"Elixir" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... himself to be led upstairs; while my mother, who had slipped in and listened with much edification to his words, hurried away to prepare him a bumper of green usquebaugh with ten drops of Daffy's Elixir therein, which was her sovereign recipe against the effects of a soaking. There was no event in life, from a christening to a marriage, but had some appropriate food or drink in my mother's vocabulary, ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... wood is corrupted, when the latter is burnt. But the implicit metaphor in the use of the terms likens substances to the human body, their production and destruction implies liability to disease, and thus prepares the way for the notion of the elixir, which is first a potion giving long life, and curing bodily ailments, and only after some time a remedy for ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... me seemed finer than anything I had ever known. Few men at my age were so blessed with the vigour of health, with the elixir of youth. To the world at large I was indebted for its appreciation, its praise sometimes, its interest always. My study in Brooklyn was a room that had become a picturesque starting point for the imagination of kindly newspaper men. They ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... conceive of few sorrows or ailments which would not be materially better for a cup of hot tea. If not the very elixir of life, it was indeed the next thing ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the rattletrap and the racket of filling the tank with the elixir finished her sleep, however. She woke in confusion, finding herself sitting up, dressed, in her little room, with three strange men ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... had brought with us, was a flask containing an elixir which had the quality of exciting love in the breasts of any man or woman who drank of it. This had been given me by the fair Sumi, who had used it herself and was full of wrath because I refused to drink it likewise, and so return her passion. I showed this liquid to the three maidens who ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... know what to do. She had shortly before become acquainted with a very remarkable man. You have heard of Count St. Germain, about whom so many marvelous stories are told. You know that he represented himself as the Wandering Jew, as the discoverer of the elixir of life, of the philosopher's stone, and so forth. Some laughed at him as a charlatan; but Casnova, in his memoirs, says that he was a spy. But be that as it may, St. Germain, in spite of the mystery surrounding ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... Droop," said the delighted old toper, leaning back against the wall as he beamed across the table at his companion, "look you! An you have a butt of this same brew, Sir Percevall Hart is your slave, your scullion, your foot-boy! Why, man, 'tis the elixir of life! It warms a body like a maid's first ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... together with posturing and breathing that rivalled the "turkey trot," the "bunny hug," and the "grizzly bear." The book, as we turned, over its pages, gave directions for preparing everything from food to love-philtres and the elixir of life. One very interesting chapter was devoted to " electric marriage," which seemed to come to those only who, after searching patiently, at last found perfect mates. Another of the Guru's tenets seemed to be purification by eliminating all ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... of their career, the Arabian doctors began the practice of dissecting and the closer study of anatomy and physiology, which added much to the power of the science. Yet they still believed in the "elixir of life," and tried to work miracle cures, which in many respects may have been successful. It is a question whether they went any farther into the practice of miracle cures than the quacks and charlatans ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... elaborated his idea in the Margrave of A Strange Story, who has no 'soul,' and prolongs his physical and intellectual life by means of an elixir. Margrave is not bad, but he is inferior to the hero, less elaborately designed, of The Haunters and the Haunted. Thackeray's tale is written in a tone of mock mysticism, but he confesses that he likes his own story, in which the strange hero, through ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... from light and air This year is the hundredth year, 200 I feed my fire with a sleepless care, Watching my potion wane or wax: Elixir of Life is simmering there, And but one ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... mediaeval alchemists set down a few centuries out of our time in the murky light of Prescott's sanctum. Yet, though he accepted us at our face value, and began to talk of his strange discoveries there was none of the old familiar prating about matrix and flux, elixir, magisterium, magnum opus, the mastery and the quintessence, those alternate names for the philosopher's stone which Paracelsus, Simon Forman, Jerome Cardan, and the other mediaeval worthies indulged in. This experience at least was as up-to-date as the Curies, ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... She taught him love's elixir, by which art His godhead into gold he did convert; No guards did then his passage stay, He passed with ease, gold was the word; Subtle as lightning, bright, and quick, and fierce, Gold through doors and walls did pierce; ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... red mark from the cheek which a beautiful lady was born with; it were hard times indeed, if a novelist might not do what he pleased in a chemist's laboratory, and produce what drugs, what perfumes, what potable gold or charmed elixir, he may have need of. But we do object to the preposterous motive which prompts the amateur of science to an operation of the most hazardous kind, on a being he is represented as dearly loving. We are to believe that a good husband ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... who is most ignorant, nor, since he himself would conceal his name, do I think fit to enquire so far, lest I get his displeasure." Again—"To pick out the roses from the most thorny bushes of writings, and to make the elixir of philosophers by his own industry, without any tutor, and at twenty-three years of age, this perchance hath been granted to none, or to most few hitherto." Langius, moreover, laments explicitly the fact that he did not print ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... suppressed and wasted force, the precious sovereign remedy, of which society insanely deprives itself—the genius, the intelligence, the inspiration of women. It is dying, inch by inch, in the midst of old superstitions which it invokes in vain, and yet it has the elixir of life in its hands. Let it drink but a draught, and it will bloom once more; it will be refreshed, radiant; it will find its youth again. The heart, the heart is cold, and nothing but the touch of woman can warm ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... pleasures, and triumphs; his fancy, the looker after new things, cannot continue to look for them in books and crucibles, but must seek them on the breathing stage of life. Pinches, buffets, the glow of hope, the shock of disappointment, furious contention with obstacles: these are the true elixir for all vital spirits, these are what they seek alike in their romantic enterprises and their unromantic dissipations. When they are taken in some pinch closer than the common, they cry, 'Catch me here again!' and sure enough you ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... know that on the next day they were going home. Each girl who had done her best would have a word of commendation, and only those who were very naughty, or very stubborn, could resist the all-potent elixir of happiness which would be poured out so abundantly for Mrs. ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... a course of the fluid gold composed by Boiviel; and his sole regret at the end of his days was, not having foreseen the death, or disappearance—a matter quite as disastrous—of his alchemist, who could have furnished him with the means of compounding the elixir for himself as it might ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... He had presented some to Overbury. Ill-natured gossip attributed the death of the Countess of Rutland on September 1, 1612, to pills of his composition. The wonder is that in neither case was any sinister motive charged. On the other hand, his Great Cordial or Elixir, which is not to be confounded with his Simple Cordial, was credited with astonishing virtues, and devoutly imbibed. His exact prescription for it is no longer extant. It is not clear whether he ever divulged the quantities as well as the ingredients. As specified by ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... Narcissus they came like a love arisen from the dead. Long before, he had 'supped full' of all the necromantic excitements that poet or romancer could give. Guy Mannering had introduced him to Lilly; Lytton and Hawthorne had sent him searching in many a musty folio for Elixir Vitas and the Stone. Like Scythrop, in 'Nightmare Abbey,' he had for a long period slept with horrid mysteries beneath his pillow. But suddenly his interest had faded: these phantoms fled before a rationalistic cock-crow, ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... the Hut were the elixir of life, and a day's cooking was no exception to the rule. It began at 7 A.M., and, with a brief intermission between lunch and afternoon tea, continued strenuously till 8.30 P.M. Cooks were broadly classified as "Crook Cooks" ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... gloomy cave." [57] It is the celestial soma or mead which Indra loves to drink; it is the ambrosial nectar of the Olympian gods; it is the charmed water which in the Arabian Nights restores to human shape the victims of wicked sorcerers; and it is the elixir of life which mediaeval philosophers tried to discover, and in quest of which Ponce de Leon traversed the wilds ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... Bihishtee is therefore an inhabitant of Paradise, a cherub, a seraph, an angel of mercy. He has no wings; the painters have misconceived him; but his back is bowed down with the burden of a great goat-skin swollen to bursting with the elixir of life. He walks the land when the heaven above him is brass and the earth iron, when the trees and shrubs are languishing and the last blade of grass has given up the struggle for life, when the very roses smell only of dust, and all day long ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... one cure ere I commence another," said the Arab; "I will pass with you when I have given my patient the second cup of this most holy elixir." ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... scoundrel, but my quick riposte confused him," observed Signor SUCCI, who entered the apartment, wiping his blade on the advertisement of a new beef-essence, and taking copious draughts of his elixir. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... special phenomena of a later day were missing from the carnival, others, as astonishing to us as the steam-organ would have been to those uncouth roisterers, were certainly present. Chief, perhaps, among these was the man who retailed the elixir of youth, the veritable eau de jouvence, to credulous drinkers at sixpence a bottle. This magician, whose dark mysterious face and glittering eyes indicated a strain of Romany blood, and whose accent proved that he had at any rate lived much in Yorkshire, had a small booth opposite ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... elixir of life in roast pork. The jokers of Woolhorton—there are always jokers, very clever they think themselves—considered the reason it suited him so well was because of the pig-like obstinacy of ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... faith, one hope, one Jesus, one refuge. There is that old Christian. Many a scar on his face tells where trouble lacerated him. He has fought with wild beasts at Ephesus. He has had enough misfortune to shadow his countenance with perpetual despair. Yet he is full of hope. Has he found any new elixir? "No," he says; "I have found ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... in rheumatic pains. What then? This is no proof that he did not end in voluptuousness. For our part, we are slow to believe that ever any man did or could learn the somewhat awful truth, that in a certain ruby-colored elixir there lurked a divine power to chase away the genius of ennui, without subsequently abusing this power. True it is that generations have used laudanum as an anodyne (for instance, hospital patients) who have not afterward courted its powers as a ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... effort on our side. If all this without moving a muscle, what should we feel if we too had exerted ourselves! And thus while under the spell of this illusion—this hyperaesthesia not bought with drugs, and not paid for with cheques drawn on our vitality—we feel as if the elixir of life, not our own sluggish blood, were coursing ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... inward representation and shadow of His own Infinite Mind; that I have toiled through what the world calls wisdom, the lore of the old fathers and time-honored philosophy, not for the dream of power and gratified ambition, not for the alchemist's gold or life-giving elixir, but with an eye single to that which I conceived to be the most fitting object of a godlike spirit, the discovery of Truth,—truth perfect and unclouded, truth in its severe and perfect beauty, truth as it sits in awe and holiness in the presence ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... came on to rain; he raised a huge umbrella and crouched under it till the storm was over. But the third day he began to show signs of new life, and before they reached the Schroon's mouth, on the fifth day, his young frame was already responding to the elixir of ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... I am the eyes, that blind law which lies nearest the root of life!—Ah, what a dreamer I should have been, had I lived in the time when great dreams were possible! Beyond a doubt I should have sat brooding over the elixir of life, cooking and mixing, heating and cooling, watching for the flash in the goblet. We know so much now, that the range of hope is sadly limited! A thousand dark ways of what seemed blissful possibility are now closed to us, because there ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... potent elixir, which erects the vital spirit, and holds it when about to flee from its tenement, so did that sweet babe keep the mother's heart pulsing with gentle beat during the days which followed those forlorn ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... you wish, I will do so,' said the father; 'this elixir is not dangerous at my age, ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... his secret and his wish, and put Doctor Coctier on his guard. "Ah," he said to himself, "you have your eye on the King with your elixir of life." And then he added aloud, ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... was altogether within the limits of possibility to discover this long-sought medium; "but," he added, "a philosopher who should go deep enough to acquire the power would attain too lofty a wisdom to stoop to the exercise of it." Not less singular were his opinions in regard to the elixir vitae. He more than intimated that it was at his option to concoct a liquid that should prolong life for years, perhaps interminably; but that it would produce a discord in Nature which all the world, and ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... my dear Frank? You know I would scorn such meanness." But rising somewhat disconcerted—"really, early as it is, I think I must retire; my head," putting up his hand to it, "feels unpleasantly; this confounded elixir of logwood, little as I drank of it, has played the deuce ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... of Health, first in the Adelphi, then in Pall Mall. He sold his "elixir of life" for [pounds]1000 a bottle, was noted for his mud baths, and for his "celestial bed," which assured a beautiful progeny. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... applies with the same cogency to Coleridge. Coleridge began in rheumatic pains. What then? That is no proof that he did not end in voluptuousness. For our parts, we are slow to believe that ever any man did, or could, learn the somewhat awful truth, that in a certain ruby-coloured elixir, there lurked a divine power to chase away the genius of ennui, without subsequently abusing this power. To taste but once from the tree of knowledge, is fatal to the subsequent power of abstinence. True it is, that generations have used laudanum as an anodyne, (for instance, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... or three waitresses with thin pert faces lounged in the background staring at her and whispering together. At last the tea was brought in a discolored metal teapot. Julia poured a cup and drank it hastily. It was black and bitter, but it flowed through her veins like an elixir. She was almost dizzy with exhilaration. Oh, how tired, how unutterably tired ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... had come. Madame Vigneron was crouching on a chair, still stupefied by her fright, whilst M. Vigneron rushed about the room, thrusting everything aside in order that he might prepare a glass of sugared-water, to which he added a few drops of some elixir. This draught, he exclaimed, would set the lad right again. But all the same, it was incomprehensible. The boy was still strong, and to think that he should have fainted like that, and have turned as white as a chicken! Speaking in this wise, M. Vigneron glanced at Madame Chaise, the aunt, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... chamber after the household had retired, the recollection of the day became an elixir, ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... impunity. By the side of this old lady jingled a bunch of keys, securing in different closets and corner-cupboards all sorts of cordial waters, cherry and raspberry brandy, washes for the complexion, Daffy's elixir, a rich seed-cake, a number of pots of currant jelly and raspberry jam, with a range of gallipots and phials and purges for the use of poorer neighbors. The daily business of this good lady was to scold the maids, collect eggs, feed the turkeys and assist at all lyings-in that happened within ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... reverse its spell, 'Twill make my fourth; and he, note well, Could solve the problems mighty— To square the circle, change to gold, Perpetual motion to unfold, And make elixir vitae. ...
— Harper's Young People, June 22, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... 64. Obtain a sheep's bladder and pour into it a heavy solution of sugar or some colored simple elixir, found at any drug store. Tie the bladder carefully and place it in a vessel containing water. After a while it will be found that an interchange has occurred, water having passed into the bladder and the water outside ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... a little his eyes went after her quite as they would have followed the flight of a brilliant bird. Then, as in sheer youth, as one who during a night of refreshing sleep has been steeped body and soul in the elixir that is youth's own, she yielded her young body up to an extravagant dance, whirling away as light as thistledown across the meadow. Hands clapped after her; voices, men's voices, filled her ears with a clamour of praise ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... step of youth, that bold and sparkling glance, that steady hand,—if only these were once more his! Where was all the gold Time had given to him? Upon what had he expended it, to have become thus beggared? To find an apothecary having the elixir of eternal youth! How quickly he would gulp the draft to bring back that beauty which had so often compelled the admiration of women, a Duchesse de Montbazon, a Duchesse de Longueville, a Princesse de Savoie, among the great; a ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... defence of a much misunderstood class. This ingenious work, entitled "Alchemy and the Alchemists," published in 1857, was written to prove that the alchemists were not foolish seekers for sordid gold, nor vain believers in the elixir of life, but philosophers of deep thought and high aims, who, in days when a man dared not say his soul was his own, veiled in mystic language, perfectly understood by each other, theological and philosophical truths, theories, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... throttle, If it wasn't for that there soothing-syrup I've artfully smuggled into its bottle. It's strongish stuff, and I've dropped enough in the Babby's gruel to prove a fixer; For this kid's riot you cannot quiet with LAWSON'S Cordial or CAINE'S Elixir. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 17, 1890. • Various
... never the poorer for his benevolence, the receiver is made rich indeed. It matters little that some dear, kind friend is ready with his bitter draught to remedy what he is pleased to call its unwholesome sweetness; you betake yourself with only the more pleasure to the "blessed elixir," whose fascinations neither the poverty of your pocket, nor the penury of your brain, can withstand, and by the magic of whose spell you are great and gifted. "Vive la bagatelle!" saith the Frenchman. "Long live flattery!" say I, come from what ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... women beautiful for ever; which renews the strength of man; which is a sweet and excellent food, and which provides medicine for various ills, cannot be said to lack many of the attributes of the elixir of life, and is surely entitled to a special paean in ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... trifle, even to the paring of his nails; and being as believer in astrology, and a student in the occult sciences, occasionally mentions his own superstitious observances. Thus, April 11, 1681, he notes—"I took, early in the morning, a good dose of elixir, and hung three spiders about my neck, and they drove my ague ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... his generation, was this same Council of Constance; which proved entirely a failure; one of the largest wind-eggs ever dropped with noise and travail in this world. Two hundred thousand human creatures, reckoned and reckoning themselves the elixir of the intellect and dignity of Europe. Two hundred thousand—nay some, counting the lower menials and numerous unfortunate females, say four hundred thousand—were got congregated into that little Swiss town; and there as ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... some minds, and it will display itself in whatever arena they are engaged. In politics the man they vote for is almost a god. In mechanics, they have invented a machine which shall ensure "perpetual motion;" in chemistry, the elixir of life, or a cure for all the ills of human life; in morals, the kingdom of heaven is speedily coming through the intervention of ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... readily be supposed, a brilliant effort of the mind. In all young men not tainted by corruption such a letter is written with gushings from the heart, too overflowing, too multifarious not to be the essence, the elixir of many other letters begun, ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... responded to the influences under which our gay party spent the next few hours. Innumerable snow-flakes had carried down from the air every particle of impurity, and left it sweet and wholesome enough to seem the elixir of immortal youth. It was so tempered also, that it only braced and stimulated. The raw, pinching coldness of the previous day was gone. The sun, undimmed by a cloud, shone genially, and eaves facing the south were dripping, the drops falling ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... nature at once cold and narrow. Father Nicholas was of a far kindlier disposition, but he was completely engrossed with another subject. Alchemy was reviving. The endless search for the philosopher's stone, the elixir of life, and other equally desirable and unattainable objects, had once more begun to engage the energies of scientific men. The real end which they were approaching was the invention of gunpowder, which can hardly be termed a blessing to the world at large. But Father ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... not going to say that when men love each other passionately and deeply, and sacrifice themselves for one another, or for some cause or purpose affecting only temporal matters, the precious elixir of love is wasted. God forbid! But I do say that all these objects, sweet and gracious as some of them are, ennobling and elevating as some of them are, if they are taken apart from God, are insufficient to fill ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... standing was interesting to him, not because it had been caused by the blood of a queen's favourite, slain in her apartment, but because it offered so admirable an opportunity to prove the efficacy of his unequalled Detergent Elixir. Down on his knees went our friend, but neither ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... and of that alkermes which makes the person tasting it think he is in an Oriental pharmaceutic laboratory. "The idea is," he said, "not so much to treat Hyacinthe as to astound her by giving her a sip of an unknown elixir." ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... suffusions of scarlet and growth of gold? If it is not ourselves that we look at then, it is at one of the tokens and emblems which claim a likeness with us, a link to hold us up to the clear space that washes itself so suddenly in an elixir costly as the golden chances of youth, and the crimson rose of love. With what a sigh, even youth itself will mark that outpouring of coloured glory! It whelms the world and overcomes the sky, and then, while none withstand it, and all is its own, it will change as if wearied, and on a sudden ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... fraternal affection for these three youths to whom he gave the nickname of the "Three Musketeers," He wished to treat them to the very best which the canteen afforded, so the proprietor produced a bottle of champagne or rather ptisan from Rheims, presenting it as though it were an elixir fabricated of gold. ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Todd over the picket fence. The conversation became at once professional after the briefest preliminaries, and he would stand twirling a sweet-scented sprig in his fingers, and make suggestive jokes, perhaps about her faith in a too persistent course of thoroughwort elixir, in which my landlady professed such firm belief as sometimes to endanger the life and usefulness of ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... said deliberately, "that you are more worthy of my attention than I had formerly supposed. A man who can solve the secret of the Golden Elixir (I had not solved it; I had merely stolen some) should be a valuable acquisition to my Council. The extent of the plans of Mr. Commissioner Nayland Smith and of the English Scotland Yard it is incumbent upon me to learn. Therefore, gentlemen, ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... the track wound through deep wooded ravines, or snaked along the narrow tops of spine-like ridges; the air became cooler, damper, and more like elixir, till at a height of 1500 feet we came upon Makaueli, ideally situated upon an unequalled natural plateau, a house of patriarchal size for the islands, with a verandah festooned with roses, fuchsias, the ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... I pledge myself to furnish evidence which will start him well on his road to the gallows!" The judge, a tremendous presence, stalked still nearer the benches. Outfacing the crowd, a sense of the splendor of the part he was being called upon to play flowed through him like some elixir; he felt that he was transcending himself, that his inspiration was drawn from the hidden springs of the spirit, and that he could neither falter nor go astray. "You don't know what you are meddling with! This man has plotted to lay the ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... attentive cowboys, "I can cure anything that touches the ground—biped, quadruped, or centipede—glanders, botts, greased hoofs, heaves, blind staggers, it makes no odds. My universal, self-acting, double compound elixir of equestrian ointment will perform a cure in each and every case. It is cheap! It is sure! It is patented! It is the best, and it is here. You may roll up, you may tumble up, you may walk up, any way to get up, ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... fear that I have indulged expectation which neither reason nor experience can justify. When we see men grow old and die at a certain time one after another, from century to century, we laugh at the elixir that promises to prolong life to a thousand years; and with equal justice may the lexicographer be derided, who being able to produce no example of a nation that has preserved their words and phrases ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... theoretically. We must study everything that surrounds, alters, and determines him, for it is at this point that a man's environments and relationships most influence him. As Grohmann said, half a century ago, "If you could find an elixir, which could cause the vital organs to work otherwise, if you could alter the somatic functions of the body, you would be the master of the will.'' Therefore it is never superfluous to study the individual's environmental conditions, ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... letters came it was as his emissary that the sun shone to give her light in darkness, and she went about the house with a song on her lips. They were filled, these letters, with an elixir of which she drank thirstily to behold visions, and the weariness of her exile fell away. The elixir of High Purpose. Never was love on such a plane! He lifting her,—no marvel in this; and she—by a magic power of levitation at which she never ceased to wonder—sustaining him. By her aid he ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... way. It was very melancholy, very touching, but the sorrow to which he had come home from his long journey had not that forlorn bewilderment in it. He was looking wonderfully well, and when I wanted the name of his elixir, he said it was plasmon. He was apt, for a man who had put faith so decidedly away from him, to take it back and pin it to some superstition, usually of a hygienic sort. Once, when he was well on in years, he came to New York without glasses, and announced that he and all his family, so astigmatic ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... everything else so sweet and winning that there was scarcely a being who did not love, as well as honour her, for the cheerfulness and resignation that had borne her through her many trials. Her trustful spirit and warm heart had been an elixir of youth, and had preserved her freshness and elasticity long after her sister and brother-in-law at Ormersfield had grown aged and sunk into the grave, and even her nephew was fast verging upon more than ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Evelina," and I hesitated with terror at the snap in his dear old eyes, back under their white brows. Then I let my eyes uncover my heart full of the elixir I had prepared for him, and offered him as much as ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... was not yet lost. The Padre's words and attitude acted like a wonderful elixir upon Chiquita. They buoyed her up, lifted her soul from the dust where it had ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... have seldom failed to perform more than those who never deviate from the common roads of action: many valuable preparations of chymistry are supposed to have risen from unsuccessful inquiries after the grand elixir: it is, therefore, just to encourage those who endeavour to enlarge the power of art, since they often succeed beyond expectation; and when they fail, may sometimes benefit the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... foot-passengers, and then I was through, I know not how. Once more I summoned all my power, recalled the twist Astley had spoken of, and tried it. I bent his neck for an inch of rein. Next I got another inch, and then came a taste—the smallest taste—of mastery like elixir. The motion changed with it, became rougher, and the hoof-beats a fraction less frequent. He steered like a ship with sail reduced. In and out we dodged among the wagons, and I was beginning to think I had him, when suddenly, without a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... beginning of another. Ten minutes are not much to a man who has things to say which could hardly be said in ten hours; still, they are something; and to waste even one would be like spilling a drop of precious elixir from a tiny bottle containing ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... excruciatingly funny narrative can be found the elixir of youth for all man and womankind. The magic of its pages compel the old to become young, the care-worn gay, and carking trouble hides its gloomy head and flies away on the blithesome ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... according to Comte, turned this poison into an elixir vitae, was found in the altruistic affections of the teachers of mankind, which led them to limit and modify the doctrine they taught, so as to subserve man's moral improvement. This, however, would not have been sufficient, if these teachers had not at an early period ceased to ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... outlook towers; I bred birds and fishes. In my harem there were always good musicians who played dance tunes. When I went out I enjoyed nature or hunted birds and fished. When I came home, I enjoyed playing the lute or reading; I also liked to concoct an elixir of life and to take breathing exercises,[3] because I did not want to die, but wanted one day to lift myself to the skies, like an immortal genius. Suddenly I was drawn back into the official career, and became once more one of the ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... haunted room. Indeed my spirit haunted it all day and all night long. And when we met amid the shadows, we were wrapped in the mantle of love, and from its folds looked out fearless on the ghostly world about us. Ghosts or none, they never annoyed us. Our love was a talisman, yea, an elixir of life, which made us equal to the twice-born,—the disembodied dead. And they were as a wall of fear about us, to keep far off the unfriendly ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... had discussed my personal failings for the benefit of their readers, as several years older than I really am (all due, no doubt, to my premature baldness). So I asked for the secret of the American hair-preserving elixir, and my charming companion assured me that she had really and truly discovered an infallible composition for producing hair! This she promised to send to me, and upon my return to England I received the following charming letter, which I publish for the benefit of all those ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... whom he sandwiched between a couple of rosy Netherland maids—also failed to grasp the true condition of the nature of things, or the true philosophical explanation. The exhalations from the aged are by no means an elixir of health or life to the young, and the fact that the young were apt to lose health by sleeping with the aged was wrongly attributed to their loss being the others' gain, and the result of its passing into the bodies of their aged companions, and not to its true cause,—the ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... ways for investing it. As in the old days, he was always putting "twenty-five or forty thousand dollars," as he said, into something that promised multiplied returns. Howells tells how he found him looking wonderfully well, and when he asked the name of his elixir he learned ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... cheap." Admitting, what no one at the time denied, the general marketableness of states as private property, this is the one practical result, thinks Carlyle (not likely to think wrong), of that oecumenical deliberation, four years long, of the "elixir of the intellect and dignity of Europe. And that one thing was not its doing; but a pawnbroking job, intercalated," putting, however, at last, Brandenburg again under the will of one strong man. On St. John's day, 1412, he first set ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... lump of coal and put it in the grate. "It must be a dreadful thing to have, judging by his expression." She laughed and wiped her hands on her handkerchief. "I suggested peppermint and hot water, but he looked so reproachfully at me that I changed it to Compound Elixir of Hexagonal Serafoam. ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... of Lobatsi, simplicity is the chief characteristic of the scenery. As I went by Victoria West (I had spent the night talking politics with the civillest Dutchmen) I came in early morning to the first Karroo I had seen. The air was tonic, like an exhilarating wine with some wonderful elixir in it other than alcohol, and though the country reminded me in places of vast plains in New South Wales, it lacked, or seemed to lack, the perpetual brooding melancholy that invests the great Austral island. As I stood on the platform of the car, the sun, not yet risen, gilded level clouds. ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... books, then we may recall Milton's description of a great book, as "the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life." And so literature becomes a store of inexhaustible vials, filled with the most generous elixir decanted from the world's master-spirits. Listen again to Vauvenargues: "Good literature is the essence of the best minds, the abstract of their knowledge, the fruit of their long vigils." Or let us drop metaphor, and accept, as entirely satisfying ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... many other alchemists of that period, had spent years in search of the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life. His vain experiments to transmute the baser metals into gold reduced him to poverty and want. His quest after these secrets had led him to study deeply the nature and composition of poisons and their antidotes. He had visited the great universities and other schools of the continent, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... There are a few cases of consumption. Syphilis is very virulent, and prevails amongst the troops. Ophthalmia and rheumatism are common complaints. Thus Mourzuk is not quite one of those oases, or Hesperian gardens, where the happy residents quaff the elixir of immortal health and virtue. Contrarily, it is a sink of vice and disease within, and a sere foliage of palms and vegetation without, overhung with an ever forbidding sky, of dull ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... of the Heathen Gods. One sets up with a receipt received from Van Helmonts own hands; Another hath received from a Jew the shining of Moses Face; nay I have heard a Pseudochymist blasphemously brag, he saw in the making of a grand Elixir, the Quintessence of the Trinity in Unity, and infinite other pitiful captivations of silly people, to be seen on every Gate and Post of this City; such as are the Spirit of the Salt of the World, Panchymagogon, and other ten-footed Greek ...
— A Short View of the Frauds and Abuses Committed by Apothecaries • Christopher Merrett
... hand. What a flood of old memories came surging back with the touch of the implement! Again he was in Vermont in the stretch of mowings that fronted the old white house where he was born. The scent of the hay in his nostrils stirred him like an elixir, and with a thrill of pleasure he set to work. He had not anticipated toiling out there in the hot sunshine at a task which he had always disliked; but to-day, by a strange miracle, it did not seem to be a task ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... one whom I could benefit. There was a young priest of Thoth, Parmes by name, who had won my goodwill by his earnest nature and his devotion to his studies. To him I whispered my secret, and at his request I injected him with my elixir. I should now, I reflected, never be without a companion of the ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in the journal: "If a man were sure of living forever, he would not care about his offspring." The "Mosses from an Old Manse" supply another link in this train of reflection; for "The Virtuoso's Collection" includes some of the elixir vitae "in an antique sepulchral urn." The narrator there represents himself as refusing to quaff it. "'No; I desire not an earthly immortality,' said I. 'Were man to live longer on earth, the spiritual would die out of him.... There is a celestial something within ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that masculine George Sand, and makes out of something coarse, something Godlike. It is 'sentiment', in my sense of the term—sentiment jealously hidden, but genuine, which extracts the venom from that formidable Thackeray, and converts what might be corrosive poison into purifying elixir. ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... "Here is an elixir. It should last thee a number of days. Whenever Thou art afraid, or feel drowsy, drink a drop. In that way Thou ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... familiar with the works of the great masters when he had not visited Italy, so little could a beer drinker assert that he had seen beer rightly drunk when he had not been in Munich. All over the world beer is regarded as a refreshment, but in Munich it is the elixir of life, the fabled fountain of youth and happiness. It is looked upon as nourishment by the lower classes, who drink for dinner two masses[E] of it, with soup and black bread. For the price of the beer they could procure a good portion ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... heaven, in graciousness, Lifts in her arms with a divine caress. Earth, like a joyous maiden whose pure soul Is filled with sudden ecstacy, became A fruitful Eden; and the golden bowl That held their elixir of life was filled To overflowing with the rarest draught Ever by gods or men in rapture quaffed; Till from the altar of their hearts love's flame Passed through the veins of the world, and thrilled The soul of the rejoicing universe, Which became theirs, and like true neophytes ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... evidently wrought on Cowper like an elixir: "From a scene of the most uninterrupted retirement," he writes to Mrs. Unwin, "we have passed at once into a state of constant engagement. Not that our society is much multiplied; the addition of an individual has made all this difference. Lady Austen and we pass our ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... rifle 'em of your honestly earned money; no, I come before you for the good of each one of you, for the easing of suffering mankind—as I might say—the ha-melioration of stricken humanity. In a word, I am here to introduce to you what I call my Elixir Anthropos—Anthropos, ladies and gentlemen, is an old and very ancient Egyptian word meaning man—or woman, ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... talker is affected in the company of the intelligent; the uneducated in the company of the educated; the poor in the company of the rich; the young lady in the company of the one who is superior to her, and into whose heart she wishes to distil a drop or two of Cupid's elixir. ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... the "elixir of youth," and "perpetual motion," the telegraph was long a dream of the imagination. In the sixteenth century, if not before, it was believed that two magnetic needles could be made sympathetic, so that when one was moved the other would likewise move, however far apart they were, and thus ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... meditative tendency. Hawthorne, like his hero, sought refuge from the hard facts of commonplace life by retiring into a visionary world. He delights in propounding much the same questions as those which tormented poor Septimius, though, for obvious reasons, he did not try to compound an elixir of life by means of a recipe handed down from Indian ancestors. The strange mysteries in which the world and our nature are shrouded are always present to his imagination; he catches dim glimpses of the laws which bring out strange harmonies, but, on ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... see no reason to the contrary, for we see the quintessence of wine will convert water into wine; why therefore should not the elixir of gold turn lead ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various |
