. Not very effectual if you know what to look for. There are better spells than that for guarding things. Now we'll see what his lordship wants to protect so badly that he practices sorcery without a license." He lifted the lid again, and then opened the inner lid. "It's safe now, my lord. ...
— The Eyes Have It • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the things that ye would. 18 But if ye are led by the Spirit, ye are not under the law. 19 Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these: fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousies, wraths, factions, divisions, parties, 21 envyings, drunkenness, revellings, and such like; of which I forewarn you, even as I did forewarn you, that they who practise such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. 22 But the fruit ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... "There is sorcery for you, and a doll worth having; being one of the sort that can shut its eyes; it was going to bed, but its mamma relented and lends it to us for the night. I told Mrs. Dodd you wanted her, and couldn't wait, so she ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... an attack upon the army of the Duke of Burgundy, but was taken prisoner by him. For a large sum of money the duke delivered her into the hands of the English, who put her in prison in Rouen. She lay in prison for a year, and finally was charged with sorcery and brought to trial. It was said that she was under the influence of the Evil One. She declared to her judges her innocence of the charge and said, "God has always been my guide in all that I have done. The devil has ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren
... sympathy. La Mole, of handsome appearance, but of cowardly disposition, was a firm believer in the magic that passed current in his day, and was questioned on the rack respecting the object of a waxen figure found among his effects. He admitted he had employed it for sorcery, to advance his suit with a lady whose love he sought. Coconnas, an Italian, instead of inviting contempt for his poltroonery, inspires aversion for his crimes. No assassin had distinguished himself more at the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day. We are inclined ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... believe in sorcery, and each sheik possesses spells and conjurers. Tortoise shells, scales of the manis, lions' claws, and those of the leopard, roots, knots of trees of peculiar shape, and many other things, are ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... said Ganglere: A most powerful man is Utgard-Loke, though he deals much with delusions and sorcery. His power is also proven by the fact that he had thanes who were so mighty. But has not Thor avenged himself for this? Made answer Har: It is not unknown, though no wise men tell thereof, how Thor made amends for the ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... are mortal wights, Bound by sorcery in this Miserable state as birds Stuffed and ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... their names, all of which point to their godless action. The representative of the tribe of Reuben was called Shammua, the son of Zaccur, because he did not obey God, which was counted against him just as if he had pursued sorcery. Shaphat, the son of Hori, was Simeon's representative. His name signifies, "He did not conquer his evil inclination, and hence went out empty-handed, without having received a possession in the land of Israel." The tribe of Issachar was ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... improvisators; they wear, over their tunick of bark, a sort of steel net, to which some pieces of iron are attached, the noise of which is very great when the improvisator is agitated; he has moments of inspiration which a good deal resemble nervous attacks, and it is rather by sorcery, than talent, that he makes an impression on the people. The imagination, in such dreary countries, is scarcely remarkable but by fear, and the earth herself appears to repel man by the terror with which she inspires him. I afterwards ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... anywise use or exercise any manner of witchcraft, charm, or sorcery, invocation, or other prayers, than may stand with God's law and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 64, January 18, 1851 • Various
... taken up in sincerity, though even this now perhaps is not unmixed with some fancy of its reality. For this must be the gradation more or less gone through in all such things, whether Obeism, Fetichism, the Evil Eye, or any sort of sorcery or witchcraft, in whatever variousness of form practised; cheats on the one hand, and dupes on the other the primum mobile in every case being, some shape or other of gain to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges' decisions based on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike destitute ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... love. Here was an excellent opportunity, which the magician does not fail to seize, of talking about serpents and toads. But, after a long enumeration of the bones, stones, and livers of animals that cause love, the alchemist, urged by Philautus, ends by confessing that the best sorcery of all to gain the loving regard of a woman, is to be ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... son. Elymas, the sorcerer, was permitted to practise his arts—gained from the devil—that it might be proved, by his overthrow and blindness, how inferior was his master to the Divine Ruler; but it does not therefore follow that sorcery generally was permitted. In this instance it may be true that the evil one has been permitted to exercise his power over the captain and crew of that ship, and, as a warning against such heavy offences, the supernatural appearance of the vessel may be ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... Convention. The note of the conference became tinged with exasperation, and certain gentlemen seized the opportunity to relieve their pent-up feelings on the subject of the President and his slavish advisers,—some of whom, before they came under the spell of his sorcery, had once been sound lawyers and sensible men. With the exception of the great Banker himself, who made few comments, Theodore Watling was accorded the most deference; as one of the leaders of that indomitable group of senators who had dared to stand up against popular clamour, his opinions ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... part of the word, po-kunt, signifies sorcery is practiced, and is the name given by the Indians to any writing, from the fact that when they first learned of writing they supposed it to be a method of practicing sorcery; in-in-yi is the verb signifying to count, and the meaning of the word has been extended so as to signify to read; kaen signifies wigwam, and is derived from the verb kueri, to stay. Thus ...
— On the Evolution of Language • John Wesley Powell
... mental condition of savages the basis of the irrational element in myth—Characteristics of that condition: (1) Confusion of all things in an equality of presumed animation and intelligence; (2) Belief in sorcery; (3) Spiritualism; (4) Curiosity; (5) Easy credulity and mental indolence—The curiosity is satisfied, thanks to the credulity, by myths in answer to all inquiries—Evidence for this—Mr. Tylor's opinion—Mr. Im Thurn—Jesuit ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... awhile and then went on again and said: "To say sooth they be not very handy for crushing as a man crushes a wasp, because sorcery goes with them, and the wiles of one who is their Queen, the evilest woman who ever spat upon the blessed Host of the Altar: yet is she strong, a devouring sea of souls, God help us!" And ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... virulent poison. And it was such that a mortal, drinking of it would win immortality, a sightless man obtain sight, and an old man would become a youth. It was that those Brahmanas conversant with sorcery spoke about that honey. And the hunters, seeing that honey, desired, O king, to obtain it. And they all perished in that inaccessible mountain-cave abounding with snakes. In the same way, this thy son desireth to enjoy the whole earth without a rival. He beholdeth the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Church be it spoken, the Archbishop of Rheims was one of those who most zealously sought to persuade him of the folly of entrusting great matters to the hands of a simple peasant girl, and warned the whole Court of the perils of witchcraft and sorcery which were like to be the undoing ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... compress and confine liberty would end in explosion. In that hour Northern men made tentative overtures looking to the purchase of all slaves. But slavery, Delilah-like, made the southern leaders drunk with the cup of sorcery. They scorned the proposition. In the light of subsequent events we see that in saving her institution the South lost it, and with it her wealth, while in losing her slaves the North gained her wealth. ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... indulgent, but the reverse is found to be the case. The new broom sweeps clean; and the white missionary of to-day is often embarrassed by the bigotry of his native coadjutor. What else should we expect? On some islands, sorcery, polygamy, human sacrifice, and tobacco-smoking have been prohibited, the dress of the native has been modified, and himself warned in strong terms against rival sects of Christianity; all by the same man, at the same period of time, and with the like authority. By what criterion ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of which these people were originally accused were various, but the principal were theft, sorcery, and causing disease among the cattle; and there is every reason for supposing that in none of these points they ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... a wizard is he, And lord of the wind and the sea; And whichever way he sails, He has ever favoring gales, By his craft in sorcery." Here the sign of the cross made Devoutly ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... nature, and the stones with which soma is pressed are divine like the plant. Yet often there is no sacrificial observance to cause this veneration. Hymns are addressed to weapons, to the war-car, as to divine beings. Sorcery and incantation is not looked upon favorably, but nevertheless ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... better then Diuels: who suffering themselues to be allured and inticed by the Diuell whom they serued, and to whome they were priuatelye sworne: entered into the detestable Art of witchcraft, which they studied and practised so long time, that in the end they had seduced by their sorcery a number of other to be as bad as themselues: dwelling in the boundes of Lowthian, which is a principall shire or parte of Scotland, where the Kings Maiestie vseth to make his cheefest residence or abode: and to the end that their detestable wickednes which ...
— Daemonologie. • King James I
... in this Crime ought to be as clear as in any other Crimes of a Capital nature. The Word of God does no where intimate, that a less clear Evidence, or that fewer or other Witnesses may be taken as sufficient to convict a Man of Sorcery, which would not be enough to convict him were he charged with another evil worthy of Death, Numb. 35.30. if we may not take the Oath of a distracted Person, or of a possessed Person in a Case of Murder, ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... strictly forbid all heathenism. It is heathenism for a man to worship idols,—that is, to worship heathen gods, and the sun or moon, fire or flood, water-wells or stones, or any kind of wood-trees, or practise witchcraft, or contrive murder by sorcery." ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... sat down by her trembling, but neither for awe of her greatness, nor for fear and horror of her guile and sorcery. ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... Perrott in 1585, and prorogued till the following year. It is remarkable of this Parliament, the third and last of Elizabeth's long reign, that it was utterly barren of ecclesiastical legislation, if we except "an act against sorcery and witchcraft" from that category. The attainder of the late Earl of Desmond, and the living Viscount of Baltinglass, in arms with the O'Byrnes in Glenmalure, are the only measures of consequence to be found among the Irish statutes of the 27th and 28th of Elizabeth. ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... Pope, and was followed, even in Protestant countries, until the eighteenth century. It based its theories upon the Bible, and devoted thirty-three pages to a proof that women were especially addicted to sorcery. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... which Grindot was measuring. She saw in those mysterious weavings a conjuring spirit that augured evil; she wished the walls were less high, the rooms less large, and dared not question the young man on the effects of his sorcery. ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... presided. He had ousted other men, and feared for his own safety when the Concini were attacked by their exasperated opponents. Concini himself was shot, and his wife was lodged in the Bastille on a charge of sorcery. Paris rejoiced in the fall of these Italian parasites, and Marie de Medici shed no tears for them. She turned to her secretary, Richelieu, when she was driven from the court and implored him to mediate for her with ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... from Christianity. At a subsequent period he travelled to Rome, where he attracted attention by the novelty of his creed, and the boldness of his pretensions. We are told that, prior to his baptism by Philip, he "had used sorcery, and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one;" [205:4] and subsequently he seems to have pursued a similar career. According to a very early authority, nearly all the inhabitants ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... present. About that time I became acquainted with an old merchant who imparted to me the secret of the success I have since then obtained. This secret, you will be perhaps somewhat disappointed to learn, consists neither in a charm nor in any kind of magical art or sorcery. It is comprised simply in a particular mode of dealing, and one, in fact, completely opposed to that which ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... power of the human fingers, or of a hair, will have, perhaps, reminded them of some sort of sorcery, or of some diabolic art worthy of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... of spiritual exaltation. For the tiny strip of waving colour was a symbol of the gallantry, of the carelessness of danger, lying under the dancing, sun-flecked ripples which alone proved that the tricolor was not some illusion of sorcery. ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... theatre when it is empty and dark; but did you ever go into a private bar that was empty and dark? A private bar is as eternal as the hills, as changeless as the monomania of a madman, as mysterious as sorcery. Always the same order of bottles, the same tinkling, the same popping, the same time-tables, and the same realistic pictures of frothing champagne on the walls, the same advertisements on the ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... places,—the luctus of widows, who for a full year of widowhood might not wed again; the names of her deities she gave to the days of the planetary week. Her superstitions and folk-lore, deep-rooted, survived and lingered long among many nations: the old sorcery of the waxen image of an enemy transfixed by bodkins for the torment of that enemy; the belief in the were-wolf (one of the oldest of Roman traditions); the association of the yew tree with mourning and ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... virginity and purity; and thou shalt shine as an Angel. But as thou hast gladly listened to the good things, listen without shrinking to the contrary. Every covetous deed of thine is recorded; every fleshly deed, every perjury, every blasphemy, every sorcery, every theft, every murder. All these things are henceforth recorded, if thou do these after baptism; for thy former deeds ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... might mean. This falcon flew straightway into the chamber, jessed and hooded from the glove, and came where the dame was seated. Whilst the lady yet wondered upon him, the tercel became a young and comely knight before her eyes. The lady marvelled exceedingly at this sorcery. Her blood turned to water within her, and because of her dread she hid her face in her hands. By reason of his courtesy the knight first sought to persuade her to put ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... an account of Sorcery and Fetishism among the African Negros, see Burton's 'Lake Regions of Central Africa,' vol. ii. ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... of Cyrus the Magi had become a sort of sacerdotal caste. They were the trusted ministers of kings, and exercised a controlling influence over the people. They assumed a stately air, wore white and flowing robes, and were adept in the arts of sorcery and magic. They were even consulted by kings and chieftains, as if they possessed prophetic power. They were a picturesque body of men, with their mystic wands, their impressive robes, their tall caps, appealing by their long incantations and frequent ceremonies and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... gate swung wider and the sorcery of drug and dream pushed me through, I knew that all sights and glories were at an end; for in that new realm was neither land nor sea, but only the white void of unpeopled and illimitable space. So, happier ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... turned back from Pamphylia (Acts xiii. 13), leaving S. Paul and S. Barnabas to go on without him. Of those in whom the seed is choked by the weeds of worldliness and love of money, there were many examples. Simon Magus, who after renouncing his sorcery and being baptised, thought that the power of the Holy Ghost might "be purchased with money" (Acts viii. 19, 20); Demas who "loved this present world" so much that he forsook S. Paul in the hour of danger (2 Tim. iv. 10); and the many of whom S. Paul spoke with tears, "whose God is their ...
— The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it? • Edward Burbidge
... me, you're a painter, are you not? I saw you looking at that dealer's show, The croutes he has for sale, a shabby lot— What do I know of Art? What do I know . . . Well, look! That David Strong so well displayed, "White Sorcery" it's called, all gossamer, And pale moon-magic and a dancing maid (You like the little elfin face of her?)— That's good; but still, the picture as a whole, The values,—Pah! He never painted worse; ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... bible teaches the existence of hell and this big devil and all these little devils. The bible teaches the doctrine of witchcraft and makes us believe that there are sorcerers and witches, and that the dead could be raised by the power of sorcery. Does anybody ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... concern does it give me, to find that you have been in such bad spirits as your last most grievously indicates. I believe we great geniuses are all a little subject to the sorcery of that whimsical demon the spleen, which indeed we cannot complain of, considering what power of enchantment we ourselves possess, by the sweet magic of our flowing numbers. I would recommend to you to read Mr. Green's[17] excellent poem upon that subject. He will dispel ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... was as completely deceived as Miss Ladd. Proceeding to further explanation—and remembering that she was in Alban's presence—Francine was careful to keep herself within the strict limit of truth. Confessing that she had frightened her servant by a description of sorcery, as it was practiced among the slaves on her father's estate, she only lied again, in declaring that Mrs. Ellmother had supposed she was in earnest, when she was guilty of no more serious offense than playing ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... attractive, whose downcast eyes seem to fear you, whose timid glance tempts you, and for whom the conjugal bed has no secrets, for she is at once a virgin and an experienced woman! How can a man remain cold, like St. Anthony, before such powerful sorcery, and have the courage to remain faithful to the good principles represented by a scornful wife, whose face is always stern, whose manners are always snappish, and who frequently refuses to be caressed? What ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... were made to pass through a wicket, beneath which and on the ground lay a copper plate engraved with the image of the Christ and the cross. In this way it was hoped to utterly eradicate the very memory of Christianity, which, to the common people, had become the synonym for sorcery. ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... subtle lineaments that serve as envelope for her uncorporeal existence. We end by seeing in her nothing but a kind of extraordinarily strange phosphorescence which is not the ordinary light of things, nor yet the ordinary brilliance of a well-regulated palette, and this adds more sorcery to the peculiarities of her countenance. Notice that in the place she occupies, one of the dark corners of the canvas, rather low in the middle distance, between a man in deep red and the captain dressed in black, this eccentric ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... by sorcery he got this isle; From me he got it. If thy Greatness will Revenge it on him,—for, I know, thou darest, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... you once again. Let one fate, then, be over you both; for I know not what weal ye go to get for yourselves in Drangey, but there ye shall both lay your bones, and many shall grudge you that abiding-place. Keep ye heedfully from wiles, for marvellously have my dreams gone. Be well ware of sorcery; yet none the less shall ye be bitten with the edge of the sword, for nothing can cope with the cunning of eld.' And when she had thus spoken she wept right sore. Then said Grettir, 'Weep not, mother; for if we be set ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... sacrifice called forth from Titurel only contempt, and he was rejected from the Order. He turned all the strength of his rage then to acquiring black arts by which to ruin the detested brotherhood. On the southward mountainside, he created by sorcery a wonderful pleasure-palace and garden, in which uncannily beautiful women grew. This lay in the path of the knights of the Grail, a temptation and a trap, and one so effectual that he who permitted himself ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... As for the caravel, Porras had little difficulty in persuading his credulous followers that it was merely an apparition which Columbus had conjured up by magic arts; and such was the reputation for sorcery which the admiral had acquired by his astronomical observations, that even the sight and taste of some tangible bacon (half of that present from Ovando of which we have heard) which he sent as a peace offering to the mutineers, failed to convince them of the ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... man of letters, M. Huysman, who has passed out of Zolaism in the direction of transcendental religion, is, in a certain sense, the discoverer of modern Satanism. Under the thinnest disguise of fiction, he gives in his romance of La Bas, an incredible and untranslatable picture of sorcery, sacrilege, black magic, and nameless abominations, secretly practised in Paris. Possessing a brilliant reputation, commanding a wide audience, and with a psychological interest attaching to his own personality, which more than literary excellence infuses a contagious element ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... my tale will not gain credit with thee, at least let me know by whose accusation it is that I am brought before thee, and who it is that accuses me of magic or sorcery. Am not I Bennaskar, the wealthy merchant of Delhi? and where are my accusers? Who dare say aught against my fame? You came into my house by night, you seized my person, you inflicted on me the punishment of a slave; you cast me into a dungeon, and condemned me ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... were under constant suspicion of being Christians only formally; it was believed that in their hearts they retained their ancient faith and secretly performed its rites; they were credited with antagonism to Christianity and suspected of practising sorcery to destroy the "Old Christians." There was some basis for the first, at least, of these suspicions. Many doubtless failed to abandon completely their ancestral ceremonies; and not only they but even some Old Christians felt ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... needed who knew the charms and incantations which could avert their malevolence or compel them to be serviceable to men. Sumerian religion, in fact, was Shamanistic, like that of some Siberian tribes to-day, and its ministers were Shamans or medicine-men skilled in witchcraft and sorcery whose spells were potent to parry the attacks of the demon and drive him from the body of his victim, or to call him down in vengeance on the person of ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... he has the power of enforcing, without any regard to justice or a regulated tariff. This right is called Hongo, in the plural Mahongo. Another source of revenue is in the effects of all people condemned for sorcery, who are either burnt, or speared and cast into the jungles, and their property seized by the grey-beards for ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... Picot and Mistress Hortense are in jail charged with sorcery! M. Picot is like to be hanged! An they do not confess, they may be set in the bilboes and whipped. There is talk of putting ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... in prosaic Europe in our days the inhabitants of our villages believe these flames to be some wild sorcery, then surely in the land of mystery they must be at least the evidences of war between the demons of two ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... Sorcery and witchcraft (to which, notwithstanding its title, Mr. Wright's book chiefly relates) was a more vulgar pursuit, and is a more difficult matter to determine. The true magician was a master over both the seen and the unseen world. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... course aware of the matters on which the holy office exercises its functions. I need scarcely mention sorcery, Judaism, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... told myself that it had been some silly prank of a romantic amateur, hidden in the gardens of the shore or gliding unperceived on the lagoon; and that the sorcery of moonlight and sea-mist had transfigured for my excited brain mere humdrum roulades out of exercises of ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... by Charles Mason, of the Royal Observatory, at Greenwich, England, and by Jeremiah Dixon, the son of a collier discovered in a coalpit. For three years they continued westward, running their stakes over mountains and streams, like a gypsy camp in appearance, frightening the Indians with their sorcery. But, near this spot, they halted longest, to fix with precision the tangent point, and the point of intersection of three States—the circular head of Delaware, the abutting right angle of Maryland, and ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... however, of his original Mongolian warriors followed Timour in the invasion of India. His armies latterly appear to have consisted chiefly of Turcomans and Persians. It was to obtain popularity amongst these soldiery that he abandoned his old religion, a kind of fetish, or sorcery, and became ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... and the best philosopher in Rome, has just written against the augurs a little work entitled "Of Divination," in which he commits to eternal ridicule all the soothsayers, all the predictions, and all the sorcery of which the world is infatuated. The emperor of China is curious to read Cicero's book, the interpreters translate it; he admires the book and the ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... England and other Northern latitudes. On the contrary, to my thinking, the regular old vulgar witch of England and Scotland was but an impersonatrix of the very same superstition. Virgil expresses this mode of sorcery to the letter, when ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... awakening, the nightly summons to bed; the connings, the recitations; the periodical half-holidays and perambulations; the playground, with its broils, its pastimes, its intrigues; these, by a mental sorcery long forgotten, were made to involve a wilderness of sensation, a world of rich incident, an universe of varied emotion, of excitement the most passionate and spirit-stirring. 'Oh, le bon temps, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... rosaries, the little babies commonly with coral crosses hanging on the breast. Here we took a guide, left the village, ascended a hill, and now the woods rose up before us in a verdure which surprised us like a sorcery. The spring had burst forth with the suddenness of a Russian summer. As we left Goettingen there were buds, and here and there a tree half green; but here were woods in full foliage, distinguished from summer only by the exquisite freshness ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... but dimly. They say she deals in magic and sorcery, and no good comes of meeting with her. But stop—there are horsemen on the road! Scatter the men, and quickly; let us ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... which their occult powers were directed: and thus turned from their lawful use, and practised for all sorts of selfish and malevolent purposes, they inevitably led to what we must call by the name of sorcery. ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... flower before he was seized with the fever of love. He fell into a state of melancholy, frequented no bad places, and only with regret now and then did he take a bite at his royal and dainty German morsel Isabella. He became passionate, and swore either by sorcery, by force, by trickery, or with her consent, to enjoy the flavours of this gentle lady, who, by the sight of her sweet body, forced him to the last extremity, during his now long and weary nights. At first, he pursued her with honied words, but he soon knew by ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... "The Annals of Ireland," in the second volume of Gibson's Camden, 3rd edition, sub eod. anno. He was nearly related to the lady Alice Kettle, and her son William Utlawe, al. Outlaw; against whom that singular charge of sorcery was brought by Richard Lederede, Bishop of Ossory. The account of this charge is so curious that, for the benefit of those readers of "N. & Q." who may not have the means of referring to the books above cited, I am tempted to ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... planned, they came to me in a body, just as the camels and Jali were about to depart, and commenced a series of absurd excuses for their intended desertion. The old grey-headed Moosa, by whose fortune-telling and sorcery the party were invariably guided, had foretold evil. This had confirmed them in their determination to return home. They were not a bad set of fellows, but, like most of their class, they required peculiar management. If natives are driven, they invariably hate their master, ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker |
