United States or Saint Barthélemy ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Those harmless meteors, the ignes fatui, which hover above moist and fenny places in the night-time, emitting a glimmering light, have been regarded by the ignorant as malicious spirits endeavoring to deceive the bewildered traveler and lead him to destruction.
And there was no difficulty about it either all one had to do was to go up to the front door and ring the bell. Telemachus and Nicholas Nickleby The virtuous young man defending a virtuous mother against a number of powerful enemies is one of the ignes fatui of literature.
And on the contrary, Metaphors, and senslesse and ambiguous words, are like Ignes Fatui; and reasoning upon them, is wandering amongst innumerable absurdities; and their end, contention, and sedition, or contempt. Prudence & Sapience, With Their Difference As, much Experience, is Prudence; so, is much Science, Sapience.
"Good heavens, the place is alive with marsh fires." "They are what the English call Jack-o'-lanterns." "They are ignes fatui," said Pierre. "They are the souls of unbaptized babies," said Ralph. "Let us try to return to the firm ground we have left." More easily said than done.
The Hill of the Phosphori begins the transmutation of the psychic fluid which makes up the souls as they flow into Mars from space. At the Hill the very moderate condensation begins, just enough to bring them to the ground by gravity. The psychic fluid is susceptible to the light, absorbs and emits it, and so the spirit forms are shining like great ignes fatui on our old earth.
I distrusted myself, not my teachers men of the greatest name, ancient and modern. But I found at last that it was safer to trust myself than them, and to proceed by the light of my own understanding than to wander after these ignes fatui of philosophy.
They refused Truth when she came; and now Truth knows nothing of them. All stars, and heavenly lights, have become veiled to such men; they must now follow terrestrial IGNES FATUI, and think them stars. That is the doom passed upon them. Italy too had its Protestants; but Italy killed them; managed to extinguish Protestantism.
Over the marsh wandered the ignes fatui. "How restlessly and to no bourne dost thou move, lost soul!" The boy at his feet stirred and sighed. "Poor Robin! Tired and sleepy and frightened, art not? Why, dear knave, the jaguar is not roaring for thee!" Bending, he put an arm about the lad and drew him to his side. "I only wait for the brightness to grow," he said. "Do not shiver so!
These are the soulless, irresponsible "goblins" and "gnomes," "Fire spirits" and "ignes fatui" of the nether world. All human beings who progress at all have to deal with one or more of these forces. Beginning in blind ignorance, through struggle, the mortal will is developed and the mere animal man has set his foot upon a low rung of the ladder of the ascending series.
He was mistaken, certainly, in the temper of the English nation; he believed what the friars told him; and trusting to the promises of disaffection, insurrection, invasion those ignes fatui which for sixty years floated so delusively before the Italian imagination, he imagined, perhaps, that he might trifle with Henry with impunity.
Word Of The Day