Bewitching Quotes & Sayings

She padded toward Han, barefoot, like a faerie startled out of a forest bower, bewitching mix of clan and flatland beauty. — Cinda Williams Chima

There, tam, la-bas, the gaze of men glows with inimitable understanding; there the freaks that are tortured here walk unmolested; there time takes shape according to one's pleasure, like a figured rug whose folds can be gathered in such a way that two designs will meet - and the rug is once again smoothed out, and you live on, or else superimpose the next image on the last, endlessly, endlessly, with the leisurely concentration of a woman selecting a belt to go with her dress - now she glides in my direction, rhythmically butting the velvet with her knees, comprehending everything and comprehensible to me ... There, there are the original of those gardens where we used to roam and hide in this world; there everything strikes one by its bewitching evidence, by the simplicity of perfect good; there everything pleases one's soul, everything is filled with the kind of fun that children know; there shines the mirror that now and then sends a chance reflection here ... — Vladimir Nabokov

MINISTER: All he has done is to find some means of bewitching the intelligence. He has only induced a radical suspension of disbelief. As in the early days of the cinema, all the citizens are jumping through the screen to lay their hands on the naked lady in the bathtub!
AMBASSADOR: And yet, in fact, their fingers touch flesh.
MINISTER: They believe they do. Yet all they touch is substantial shadow.
AMBASSADOR: And what a beautiful definition of flesh! You know I am only substantial shadow, Minister, but if you cut me, I bleed. Touch me, I palpitate! — Angela Carter

I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of creation. It was one of the most bewitching sights in the world to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a rose of early peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

But I also know of yet another life. I know and want it and devour it ferociously. It's a life of magical violence. It's mysterious and bewitching. In it snakes entwine while the stars tremble. Drops of water drip in the phosphorescent darkness of the cave. In that dark the flowers intertwine in a humid fairy garden. And I am the sorceress of that silent bacchanal. I feel defeated by my own corruptibility. And I see that I am intrinsically bad. It's only out of pure kindness that I am good. Defeated by myself. Who lead me along the paths of the salamander, the spirit who rules the fire and lives within it. And I give myself as an offering to the dead. I weave spells on the solstice, spectre of an exorcised dragon. — Clarice Lispector

Many different thoughts rise up in the darkness - like those gossamer plants that grow in the lake, oddly bewitching and pretty as they bob and sway; but enticing and sinister, they exert a dark pull as long as they're growing in the living, trickling mire. ANd yet as long as they're nothing but slimey brown clumps when the children pull them in to the boat. So many strange thoughts, both terrifying and enticing, grow in the night. — Sigrid Undset

A screen ... the scenery and the figures of life were perfectly represented, but with that bewitching, yet indescribably difference, which always makes a picture, an image, or a shadow, so much more attractive than the original. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

With one of the most bewitching sounds in the world, its purr, the cat persuades us that it thinks we are wonderful. — Akif Pirincci

Love distills desire upon the eyes, love brings bewitching grace into the heart ... — Euripides

I really should have died then, Tsukuru often told himself. Then this world, the one in the here and now, wouldn't exist. It was a captivating, bewitching thought. The present world wouldn't exist, and reality would no longer be real. As far as this world was concerned, he would simply no longer exist - just as this world would no longer exist for him. — Haruki Murakami

A gentle joyousness-a mighty mildness of repose in swiftness, invested the gliding whale. Not the white bull Jupiter swimming away with ravished Europa clinging to his graceful horns; his lovely, leering eyes sideways intent upon the maid; with smooth bewitching fleetness, rippling straight for the nuptial bower in Crete; not Jove, not that great majesty Supreme! did surpass the glorified White Whale as he so divinely swam. — Herman Melville

Charles Adams was an amiable, accomplished & bewitching young Man; of so dazzling a Beauty that none but Eagles could look him in the Face. — Jane Austen

If you choose your life's work well, something bewitching can happen through your labors. Each hour you log can be a source of joy. — Laura Vanderkam

There is between sleep and us something like a pact, a treaty with no secret clauses, and according to this convention it is agreed that, far from being a dangerous, bewitching force, sleep will become domesticated and serve as an instrument of our power to act. We surrender to sleep, but in the way that the master entrusts himself to the slave who serves him. — Maurice Blanchot

A zing travels up my arm from the contact. My nostrils flare, and I catch a whiff of her female scent. She may not wear perfume, but there's a bewitching essence to her that ensnares my senses. — Magda Alexander

I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses ... — J.K. Rowling

A thousand for his love expired each day, And those who saw his face, in blank dismay Would rave and grieve and mourn their lives away- To die for love of that bewitching sight Was worth a hundred lives without his light. None could survive his absence patiently, None could endure this king's proximity- How strange it was that man could neither brook The presence nor the absence of his look! — Farid Al-Din Attar

Dr. Benjamin Spock, who worked in a veterans' hospital dealing with emotional illnesses during World War II, commented at the time that there was a pronounced cross-sex problem in dealing with psychopathic personalities. The male psychopaths had no difficulty in bewitching female staff members, while the male staff picked up on them rapidly. The female psychopaths could fool the male staff but not the women. — Ann Rule

When the character is lacking in purity, when sin has become a part of the character, it has a bewitching power that is equal to the intoxicating glass of liquor. — Ellen G. White

And what did you want?"
His eyes sparkled with laughter. "I wanted to find the nearest bar and drink until I forgot a certain orphan with bewitching green eyes. I kept telling myself it was my Mori who wanted you, but the truth was, I noticed you before my demon did, and I wanted to see you again."
Warmth pooled in my stomach. "Would you do it differently now?"
"Yes."
"What would you do?"
"I'd do this."
I squealed as he swung me up over his shoulder and started striding back toward the waterfront. "Nikolas, put me down, you big lug!" I yelled through my laughter.
He patted my backside. "This time my Mori and I are in complete agreement."
"You do know I can zap your warrior ass, right?" I squirmed and he held me tighter.
His deep laugh warmed me to my toes. "But you won't."
"How do you know?"
"Because you like me... a lot. — Karen Lynch

All was calm and motionless in the wondrous Garden, and the marvelously brilliant flowers seemed breathless; and they suffused the Youth with a scent which made the head whirl and oppressed the heart with a sinister languor - a scent which was reminiscent of the obscure, rushing, thirsting sighs of vanilla, cyclamen, datura and lily, of evil and fateful flowers which in dying themselves destroy, bewitching with a mysterious death.
The Youth resolutely decided to make his way into the wondrous Garden, to inhale the mysterious fragrances which the Beauty inhaled, and gain her love even though the price might be life itself, even though the road to it might be a fatal road, a road of no return.
("The Poison Garden") — Valery Bryusov

His [the pedestrian's] elevation transfigures him into a voyeur. It puts his at a distance. It transforms the bewitching world by which one was 'possessed' into a text that lies before one's eyes. It allows one to read it, to be a solar Eye, looking down like a god. The exaltation of a scopic and gnostic drive: the fiction of knowledge is related to this lust to be a viewpoint and nothing more. — Michel De Certeau

She stopped as a map of Erilea appeared. Maps had always interested her; there was something bewitching in knowing one's precise location in relation to others on earth. — Sarah J. Maas

Christ, he was a cipher.
For the first time, he worried if he could be worthy enough for Mariketa. Did he even deserve her? Yes, she was a witch, but she was also stunningly beautiful and brave and clever.
"I like football, too," he finally said.
"You've already told me, so that doesn't count."
"I love the color of your eyes."
She tucked a curl behind her pointed ear, sliding him the bewitching smile that made his heart punch the insides of his chest. "What's your favorite place to visit?"
He absently answered, "Wherever you are."
"Bowen, five things about you can't all be about me."
But you're the only good thing that I've got. "Why no'? — Kresley Cole

A memory came to me. One time, in middle school, a famous author came to talk to our class and give a writing workshop. One of the things she told us about writing a novel was that the story should be about what the main character wants. Dorothy wants to go home to Kansas. George Milton wants a farm of his own. Amelia Sedley wants to marry her darling George and live happily ever after. The end of the story, according to the famous author, is when the character either gests what he wants or realizes he's never going to get it. Or sometimes, she said, like Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind, realizes she doesn't actually want what she thought she wanted all along.
pg. 324 of Bewitching — Alex Flinn

Bouchalka was not a reflective person. He had his own idea of what a great prima donna should be like, and he took it for granted that Mme. Garnet corresponded to his conception. The curious thing was that he managed to impress his idea upon Cressida herself. She began to see herself as he saw her, to try to be like the notion of her that he carried everywhere in that pointed head of his. She was exalted quite beyond herself. Things that had been chilled under the grind came to life in her that winter, with the breath of Bouchalka's adoration. Then, if ever in her life, she heard the bird sing on the branch outside her window; and she wished she were younger, lovelier, freer. She wished there were no Poppas, no Horace, no Garnets. She longed to be only the bewitching creature Bouchalka imagined her. — Willa Cather

'Kukla, Fran and Ollie' occurred in real time and was a benign and bewitching example of pure television. — Tom Shales

Spanish children are too often ill-cared for, but despite the abuses of ignorant motherhood and fatherhood, such vivid, vivacious, bewitching little people as they are! — Katharine Lee Bates

Whenever I find myself talking of the beauty and the poetry of the Bosphorus and Istanbul's dark streets, a voice inside me warns against exaggeration, a tendency perhaps motivated by a wish not to acknowledge the lack of beauty in my own life. If I see my city as beautiful and bewitching, then my life must be so too. A — Orhan Pamuk

A simple garb is the proper costume of the vulgar; it is cut for them, and exactly suits their measure, but it is an ornament for those who have filled up their lives with great deeds. I liken them to beauty in dishabille, but more bewitching on that account. — Jean De La Bruyere

She was wearing a simple silver sheath cut within an inch of indecency, curving round her slender shoulders and then falling away to expose the smooth white skin of her back and just a hint of the soft round curve of her breasts. She had on no jewellery, only a pale wash of lipstick, and again the black halo of hair was arranged so that it looked almost wind tossed. Yet her dark tresses shone, framing her face with a soft, unearthly light. Next to the other women at the table, with their diamonds, heavy strands of pearls, and meticulously groomed faces and hair, she seemed feral and bewitching. The impact of her beauty lay in her confidence and her utter lack of self-awareness. In contrast, others appeared to be trying too hard, careful and staid. — Kathleen Tessaro

Truth always has a bewitching savor of newness in it, and novelty at the first taste recalls that original sweetness to the tongue; but alas for him who would make the one a substitute for the other. — James Russell Lowell

The independent girl is truly of quite modern origin, and usually is a most bewitching little piece of humanity. — Lou Henry Hoover

But from the hoop's bewitching round, Her very shoe has power to wound. — George Edward Moore

She's beautiful, delightful, elegant, exquisite, charming, divine, captivating, gorgeous, stunning, bewitching, admirable, and a million other inadequate words. — Jewel E. Ann

Andrew Cairns has written, quite literally, a bewitching novel, one that speaks to an underbelly which lies dormant in us all. The Witch's List bridges our world of convention, with that of a fabulous Twlilight Zone, what may be true reality
a realm of magic and ultimate possibility. I recommend this book because, behind the smokescreen of simplicity, there lies a masked bedrock of extraordinary power. — Tahir Shah

The wine urges me on, the bewitching wine, which sets even a wise man to singing and to laughing gently and rouses him up to dance and brings forth words which were better unspoken. — Homer

I succeeded in bewitching a fair number and in being intoxicated with my mistakes. — Jean Cocteau

The very falsehood that stained her, was a proof how blindly she loved another
this dark, slight, elegant, handsome man
while he himself was rough, and stern, and strongly made. He lashed himself into an agony of fierce jealousy. He thought of that look, that attitude!
how he would have laid his life at her feet for such tender glances, such fond detention! He mocked at himself, for having valued the mechanical way in which she had protected him from the fury of the mob; now he had seen how soft and bewitching she looked when with a man she really loved. He remembered, point by point, the sharpness of her words
'There was not a man in all that crowd for whom she would not have done as much, far more readily than for him.' He shared with the mob, in her desire of averting bloodshed from them; but this man, this hidden lover, shared with nobody; he had looks, words, hand-cleavings, lies, concealment, all to himself. — Elizabeth Gaskell

She was so desperate to love and be loved, she could sprout tender feelings toward a rock. And rocks didn't call her "bewitching" or "temptress." Rocks didn't have touchable golden brown hair.

But rocks and Ransom did have something in common. — Tessa Dare

Night's bewitching hand
Slams the door- in my face and that of sorrow.
No matter how hard I try,
It only mocks me.

All that I designed in daytime,
Night came and smeared with smoke.
All that I imagined at night,
Day came and erased outright. — Sohrab Sepehri

I found myself at dusk in the bewitching Roman city of Jerash with H.M. Queen Rania of Jordan one year, and scrambling with hardened paparazzi to get an image of the Princess of Wales in a tiny Nepalese clinic in the foothills of the Himalayas another. — Hamish Bowles

She couldn't take her eyes off him.
He had sandy-blond hair and piercingly green eyes. Today he wore a deep-red T-shirt with the word BOUNCER printed across the back. The material pulled tightly over his muscular chest. He was a specimen.
But the most striking feature about him was his smile.
The man was bewitching, and Sofia knew a thing or two about bewitching. — Amanda Carlson

He had sometimes looked into her eyes and whispered to himself how bewitching she was, as if she weren't there hearing him, as if he were all alone looking upon some exceptional specimen rather than his wife. — Terry Goodkind

Lucy does not want sense, and that is the foundation on which everything good may be built. And after all, Marianne, after all that is bewitching in the idea of a single and constant attachment, and all that can be said of one's happiness depending entirely on any particular person, it is not meant - it is not fit - it is not possible that it should be so. — Jane Austen

One morning in mid-December, Hogwarts woke to find itself covered in several feet of snow. The lake froze solid and the Weasley twins were punished for bewitching several snowballs so that they followed Quirrell around, bouncing off the back of his turban. — J.K. Rowling

The first impression of the writings of Mr. J. J. Rousseau received by a knowledgeable reader, who is reading for something more than vanity or to kill time, is that he is encountering a lucidity of mind, a noble impulse of genius and a sensitive soul of such a high level that perhaps never an author of whatever epoch or of whatever people has been able to possess in combination.
The impression that immediately follows is bewilderment over the strange and contradictory opinions, which so oppose those which are in general circulation that one can easily come to the suspicion that the author, by virtue of his extraordinary talent, wishes to show off only the force of his bewitching wit and through the magic of rhetoric make himself something apart who through captivating novelties stands out among all rivals at wit. — Immanuel Kant

If I see my city as beautiful and bewitching, then my life must be so too. — Orhan Pamuk

He enjoyed dancing with a fair stranger, enjoyed the vacuous, chaste talk, through which you listen closely to that bewitching, vague something going on inside you and inside her, which will last a couple of bars more and then, finding no resolution, will vanish forever and be utterly forgotten. But while the bond of bodies is still unbroken, the outlines of a potential love affair begin to form, and the rough draft already comprises everything: the sudden silence between two people in some dimly lit room; the man carefully placing with trembling fingers on the edge of an ashtray the just-lit bit impedient cigarette; the woman's eyes slowly closing in as in a film scene.. — Vladimir Nabokov

to absorb, explore, and expand the intricacies of those bewitching systems; — Steven Levy

Having been a demon curse, however brief, should leave a mark. A streak of silver hair, or bewitching eyes. Maybe crows on one's roof or a hound from hell at your heel. Blowing out my breath I stood and squinted at my reflection. A black eye. Swell. — Kim Harrison

What did I do to deserve you?" I wonder aloud, feeling like this woman just doesn't stop bewitching me.
"Nothing really. You bossed me into dating you. Fucked me good, and then you wouldn't leave me alone. Now you're stuck with me. — River Savage

Laughter is day, and sobriety is night; a smile is the twilight that hovers gently between both, more bewitching than either. — Henry Ward Beecher

Dear God, you are beautiful. I tried to forget, to pretend I did not need you, but it was no use. You haunt my waking hours and my dreams, and though I know if I stay with you my soul my soul will be lost and my life damned, I cannot stay away, nor can I put you from me. So come and let me drown in your bewitching angel's eyes. Some things bought dearly are worth the price. — Jennifer Blake

Did he ask what she'd done in her room? Hell, no. At that point, and after that bewitching smile, if she'd murmured, "I'm leading you into the fiery depths of hell," he'd have followed dumbly. — Kresley Cole

In stories like Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast, they always say the heroine is 'as good as she is beautiful.' I wondered if people just wanted that to be true, wanted the beautiful to be good. I wondered if they wanted the ugly to be bad because then they wouldn't have to feel bad for them. — Alex Flinn

You got me sitting on the shelf, while you're out bewitching someone else. — Jimi Hendrix

Not long before, I had stayed up late with my mother and watched Citizen Kane, and I was very taken with the idea that a person might notice in passing some bewitching stranger and remember her for the rest of his life. Someday I too might be like the old man in the movie, leaning back in my chair with a far-off look in my eyes, and saying: You know, that was sixty years ago, and I never saw that girl with the red hair again, but you know what? Not a month has gone by in all that time when I haven't thought of her. — Donna Tartt

Maps had always interested her; there was something bewitching in knowing one's precise location in relation to others on the earth. — Sarah J. Maas

They understood, as few have understood before or since, how fleeting life is and how pointless to try to hold on to things or people. They pursued the wondrous deed, the heroic gesture: fighting, fucking, drinking, art - poetry for intense emotion, the music that accompanied the heroic drinking with which each day ended, bewitching ornament for one's person and possessions. — Thomas Cahill

When I was at the University I knew a law student named Yamada Uruu. Later he worked for the Osaka Municipal Office; he's been dead for years. This man's father was an old-time lawyer, or "advocate," who in early Meiji defended the notorious murderess Takahashi Oden. It seems he often talked to his son about Oden's beauty. Apparently he would corner him and go on and on about her, as if deeply moved. "You might call her alluring, or bewitching," he would say. "I've never known such a fascinating woman, she's a real vampire. When I saw her I thought I wouldn't mind dying at the hands of a woman like that!"

Since I have no particular reason to keep on living, sometimes I think I would be happier if a woman like Oden turned up to kill me. Rather than endure the pain of these half-dead arms and legs of mine, maybe I could get it over and at the same time see how it feels to be brutally murdered. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki

After all that is bewitching in the idea of a single and constant attachment, and all that can be said of one's happiness depending entirely on any particular person, it is not meant
it is not fit
it is not possible that it should be so.
Edward will marry Lucy — Jane Austen

That's one of the most bewitching things about romance for me, as a reader and writer. Romances harbor hope for the reader. They create a direct emotional experience of certainty and potential to bridge the dark moments and help lead us into the light. No small wonder that romance is the source of all fictional genres and that romance continues to outsell every other form of human literary output. Hope is a magical thing, hard-won and easily snuffed. Anyone can point out ways for us to stay disappointed, compromised, and anxious, but opening anyone's eyes to possibilities helps them dream harder and reach further. Any book that can do that deserves a place on my shelves. — Damon Suede

Hope is a bewitching emotion... leading one on with outrageous promises of
better things to come. (Adam Ashworth) — Cynthia Wicklund

There are few faces that can afford to smile: a smile is sometimes bewitching, in general vapid, often a contortion. — Benjamin Disraeli

Charles stepped forward, looking outraged. 'Him?' he cried. 'But I clobbered him! You can't marry him, Ally. — Marissa Doyle

Do or do not. There is no try, says Yoda, the bewitching philosopher warrior created by George Lucas in Star Wars. Yoda is quoted at least as often as the founding fathers on this topic. — Jerry I. Porras

What she had believed was indignation or rage or a deep intolerance for injustice came down to this: she was irreducibly in love with this bewitching planet, this thrilling life, this heartbreaking species she belonged to, with its capacity for stupefying destruction and breathtaking magnanimity. — Thrity Umrigar

No sugarcoating would be necessary," Matthew interrupted calmly. "Daisy ... that is, Miss Bowman, is entirely - " Beautiful. Desirable. Bewitching. " - acceptable. Marrying a woman like Miss Bowman would be a reward in itself. — Lisa Kleypas

You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making. As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses ... I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death - if you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach. — J.K. Rowling

By and by a change came: I started to muse about the shape of my nose. I put my trivial surroundings aside and mused more and more about myself, and I found this to be a bewitching occupation. I stopped asking and longed instead to speak of my thoughts and feelings. Alas, there was no one besides myself who found me interesting. — Tove Jansson

Do not the bewitching power of all studies lie in that they continually open up to us new, unsuspected horizons, not yet understood, which entice us to proceed further and further in the penetration of what appears at first sight only in vague outline? — Pyotr Kropotkin

It is midnight
no magical bewitching
hour for me — Sonia Sanchez

This is what I am talking about: the bewitching power of moonlight. Moonlight incites dark passions like a cold flame, making hearts burning with the intensity of phosphorus. — Rampo Edogawa

Admiration is one of the most bewitching, enthusiastic passions of the mind; and every common moralist knows that it arises from novelty and surprise, the inseparable attendants of imposture. — William Warburton

Listening to him play was like discovering an eagle in the wild. It was tumblingly bewitching. She could feel and hear genius she knew it. — Debra Anastasia

Don't worry. If we sink, we'll swim together to shore. We'll use your bewitching chapeau as a float."
The nose of the yacht dipped hard, then rose. The wing began a low howl around us.
"I'm not blotto," he said, in response to my expression. He turned to the railing and chucked the empty flute to the waves. "Not yet, in any case."
I went to stand beside him. The flute had sunk beneath the surface already, on its way to an eternity of sand and tide.
"That's good. Because I can't swim."
"Why did you go swimming in the grotto, then," he asked too pleasantly, "if you can't swim?"
"I wasn't swimming there. I was smoke, at the ceiling, when you came in. Falling into the water was an accident."
"You're welcome," Armand said.
I refused to ask for what. We both knew. — Shana Abe