"Transmute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... doctrine arose that metals, like human beings, had body and soul, the soul being regarded as a finer form of corporeality. They said that the soul or primitive stuff (prima materia) was common to all metals, and in order to transmute one metal into another they had to produce a tincture of its soul. In Egypt lead, under the name Osiris, was thought to be the primitive base of metals; later when the still more plastic quicksilver (mercury) was discovered, they regarded this as the soul of metals. They thought they had to fix ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... temptation, by toil and expenditure, through all the hardships and hazards of daily life its value is determined and its destiny shaped. And according to the measure in which we use these experiences, and transmute them by obedience to the will of God into means of good, do we grow in Christian character and approximate to the full ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... not until the war gave me, like many craftsmen, a most reluctant and unwelcome space of leisure, that I ever had the opportunity of considering the possibility of writing this book. I am too old to be a combatant, and too much of a specialist in literature to transmute my activities. I lately found myself with my professional occupations suddenly suspended, and moreover, like many men who have followed a wholly peaceful profession, plunged in a dark bewilderment as to the onset of the forces governing the social life of Europe. In the sad inactivity which ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... my ferrets which I sent into its burrow, my brace of terriers which unearthed it.... Other seeds I have which will find other things in that corner of my garden. Perfect alchemists I keep who can transmute substances without end, and thus the corner of my garden is an inexhaustible treasure-chest. Here you can dig, not gold, but the value which gold merely represents; and there is no Signor Blitz about it. Yet farmer's sons will stare by the hour to ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... necessities. Unlike beauty, they are not their own excuse for being. Their embodiment is utilitarian, that of art is aesthetic. Political economy, for example, shows me how to buy two drinks for the same price I used to pay for one; while art inspires me to transmute a pewter mug into a Cellini goblet. My physical nature, perhaps, prefers two drinks to one; but, if my taste be educated, and I be not too thirsty, I would rather drink once from the Cellini goblet than twice from the mug. Political economy gravitates towards the material level; ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
|
