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More "Divination" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or other standing water fate reveals itself to the solitary votary. O Vivian, I have been too long a searcher after this fearful science; and this very night, agitated in spirit, I sought yon water. The wind was in the right direction, and everything concurred in favouring a propitious divination. I knelt down to gaze on the lake. I had always been accustomed to view my own figure performing some future action, or engaged in some future scene of my life. I gazed, but I saw nothing but a brilliant ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... element contributed by the Turanian Accadians, grew a system of magic and divination which had a most profound influence not only upon all the Eastern nations, including the Jews, but also upon the later peoples of the West. mediaeval magic and witchcraft were, in large part, an ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... together. Some of the seats are under the black shadows of the overhanging rock. Since the pool was an object of fear and mystery the seats were probably used only by priests or sorcerers. It would have been a splendid place to practice divination. No ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... persisted Gudrun. It was strange, her pointed interest in his answer. It might have been her own fate she was inquiring after. Her dark, dilated eyes rested on Birkin, as if she could conjure the truth of the future out of him, as out of some instrument of divination. ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... accomplished needlewomen; for a Breton chronicler, giving an account of the coronation of an early king (Erech) at Nantes, describes his mantle as embroidered by these priestesses with figures of Arithmetic, Astronomy, and Music. Their skill in divination caused them to be associated with the fairies; and Morgan—i.e. "born of the sea"—one of these priestesses, who lived in the first century of the Christian era, was ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... move inwards and outwards as they circle round; and this in turn yields place to the "Bondogaya" and two religious figures, the "Damali" and "Chinughi," which are said when properly performed to give men the power of divination. ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... comprised a large number who were skilled in astrology and divination. The great temple of Mexico, alone, had 5,000 priests in attendance, of whom the chief dignitaries superintended the dreadful rites of human sacrifice. Others had management of the singing choirs with their musical accompaniment ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... insight and a foresight which the ancients would have called divination, he saw, in the midst of darkness and obscurity, the logic of events, and forecast the result. From the first, in his own quaint, original way, without ostentation or offense to his associates, he was pilot and commander of his administration. He was ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... inscriptions written 300 feet high upon the face of the rocks of Behistun; and though the alphabets and the languages in which these long inscriptions were "graven with a pen of iron and lead upon the rocks for ever," had been long dead and unknown, yet, by a kind of philological divination, Archaeology has exorcised and resuscitated both; and from these dumb stones, and from the analogous inscriptions of Van, Elwend, Persepolis, etc., it has evoked official gazettes and royal contemporaneous ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... suggests a contradiction in terms—the word "prophecy" being so constantly, in ordinary use, restricted to "foretelling." Strictly, however, the term prophecy applies as much to outspeaking as to foretelling; and, even in the restricted sense of "divination," it is obvious that the essence of the prophetic operation does not lie in its backward or forward relation to the course of time, but in the fact that it is the apprehension of that which lies out of the sphere of immediate knowledge; the seeing of that which, to the natural sense ...
— On the Method of Zadig - Essay #1 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... home). The first of these was Fenris, the wolf; the second was Joermungand, the Midgard serpent; and the third was Hela, death. Very soon did the gods become aware of this evil progeny which was being reared in Jotunheim, and by divination they discovered that they must receive great injury from them. That they had such a mother spoke bad for them, but their coming of such a sire was a still worse presage. All-father therefore despatched certain of the gods to bring the children to him, and when they were ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... Scripture was closed, and especially during the last three hundred years, may enable us to realize the significance of a most remarkable fact. Even in those early ages, when to all the nations surrounding Israel the heavenly bodies were objects for divination or idolatry, the attitude of the sacred writers toward them was perfect in its sanity ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... By what felicity of divination were you inspired to send me a few days ago that wonderful diary under its lock and key?—feeling so rightly certain, I mean, of the peculiar degree and particular PANG of interest that I should find in it? I don't wonder, indeed, at your general ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... especially of the most ancient, is much less advanced than that of the hieroglyphs. When documents in the old language, or at least written in the primitive ideographic characters, are attacked, the process is one of divination rather than of translation in the strict sense of ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... court; his wife, his daughter, his nephews, his sons-in-law his sister, Agrippa, his kinsmen, his domestics, his friends; Areus, Maecenas, his slayers of beasts for sacrifice and divination: there thou hast the death of a whole court together. Proceed now on to the rest that have been since that of Augustus. Hath death dwelt with them otherwise, though so many and so stately whilst they lived, than it doth use to deal with any one particular ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... be said, her value from Lord Mark. She wished him, the wonderful lady, to have no pretext for not knowing what he thought of Miss Theale. Why his judgment so mattered remained to be seen; but it was this divination, in any case, that now determined Milly's rejoinder. "No. She knows you. She has probably reason to. And you all, here, know each other—I see that—so far as you know anything. You know what you're used to, and it's your being used to it—that, and that only—that ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... so much in the right in guessing you had been ill, but at our age there is little sagacity in such divination. In my present holidays from the gout, I have a little rheumatism, or some ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... ascertained the breadth of the original note by a part of the middle-crease which remained, filled out the torn part with blank paper, completed the divided words in the same character of manuscript, and endeavored to guess the remainder, but no clairvoyant power of divination came to my aid. I turned over the letters again, remarking the neatness with which the addresses had been cut off, and wondering why the man had not destroyed the letters and other memoranda entirely, if he wished to hide a possible crime. The fact that ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... communicated my knowledge of the definite locality of the sample joint. She plunged her arm, bare and herculean, behind the aforementioned sofa, and holding aloft a section of wood, called out in a mood of discovery: 'Is that it?' Replying in the affirmative, she added, under an impulse of innocent divination that whatever her wizard master laid hands upon could result in nothing short of an invention, 'Sure, sor, and what's he going to ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... however malevolent, can resist the power of the right word."[39:4] Ignorant people are usually impressed by obscure phrases, the more so, if these are well sprinkled with polysyllables. Cicero, in his treatise on Divination (LXIV) criticizes the lack of perspicuity in the style of certain writers, and supposes the case of a physician who should prescribe a snail as an article of diet, and whose prescription should read, "an earth-born, grass-walking, house-carrying, ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... whether or no even the general conception of such a performance was due to Raynal, it is at least certain that the original author, whoever he may have been, divined a remarkable literary opportunity. This divination is in authorship what felicity of experiment is to the scientific discoverer. The book came into immediate vogue. It was published in 1772; a second edition was demanded within a couple of years, and it is computed that more ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... two distinct functions: (1st), a kind of divination called bhao (the same in Hindi), and (2nd), a kind of Shamanism called darasta in Hindi, and bharotan in Horokaji, which, however, is resorted to only on very grave occasions—as, for instance, when several families think ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... vocabulary. Owing to this thorough knowledge of Hebrew he readily obtained insight into the true sense of the text. By subjecting the thought of the Holy Scriptures to a simple and entirely rational examination, he not seldom succeeds in determining it. Thus, as it were by divination, he lighted upon the meaning of numerous Biblical passages. A long list might be made of explanations misunderstood by his successors, and revived, consciously or unconsciously, by modern exegetes. An illustration in point ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... their own price;—his conversation will seldom be taken in exchange for theirs without a large discount,—and this, by the by, eternally driving him into the hands of more equitable brokers, for such conversation as he can find, it requires no great spirit of divination to guess ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... he did not deal in mummies himself, though he had a stuffed crocodile very much at my service; but would I call to-morrow, and bring Leonora? He added that he had known of our coming by virtue of his secret art of divination. 'And thyself,' he added, 'shalt gaze without extra charge in ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... natives and probably never by the professional shaman, who worked by incantation, often pulverizing and mixing the substances mystically used, to prevent their detection. The same mixtures were employed in divination. The author particularly mentions Mandan ceremonies, in which a white "medicine" stone, as hard as pyrites, was produced by rubbing in the hand snow or the white feathers of a bird. The blowing away of the disease, considered ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... disciples. The latter confesses, in a well-known passage, that "Ivanhoe" was the inspirer of his "Conquete d'Angleterre," and styles the novelist "le plus grand maitre qu'il y ait jamais eu en fait de divination historique." [45] ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... familiarized itself with all the relics of an ancient period can sometimes, by the force of its sympathetic divination, restore the missing notes in the "music of humanity," and reconstruct the fragments into a whole which will really bring the remote past nearer to us, and interpret it to our duller apprehension—this form of imaginative power must always be among the very rarest, because it demands as much accurate ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... regarded her seriously, as if with a certain divination of her worry. Someway, from the look in his eyes her confidence returned, ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... of the entrails of animals for the purposes of divination is worthy of note, as a most rare, if not a solitary, instance of the kind among the nations of the New World, though so familiar in the ceremonial of sacrifice among the pagan nations ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... gone so far as to say to herself that such a cheerful presence coming and going might make life more interesting. The new-comer, she was quite well aware, was going away to-morrow, nor was there any reason within her power of divination why he should not go; but he was a pleasant break. Chatty reasoned with herself that though a love of novelty is a bad thing and quite unjustifiable in a woman, still that when something new comes of itself ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... less obvious indications of general tone of style, color of incident, and form of fable, on which more phlegmatic persons base measurement and comparison. Whatever of truth there may or may not be generally in the above remarks,—certain it is, that in the novels now in question instinct or divination directed us aright. In the prefaces and notices before us, we find that the Bells were three sisters:—two of whom are no longer amongst the living. The survivor describes ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... I not true? doth not his passion speak Out of my divination? O my senses, Why lost you not your powers, and become Dull'd, if not deaded, with this spectacle? I know him, it is Sordido, the farmer, A boor, and brother to ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... locks up truths, which were once well known, but which, in the course of ages, have passed out of sight and been forgotten. In other cases it holds the germs of truths, of which, though they were never plainly discerned, the genius of its framers caught a glimpse in a happy moment of divination. A meditative man cannot refrain from wonder, when he digs down to the deep thought lying at the root of many a metaphorical term, employed for the designation of spiritual things, even of those with regard to which professing philosophers have ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... the Apostle John, he exhibited in society a tact and address which, at this period at least, did not compromise his religious professions. Next to his interest in the Founder of Christianity was his interest in human character, and his divination of the working of men's minds was such that, according to Goethe, it produced an uneasy feeling to be in his presence. Be it added that Lavater was in full sympathy with the leaders of the Sturm und Drang as emancipators from dead formalism, and the ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... a professed cabalist, and was visited in his studio in the Hotel de Crillon (Rue de la Verrerie) by all those who desired to unroll the Book of Fate. In 1783 he published Maniere de se Recreer avec le Jeu de Cartes nommees Tarots. In the British Museum are some divination cards published in Paris in the first half of the nineteenth century, called Grand Etteilla and Petit Etteilla, each pack being accompanied with a ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... Perronel drew near to the party round the fire, where the divination of the burning of nuts was going on, but not successfully, since no pair hitherto put in would keep together. However, the next contribution was a snail, which had been captured on the wall, and was solemnly set to crawl on ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... processes of notation—that of his practically instant surrender to the consequences of the act of perception in his host of which the two women trained suppos-ably in the art of pleasing had been altogether incapable; and that of some other condition on Newton's part that left his own poor power of divination nothing less than shamed. This last was signally the case on the former's saying, ever so responsively, almost radiantly, in answer to his account of how he happened to come: "Oh then it's very interesting!" That was the astonishing note, after what he had been through: neither ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... vision till they have first inquired the time at which it befell; for, if it were early, and of the morning sleep, they then thought that they might make a good interpretation thereof (that is, that it might be worth the interpreting), in that the soul was then fitted for divination, and disencumbered. But if in the first sleep, or near midnight, while the soul was as yet clouded and drowned in libations, they, being wise, refused to give any interpretation. Moreover, the gods themselves ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... in no time went by. Shih-yin was the first to fall ill, and his wife, Dame Feng, likewise, by dint of fretting for her daughter, was also prostrated with sickness. The doctor was, day after day, sent for, and the oracle consulted by means of divination. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... The divination of each cup should be carefully studied with its illustration; by this means the student will be enabled to grasp the principles upon which to form a judgment of the cup ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... rejoinders to Lois's remarks were more or less at random. Vital questions were pounding through his brain and demanding an answer. Who knew but that with regard to Rosie she was right—and yet wrong? Women, with their remarkable powers of divination, didn't always hit the nail directly on the head. It might be the case with Lois now. She might be right in her surmise that Rosie was in love, and mistaken in those light and cruel words: "Oh, not with you!" He didn't suppose it was with him. And ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... hand, is a non-reflex movement of a voluntary muscle, executed in the waking state but not controlled by the ordinary waking consciousness. Phenomena of this kind play a large part in primitive ceremonies of divination (q.v.) and in our own day furnish much of the material of Psychical Research. At the lowest level we have vague movements of large groups of muscles, as in "bier-divination," where the murderer or his residence is inferred from the actions of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... babies . . . she was one mother then, she had become another mother now. She turned to bless the torment of bitter, doubting questioning of what she had called mother-love, which had forced her forward blindly struggling, till she found this divination ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... hand, had no such scruples. She was more like Esther in nature, with a touch of cynicism curling her dainty lip, arising, perhaps, from an early divination that she was to lack Esther's opportunities. Perhaps it was because she was the pessimist—the quite cheerful pessimist—of the family, that she was by far the cleverest and most industrious at the housework. If it was her fate ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... from fifteen or sixteen to some fifty years of age, who walk about the streets, carrying on their backs a divining-box about a foot square; they have no shop or stall, but wander about, and are invited into their customers' houses. The ceremony of divination is very simple. A porcelain bowl filled with water is placed upon a tray, and the customer, having written the name of the person with whom he wishes to hold communion on a long slip of paper, rolls it into a spill, which he dips into the water, and thrice sprinkles ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... far and wide, till the mother died, and Cadmus went to Delphi—the place thought to be the centre of the earth—where Apollo had slain the serpent Python, and where he had a temple and cavern in which every question could be answered. Such places of divination were called oracles, and Cadmus was here told to cease from seeking his sister, and to follow a cow till she fell down with fatigue, and to build a city on that spot. The poor cow went till she came ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... nature, upon which antiquity founded most of their public and private enterprises, our religion has totally abolished them. And although there yet remain amongst us some practices of divination from the stars, from spirits, from the shapes and complexions of men, from dreams and the like (a notable example of the wild curiosity of our nature to grasp at and anticipate future things, as if we had not enough to do ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... instructors was Lenbach, and she is said by some critics to have appropriated his peculiarities as a colorist and his shortcomings in drawing, without attaining his geniality and power of divination. In 1891 her portrait of Count von Moltke, begun shortly before his death and finished afterward, was sent to the International Exposition at Berlin, but was rejected. The Emperor, however, bought it for his private collection, and at his request it was given ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... tighten, pull as though by chance, and bring their lives into one and the same circle. Wondering in particular for what kind of a companion the second cover was laid, Henriot felt certain that their eventual coming together was inevitable. He possessed this kind of divination from first impressions, and not uncommonly ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... word Aper, which means a boar, and alluding to the prediction of a soothsayer in Gaul, who had told him that he would become emperor after having killed a boar (Vopiscus, in "Hist. Aug."). Diocletian, self-composed and strong-minded in other respects, was all his life an anxious believer in divination, which superstition led him probably to inflict summary punishment upon Aper with his own hands. He made his solemn entrance into Nicomedia in September, 284, which town he afterward chose for his ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... lose sight of the fact that since abandoning her work-girl existence Clara had been constantly educating herself, not only by direct study of books, but through her association with people, her growth in experience. Where in the old days of rebellion she had only an instinct, a divination to guide her, there was now just enough of knowledge to give occupation to her developed intellect and taste. Far keener was her sense of the loss she had suffered than her former longing for what she knew only in dream. The activity of ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... I see through you at last! You're a fanatic, a poor, frenzied maniac on this subject, and you've morbidly spied on and studied me as a typical case of it; through your devilish understanding and divination you've guessed at that conversation between me and my wife, and like the creature I pictured you in my house, a ravening, devouring thing, you've sought to drag me into your hell of madness! But you shan't! I tell you I see through you at last, you ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... progress in the acquisition of the language that I was able after a few weeks to understand much of what was said to me, and to express myself in a vague, roundabout way. In the latter operation I was much assisted by a peculiar faculty of divination which the Russians possess in a high degree. If a foreigner succeeds in expressing about one-fourth of an idea, the Russian peasant can generally fill up the remaining three-fourths from ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... journey of the sun,[1] let my desire be fulfilled." Saying this, she, in a purified condition of body and soul, worshipped the goddess Night. And in the name of her chastity and truth she had recourse to divination.[2] And she asked, "Show me the place where the king of the gods is. Let truth be verified by truth." And it was thus that she addressed the goddess ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... men who argue that the speech was fictitious are also obliged to explain what motive there could possibly have been for the deception; they accordingly advance the theory that it was part of Dunmore's (imaginary) treacherous conduct, as he wished to discredit Cresap, because he knew—apparently by divination—that the latter was going to be a whig. Even granting the Earl corrupt motives and a prophetic soul, it remains to be explained why he should wish to injure an obscure borderer, whom nobody has ever heard of except in connection with Logan; it ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... a change became familiar to me in the course of time, and Mrs. Todd hardly noticed some plain proofs of divination one August morning when I said, without preface, that I had just seen the Beggs' best chaise go by, and that we should have to take the grocery. Mrs. Todd was ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... the Pythia in Apollo's temple at Delphi, were possessed with a spirit of divination or prophecy. The barbarous Latin form of the word was "Pythonissa" or "Phitonissa." See note 9 to ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... of Jeff's conversation was that he could suit it to his man every time. He had a kind of divination about it. There was a certain kind of man that Jeff would size up sideways as he stropped the razor, and in whose ear he would whisper: "I see where Saint Louis has took four straight games off Chicago,"—and so hold him fascinated ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... Catalogue of Playing and other Cards in the British Museum, accompanied by a Concise General History of the Subject, and Remarks on Cards of Divination and of a Politico-Historical Character. By William Hughes Willshire, M.D. Printed by order of the Trustees, ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley
... Exhibition would open within two days, and this was to be her contribution. A sad-eyed Cassandra, with pallid, prescient, woe-struck features—an over-mastering face, wherein the flickering light of divination struggled feebly with the human horror of the To-Come, whose hideous mysteries were known only to the royal prophetess. In mute and stern despair it looked out from the canvas, a curious anomalous thing—cut adrift from human help, bereft of aid from heaven—yet, in ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... women experts in the fine art of interpreting countenance and character, and by a mysterious and unerring divination, Mrs. Singleton knew that her visitor desired no companion in his vigils; hence, after flitting about the room for ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Auntie time!" cried Rhoda, with a quick divination of something unsettled or misunderstood. "Don't you know your Rhudy? Even I was afraid of you till I was tuke sick and you thought it was ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... invariably of straight lines, in the shape of little sticks either singly or put together. Such sticks were in early times used by the northern nations for the purpose of ascertaining future events. The sticks were shaken up, and from the figures that they formed a kind of divination was derived. ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... the step, from the moon-blue huddle of the castaway, there came a sound. With a singular clarity of divination I built up the thought, the doubt, the bitter perturbation in the fellow's mind. The woman had danced then at Papeete, the cross roads, the little Paris of mid-seas. And before the white men from steamers—the white ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Neptune was found through scientific prophecy. No one suspected the existence of a trans-Uranian planet till Uranus itself, by hair-breadth departures from its predicted orbit, gave out the secret. No one saw the disturbing planet till the pencil of the mathematician, with almost occult divination, had pointed out its place in the heavens. The general predication of a trans-Uranian planet was made by Bessel, the great Konigsberg astronomer, in 1840; the analysis that revealed its exact location was undertaken, half a decade later, by two independent workers—John ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... we have here a work Wrought counter to the stars and destiny. The science is still honest: this false heart Forces a lie on the truth-telling heaven. On a divine law divination rests; Where nature deviates from that law, and stumbles Out of her limits, there all science errs. True I did not suspect! Were it superstition Never by such suspicion t' have affronted The human form, O may that time ne'er come In which I shame me of the infirmity. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... great number of ignorant prejudices, a multitude of barbarous errors, even at the present day, receive the almost universal sanction of the human race? Are not nearly all the inhabitants of the earth imbued with the idea of magic—in the habit of acknowledging occult powers—given to divination—believers in enchantment—the slaves to omens—supporters of witchcraft—thoroughly persuaded of the existence of ghosts? If some of the most enlightened persons are cured of these follies, they still find very zealous partizans in the greater number of mankind, who accredit them with the ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... mark when they miss; as they do generally also of dreams. The second is, that probable conjectures, or obscure traditions, many times turn themselves into prophecies; while the nature of man, which coveteth divination, thinks it no peril to foretell that which indeed they do but collect. As that of Seneca's verse. For so much was then subject to demonstration, that the globe of the earth had great parts beyond the Atlantic, which mought be ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... the field, To see what comfort it would yield; And as I went my private way, An olive-branch before me lay; And seeing it, I made a stay, And took it up, and view'd it; then Kissing the omen, said Amen; Be, be it so, and let this be A divination unto me; That in short time my woes shall cease, And love shall crown my ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... could have put this hope in the human mind; since it is said that many have hastened to death of the body that they might live in the other life; and this also is impossible. Again, we have continual experience of our immortality in the divination of our dreams, which could not be if there were no immortal part in us, since immortal must be the revelation. This part may be either corporeal or incorporeal if one think well and closely. I say corporeal or incorporeal, because of the different opinions ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... his daughter his money at once, she would spend it extravagantly. Upon consideration, therefore, he hid the money in the pillar, and instructed his daughter as related. In accordance with the father's prophecy, the man came and lodged in the house on the predicted day, and by the art of divination ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... he had nothing but contempt for the later Neoplatonism, the theurgic and theosophic apparatus of Iamblichus and his friends. I have said nothing yet about the extraordinary development of magic in all its branches, astrology, necromancy, table-rapping, and other kinds of divination, charms and amulets and witchcraft, which brought ridicule upon the last struggles of paganism. These aberrations of Nature-Mysticism will be dealt with in their later developments in my seventh Lecture. St. Augustine, after mentioning some nonsensical incantations of the "abracadabra" ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... other red men of the forest, was collected into a roll at the top of the head, and tied round with a string of red wampum, its extremities being suffered to fall on either side, as nature or accident might dispose it. When they would intercede with the Great Spirit, or know his will by divination, they assumed other dresses; the skins of bears or buffaloes, or mantles curiously woven of feathers. They usually dwelt together on a sort of consecrated ground, set apart for their special accommodation, and which was as unlike the rest of the valley, as the valley itself was unlike ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... be killed; thinking thereby to escape the realization of the prediction. Servius, on the authority of Euphorion, relates the story in much the same manner; but a poet quoted by Cicero in his first book on Divination, says that it was the oracle of Zelia, a little town at the foot of Mount Ida, which gave that answer as an interpretation of the dream of Hecuba. Pausanias says it was the sibyl Herophila who interpreted the dream, while other ancient writers state ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... the best of them get the equivalent of from eight to ten dollars a month. Every white individual has one or more of them; even the tiny children with their ridiculous little sun helmets are followed everywhere by a tall, solemn, white-robed black. Their powers of divination approach the uncanny. About the time you begin to think of wanting something, and are making a first helpless survey of a boyless landscape, your own servant suddenly, mysteriously, and unobtrusively appears from nowhere. Where he keeps himself, where he feeds himself, where he sleeps ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... at his unconscious divination. "I do not know," she said. "But you are one person, Jim Daly is another. You have had every advantage; he is a—er—blatherskite. Yet you condescend to put yourself on a par with him, and condone the offence on the ground that your little ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... permitted that I send for my priests, who tell by divination, having burnt strange herbs to the gods that guard the ...
— Plays of Near & Far • Lord Dunsany
... amiable young men, and eventually they made the Janta the scapegoat, and he got seven years, while the murderers could not be touched. Colonel Mackenzie writes that, "Curious to relate, the Jantas, known locally as Bhagats, in order to become possessed of their alleged powers of divination and prophecy, require to travel to Kazhe, beyond Surat, there to learn and be instructed by low-caste Koli impostors." This is interesting as an instance of the powers of witchcraft being attributed by the Hindus or higher race to the indigenous primitive tribes, a rule which ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... been misunderstood by Church writers as much as by their adversaries, for if Francis was particular not to put himself in the attitude of revolt, he would not compromise his independence, and he felt with an exquisite divination that all the privileges which the court of Rome could heap upon him were worth nothing in comparison with liberty. Alas, he was soon forced to resign himself to these gilded bonds, against which he never ceased to protest, even to his last sigh;[10] but to shut ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... claimed to exercise the prophetical office. From a very early date they had made themselves conspicuous as omen-readers and dream-expounders; but, not content with such occasional exhibitions of prophetic power, they ultimately reduced divination to a system, and, by the help of the barsom or bundle of divining rods, undertook to return a true answer on all points connected with the future, upon which they might be consulted. Credulity is never wanting among Orientals; and the power of the priesthood was no ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... his story and then asked whether Jadu Babu would try Bati Chala (divination by the bata leaf), or some simpler method of discovering the lost jasam. On learning that the matter would be left entirely in his hands, he told Jadu Babu to collect all his servants in the parlour and let him ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... would sometimes be accompanied by the slim, fair-haired Court pages, with their floating mantles, and gay fluttering ribands; but more often he would be alone, feeling through a certain quick instinct, which was almost a divination, that the secrets of art are best learned in secret, and that Beauty, like Wisdom, loves ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... hurled the bolts, the great king and lawgiver, the father of men, and Hera, originally the air, became the protecting goddess of married life; Apollo, the god of light, who shot forth his arrows, not at first identified with Helios, became the god of divination and poetry, who led the choir of the muses; the goddess of light, Athene, became the contentious goddess of wisdom; Aphrodite, born of the foam of the sea, once the symbol of the fruitful power of nature, later, encircled by the Graces, became the type ...
— A Comparative View of Religions • Johannes Henricus Scholten
... Indians, and sent them to Ticonderoga in numbers that were sometimes embarrassing. Even Pottawattamies from Lake Michigan were prowling about Winslow's camp and silently killing his sentinels with arrows, while their "medicine men" remained at Ticonderoga practising sorcery and divination to aid the warriors or learn how it fared with them. Bougainville writes in his Journal on the fifteenth of October: "Yesterday the old Pottawattamies who have stayed here 'made medicine' to get news of their brethren. The lodge trembled, the sorcerer sweated ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... 'Divination is another point on which Mongols are troublesome. It never for a moment enters their head that a man so intelligent and well fitted out with appliances as a foreigner seems to them to be cannot divine. Accordingly they come to him to divine for ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... from or through him, Thou conveyedst to me, and tracedst in my memory, what I might hereafter examine for myself. But at that time neither he, nor my dearest Nebridius, a youth singularly good and of a holy fear, who derided the whole body of divination, could persuade me to cast it aside, the authority of the authors swaying me yet more, and as yet I had found no certain proof (such as I sought) whereby it might without all doubt appear, that what had been truly foretold by those consulted was the result of haphazard, ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... not the theory of the Aryan mythological origin of our folk-tales be as imaginary and as groundless as the theory of the Oriental origin of fairies? At the same time, let us admit that the superstitious belief in capnomancy—i.e., divination by smoke—still said to be prevalent in some parts of the Highlands, is probably the relic of the old sacrifices by fire to the gods. In so far the superstition has a mythological significance, but then, are we not driven back to the consideration whether these gods were not actual personages ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... go into a thorough investigation of the causes that have produced so many disagreeable effects in the army and country, in a word, that public abuses should be corrected. Without this it does not in my judgment require the spirit of divination to foretell the consequences of the present administration nor to how little purpose the States individually are framing constitutions, providing laws, and filling offices with the abilities of their ablest men. These, if the ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... use of my profession. But I was pleased to be of some service to this rich banker. He wished to consult me professionally, because he had heard from the truthful lips of rumour of the wonderful powers of divination given to the foreign medical man. What was his probable tenure of life? That was the problem. I gravely examined two of his pulses—every properly organised Chinaman has four hundred—and finding his heart where it should be in the centre of his body, with the ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... preferred intelligence in the quick, the sort of intelligence which studies men. She loved to pierce through to the soul and to weigh its value—(she gave as scrupulous an attention to it as the Jewess of Matsys to the weighing of her gold)—with marvelous divination she could find the weak spot in the armor, the imperfections and foibles which are the key to the soul,—she could lay her hands on its secrets: it was her way of feeling her sway over it. But she never dallied with her victory: she never did anything with her prize. Once her curiosity and her ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... his linguistic studies. Difficult as the language seems to be upon one's first introduction to it, it was not long before I was able to understand much of what was said to me, and to express myself in a vague roundabout way. In the latter operation I was much assisted by a peculiar faculty of divination which the Russian peasant possesses to a remarkably high degree. If a foreigner succeeds in expressing about one-fourth of an idea, the Russian peasant can generally fill up the remaining three-fourths from his own intuition. This may perhaps be readily understood when one ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... word translated 'divine,' means to eye subtly, to search, to try. Verse 5 may be rendered, 'And he will search deeply for it'; and in verse 15, 'Know ye not that a man like me would search deeply,' alluding to the certainty of detection, but not by divination.—Ed. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... in Sicily, and was not brought to an end until after four years of hard fighting. The leaders were Salvius, or Tryphon, an Italian, and Athenion, a Cilician, or Greek. Both showed considerable talent, but owed their leadership, Salvius to his knowledge of divination, and Athenion to his pretensions to astrology. They were often successful, and it was not until a Consul had taken the field against them that the slaves were subdued, the chiefs having successively fallen, and no one arising to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... war or any other important matter, the natives used to have recourse to divination by means of little miniature darts made of rushes or reeds, or often of the leaf of ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... and shook through his great stature, he seemed indeed like one in whom the spirit of divination worked and might utter oracles. Herrick looked at him, and looked away; It seemed not decent to spy upon such agitation; and the ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... divination, Thelismer Thornton watched the rapid development of this bottle imp with much complacency. "Whispering" Urban Cobb brought him reports from the field. Talleyrand Sylvester was trying to place bets on Harlan Thornton, but there were no takers. It was even stated that ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... more occult than the manufacture of yellow starch and skin lotions. "It was also rumoured,'' says Mr Sabatini, "that she amassed gold in another and less licit manner: that she dabbled in fortune-telling and the arts of divination.'' We shall see, as the story develops, that the rumour had some foundation. The inquiring mind of the late Dr Turner had led him into strange company, and his legacy to Anne included connexions more sombre than those in the extravagantly ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... roof anything to do with your divination?" asked Vendale, holding his light towards a gloomy ragged growth of dark fungus, pendent from the arches with a very disagreeable and repellent effect. "We are famous for this growth in this ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... said Yahn with quick divination,—"that he would like to know of the strangers who are made welcome here:—and why they come far into a country not ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... devilish men, who serve nobody but the Devil, that is, the spirit which in their language they call Menetto; under which title they comprehend everything that is subtle and crafty and beyond human skill and power. They have so much witchcraft, divination, sorcery and wicked arts, that they can hardly be held in by any bands or locks. They are as thievish and treacherous as they are tall; and in cruelty they are altogether inhuman, more than barbarous, far exceeding ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... the Argives, casting back death over their eyes, and Thebes will he make illustrious: of these two fates choose the one; either preserve thy child or the state. Every information from me thou hast:—lead me, my child, toward home;—but whoever exercises the art of divination, is a fool; if indeed he chance to show disagreeable things, he is rendered hateful to those to whom he may prophesy; but speaking falsely to his employers from motives of pity, he is unjust as touching the Gods.—Phoebus ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... Pison, in his "Natural History of the East Indies," makes use of the word Vates (divine) to designate these insects, and speaks of that superstition, common to both Christians and heathens, that assigns to them the gifts of prophecy and divination. The habit that the mantis has of first stretching out one fore leg, and then the other, and of preserving such a position for some little time, has also led to the belief among the illiterate that it is in the act, in such ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... represented himself for the time being, for he claimed the power, as God, to know and reveal the future. This explanation accounts for the fact that the witches always spoke of such animals as the Devil and believed that they could foretell the future by his means. The actual method of divination is not preserved; all that remains of the ceremony are the words and gestures which were used before the appearance of the animal, and these only in few cases. The method was probably such as obtained in other places where ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... the second act of the play a mysterious and solacing pleasure came to her. She enjoyed the words with which Enid questions the life of her richest and most powerful suitor. The mingled shrewdness, simplicity, and sweetness of this scene always filled her with a new sense of Douglass's power of divination. Indeed, she closed the play each night with a sense of being more deeply indebted to him as well as a feeling of having been near him. Once she saw a face strangely like his in the upper gallery, and the blood tingled round her heart, and she played the remainder of the act with mind ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... and his creed to believe in the overwhelming power of the mind. "If you have faith enough, and think hard enough, you can think anything until it comes true," he had told himself more than once. And he knew Yellow Bird possessed that illimitable faith, and that behind her divination lay generations and centuries of an unbreakable certainty in the power of mind over matter. He realized his own limitations, but a mysterious voice in the still night seemed whispering to him that in the crude wisdom of Yellow Bird's brain lay ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... you know—hasn't sent you to me." She knew the luck he meant—that of her mother's having so enabled him to get rid of her; but it was the nearest allusion of the merely invidious kind that he would make. It had thus come to our young woman on the spot and by divination: the service he desired of her matched with remarkable closeness what she had so promptly taken into her head to name to himself—to name in her own interest, though deterred as yet from having brought it right out. She had been prevented ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... his physical vigor. Every nerve and muscle was flexible and strong, as if made of steel wire. His eye had never before been so clear, nor his ear so acute, and above all, that sixth sense, the power of divination almost, which came from a perfect correlation of the five senses, developed to the utmost degree, was alive in him. Nothing could stir in the brush without his knowing it, and, welcoming the pursuit, the spirit of challenge was so strong in him that he threw back his head and uttered a ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... real veneration for any of their idols; nor do they hesitate to profane the temples, by smoking their pipes, and taking refreshments, and even by gambling, within the consecrated precincts. The priests are shameless impostors. They practise the mountebank sciences of astrology, divination, necromancy, and animal magnetism, and keep for sale a liquid, which, they pretend, will confer immortality on ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... returning to the foot of the terrace, sweetly repeats her wish to adopt the little boy, when Butterfly, emerging from the inner room, comes to look for her long lost husband, whose presence she feels with the divination ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... and routed the others, and recovered a great part of the booty. They cared nothing for Numitor's anger, but collected together many needy persons and slaves, and filled them with a rebellious spirit. While Romulus was absent at a sacrifice (for he was much addicted to sacrifices and divination), the herdsmen of Numitor fell in with Remus, accompanied by a small band, and fought with him. After many wounds had been received on both sides, Numitor's men conquered and took Remus alive. Remus was brought before ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... reserve for us a sequel greater and lovelier, not meaner than our brightest dream hitherto. The worthiest theory of the fate of man which the spirit of man can construct must either be a revelatory divination of the truth, or an inadequate attempt to grasp the design of the Creator in its true glory. It is impious and absurd to hold that man can think out a scheme superior to the one God has decreed. And it seems equally ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... supplemented. "I suppose he gave me all the facts you've collected. But Greenleaf—you know what I mean," he waved his cigarette hand expressively; "I wouldn't say he had extraordinary powers of divination. He's a good fellow, and all that, but—what do ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... who really believed in the science that he professed. He had learned, as a student of the old Chinese philosophy, to believe in divination long before he thought of practising it. During his youth he had been in the service of a wealthy daimyo, but subsequently, like thousands of other samurai, found himself reduced to desperate straits ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... in the secret of the communications with Lord Derby, but the intrinsic probabilities of a case often give to the public a trick of divination. In the middle of December (1856) articles actually appeared in the prints of the day announcing that Mr. Gladstone would at the opening of the next session figure at the head of the opposition. The tories, they ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... buried the dead, and he would give me a guide to-morrow; being rainy I stop willingly. Dugumbe is said to purpose going down the river to Kanagumbe River to build on the land Kanagumbe, which is a loop formed by the river, and is large. He is believed to possess great power of divination, even of killing ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... dawn of adolescence she had passed through a long period of abject superstition, largely through the influence of a servant. All the old woman's signs were very dominant in her life. She even invented methods of divination, as, "if the boards do not creak when I walk across the room I shall get through my lessons without trouble." She always preferred to see two rooks together to one and became expert in the black arts. She used to hear strange ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... would not have been necessary. That the Germans were familiar with some sort of marks on wood at a much earlier period is shown by Tacitus's Germania, chap. x. There we are told that for purposes of divination certain signs were scratched on slips of wood from a fruit-bearing tree (including, no doubt, tile beech; cp. book, German Buch, and Buchstabe, a letter of the alphabet); the slips were thrown down promiscuously ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... take so long. The contents of the ball turned out to be a small magnifying-glass, and the picture a maze of written words. I did not decipher it all; I did not decipher the half. I did not need to. A spirit of divination was given me in that awful hour which enabled me to grasp its full meaning from the few sentences I did pick out. And that meaning! It was horrible, inconceivable. Murder was taught; but murder from a distance, and by an act too simple to awake revulsion. Were the wraiths of my two ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... Greek [Greek: ophis] was probably derived; for the same word, in Hebrew, Arabic, and Greek, which denotes "divination" denotes a "serpent." "Nachash,"[4] "ilahat,"[5] "[Greek: oionizesthai],"[6] have the same double signification as if the serpent were recognised as the grand inspirer of the heathen prophets. See Faber's Horae Mosaicae, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 77, April 19, 1851 • Various
... ter the fiddle,—ef ye hev enny call ter know." Mrs. Bedell replied to his unspoken thought, as if by divination. ...
— The Christmas Miracle - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... first part of it is one that shows in a remarkable manner the dread power of Our Lord in His Sacrament of the Altar, a power which the infernal legions recognize, and before which they tremble. The second part gives a short but deeply interesting account of modern spiritualism, as the form which divination, sorcery, and devil-worship has assumed in our days. It is written in a simple, agreeable style, that makes it pleasant ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... whom he is said to have been connected. His contemporaries at Crotona in South Italy, where he lived, looked upon him as a man peculiarly connected with the gods; and some of them even identified him with the Hyperborean Apollo. He himself is said to have laid claim to the gifts of divination and prophecy. The religious element was clearly predominant in his character. Grote says of him, "In his prominent vocation, analogous to that of Epimenides, Orpheus, or Melampus, he appears as the revealer of a mode of life calculated to raise his disciples ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... convictions into the wretched knowledge. All this time my thoughts have hovered round you all, around you in particular, with a tenderness of which I could have wished you might have, afar-off, the divination. You are such a visible picture of desolation that I need to remind myself that courage, and patience, and fortitude are also abundantly with you. The devotion that Louis inspired—and of which all the air about you must be full—must ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... effective (is it the handsomest, is it the ugliest?) of noses?"—some such loose handful of bright flowers she seemed, fragrantly enough, to fling at him. Strether almost wondered—at such a pace was he going—if some divination of the influence of either party were what determined Madame de Vionnet's abstention. One of the gentlemen, in any case, succeeded in placing himself in close relation with our friend's companion; a gentleman rather ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... take any blame to myself for not foreseeing the misprints which our author pleads, because they must have baffled far higher powers of divination than mine. Thus I found [124:2] the author stating that the fourth Evangelist 'only once distinguishes John the Baptist by the appellation [Greek: ho baptistes],' [124:3] whereas, as a matter of fact, he never does so; and comparing the whole sentence with a ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... and regarded Martin. Then, with a flash of divination, he saw the situation. The expression on his ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... inexpedient to dive a little into futurity, and to view through the mirror of the imagination the further results which the experience of the past may convince us that a perseverance in the same course of restriction and disability will infallibly lead to. It requires not the gift of divination to foresee that the manufacturing system, which has already taken such deep root, and so rapidly shot up towards maturity, will still further confirm and consolidate itself with the increasing poverty of the community. For several years the importation of British ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... a woman. There is no grace, sweetness, dignity, disinterestedness, equal to those of a woman. And, when all is said, the conclusion of one who understands the subject will be, that, for quick depth of sympathy, intuitive divination, joyous sacrifice, perfect reproduction of all the modulations of feeling, there is no friendship equal to that ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... of Moab and the elders of Midian," who were Balak's messengers, went to Pethor, where Balaam resided. As the reader might expect, they did not go empty-handed, but took with them "the rewards of divination." What these were we are not told. No doubt they were very handsome. The prophetical business requires large profits to compensate for the absence of quick returns; and in any case it is not to be supposed that a man who can do ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... paid more attention to his personal fads. He had a creditable collection of all works on divination, a similarly inclusive assemblage of works on the theory of government, and an almost complete array of the writings of the Emperors, from the Divine Julius to the Divine Aurelius, whose meditations ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... the possessed became docile as a little child before him, and was subsequently a sort of erratic follower of the party unto which Gilgal was allied; but he would at times forsake the assemblies of the faithful, when, it is said, the dark spirit of divination again came over him, and he would wander among the tombs, showing symptoms of a disordered intellect, though not of the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... of humor in the men who never dreamt of laughing at him. The man who was in the last degree amiable was to the last degree unyielding where conscience was concerned; the soul which was so tender had no weakness in it; his lenity was the divination of a finer justice. His honesty made all men trust him when they doubted his opinions; his good sense made them doubt their own opinions, when they had as little question of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and unaffectedly. It needed little divination on her part to guess what the words might have been. Even if she wished them spoken, she would not have them spoken too lightly, for she had heard his love speeches before, when they had meant ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... entirely outside one's own choice or volition is to stand helpless—if not hopeless—before the spectacle of life. It is out of this aimless and chaotic state that resort is had to the seeking of all kinds of divination, omens, prophecies, and foreshadowings, with the result of more and more completely separating the individual from his legitimate activities and endeavor, and leading him to substitute for spiritual realities a mere false and mirage-like outlook,—and instead of that rational ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... nostalgia, and I think of her as ever so patiently communicative on that score under pressure of my artless appeal. That I should have been so inquiring while still so destitute of primary data was doubtless rather an anomaly; and it was for that matter quite as if my infant divination proceeded by the light of nature: I divined that it would matter to me in the future that "English life" should be of this or that fashion. My father had subscribed for me to a small periodical of quarto form, covered in yellow and entitled The Charm, which shed ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... thrilling divination. She grasped the relation between Monty's terrible cry and the strange hunched posture he had assumed. Stillwell's haste and silence, ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... shadowy face. Another of those strange desert prospectors in whom there was some relentless driving power besides the lust for gold! Cameron felt that between this man and himself there was a subtle affinity, vague and undefined, perhaps born of the divination that here was a desert wanderer like himself, perhaps born of a deeper, an unintelligible relation having its roots back in the past. A long-forgotten sensation stirred in Cameron's breast, one so long forgotten that he could ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... condition of great suffering; yet there were exceptions to this rule. For the sake of obtaining supernatural power, some welcomed the satanic influence. These of course had no conflict with the demons. Of this class were those who possessed the spirit of divination,—Simon Magus, Elymas the sorcerer, and the damsel who followed Paul and ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... Congress, and that they would instruct them to go into a thorough investigation of the causes that have produced so many disagreeable effects in the army and country, in a word, that public abuses should be corrected. Without this it does not in my judgment require the spirit of divination to foretell the consequences of the present administration nor to how little purpose the States individually are framing constitutions, providing laws, and filling offices with the abilities of their ablest men. These, if the great whole is mismanaged, must sink in the general wreck, which ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... argue that the speech was fictitious are also obliged to explain what motive there could possibly have been for the deception; they accordingly advance the theory that it was part of Dunmore's (imaginary) treacherous conduct, as he wished to discredit Cresap, because he knew—apparently by divination—that the latter was going to be a whig. Even granting the Earl corrupt motives and a prophetic soul, it remains to be explained why he should wish to injure an obscure borderer, whom nobody has ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... feathers, called Cleopatra or Bilouche. These two animals caught Gazonal's eye in 1845, when in company with De Lora and Bixiou he visited the fortune-teller's. The Southerner, however, asked only a five-franc divination, while in the same year Mme. Cibot, who came to consult her on an important matter, had to pay a hundred francs. According to Bixiou, "a third of the lorettes, a fourth of the statesmen and a half ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... which he meets, and thus the effect of narcotics is early discovered, and the savage in the practice of his religion oftentimes resorts to these native drugs for the purpose of producing an ecstatic state under which divination may be performed. The practice of ecstasism is universal in the lower stages of culture. In times of great anxiety, every savage and barbarian seeks to know of the future. Through all the earlier generations ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell
... overwhelming power of the mind. "If you have faith enough, and think hard enough, you can think anything until it comes true," he had told himself more than once. And he knew Yellow Bird possessed that illimitable faith, and that behind her divination lay generations and centuries of an unbreakable certainty in the power of mind over matter. He realized his own limitations, but a mysterious voice in the still night seemed whispering to him that ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... to the king a certain wise man, Tremonius, Archbishop of Caerleon, praying him to send for Merlin, and build according to his bidding, since there was none so skilled in counsel or labour, more truthful of word or apter in divination. The king desired greatly to behold Merlin, and to judge by hearing of his worth. At that time Merlin abode near the Well of Labenes. This fountain springs in a hidden place, very deep in Wales, but I know not where, since I have never been. Merlin ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... having his wheel locked, or meeting with a regular upset at every turn." Though Bob has given sufficient proofs of his spirit in danger, I certainly never suspected him to be possessed of the spirit of divination, and yet his prophetic address had scarcely concluded before Boots announced a parcel for Bernard Blackmantle, Esq. forwarded from London, per favour of Mr. Williams. And, Heaven preserve me from the charge of imposing upon my reader's ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... his unconscious divination. "I do not know," she said. "But you are one person, Jim Daly is another. You have had every advantage; he is a—er—blatherskite. Yet you condescend to put yourself on a par with him, and condone the ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... of fable, on which more phlegmatic persons base measurement and comparison. Whatever of truth there may or may not be generally in the above remarks,—certain it is, that in the novels now in question instinct or divination directed us aright. In the prefaces and notices before us, we find that the Bells were three sisters:—two of whom are no longer amongst the living. The survivor ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... Maya codices are made up, for the most part, of the records of the sacred period of two hundred and sixty days, a period called in Nahuatl, tonalamatl, and other numerical calculations. The tonalamatl was used for purposes of divination in order to find out whether good or bad fortune was in store for an individual. It is not necessary at this place to go into the different means taken to record this period of time or its methods of use. It may be well, ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen
... should I do, seeing thee so indeed, That tremble at the imagination? 668 The thought of it doth make my faint heart bleed, And fear doth teach it divination: I prophesy thy death, my living sorrow, If thou encounter with the ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... well known that the Egyptians worshipped the ibis, the hawk, and other birds, and that the Greeks worshipped birds and trees at Dodona, in consequence of a celebrated oracle. In Italy the lapwing and the magpie became Pilumnus and Picus, who led the Sabines into Picenus. Divination by eagles and other birds was practised at Rome, and German, Slav, and Celtic traditions abound in similar myths.[40] Nor are they wanting in the Bible itself, in which we hear of the trees of knowledge and of life, of some celebrated trees in the times of the patriarchs, ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... charged with a significance that Brodrick himself was not aware of; as if the powers that worked in him obscurely had used him for the utterance of a divination not his own. ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... similar in character to the "Works and Days", only the scantiest fragments survive. One at least of these, the "Divination by Birds", was, as we know from Proclus, attached to the end of the "Works" until it was rejected by Apollonius Rhodius: doubtless it continued the same theme of how to live, showing how man can avoid disasters by attending to the omens to be drawn from birds. It is possible that the "Astronomy" ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... keener gaze upon the furrowed, shadowy face. Another of those strange desert prospectors in whom there was some relentless driving power besides the lust for gold! Cameron felt that between this man and himself there was a subtle affinity, vague and undefined, perhaps born of the divination that here was a desert wanderer like himself, perhaps born of a deeper, an unintelligible relation having its roots back in the past. A long-forgotten sensation stirred in Cameron's breast, one so long forgotten that he could not recognize ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... is one that has the form of a participle, but differs from it by rejecting the idea of time; as, "An amusing story,"—"A lying divination." ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... admiration. He knew that Paul was not, like himself, born to the wilderness, and he respected the courage and skill that could triumph nevertheless. But it was only a fleeting look. His eyes turned back to the forest, where he watched lazily; lazily, because he knew with the certainty of divination that they would not attempt anything until dark, and he knew with equal certainty that they would ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... allow the money question to stand as agreed. Such step would put this Cho[u]bei in an awkward position. The man is found, and soon will be here. Probably even Kondo[u] Dono will be satisfied."—"Who is he?" asked Kondo[u].—"One Yanagibara Kazuma. He has practised divination at Asakusa...."—"A charlatan! A quack doctor! Cho[u]bei, are you mad?" Rokuro[u]bei pushed back his cushion and his cue in horror. Not a word did he say of Natsume Kyuzo[u]. Cho[u]bei smiled. He had been trapped; ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... inwards and outwards as they circle round; and this in turn yields place to the "Bondogaya" and two religious figures, the "Damali" and "Chinughi," which are said when properly performed to give men the power of divination. ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... leading by the place of divination,[20] he went out with a single attendant, a deerskin covering his shoulders,[21] and proceeding by a secret way where there were no sentinels, entered the avenues of the camp, stationed himself near the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... twilight heralded another council. His duties swamped him; he was worried, exultant, happy. Always he found Cherry at his shoulder, unobtrusive and silent for the most part, yet intensely observant and keenly alive to every action. She seemed to have the faculty of divination, knowing when to be silent and when to join her mood with his, and she gave him valuable help; for she possessed a practical mind and a masculine aptitude for details that surprised both him and George. But, ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... were also put on a par with heresy. Pope Alexander IV had decided that divination and sorcery did not fall under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, unless there was manifest heresy involved.[1] But casuists were not wanting to prove that heresy was involved in such cases. The belief in the ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... that is not uncommon on our earth, of cunning knavery imposing on ignorance and credulity; and I expressed my opinion to the Brahmin; but he assured me that the class of persons in the moon, who were resorted to on account of their supposed powers of divination, was very different from the similar class in Asia or Europe, and that oracular art was here regularly studied and professed as a branch of philosophy. "You would be surprised," said he, "to find ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... sternly sets its face against the old customs with which the Christmas season was associated, denouncing the "fiendish songs," and "devilish games," the "graceless talk," the "nocturnal gambols," and the various kinds of divination in which the faithful persisted in indulging. But, although repressed, they were not to be destroyed, and at various seasons of the year, but especially those of the summer and winter solstice, the "orthodox," ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... more attention to his personal fads. He had a creditable collection of all works on divination, a similarly inclusive assemblage of works on the theory of government, and an almost complete array of the writings of the Emperors, from the Divine Julius to the Divine Aurelius, whose meditations ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... sounds like divination. A tutor I will never be again; never take a pupil after Henry and yourself; not again will I sit habitually at another man's table—no more be the appendage of a family. I am now a man of thirty; I have never been free since I was ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... like other discoverers, he is too much impressed with the value of his divination. It is something that, at any rate, can appeal for recognition only to the aged or the aging. With these we could imagine it bringing a certain consolation, a relief from vain regret, an acquittal from self-accusation. If one has suddenly changed for no apparent ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... various forcible and fine turns of phrase, her previous answers, with here and there a new explanation; but to the great majority she referred simply to her former replies, or denied the charge, as follows: "The second article concerning sortilege, superstitious acts and divination, she denied, and in respect to adoration (i.e. allowing herself to be adored) said: If any kissed her hands or her garments, it was not by her will, and that she kept herself from it as much as she could; and the rest of the article she denies." This ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... time to my linguistic studies, I made such rapid progress in the acquisition of the language that I was able after a few weeks to understand much of what was said to me, and to express myself in a vague, roundabout way. In the latter operation I was much assisted by a peculiar faculty of divination which the Russians possess in a high degree. If a foreigner succeeds in expressing about one-fourth of an idea, the Russian peasant can generally fill up the remaining ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... almost invariably of straight lines, in the shape of little sticks either singly or put together. Such sticks were in early times used by the northern nations for the purpose of ascertaining future events. The sticks were shaken up, and from the figures that they formed a kind of divination was derived. ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... as divination, or soothsaying, or prophesy, or fortune telling in this world. It is all coarse imposture, that can deceive only the weakest mortals. You know that, of course, Ryland. It follows, then, that this old woman could have had ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... myself to this goddess Night,—holy, pure, running her course during this the northern journey of the sun,[1] let my desire be fulfilled." Saying this, she, in a purified condition of body and soul, worshipped the goddess Night. And in the name of her chastity and truth she had recourse to divination.[2] And she asked, "Show me the place where the king of the gods is. Let truth be verified by truth." And it was thus that she addressed the goddess ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... would be the most hopeless experiment you could make," said Mrs. Faith. "She loves you too much for it," she added, with the divination of her sex. Comforted a little by Mrs. Faith, I quickly abandoned this project; indeed, I soon abandoned every other which concerned itself with Helen, and yielded myself with a kind of desperate lethargy, if I may be allowed the expression, to the fate which separated ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... return from Babylon, having entirely forsaken idolatry, and being no longer favoured with the gift of prophecy, they gradually abandoned themselves, before the coming of our Saviour, to sorcery and divination. The Talmud, still regarded with a reverence bordering on idolatry, abounds with instructions for the due observance of superstitious rites. After their city and temple were destroyed, many Jewish impostors were highly esteemed for their pretended ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... bestialities that is the most foolish and vile and hurtful which believes there is no other life after this." "And I so believe, so affirm, and so am certain that we pass to another better life after this" (Convito, Tr. II. c. 9). It is a fine divination of Carlyle from the Non han speranza di morte that "one day it had risen sternly benign in the scathed heart of Dante that he, wretched, never resting, worn as he was, ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... prefigured what woman in Europe was to become under the influence of Christianity. In the same town of Philippi there was seen, too, at the same time an equally representative image of the condition of woman in Europe before the gospel reached it, in a poor girl, possessed of a spirit of divination and held in slavery by men who were making gain out of her misfortune, whom Paul restored to sanity. Her misery and degradation were a symbol of the disfiguration, as Lydia's sweet and benevolent Christian character was of the ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... must not lose sight of the fact that since abandoning her work-girl existence Clara had been constantly educating herself, not only by direct study of books, but through her association with people, her growth in experience. Where in the old days of rebellion she had only an instinct, a divination to guide her, there was now just enough of knowledge to give occupation to her developed intellect and taste. Far keener was her sense of the loss she had suffered than her former longing for what she knew only in dream. ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... By imitating the dull effect of a distant voice, he is able to excite in the minds of his audience a powerful conviction that the sounds proceed from a distant point. There is little doubt that ventriloquism has played a conspicuous part in the arts of divination and magic. ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... communications, the Bible reader is at once aware of a conflict of claims. In times when the Bible was written, there were practices among men which went under the names of "enchantment," "sorcery," "witchcraft," "necromancy," "divination," "consulting with familiar spirits," etc. These practices were all more or less related, but some of them bear an unmistakable meaning. Thus, "necromancy" is defined to mean "a pretended communication with the dead." ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... has excommunicated the church from the power of working miracles; she has not been able, with the assistance of all her saints, to work one miracle since the revolution began; and as she never stood in greater need than now, we may, without the aid of divination, conclude that all her former miracles are tricks and lies. [Boulanger in his life of Paul, has collected from the ecclesiastical histories, and the writings of the fathers as they are called, several matters which show the opinions that prevailed ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... sacred by the benighted islanders. This spring, or the fumes that arose from it, was supposed to confer on the dweller in the cave the gift of prophecy. She was the servant of Apollon, and was credited with possessing a spirit of divination. The woman, after undergoing, or simulating, an epileptic attack, declared, in rhythmical language, that the babe must not be allowed to live. She averred that it would "bring destruction on Scheria," the native name for the island, which I have styled Boothland, in honour of the Salvation Army. ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... perception in his host of which the two women trained suppos-ably in the art of pleasing had been altogether incapable; and that of some other condition on Newton's part that left his own poor power of divination nothing less than shamed. This last was signally the case on the former's saying, ever so responsively, almost radiantly, in answer to his account of how he happened to come: "Oh then it's very interesting!" That was the astonishing note, after ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... first time in his life, Bedient learned what America liked to read.... All the finer expressions of the human mind and hand gave him deep joy. His love and divination for the good and the true were the same that characterized the rarest minds of our ancestors, who had access only to a few noble books in their formative years. And Bedient's was the expanded and fortified intelligence of one who has grown ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... it—to admit that she stood alone, and must judge for herself. What possible bliss or reward could there ever be for her but just this: to be allowed to watch and suffer with Oliver—to bring him the invention, the patience, the healing divination of love? And if it were not to be hers, then what remained was to go down into the arena, where all that is ugliest and most piteous in life bleeds and gasps, and throw herself blindly into the fight. Perhaps some heavenly ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... accession of sudden strength, and looked at her erstwhile husband. Then, if never before, she knew—him, as well as his works! From him her glance flashed to the fair face at her shoulder. What power of divination possessed her? Or was it Bachelder's fancy? He swears to the chosen few, the few who understand, that her face lit with the same glory of tender pity that she held over her sick child. Then, before they could reach her, she shot suddenly ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... spades, and his sun-burnt daughters, and pointing to them exclaimed: "Here are my charms; this is my magic; these only are the witchcraft I have used." Zoroaster, the great philosopher and astronomer of the ancient East, was charged with divination and magic, merely, it is probable, because he possessed ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... Nothing happened. There were no lighted windows, nor had lights appeared and disappeared in any of the windows. Yet it was the central point of his consideration. He rallied to it each time after a divination of the state of ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... deities was this—that he had frequently declared in public he had received counsel from a divine voice, which he called his Demon. But this was no proof at all of the matter. All that Socrates advanced about his demon was no more than what is daily advanced by those who believe in and practise divination; and if Socrates, because he said he received intelligence from his genius, must be accused of introducing new divinities, so also must they; for is it not certain that those who believe in divination, and practise that belief, do observe the flight of birds, consult ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... the gold was known to the Rhine-god; three of his daughters had been instructed by him, and detailed to guard the treasure. Some faculty of divination warned him of danger to it, and of the quarter from whence this danger threatened. But nixies—even when burdened by cares of state—are just nixies; those three seem to have lived to laugh before all else—to laugh and chase one another and ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... place whereupon the priest formerly raveled out the small intestine of the sacrificial victim for purposes of divination and cooked its flesh for the gods. The word is now seldom used, except with reference to the sacrifice of their liberty and peace by a male and ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... Love would not be of divine origin did he not possess the faculty of divination. He knows all, and here is the proof. Do you not wish to know whether my friend was with me during the fatal night which has ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... conversation will seldom be taken in exchange for theirs without a large discount,—and this, by the by, eternally driving him into the hands of more equitable brokers, for such conversation as he can find, it requires no great spirit of divination to guess ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... knew what he was saying, except that his rejoinders to Lois's remarks were more or less at random. Vital questions were pounding through his brain and demanding an answer. Who knew but that with regard to Rosie she was right—and yet wrong? Women, with their remarkable powers of divination, didn't always hit the nail directly on the head. It might be the case with Lois now. She might be right in her surmise that Rosie was in love, and mistaken in those light and cruel words: "Oh, not with you!" He ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... not kept for her followers alone, and her voice would become harsh, and her mockery lose phantasy and humour, when she spoke of what seemed to her scientific materialism. Once I saw this antagonism, guided by some kind of telepathic divination, take a form of brutal phantasy. I brought a very able Dublin woman to see her and this woman had a brother, a physiologist whose reputation, though known to specialists alone, was European; and, because of this brother, a family pride in everything scientific and ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... genius which has familiarized itself with all the relics of an ancient period can sometimes, by the force of its sympathetic divination, restore the missing notes in the "music of humanity," and reconstruct the fragments into a whole which will really bring the remote past nearer to us, and interpret it to our duller apprehension—this form of imaginative power must always be among the very rarest, because it demands ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... meetings have been unusually spirited, and congratulates herself on the part taken in them by Miss Burley, as 'a presence so positive as to be of great value to me.' The general subject I do not find. But particular topics were such as these:—"Is the ideal first or last; divination or experience?" "Persons who never awake to life in this world." "Mistakes;" "Faith;" "Creeds;" "Woman;" "Daemonology;" "Influence;" "Catholicism" ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... frivolous galahs, sweeping in a changeably-tinted cloud over the plain, or studding the trees of the pine-ridge like large pink and silver-grey blossoms, set off by the rich green of the foliage. But outside all possible research or divination lay the occult reason why my bosom's lord sat so lightly on his throne. This will be explained ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... falls, like a pale prophetess, Under the swoon of holy divination: And what had all surpass'd her simple guess, She now resolves in this dark revelation; Death's very mystery,—oblivious death;— Long sleep,—deep night, ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... she had traveled—true, against her will, but yet through scenes which she now remembered. And always there came up in her mind a question which she found no way to ask. It was Jeanne herself who, either by divination or by blunder, brought up ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... of the sample joint. She plunged her arm, bare and herculean, behind the aforementioned sofa, and holding aloft a section of wood, called out in a mood of discovery: 'Is that it?' Replying in the affirmative, she added, under an impulse of innocent divination that whatever her wizard master laid hands upon could result in nothing short of an invention, 'Sure, sor, and what's he going to invint out ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... or any other important matter, the natives used to have recourse to divination by means of little miniature darts made of rushes or reeds, or often of the leaf ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... this time the stars were unfavourable to them, and astrologers were reading their approaching ruin in the sky. Their late King, Henry V, when he was studying at Oxford, had learnt there the rules of divination by the stars. For his own special use he kept in his coffers two astrolabes, one of silver and one of gold. When his queen, Catherine of France, was about to be confined, he himself cast the horoscope ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... that no alteration or new appointment of that kind could be made, unless the birds approved of it. The king, enraged at this, and, as it is related, ridiculing the art, said, "Come, thou diviner, tell me, whether what I am thinking on can be done or not?" When he had tried the matter by divination, he affirmed it certainly could. "But I was thinking," says he, "whether you could cut asunder this whetstone with a razor. Take it, and perform what thy birds portend may be done." Upon this, as they say, he immediately cut the whetstone in two. A statue of Attus, with his head veiled, was erected ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... horse was eating well, and turned to go out again, when his master beckoned him to stop. The man was surprised, for generally his master was not fond of his society, except when he wanted to consult him or persuade him to exercise his pretended art of divination. The truth was, however, that at the moment Frank Muller would have been glad to consort with a dog. The events of the night had brought this terrible man, steeped in iniquity from his youth up, down to the level of a child frightened at the dark. For a while he sat in silence, ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... the Shamanistic element contributed by the Turanian Accadians, grew a system of magic and divination which had a most profound influence not only upon all the Eastern nations, including the Jews, but also upon the later peoples of the West. mediaeval magic and witchcraft were, in large part, an unchanged ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... became docile as a little child before him, and was subsequently a sort of erratic follower of the party unto which Gilgal was allied; but he would at times forsake the assemblies of the faithful, when, it is said, the dark spirit of divination again came over him, and he would wander among the tombs, showing symptoms of a disordered intellect, though not of the same violent character ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... hers, kissed it, and was pushing him off the train. Then she watched from the, platform the three receding figures in the yellow smoky light until the car slipped out from under the roof into the blackness of the night. Some faint, premonitory divination of what they represented of immutable love in a changing, heedless, selfish world came to her; rocks to which one might cling, successful or failing, happy or unhappy. For unconsciously she thought of them, all three, as one, a human trinity in which her faith had never been betrayed. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... his ablutions and absolutions, as being the physician who orders them, he may be rightly called Apolouon (purifier); or in respect of his powers of divination, and his truth and sincerity, which is the same as truth, he may be most fitly called Aplos, from aplous (sincere), as in the Thessalian dialect, for all the Thessalians call him Aplos; also he is aei Ballon (always shooting), because he is a master archer who never ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... been suspected of falsehood, it was in the capital matter of religion. He ratted from his Protestant faith; and according to the literal origin of that figure he ratted; for he abjured it as rats abjure a ship in which their instinct of divination has deciphered a destiny of ruin, and at the very moment when Popery wore the promise of a triumph that might, at any rate, have lasted his time. Dryden was a papist by apostacy; and perhaps, not to speak uncharitably, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... a retreat; for what men are forced to do by fear, requires darkness to conceal it, and light is inimical to them. Moreover men were only wont to wait three days after an eclipse of the moon, or of the sun, as we learn from Autokleides in his book on divination; but Nikias persuaded them to wait for another complete circuit of the moon, because its face would not shine upon them propitiously before that time after its defilement with the gross earthy particles which had intercepted ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... not received a severe admonishment from Stratford Canning at Constantinople. What is certain is that the ignorant and superstitious populations around her feared and loved her, and that she, reacting to her own mysterious prestige, became at last even as they. She plunged into astrology and divination; she awaited the moment when, in accordance with prophecy, she should enter Jerusalem side by side with the Mahdi, the Messiah; she kept two sacred horses, destined, by sure signs, to carry her and him to their last triumph. ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... thought she read in his a sudden divination of her inmost thoughts. The discovery electrified her flagging strength, restoring her to immediate clearness of brain. She saw the gulf of self-betrayal over which she had hung, and the nearness of the peril nerved her to a ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... Divination by the inspection of the entrails of victims, and the study of omens were considered by the Egyptians as important branches of learning. The soothsayers formed a respected order of the priesthood. From the mural paintings at Chichen, and from the works of the chroniclers, we learn that the ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... They cared nothing for Numitor's anger, but collected together many needy persons and slaves, and filled them with a rebellious spirit. While Romulus was absent at a sacrifice (for he was much addicted to sacrifices and divination), the herdsmen of Numitor fell in with Remus, accompanied by a small band, and fought with him. After many wounds had been received on both sides, Numitor's men conquered and took Remus alive. Remus was brought ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... and publicity of a gift which had been growing through all the changes of private life, of the wonderful stream of knowledge, recollection, divination, boundless acquaintance with and affection for human nature, which had gladdened the Edinburgh streets, the Musselburgh sands, the Southland moors and river-sides, since ever Walter Scott had begun to roam ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... forgotten. The new-robed regicides found a representative for her. And who was this representative? Without a previous knowledge, any one would have given a thousand guesses before he could arrive at a tolerable divination of their rancorous insolence. They chose to address what they had to say concerning this nation to the ambassador of America. They did not apply to this ambassador for a mediation: that, indeed, would have indicated ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... very little doubt that amongst the various tricks of ancient divination ventriloquism found a place; but I cannot give that direct evidence which MR. SANSOM asks for. I think it very likely that "the wizards that peep and mutter" (Isa. viii. 19.) were of this class; but it is not clear that the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 45, Saturday, September 7, 1850 • Various
... the religious provinces of New-England, a credulous superstition, of a less active quality, possessed the minds of the most intelligent of the Dutch colonists, and even of their descendants so lately as in our own times. The art of divination was particularly in favor; and it rarely happened, that any inexplicable event affected the fortunes or comforts of the good provincialists, without their having recourse to some one of the more renowned fortunetellers of the country, ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... nature of the soul, and the other of its faculties or functions. I believe that the first of these may be more soundly inquired than it has been, yet I hold that in the end it must be bounded by religion. It has two appendices, concerning divination and fascination; these have rather vapoured forth fables than kindled truth. The knowledge respecting the faculties of the mind is of two kinds, the one respecting understanding and reason, and the other respecting will, appetite, and affection, the imagination being ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... accurate knowledge of the accomplished physician! How miracle-like the dainty and beneficent skill of the modern surgeon. The peculiar ability of a great diagnostician amounts to divination. And he, whom Nature has fitted for this noble profession, is endowed with a sympathy for you and an intuitive understanding of you very much akin to the peculiar sixth sense of woman—that strange power by ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... in this case upon which Camille wished he could bring to bear those purely intellectual—not magical—powers of divination which he modestly told his clients were the secret of all his sagacious advice. He wished he could determine conclusively and exactly what was the mutual relation of Attalie and her lodger. Out of the minutest corner of one eye he had watched ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... producing, collecting, training and drilling troops, and the correct theory with regard to measures of expediency, laying plans, transport of goods and the handling of soldiers — in strong contrast to later works, in which the science of war is usually blended with metaphysics, divination and ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... down upon the grass, o'ercome with sleep, There where all five were seated. In that hour, When near the dawn the swallow her sad lay, Rememb'ring haply ancient grief, renews, And with our minds more wand'rers from the flesh, And less by thought restrain'd are, as 't were, full Of holy divination in their dreams, Then in a vision did I seem to view A golden-feather'd eagle in the sky, With open wings, and hov'ring for descent, And I was in that place, methought, from whence Young Ganymede, from his associates 'reft, Was snatch'd ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... not do like them. And they left all the commandments of Jehovah their God, and made them molten images and an Asherah, and worshipped the whole host of heaven, and served Baal; and they caused their children to pass through the fire, and used divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of Jehovah, to provoke Him to anger. And Jehovah was very wroth with Israel, and removed them out of His sight; there was none left but the men of Judah only. But they of Judah also kept not the ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... the breast-bone and the right shoulder were allotted to the use of the priest, in order to prevent a certain kind of divination which is known as "spatulamantia," so called because it was customary in divining to use the shoulder-blade (spatula), and the breast-bone of the animals offered in sacrifice; wherefore these things were taken away from the offerers. This is also denoted the priest's need of wisdom ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... 'And Samuel died.' Observing this, they concluded that their friend was dead. And it so happened that news was soon brought to them that Rabbi Samuel of Babylon had died." The Bath Kol seems to have been a sort of divination practised with the words of Scripture, like the Sortes Virgilianae among ...
— Hebrew Literature
... His blessed angels. Such agents in the book of the Scriptures are called devils, and intercourse with them is styled superstition, seeking their assistance is magic or witchcraft, and consulting them is divination or fortune-telling. All these practices are directly and strictly forbidden in the Scriptures, and yet they are commonly enough in use in our own day to procure effects that gratify the curiosity of such, especially, as have no settled belief ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... given signal. All was at last ready, and they were on the point of sailing away, when an eclipse of the moon, which was then at the full, took place. Most of the Athenians, deeply impressed by this occurrence, now urged the generals to wait; and Nicias, who was somewhat over-addicted to divination and practices of that kind, refused from that moment even to take the question of departure into consideration, until they had waited the thrice nine days prescribed ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... shape resolved itself into a woman's; she was looking on the ground, and walking slowly as if searching for something that had been lost, her course being precisely that of Mr. Melbury's gig. Fitzpiers by a sort of divination jumped to the idea that the figure was Grace's; her nearer approach ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... conveyed in a discussion between his brother Quintus and himself, in two books. In the former, Quintus, after dividing Divination into the heads of natural and artificial, argues with the Stoics for its sacred nature, from the evidence of facts, the agreement of all nations, and the existence of divine intelligences. In the latter, Cicero questions ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... are plentiful in this by turns incisive, brilliant, reflected, and spontaneous style, in which learning comes in to enhance and steady the flow of a lively and luxuriant imagination. To all the refinement and subtle divination common to Slavic genius, you ally the patient research and learned scruples which characterize the German explorer. You assume alternately the gait of the mole and of the eagle—and everything you do succeeds wonderfully, because amid your subterranean maneuvers and your airy flights you ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... an exhausting process, which probably accounts for the fact that his literary output has been small. But the same power of analysis and attention to detail have been most effective in his political activities. In these his divination has been prophetic and in his manipulation of contending elements he shows a dexterity that has baffled even the ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... Thou conveyedst to me, and tracedst in my memory, what I might hereafter examine for myself. But at that time neither he, nor my dearest Nebridius, a youth singularly good and of a holy fear, who derided the whole body of divination, could persuade me to cast it aside, the authority of the authors swaying me yet more, and as yet I had found no certain proof (such as I sought) whereby it might without all doubt appear, that what had been truly foretold by those consulted ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... earth should make a man in the possession of his natural senses leave a warm town-house in January, and come to camp in 'owd Ben's' farm, was, indeed, past Hannah's divination. In reality, no sudden resolve could have been happier. Sandy was a hardy little fellow, and with the first breath of the moorland wind David felt a load, which had been growing too heavy to bear, lifting from his breast. His youth, his manhood, reasserted themselves. The ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... different from what Aristotle or Bacon supposed, and has been conquered by implements and weapons very different in precision and power from what they purposed to rely on. But the combination of patient and careful industry, with the courage and divination of genius, in doing what none had done before, makes it equally stupid and ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... Have no fear," said Mr. Wrandall, with an acute sense of divination. "You will also find it to be in ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... supposed to be at variance always, and to share the week between them in proportions fixed by lawyers—the holy and unholy elements of man's brief existence, were combined in Flamborough parish in the person of its magisterial rector. He was also believed to excel in the arts of divination and medicine too, for he was a full Doctor of Divinity. Before this gentleman must be laid, both for purse and conscience' sake, the case of the child just ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... sure "Old Mag," as she called herself, possessed no powers of divination, he knew she did have certain knowledge that he considered she had no ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... contemplating the brilliant groups and throngs flowing on before him, has he yielded to the strange charm of some isolated figure, arresting it in its course by the magic of his gaze, and, suffering the gay crowds to pass on, he has given himself up with delight to the divination of its mystic revelations, while he continued to weave his incantations and spells only for the ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... wars—in the event of his setting eyes on the soil, and the chiefs, people, and all, would believe them; for, as may be imagined, with men unenlightened, supernatural and imaginary predictions work with more force than substantial reasons. Their implement of divination, simple as it may appear, is a cow's or antelope's horn (Uganga), which they stuff with magic powder, also called Uganga. Stuck into the ground in front of the village, it is supposed to have sufficient power to ward off the attacks of ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... listen ter the fiddle,—ef ye hev enny call ter know." Mrs. Bedell replied to his unspoken thought, as if by divination. ...
— The Christmas Miracle - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... oration, And poetical quotation, And master derivation, And the science of translation, And complex pagination, And perfect punctuation, And binomial equation, And accurate computation, And boundless permutation, And infinite gradation, And the craft of divination, And Scripture revelation, ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... appended to miniatures representing Manjusri. The principal temple is said to have been erected between 471 and 500 A.D. I have not seen any statement that the locality was sacred in pre-Buddhist times, but it was probably regarded as the haunt of deities, one of whom—perhaps some spirit of divination—was identified with the wise Manjusri. It is possible that during the various inroads of Graeco-Bactrians, Yueeh-Chih, and other Central Asian tribes into India, Manjusri was somehow imported into the pantheon of the Mahayana from China or Central ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... of divination which was the remarkable side of the character of Aramis, the event, subject to the risks of things over which uncertainty presides, did not fall out exactly as the bishop of Vannes had foreseen. Biscarrat, better ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... wondering about her almost uncanny divination. He knew that all his life he himself had had strange memories, as well as certain peculiar powers which had put the honest phenomena and the trickery of the Medicine Men in the shade. He had influenced people by the sheer force of presence. As he ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... men who never dreamt of laughing at him. The man who was in the last degree amiable was to the last degree unyielding where conscience was concerned; the soul which was so tender had no weakness in it; his lenity was the divination of a finer justice. His honesty made all men trust him when they doubted his opinions; his good sense made them doubt their own opinions, when they had as little ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... orthodox school, as one of the most accurate masters of the Christian theology; and he was supposed to possess two profane sciences, less adapted to the episcopal character, the knowledge of jurisprudence, [97] and that of divination. [98] Some fortunate conjectures of future events, which impartial reasoners might ascribe to the experience and judgment of Athanasius, were attributed by his friends to heavenly inspiration, and imputed by his enemies ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... Even as the physician turned to intercept his daughter, she crossed the threshold of the study. She stopped short at perceiving Exel; then, with a woman's unerring intuition, divined a tragedy, and, in the instant of divination, sought for, and found, the hub of ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... direction; was more or less luminous; was visible during a certain lapse of time, and then disappeared under such and such circumstances. When the Tchurtchun has obtained all the necessary information, he recites a few prayers, opens his book of divination, and finally pronounces his oracle, while the Tartars, who have come to consult him, listen to his words, kneeling, and rapt in profound devotion. Your Grand Lama, he says, is come to life again, in Thibet, at such ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... o'clock of the same morning. None of them knew Mr. Sidney, or were known by him. It was arranged that he should meet them, Mr. Conway included, and exhibit his skill, and if he should convince them of his power of divination, he should discuss the genuineness of the signatures of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... during sickness the soul departs from the body; and the medicine-man attempts to arrest it and to bring it back to the body of the patient. In this and other rites the blood of fowls (which they are said to venerate) (2) is smeared on the participants. Divination by means of the bones of fowls and the viscera, especially the liver of the pig, is in common use (5). The souls of the dead go to a place in which they live much as in this world. It is called ABU LAGAN[200] (3). In this abode of shades everything ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... circumstance that he opened by chance the writings of Lampridius at the verse, "Remember, Roman, with imperial sway to rule the people." The Bible itself was used by the early Christians for such purposes of divination. St. Augustine, though he condemned the practice as an abuse of the Divine Word, yet preferred that men should have recourse to the Gospels rather than to heathen works. Heraclius is reported by Cedrenus to have asked counsel of the New Testament, and to have been thereby persuaded ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... at her, touched, moved, his eyes very tender, but sad as though with a divination of the barrier his fortune eternally raised ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... Majesty,' said I, 'I have reason to believe that the man who sent you this message is one of those who are deeply skilled in the arts of divination, and who pretend from the motions of the celestial bodies to foretell the fates ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... departed said this; and after this the son of Aetion grew, and because he had escaped this danger, the name of Kypselos was given him as a surname derived from the corn-chest. Then when Kypselos had grown to manhood and was seeking divination, a two-edged 85 answer was given him at Delphi, placing trust in which he made an attempt upon Corinth and obtained possession of it. Now ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... anticipation of some future epoch in the pregnant sayings of eminent philosophers and poets; as for example the intimation of the discovery of America by Seneca; or of Shakespeare by Plato; or the Reformation by Dante. Sometimes the result has been produced by the power of divination, granted in some inexplicable manner to ordinary men. Of such a kind were many of the ancient oracles, the fulfillment of which, according to Cicero, could not be denied without a perversion of history. Such was the foreshadowing of ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
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