"Magician" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fire-bath in She, could not more completely have transmogrified him. His face brightened with youthfulness, his solitary forelock bushed out into a wavy and hyacinthine hirsute crop, his ancient and magician-like garments fell from him, his plumes expanded, until he looked more like "the herald Mercury" ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... restaurant was in itself a sufficient reminder that the overstrain had not been incurred for nothing. Electricity is the true "white magic" of the future; and here, with his pallid face and silver hair, sat the master magician—one of the great light-givers of the world. A light-giver, I think, in more than a merely material sense. The moral influence of the electric lamp, its effect upon the hygiene of the soul, has not yet been duly estimated. But even in a merely material sense, what has not the Edison ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... A modern magician to make the semblance of a human being, with two laths for legs, a pumpkin for a head, etc., of the rudest and most meagre materials. Then a tailor helps him to finish his work, and transforms this scarecrow into quite a fashionable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... able to tell just how hot or how cold it may be. And more wonderful still, he has fashioned other little tubes by which we are to tell when it is going to storm and when it will be fair weather. And I cannot begin to tell you all the wonderful appliances this magician has fashioned for our comfort and safety this winter, aided and abetted by his willing ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... touch, a consummate bloom, to which duty can never attain, and which is only attainable by love. All love's ministries are creative of loveliness. Wherever her finger rests, something exquisite is born. Love is a great magician: she transforms the desert into a garden, and she makes the ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... The innocent conjecture was soon, however, disabused; for on their drawing nearer they observed that faithless population gathered about "ANOTHER DISTINGUISHED FOREIGNER," with a remarkably long beard and a fierce pair of horns, who proclaimed himself a magician from beyond the land where the sun rose, and rejoiced in the name of Doctor Capricornus, A.V.G.T., and M.U.H.S., which the great learning of Herr Schwein interpreted by A Very Great Traveller, or Thief, and Member of the ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... believed to be a magician. An able naturalist, who happened to know something of the arcana of nature, was immediately suspected of magic. Even the learned themselves, who had not applied to natural philosophy, seem to have acted with the same feelings as the most ignorant; ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... to Pilate, stands Herod, lazy and voluptuous. He, too, finds nothing of evil in Jesus, whom he supposes to be a clever magician. "Cause that this hall may become dark," he says, "or that this roll of paper, which is thy sentence of death, shall become a serpent." He receives Christ in good-natured expectancy, which changes to disgust when he answers him not a word. Herod pronounces him "dumb as a fish," and, ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... out of Judaism or the Jewish sects; in the later writers, Irenaeus, Tertullian and Hippolytus, that these schools owe most to the doctrines of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, etc.[330] But they all agree in this, that a definite personality, viz., Simon the Magician, must be regarded as the original source of the heresy. If we try it by these statements of the Church Fathers, we must see at once that the problem in this case is limited—certainly in a proper way. For after Gnosticism is seen to be the acute secularising of ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... of application is found in all the molecules of the body, and they produce pressures and slidings of a peculiar kind. But these forces are of a very limited magnitude; but it might nevertheless be of great interest to amplify them in a strong measure. Let us, for example, suppose that a magician has found a means of increasing the intensity of gravity tenfold in his laboratory. All the conditions of life would be modified to the extent of being unrecognizable. A living being borne in this space would remain ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... Pleasant magician that waves this wand! what curious people are walking in the chambers of your brain! What dreams are yours, and what cruel cuts this real world sometimes gives you! You have no right to be here, poor devil! You are somewhat misplanted; you belong to some sphere ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... sun arise after the storm, like a prisoner released from dungeon and chains, again to look upon the faces of those he loved; and all nature put on a holiday garb to greet him. Every tree and bush was sparkling, as if with rapture. If a magician of superhuman power had waved his wand over the earth, it could not have been more changed. Long icicles were suspended from the fences and the overhanging roofs, and even the sheds looked brilliant and beautiful ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... for, unless he can break the charm which binds Ada, he must share her fate and be doomed to remain a stone for ever. Arindal, who until then has been using the dagger and the shield given him by the friendly magician, now makes use of an instrument—a lyre—which he has brought with him, and the meaning of which he had not yet understood. To the sounds of this instrument he now expresses his plaintive moans, his remorse, and his overpowering longing ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... diffidently by Washington. The pilot turned presently to "get his stern-marks," saw the lads and invited them in. Now their happiness was complete. This cosy little house, built entirely of glass and commanding a marvelous prospect in every direction was a magician's throne to them and their enjoyment of the place ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... gold a few small, scattered flakes of fleecy cloud that floated high over our mastheads. Then, all in a moment, the small, faintly- gleaming bit of land ahead became transformed, as it might be with a magician's wand, into a block of deepest, richest purple, bristling with rays of burning gold, a throbbing rim of molten gold swept into view from behind it, and in an instant it vanished amid a blinding blaze of sunlight that ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... at this picture of myself, which is much more like to the studious magician in the enchanted opera of Rinaldo; not but Twickenham has a romantic genteelness that would figure in a more luxurious climate. It was but yesterday that we had a new kind of auction-it was of the orange-trees and plants of your old acquaintance, Admiral Martin. It was one of the warm days of ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... cried the magician, with a glance at his watch and an ear towards the open window. "The postman's knock from door to door down every street in town—house to house from one end of your British Islands to the other! A certain letter is without doubt being delivered at this very ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... saw the face of Hogarth, he started, muttering: "He has the diamonds back! God! is he a magician?" ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... The magician of M. Maillardet is also worthy of notice. We copy the following account of it from the Letters before mentioned of Dr. B., who derived his information principally ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... name a word meaning "magician" was formed, showing that these priests had gained the reputation of being dealers ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... the first speaker, "I'm all of a tremble! And to think that many times I have got this magician Urbain ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... himself among them, but to take him alive and bring him a prisoner to Pyrrhus's camp; and that then, after the battle was over, he should be subjected, they declared, to the most cruel and ignominious punishments, as a magician and an impostor. Decius sent back word, in reply, that Pyrrhus had no occasion to give himself any uneasiness in respect to the course which the Roman general would pursue in the approaching battle. The measure that he had referred to was one to which the Romans were not accustomed to resort ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... age? And is not this sufficient to prove, clearly and incontestibly prove, that she is dead? And yet here she is again, in all her primitive beauty and splendour! No, this surely can never be. However the author may succeed in his description, in painting reanimated nature, he is no magician, or if he is, he cannot ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... foibles of genius, for, notwithstanding all his fast life and many vices, Fox was hardly surpassed as a scholar, an orator, and a linguist; and, as a politician, Pitt himself—a life-long rival—frankly admitted that 'Fox was a magician, who laid a spell upon his hearers as long as the words ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... ago a beautiful little brown sparrow made her home in the garden of a certain great and renowned magician. She built her nest in the grass, and was content to hop and chirp about in the rose thicket, and to keep very ...
— Harper's Young People, October 12, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... by damnable Magician, Being cast illegally in prison, Love brings his Action on the Case. And lays it upon Hudibras. How he receives the Lady's Visit, And cunningly solicits his Suite, Which she defers; yet on Parole Redeems him ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... is not yet noon, hunger rages in us. The pancakes, the syrup, the toast and the other incidents of breakfast have disappeared the way the rabbit vanishes when the magician waves his hand. The horrid Polyphemus did not so crave his food. And as yet there is no comforting sniff from the kitchen. Scrubbing and other secular matters engage the farmer's wife. There is as yet not a faintest gurgle ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... of gold into the temperate regions, locking land and sea under tons of ice. Never the frost comes, and the snow deepens on the land, and the rivers and lakes are struck silent as if by a cruel magician's magic, but that this old fear returns, creeping like poison into the nerves, bowing down the heart and chilling the warm wheel of the blood. For the rodents and the digging people—even for the mighty grizzly himself—the season means nothing but the cold and the darkness of their underground lairs. ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... the boy, he became a great magician, or, as we in our age would call him, a man of science and wisdom, named Merlin. He lived long on the mountain, but when he went away with a friend, he placed all his treasures in a golden cauldron and hid them in a cave. He rolled a great stone over its mouth. Then with sod and earth ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... and lighter and loftier portion, where the light comes in, is but a space filched away from the roofs and leads, and jammed in in such a fashion that it would defy a magician to find it from without. We tried days and days and could not do it, and never did, albeit we can climb like cats and had an inkling where it was—until we put Julian within to shout aloud and guide us by his voice. It is so placed that none can get really nigh to those places where the ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... and man. To them alone was the will of God declared. They only could penetrate the future. And they alone predicted the future to those who sought of them therefor. In later days the name Magi became synonymous with sorcerer, magician, alchemist, &c.[24] ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... the doctor has much to tell us concerning two sisters in Lucifer who have long been at daggers drawn, and considering their supernatural attributes, it is incomprehensible in a high degree that they have not destroyed one another like the Magician and the Princess of a more credible narrative of wonders in the "Arabian Nights." Diana Vaughan, much heard and little seen, has since become famous by her conversion to the Catholic faith. Honoured with her acquaintance ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... through Portugal, in full anticipation of "driving the leopards into the sea," he suddenly saw before him the frowning lines of Torres Vedras, the great fortress which had sprung from earth, as it were, at the touch of a magician's wand? ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... coming thence, one who was fabled to have gathered together more knowledge, both of this world and of that other hidden one which was to them just as real, than any mortal man alive. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that Cardan should have been regarded rather as a magician than as a doctor, and in the Scotichronicon[146] it is recorded that the Primate was cured of a lingering asthma by the incantations of an astrologer named Cardan, from Milan. Cardan in his narrative speaks of Edinburgh ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... said the blacksmith blowing his nose. 'A nasty, wicked magician—he had a spite against the King, and he got at the Princess when she was playing ball in the garden, and now she's blind and deaf and dumb. ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... shootee wolf, turnee into man light away. Ha, ha, me allee same plenty smart man, likee magician." ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... at work in his panelled study, translating the Bible, while the blessed sun shines in and the lion and the little bear doze contentedly, is not Luther foretold? But the German study, {685} that magician's laboratory that has produced so much of good, has also often been the alembic of brooding and despair. More than ever before at the opening of the century men felt the vast promises and the vast oppression of thought. New science ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... sea of sleep walks white-robed Night; The breeze but the faint rustle of her drapery That calls the mist-made bark of dream From the cavern of the Unknown to sail to us, Laden with endless star-like fancies. And She! the magician, walks on and on Over the sapphire embankment of the sky Like a moving magnet drawing behind ...
— Sandhya - Songs of Twilight • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... and bold Supplement au Voyage de Bougainville is entirely in the vein of Rousseau's discourse on the superiority of primitive over civilised life. "Prodigious sibyl of the eighteenth century," cries Michelet, "the mighty magician Diderot! He breathed out one day a breath; lo, there sprang up a man—Rousseau."[87] It is hard to believe that such an astonishing genius for literature as Rousseau's could have lain concealed, after he had once inhaled the vivifying air of Paris. Yet the fire and inspiring energy ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... an ambitious lad who was quite a wonder at turning rapid cartwheels. Another did some creditable pole balancing. One old man wanted to serve as a magician. All had a chance, but their merit was not distinguished enough ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... course raise him, and invite him to cooperate in the business of photographing his own shining face. But we are not so sanguine as to expect that miracle, though almost as great wonders have been done by the power of this magician. But where is the "triple curse" with which, according to this authority, "that gravestone is weighted"? Quite another view of the inscription is given by Lord ...
— Shakespeare's Bones • C. M. Ingleby
... deserve your confidence, Jeanne; but I am not a magician. But I will talk it over with"—and he hesitated—"with a young fellow who is, like myself, a Royalist, and in disguise. Luckily, we ran against each other the other day, and after a little conversation discovered each other. He, too, has relatives in prison, and will, I ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... a magician at whose touch the plainest features take on new aspects. Helen's face had never been plain. Even in its anguish it had produced in beholders the profound commiseration which is more readily given when beauty is sorrowful. Now that a new life at ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... lovers, to those who have found their way into the secret places of his art, his lines are impregnated with a peculiar beauty, and the last perfection of style. Over them, the most insignificant of his verses can throw a deep enchantment, like the faintest wavings of a magician's wand. 'A-t-on vu de ma part le roi de Comagene?'—How is it that words of such slight import should hold such thrilling music? Oh! they are Racine's words. And, as to his rhymes, they seem perhaps, to the true worshipper, the final crown of his art. Mr. Bailey tells us that the couplet ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... vernaculars were things unsafe, "like to play the bankrupt with books," but as protesting by anticipation against the continuance of this error which affected Bacon and Hobbes, and was not entirely without hold even on such a magician in English as Browne. But perhaps everybody has not seen how by implication it acknowledges the peculiar character of the genuine letter—that, though it may be a work of art, it should not be one of artifice—that it is a matter of "business or bosoms," ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... kissed the dragon, which instantly became a most beautiful princess; for she had lain enchanted as a dragon, by a wicked magician, till somebody should be bold enough to ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang
... innumerable brave souls still engaged there. His express contributions to poetry, philosophy, or any specific province of human literature or enlightenment, had been small and sadly intermittent; but he had, especially among young inquiring men, a higher than literary, a kind of prophetic or magician character. He was thought to hold, he alone in England, the key of German and other Transcendentalisms; knew the sublime secret of believing by "the reason" what "the understanding" had been obliged to fling out as incredible; and could still, after Hume and Voltaire had done their best and worst ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... dimension in space, Greif had believed that the scientist was raving mad. Up to the moment when the telegram had arrived, he had been convinced that Rex was a cheat, who had accidentally learned certain facts connected with the Greifensteins and was attempting to play the magician by making an adroit use of what he knew. When brought suddenly face to face with a phenomenon he could not explain, Greif's reason ceased altogether to perform its functions. The news he had just received was startling, but the bewilderment caused by its arrival at that precise juncture ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... magician," I thought for the thousandth time, as, for the millionth, Aaron looked at her sitting so demurely regal at his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... to do this with scientific accuracy when we employ that remarkable key to Nature's secrets known as the spectroscope. The beams of white sunlight consist of innumerable beams of every hue in intimate association. Every shade of red, of yellow, of blue, and of green, can be found in a sunbeam. The magician's wand, with which we strike the sunbeam and sort the tangled skein into perfect order, is the simple instrument known as the glass prism. We have represented this instrument in its simplest form in the adjoining figure (Fig. 17). It is a piece of pure and homogeneous glass in the shape ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... a magician and his wife, who, being wise folk, were not afraid of the serpents which dwelt in the tree, came to draw water at the spring which flowed from the roots; and when the magician's wife saw the dead Prince ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... true magic; this was the key to the symbolic transmutations of the Eastern tales. The adept could, in truth, change those who were obnoxious to him into harmless and unimportant shapes, not as in the letter of the old stories, by transforming the enemy, but by transforming himself. The magician puts men below him by going up higher, as one looks down on a mountain city from a loftier crag. The stones on the road and such petty obstacles do not trouble the wise man on the great journey, and so Lucian, when obliged to stop and converse with ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... to interchange talk with this magician. But Power, in all its shapes, is venerable to man. Awe, curiosity, a clinging fascination, drew me ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... tales is that they are all told to King Khufu by his sons; and as the beginning is lost, eight lines are here added to explain this and introduce the subject. The actual papyrus begins with the last few words of a previous tale concerning some other magician under an earlier king. Then comes the tale of Khafra, next that of Bau-f-ra, and lastly ...
— Egyptian Tales, First Series • ed. by W. M. Flinders Petrie
... full of queer people. It is the chosen home of every kind of eccentricity. It sounds incredible in this year of grace, but my friend Oliver Haddo claims to be a magician. I think he is ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... of nature; and when we think or speak of him, it should be with humility where we do not understand, and a conviction that it is rather to the narrowness of our own mind than to any failing in the art of the great magician, that we ought to attribute any sense of weakness, which may assail us during the contemplation ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... origin, which in the latter part of the sixteenth century came to be associated with an actual individual of the name of Faustus whose notorious career during the first four decades of the century, as a pseudo-scientific mountebank, juggler and magician can be traced through various parts of Germany. The Faust Book of 1587, the earliest collection of these tales, is of prevailingly theological character. It represents Faust as a sinner and reprobate, and it holds up his compact with Mephistopheles ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... beloved violin gave him confidence. Lovingly, tenderly, he drew the bow across the strings. The coldly critical eyes no longer gazed at him. The unsympathetic audience melted away. He and his violin were one and alone. In the hands of the great magician the instrument was more than human. It talked; it laughed; it wept; it controlled the moods of men as ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... Nobody thinks 'the cognitions of which I was conscious in my dream are unreal'; what men actually think is 'the cognitions are real, but the things are not real.' In the same way the illusive state of consciousness which the magician produces in the minds of other men by means of mantras, drugs, &c., is true, and hence the cause of love and fear; for such states of consciousness also are not sublated. The cognition which, owing ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... his, it would have gone near converting me. Charles Greville, who was deaf, and spoke rather loud in consequence of that infirmity, said, as he entered, to my sister, "I shall ask him about my mother." Adelaide, quite determined to test the magician's powers to the utmost, replied, with an air of concern, as if shocked at the idea, "Oh, no, don't do that; it is too dreadful." However, this suggestion of course not being thrown away upon Mr. Foster, Charles Greville desired to be put in communication ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... Esther, "I mean to please the magician who has worked all these wonders.—Listen, my fat elephant, after dinner we will go to the play together. I am ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... "A magician more mighty and more evil than Mirza ever was or could be," he continued, "a master of the Black Art, expelled a woman's spirit from its throne and temporarily installed in its place the ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... only compare himself to Aladdin in his palace. Could it be believed that so many ideas had been left for one man to discover? It seemed to him, that the kingdoms of literature lay at his mercy; he was like a magician who has discovered a new spell, which places his rivals in his power. He knew that this book, if he could ever finish it, would alter the aspect of literary criticism, as a blow changes the pattern in ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... his German empire crumbled into nothing, as at the spell of a magician. Hanover returned to the dominion of its rightful sovereign immediately. Brunswick, Hesse, and the other states which had formed Jerome's kingdom of Westphalia, followed the same example. The Confederation of the Rhine was dissolved for ever; ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... a single spark, rises in smoke and flame a mighty Afrit with a voice like thunder and an arm that shatters like an earthquake. The dreams of Oriental fancy have become the sober facts of our every-day life, and the chemist is the magician to ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... bow was perceived a darker mass of mist, which after some time resolved itself into the well-known form of the Rock of Lisbon. The wind being light and variable, we drew very gradually inshore, till the mist suddenly lifting, as if at the command of a magician, disclosed to us the splendid and fantastic scenery of those rocky heights, as they rose proudly from the glittering ocean, which was dotted with numerous sails of fishing-boats and coasters, and here and there the canvas of some loftier merchantmen, ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... mathematical papers and destroyed. But this duty seems, fortunately for us, to have been neglected by his executors, and hence among this 'waste' one has even now no great difficulty in recognizing in the well-known Latin handwriting of the' magician,' many jottings in chronology, geography and science, and many abstracts and citations of the classics, that in their time must have played parts in the History of the World. The Will now first produced lets in a flood of light ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... irremediable, change impossible—which demanded the drudgery of a student, while it involved the deliberation of a master—in which the patience of a mechanic was to be united with the foresight of a magician—in which no license could be indulged either to fitfulness of temper or felicity of invention—in which haste was forbidden, yet languor fatal, and consistency of conception no less incumbent than continuity of toil. Let them reflect what kind of men must have been ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... steal upon the variety show with the increasing predominance of short plays. Since they were short, I should not have minded them so much, but they were always so bad! Still, I could go out, when they came on, and return for the tramp magician, or the comic musician, who played upon joints of stovepipe and the legs of reception-chairs and the like, and scratched matches on his two days' beard, and smoked a plaintive air on a cigarette. But when the 'playlets' ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... he couldn't sing, but he could show them a trick or two. And with his grimy euchre-deck he kept his word, showing that he was not the mere handy-man, but the magician of the party. The natives, who know the cards as we know our A B C's, were enthralled, and began to look upon Potts as a creature of more than ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... the winged hours would seem to move too slowly. Even thus Prospero is not quite satisfied. During his subsequent dialogue with Ariel, we are to suppose that Ferdinand, in conversing apart with Miranda, betrays more impassioned ardor than the wise magician altogether approves. The prince's caresses have not been unobserved; and ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... night he glided about the deck, like the ghost of a hospital attendant; flitting from mast to mast; now hovering round the skylight, now vibrating in the vicinity of the binnacle. Blunt, the Dream Book tar, swore he was a magician; and took an extra dose of salts, by way of precaution ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... Arcturus through this, Maskull. It may serve as a provisional sign. It's the best I can do, unfortunately. I am not a travelling magician.... Be very careful not to drop it. It's ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... him, while you let me play upon those ardent strings of feelings, that you might save him! You used me, Tinoir Doltaire, son of a king, to further your amour with a bourgeois Englishman! And he laughed in his sleeve, and soothed away those dangerous influences of the magician. By the God of heaven, Robert Moray and I have work to do! And you—you, with all the gifts of the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... part of the sixteenth century. He is frequently mentioned as a well-known character who gained his celebrity by the profession of magic. In the "History of Dr. Faustus," first published 1587, he is represented as a magician, who gained by unlawful arts a mastery over nature. The legend rapidly spread; It was versified by the English dramatist Marlowe, it became the foundation of innumerable tales and dramas, until, transformed by the genius of Goethe, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... as the "Devil's Tree," and the "Magician's Cypress," because much affected by witches and sorcerers when ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... Achmet was correct; even where milk was abundant, the Arabs invariably declared that they had not a drop, that the goats were dry, or had strayed away; and some paltry excuses were offered until the temper of the Turk became exhausted, and the coorbatch assisted in the argument. A magician's rod could not have produced a greater miracle than the hippopotamus whip. The goats were no longer dry, and in a few minutes large gourds of milk were brought, and liberally paid for, while I was ridiculed by the Turk, Hadji Achmet, for so foolishly throwing ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... beaten. Now suppose Mr. Yeats had told Mr. Moore, then moving in this glamorous atmosphere, another story of the same sort. Suppose he had said that the farmer's pigs had fallen under the displeasure of some magician of the sort he celebrates, who had conjured bad fairies into the quadrupeds, so that they went in a wild dance down to the village pond. Would Mr. Moore have thought that story any more incredible than the other? ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... concealed magician's wand, which you propose to draw forth at some decisive moment, and present to me, as the cross is presented to ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... horses and hydra-headed dragons guarded enchanted castles—where Princes and Princesses flew through the air on carpets that obeyed a mystic talisman—where cities whose houses were made of precious stones sprang up in a night under the hand of the magician, and where busy marts were suddenly stricken with a spell and each citizen lay or sat, or stood with weapon raised or foot advanced, just as he was, speechless and motionless, till time had told ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... wisdom, fine observation, and profound thought; sterling philosophy written in the purest, simplest, and raciest English; noble translations, or rather free adaptations of Calderon's two finest dramas, The Wonderful Magician and Life's a Dream, and a splendid paraphrase of the Agamemnon of AEschylus, which fills its reader with regret that he should not have Englished the whole of the great trilogy with the same severe sublimity. In America this ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... will loosen these cautious tongues. My friend, "the sweet Harp-String" (I give no more than his Irish name for fear of gaugers), has the science of unpacking the stubbornest heart, but then he supplies the potheen-makers with grain from his own fields. Besides, he is descended from a noted Gaelic magician who raised the "dhoul" in Great Eliza's century, and he has a kind of prescriptive right to hear tell of all kind of other-world creatures. They are almost relations of his, if all people say concerning the ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... more like an indifferent but restless corpse. Those two could not be said to have ever conversed together. Conversation with Jorgenson was an impossible thing. Even Lingard never attempted the feat. He propounded questions to Jorgenson much as a magician would interrogate an evoked shade, or gave him curt directions as one would make use of some marvellous automaton. And that was apparently the way in which Jorgenson preferred to be treated. Lingard's real company on board the Emma was d'Alcacer. D'Alcacer had met Lingard on the easy terms of ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... the magician who accomplished that happy miracle. Ma always contrived to accomplish everything, so of course she managed rent day along with the rest of the wonders she performed. She made no secret, either, of ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... which spread over the entire heavens and illuminated the distant mountains of Lower California. I have never seen anything like that wonderful color, which spread itself over sky, river and desert. For an hour, one could have believed oneself in a magician's realm. ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... not much over a hundred years after his death he was declared by scholars to be a mere myth. A certain J.C. Duerr attempted to prove, in a learned "Dissertatio Epistolica de Johanne Fausto," (printed at Altorf, in 1676,) that the magician of that name had never existed, and that all the strange things which had been related of him referred to the printer John Faust, or Fust,—who had, indeed, been confounded with him before, although he lived nearly a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... women who go into these rages, but they do not do so much harm. They walk on all fours like beasts. Seeing this, the magician, called oqui, begins to sing; then, with some contortions of the face, he blows upon her, directing her to drink certain waters, and make at once a banquet of fish or flesh, which must be procured although very scarce at the time. When the shouting is over and the banquet ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... the space of two years, so that none suspected but that she was still alive; for she did both speak and eat, though very sparingly; only she had a deep paleness on her countenance, which was the only sign of death. At length a Magician coming by where she was then in the company of many other virgins, as soon as he beheld her he said, "fair Maids, why keep you company with the dead Virgin whom you suppose to be alive?" when taking away the magic charm which was ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... fell into another error; they were in a hurry, and would fain have effected their great transformation as by the waving of a magician's wand. Impatient of gradation, they scorned to traverse the distance between the point of departure and that of the goal, and by way of setting up the new social structure without delay, they rolled away all hindrances regardless of consequences. In this spirit of absolutism ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... manhood and succeeded his father the Emperor Yuhi. His early reign was greatly troubled by the rebel Shiyu. This rebel wanted to make himself King, and many were the battles which he fought to this end. Shiyu was a wicked magician, his head was made of iron, and there was no man that could ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... absence, and put to death his father and mother and his infant brother. On learning of this murderous act Jason determined on revenge. But Pelias was too strong to be attacked openly, so the hero employed a strange stratagem, suggested by the cunning magician Medea. He and his companions halted at some distance from Iolcus, while Medea entered the town alone, pretending that she was a fugitive from ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... was of wonderful quality, rich and unctuous, the labials dropping, honeyed, from the lips. It wooed the crowd, lured it, enmeshed it. But the magician had, a little, lost confidence in the power of his spell. His mind dwelt uneasily upon his well-garbed auditor. What was he doing there, with his keen face and worldly, confident carriage, amidst those clodhoppers? Was there peril in his presence? ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... woman had left, Marya Proderenska sat alone and her face was troubled. The strength of the curse—she had felt it herself—was enormous. She did not know of any magician who had such power. ...
— Hex • Laurence Mark Janifer (AKA Larry M. Harris)
... one to us in our secret hearts, which throbbed with passionate excitement over our own small affairs of to-day, and to-morrow. Little cared we, as our white boat bore us southward, on the bosom of the sacred river—little cared we for the love-story of the Great Enchantress—pupil of Magician Thoth, —fair Isis, in whose honour that boat was named. Her tragic journey along this river, whose stream she could augment by one sacred tear, should have been followed by our fancy. We should have seen with our ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... from bad to worse, when Queen Moini thought of inviting a celebrated magician, then in the north of Angola. He was a magician of the first order, whose power was the more marvelous because they had never tested it in this country where he had never come. But there was no question of ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... process is a chemical experiment, but upon reading it I felt that it was as good as a conjuring trick, and a very grand one too. In fact it is good enough for a magician, for it is a wonderful example of the way in which our chemists have mastered some of the ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... boom. Mulvaney looked at me hopelessly, but I remembered how the madness of despair had once fallen upon Ortheris, that weary, weary afternoon in the banks of the Khemi River, and how it had been exorcised by the skilful magician Mulvaney. ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... munificently offers them for the construction of their railways. If they say, "Yes, thank you," to this simple question, the Chief Conjurer of the nation, the great Medicine Man of our tribe, the Head Magician of our Egypt, will only have to say, "Presto pass," and they will find themselves a Slave State in the glorious Union, under a solemn contract, struck by this same act, to endure Slavery for six years to come. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... fashion remain true to our allegiance to the magician of our youth, who can never worship or love another as we loved and worshipped him, are quite contented in the slight inevitable dimming of his fame. He is still in the hearts of the people, and there he ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... the early Babylonian tablets with catalogues of eclipses on all days of the month, and in all quarters of the sky. The great majority of the eclipses could never happen, but they could be, none-the-less, made use of by a court magician. If an eclipse of the sun took place on the 29th day and in the south, he could always point out how exceedingly unpleasant things might have been for the king and the country if he, the magician, had ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... seize the crown for himself. The country was like to fare ill when laws were broken on every side, and the corn which was to give the poor bread was trodden underfoot, and there was none to bring the evildoer to justice. Then, when things were at their worst, came forth Merlin the magician, and fast he rode to the place where the Archbishop of Canterbury had his dwelling. And they took counsel together, and agreed that all the lords and gentlemen of Britain should ride to London and meet on Christmas Day, now at hand, in the Great Church. So this was done. ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... has got. I would implore her to spend an hour or two at serious play with any decent young cat and study the grace and variety of its beautiful, imitable gestures. Then she will assuredly pounce on her magician turned mouse, and fawn on her master and friends, with a greater air of conviction. And she will mightily please all the other nice ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... she said, "Priestess of Set, great seeress and magician of the old world in whom once my spirit dwelt, send forth your Ka, your everlasting Emanation, to help me. Crush this black hound. ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... from further appeals to the public, as I mean to do, I cannot pose as a Prospero who breaks his staff. I am only a somewhat sturdy, highly nervous varlet in the sphere of art, who has sought to wear the robe of the magician—and being now disrobed, takes his place quietly where God appointed him, and means to hold his tongue in future, since his proper function has ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... for their own happiness and for the benefit of others. And she sought in her bosom if the letters were safe. Yes; there they were; she felt them. Her happiness had seemed a dream without that proof of its reality. For once she gave way to imagination, and allowed that magician to build castles in the air at will. Thurston and herself must go to England immediately to take possession of the estate; that was certain. Then they must return. But ere that she would confide to him her darling project; ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... time of Theodosius. No doubt there were still here and there a few genuine classical books, and we hear of Aristotle being prized—the obscurity and subtlety of his works having led to his being now regarded as a magician. ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... eyes shining over rose-flushed cheeks, of deeper-rose-red lips in curves of haunting sweetness, of the tender contour of her young face, fixed unforgettingly in the radiant moonlight—only an instant's vision, for while the blood stopped in his veins the darkness engulfed her, like a magician's curtain. ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... without number, teachers, companions, and everything that money could buy or ingenuity devise; but for all this, the young prince was unhappy. He wore a frown wherever he went, and was always wishing for something he did not have. At length a magician came to the court. He saw the scowl on the boy's face, and said to the king: "I can make your son happy, and turn his frowns into smiles, but you must pay me a great price for telling him this secret." "All right," said the king; "whatever you ask I will give." The magician took the boy into ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... centuries old French fry. Monsieur was permitted to assist her in this, and wielded the keen bladed knife with precision. Then there was the salad and the seasoning of it to just that degree of the "delicieux" the palate revels in. With the art, as it were, of a magician, she drew from a huge cupboard the most inviting piece of beef and proudly flourished it before our devouring eyes. Here was the makings of a "filet de boeuf" fit for Epicurius himself. In the center of the table was next placed the great round loaf of bread, ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... his canoe and crosses arms of the sea, as a pastime, makes a tent of his boat if it rains, fighting the desperadoes of all climes with the superstition, for which he is indebted to their imagination for his safety in running phenomenal hazards, that he is a magician. Marco Polo was not so great a traveler or so rare an adventurer as Bigelow, and, having left Florida under a thunder cloud of the scowl of an angry army for untimely criticisms, he has invaded the celestial empire in his quaint canoe, ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... Miss Dandridge. "When you've swum the Hellespont like Leander, or picked a glove out of the lion's den like the French knight, or battered down a haunted castle like Rinaldo, or taken the ring from a murderer's hand like Onofrio, or set free the Magician's daughter ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... came for one moment into her face. How soon he had startled her from her poor little hiding-place! How easy the assumption of extraordinary, powers based on the clever use of ordinary faculties! Your true magician is, after all, only your quiet and accurate observer. "You are not vexed that I speak of him when I want a name?" he asked, after a pause to give Leam time to regain her self-possession, to readjust the screen, to fasten ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... from a pearly haze, the innumerable towers of Manhattan floated and gleamed before my eyes. Irresistibly there came to me a memory of Turner's Venetian masterpieces, and I knew that even that great magician would have seized upon the scene before me with avidity, would have delighted in the fairy-like threads of the bridges, the poetic groupings of the vast buildings, and the innumerable fenestrations of the campanili. One by one half-forgotten fragments of ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... of these two great powers mentioned was not the same. The good old sun began by doing a great many pretty actions. As the sleet had, during the night, covered the bare branches of the trees in the boulevard Malesherbes, where the hotel Godefroy is situated, with a powdered coating, the great magician sun amused himself by transforming the branches into great bouquets of red coral. At the same time he scattered his rays impartially on those poor passers-by whom necessity sent out, so early in the morning, to gain their daily bread, He even had a smile for the poor clerk, who, in a thin overcoat, ...
— The Lost Child - 1894 • Francois Edouard Joachim Coppee
... brightness are all merged in one blinding glitter. His recurring conferences with Mrs. Westmore formed, as it were, the small surprising kernel of fact about which sensations gathered and grew with the swift ripening of a magician's fruit. That she should remain on at Hanaford to look into the condition of the mills did not, in itself, seem surprising to Amherst; for his short phase of doubt had been succeeded by an abundant inflow of faith in her intentions. It satisfied ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... his rounds, complaint and pain were hushed, and the flourish of the bamboo, which he bore in his hand, seemed powerful as the wand of a magician to silence ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... not worth working for. It was very well when it was a Pleasure. So it is with Calderon. It is well enough to sketch such things out in warm Blood; but to finish them in cold! I wish I could finish the 'Mighty Magician' in my new way: which I know you would like, in spite of your caveat for the Gracioso. I have not wholly dropt the two Students, but kept them quite under: and brought out the religious character of the Piece into stronger Relief. But as ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... big battle-ax, if any knight will agree to abide a blow in return. After some natural consternation and a fine speech by Arthur, Gawain accepts the challenge, takes the battle-ax, and with one blow sends the giant's head rolling through the hall. The Green Knight, who is evidently a terrible magician, picks up his head and mounts his horse. He holds out his head and the ghastly lips speak, warning Gawain to be faithful to his promise and to seek through the world till he finds the Green Chapel. There, on next New ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... a new home, the house became transformed as if a magician of the Arabian Nights had touched it with his wand. There was not a dark or gloomy corner to be seen. Lights blazed everywhere. The rarest pictures and choicest furniture were to be seen. Everything was magnificent and harmonious. The tall stature ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... Nang-Poo, Was a magician who lived at Foo-choo. Now if you possess a magician of cunning Nothing you want should ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... a handsome young man came to the spot at the moment the girl was being thus attended to by her mother. He was struck with her beauty, and immediately went home and told his love to his uncle, who was a great chief and a powerful magician. ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous
... the Magi in connection with their occult "wonder working," we must turn to the dictionaries, where we will see that the word "Magic" is derived from the title "Magi;" the word "Magician" having been originally "Magian", which means "one of the Magi." Webster defines the word "Magic" as follows: "The hidden wisdom supposed to be possessed by the Magi; relating to the occult powers of nature; mastery of secret forces in nature", etc. So you may readily ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... his heart opens to the soft influences of love, and her figure, trim and debonair, that allures the older fancy of the man who sits "alone and merry at forty year," having seen his earlier Gillian and Marian and a score more happily married. She is, in fact, the domestic magician, the good fairy, the genius of home, the thoughtful, tactful, careful, intelligent house-keeper, the very she whom Milton sings, ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... (as long as we were at the table) it seemed as if his authority were quite vanished and his teeth all drawn. We had known him a magician that controlled the elements; and here he was, transformed into an ordinary gentleman, chatting like his neighbours at the breakfast-board. For now the father was dead, and my lord and lady reconciled, in what ear was he to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... far out on the lonely moor sat down to think. Like a weird magician, Memory led me back into the past, calling up the hopes and passions buried there. My childhood,—fatherless and motherless, but not unhappy; for no wish was ungratified, no idle whim denied. My boyhood,—with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and that wonder of wonders, a bashful newspaper reporter. Their chief concern centered in the query, how Pilgrim could hold that goodly heap of luggage and still have room to spare for four passengers? It became evident that her capacity is akin to that of the magician's bag. ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... to the Life of Apollonius of Tyana by Philostratus. He will there see that the Magician of Cappadocia on his arrival in Babylon was told that Bardanes had been reigning two years and as many months; Apollonius stopped in the palace of the king twenty months; then he started on a tour to India; he travelled about the Asiatic Peninsula for a considerable time; next he went on a ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... rests the dust of Sir Walter Scott and his kinsfolk, and of it Alexander Smith wrote that "when the swollen Tweed raves as it sweeps, red and broad, round the ruins of Dryburgh, you think of him who rests there—the magician asleep in the lap of legends old, the sorcerer buried in the heart of the land he has ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... appeared, suggesting series of convents, barracks, or hospitals. Extraordinary and painful was the impression produced by this town so suddenly immobilised whilst in course of erection. It was as if on some accursed morning a wicked magician had with one touch of his wand stopped the works and emptied the noisy stone-yards, leaving the buildings in mournful abandonment. Here on one side the soil had been banked up; there deep pits dug for foundations had remained gaping, overrun with weeds. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... with seasonable greeting. (For no excess of consideration is too great to be lavished upon these, who unite within themselves the courage of a high warrior, the expertness of a three-handed magician, and the courtesy of a genial mandarin.) "I seek two, apparelled thus and thus. Did you, by any chance, mark the direction of ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... by Rimrock when Gunsight would be transformed by his hand, but the prophet was not there to see. After all his labors, and his patient endurance of ridicule and unbelief, when the miracle happened Rimrock Jones the magician was ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... prophet and magician, child of a wizard and a princess, who lived in the 5th century, and was subsequently a prominent personage at King Arthur's' court; prophecies attributed to him existed as far back as the 14th century; Tennyson represents him as bewitched by Vivian; legend ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... faster and stronger and more sensitive than any other living human being, but that doesn't mean I have superhuman powers, or that I'm a magician. And I'm quite certain that you, Colonel, don't credit me with such abilities. You don't believe that I can do in a short time what the combined forces of the Government couldn't do in ten. Certainly you wouldn't rely too ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the magician journeyed together to Wales. They went to Craig y Dinas, the Rock of the Fortress, at the head of the Neath valley, near Pont Nedd Fechan, and the Welshman, pointing to the stock or root of an old hazel, said: "This is where I ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... temperament, and in an age when the conjuror and the alchemist were the companions and even the idols of princes, it is easy to trace the steps by which a gifted sage retains his ascendancy among the ignorant. The hecatomb which is sacrificed to the magician, he receives as an oblation to his science, and conscious of possessing real endowments, the idol devours the meats that are offered to him without analysing the motives and expectations under which he is fed. But even when the idolater and his god are not placed ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... there was such a man as Julius Caesar? Indeed, there are millions of truths that a man is not, or may not think himself concerned to know; as whether our king Richard the Third was crooked or no; or whether Roger Bacon was a mathematician or a magician. In these and such like cases, where the assent one way or other is of no importance to the interest of any one; no action, no concernment of his following or depending thereon, there it is not strange that the mind should give itself up to the common opinion, or render ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... be covered with stripes and bruises. The uncle of my informant once read such strong language (magically) in a certain book that it began to tremble violently, and finally made a dash for it out of the window. This same personage was once sitting beneath a palm-tree with a certain magician (who, I fear, was also a conjurer), when, happening to remark on the clusters of dates twenty feet or so above his head, his friend stretched his arms upwards and his hands were immediately filled with the ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall |
