Under A Spell Quotes & Sayings

I had thought I loved Mildrith, but that was lust, though for a time I had believed it was love. Lust is the deceiver. Lust wrenches our lives until nothing matters except the one we think we love, and under that deceptive spell we kill for them, give all for them, and then, when we have what we have wanted, we discover that it is all an illusion and nothing is there. Lust is a voyage to nowhere, to an empty land, but some men just love such voyages and never care about the destination. Love — Bernard Cornwell

When I come across one or other of my fellow Christians ignorant of astronomy, believing what is not so, I calmly look on, not thinking him the worse for mistaking the place or order of created things, so long as he holds nothing demeaning to you, Lord, the creator of all those things. But he is worse off if he holds that his error is a matter of religious faith, and persists stubbornly in the error. His faith is still a weak thing in its cradle, needing the milk of a mothering love, until the youth grows up and cannot be the play-thing, any more, of every doctrinal wind that blows.
But one who ventures on the role of teacher, of leader and ruler of those under his spell, whose followers heed him not as a man only but as your very Spirit
what are we to make of him when he is caught purveying falsehoods? Should we not reject and despise such madness? — Augustine Of Hippo

There is no discussing theology, sociology and politics when someone is under the spell of a self-enclosed totalitarian ideology. Intentionally or out of ignorance, Ahmed, who is empirical in all matters, detests pointless and laborious philosophical imaginings, never-ending discussions, or clashes of ideas that might be respectful of non-believer opponents and sinners deserving only of complete contempt. — Elie Wiesel

Certain streets have an atmosphere of their own, a sort of universal fame and the particular affection of their citizens. One of such streets is the Cannebiere, and the jest: "If Paris had a Cannebiere, it would be a little Marseilles" is the jocular expression of municipal pride. I, too, I have been under the spell. For me it has been a street leading into the unknown. — Joseph Conrad

Coppers and purples, and reds and golds, browns and blacks streaked across the earth violently, and sweeping up and over, a kaleidoscope of dirt and rock that challenges even the most jaded of hearts to not fall under her spell. — Danielle Rohr

Heat stole over her for she suspected he might be trying to charm her, and she was not immune. 'Twould be too easy to fall under his spell. "I've already given you food. You are mighty demanding for a prisoner."
A grin quirked his lips. "There is something I want from you after I'm free." She was afraid to ask, but she had to know. "And what is that?"
"A kiss. — Vonda Sinclair

The secret is
a magician doesn't buy magic. Admire the skill of a magician, but never fall under his spell. She rose and collected our glasses. And I thought of how Barry seduced my mother, his smoked mirrors and hidden trained doves. She never chose him, not really, but she gave him everything. She would always be his, even if he was dead. He had shaped her destiny. — Janet Fitch

Under the sad end-of-days spell of the smoky dusk and the waning year, of the moon and its ostentatious superiority to the trashy, petty claptrap of his sublunar existence, why does he even hesitate? The Kamizakis are your enemies whether you do or not, so you might as well do it. Yes, yes, if you can still do something, you must do it - that is the golden rule of sublunar existence, whether you are a worm cut in two or a man with a prostate like a billiard ball. If you can still do something, then you must do it! Anything living can figure that out. — Philip Roth

In a democratic society, there is always a struggle between the machinery of national security and press freedom, and the public's right to know is usually the loser. When our national security czars become, in effect, our media gatekeepers, we lose one of the essential cornerstones of a true democracy - an informed citizenry. Distracted by the manufactured flow of information produced by a news media that has fallen under the spell of its own official sources, and beguiled by militaristic and patriotic Hollywood myth-making, the American public is largely benighted when it comes to understanding the wars and covert violence carried out in our name. Spooked will explain exactly how this process occurs and what happens to journalists who dare to break the rules. The — Nicholas Schou

If anyone's under a spell, Justina, it's me. Your daughter put one on me five years ago, and I haven't broken free of it yet. Oh, and you'll be delighted to know, we've decided to resume our relationship. Don't bother with congratulations - trust me, your expression is congratulations enough. — Jeaniene Frost

It used to be, you'd open your mouth
And the weather changed. You'd
Open your mouth and the sky'd spill
That dry, missing-someone kind of rain
No matter the season. And it hurt
Like a guitar hurts under the right hands.
Like a good strong spell. Now
You're all song. Body gone to memory.
And guess what? It hurts
Harder. — Tracy K. Smith

I learned to knit in 2002, six months after my 5-year-old daughter, Grace, died suddenly from a virulent form of strep. I was unable to read or write, and friends suggested I take up knitting; almost immediately I fell under its spell. — Ann Hood

People often ask me if I'm working on a book. That's not how I feel. I feel like I work in a book. It's like putting myself under a spell. And this spell, if you will, is so real to me that if I have to leave my work for a few days, I have to work myself back into the spell when I come back. It's almost like hypnosis. — David McCullough

But if we can achieve a deeper understanding of "suffering," of the unreliability of everything we experience, it will help us appreciate the inherent poignancy of everything in the world. "It's like we've been enchanted," he says. "We've been put under a spell - believing that this or that is going to be the source of our ultimate freedom or happiness. And to wake up from that, to wake up from that enchantment, to be more aligned with what is true, it brings us much greater happiness. — Dan Harris

Often I felt that these men were play-acting: the unreality of their role was their security, even their own destinies were to them saga and folk-tale rather than a private matter; these were men under a spell, men who had been turned into birds or even more likely into some strange beast, and who bore their magic shapes with the same unflurried equanimity, magnanimity, and dignity that we children had marvelled at the beasts of fairy tale. Did they not suspect, moreover, with the wordless apprehension of animals, that if their magic shapes were to be stripped from them the fairy tale would be at an end and their security gone, too, while real life would begin with all it's problems, perhaps in some town where there was neither nature or mirage, no link with the folk-tale and the past, no ancient path to the far side of the mountains and down to the river gullies and out beyond the grass plains, no landmarks from the Sagas? - Only a restless search for sterile, deadening enjoyment. — Halldor Laxness

Why? How had this otherwise sensible woman who had only met Beamabeth as a screaming purple blob fallen under her spell? Or had Beamabeth slipped immaculate into the world, petal-cheeked and smiling amidst gleaming golden curls? — Frances Hardinge

It is neutral if you go under spell in your first love; but if it happens for a second time you have mistaken love with something else. — M.F. Moonzajer

All the same, we ought to point out that if the kinds of poetry and representation which are designed merely to give pleasure can come up with a rational argument for their inclusion in a well-governed community, we'd be delighted
short of compromising the truth as we see it, which wouldn't be right
to bring them back from exile: after all, we know from our own experience all about their spell. I mean haven't you ever fallen under the spell of poetry, Glaucon, especially when the spectacle is provided by Homer? — Plato

Love, she told herself, would one day release her from this spell of unreality. She was persuaded that the sublime passion was the key to the enigma; but it was difficult to relate her conception of love to the forms it wore in her experience. Two or three of the girls she had envied for their superior acquaintance with the arts of life had contracted, in the course of time, what were variously described as "romantic" or "foolish" marriages; one even made a runaway match, and languished for a while under a cloud of social reprobation. Here, then, was passion in action, romance converted to reality; yet the heroines of these exploits returned from them untransfigured, and their husbands were as dull as ever when one had to sit next to them at dinner. Her own case, of course, would be different. — Edith Wharton

I still don't like my freckles," I said desperately, trying to stop myself from falling completely under his spell. "Angel kisses." Corbin dropped a soft, open-mouthed kiss on my bare shoulder where there was a cluster of freckles. "That is what we used to call them. They're beautiful, just like the rest of you, Addison. — Evangeline Anderson

Money had them under a spell. Once they spent the money on a problem, they never thought about it again. — Eddie Huang

Looking back on that time it seems to me that such rapture over Tarkovsky by an audience most of whom would not have known how to spell his name, and who would under normal circumstances have ignored or even disliked his work, arose from our intense sensory deprivation. We were thirsty for some form of beauty, even in an incomprehensible, overintellectual, abstract film with no subtitles and censored out of recognition. There was a sense of wonder at being in a public place for the first time in years without fear or anger, being in a place with a crowd of strangers that was not a demonstration, a protest rally, a breadline or a public execution. — Azar Nafisi

Little did Crystal know that once you got hooked on knitting you would not merely "like the yarn you were working with," but become obsessed with the stuff, craving it, longing for it, fascinated by yarn as if you were under a spell. You'd see a skein of yarn somewhere and feel you just had to have it . . . or die. — Anne Canadeo

Love is a dangerous thing. It comes in disguise to change our life ... Lust is the deceiver. Lust wrenches our lives until nothing matters except the one we think we love, and under that deceptive spell we kill for them, give all for them, and then, when we have what we have wanted, we discover that it is all an illusion and nothing is there. Lust is a voyage to nowhere, to an empty land, but some men just love such voyages and never care about the destination. Love is a voyage too, a voyage with no destination except death, but a voyage of bliss. — Bernard Cornwell

I told her that magic spells only work until the person under the spell is really and honestly tired of it. It ends when continuing becomes simply too ghastly a prospect. — Helen Oyeyemi

You're a gorgeous siren who could lure anybody into your arms. But I must go before I deliciously fall under your spell. — Rebekkah Ford

You call that a kiss?"
"Yep."
Okay, so I'm in shock the girl put my hand on her creamy cheek. Damn, you'd think I was on drugs by the way my body reacted.
She had me totally under her spell a minute ago. Then the pretty witch turned my game around so she was the one with the upper hand. — Simone Elkeles

You know," he said, "under normal circumstances, you inviting me to the bedroom would be the highlight of my day."
I crossed my arms and sat on the bed. I did so out of simple fatigue, but a moment later, I was struck by what I was doing. This is where Adrian sleeps. I'm touching the covers he's wrapped in every night. What does he wear? Does he wear anything?
I jumped up. — Richelle Mead

It seemed to him he had waited an age for some stir of the great grim hush; the life of the town was itself under a spell
so unnaturally, up and down the whole prospect of known and rather ugly objects, the blankness and the silence lasted. Had they ever, he asked himself, the hard-faced houses, which had begun to look livid in the dim dawn, had they ever spoken so little to any need of his spirit? Great builded voids, great crowded stillnesses put on, often, in the heart of cities, for the small hours, a sort of sinister mask, and it was of this large collective negation that Brydon presently became conscious
all the more that the break of day was, almost incredibly, now at hand, proving to him what night he had made of it. — Henry James

It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language that is under the spell of another, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his re-creation of that work. — Walter Benjamin

I slay dragons at night while you sleep.
I see by the way your face contorts how they exist in your dreams.
Willing a magic sword, I plunge into your deepest nightmares and swing at the beasts with all my might, dodging flames exhaled by monsters that would eat me alive to go on torturing the fair one I love. I see your face relax, eyes still drowsily closed, when the mighty dragon is slain.
It may be that my fingers rub soft circles on your forehead as I imagine my brave fight as a knight reclaiming your dreams. You smile under the spell of my touch, and I am rewarded. And so, my love, as I await the dawn, I stand ready to slay dragons while you sleep. — Richelle E. Goodrich

I know what I want to eat, and I bet it's not on the menu. Regardless of how hot he made her, though, she needed to remind herself he was under a spell, meaning he was off limits no matter how much her body craved him. Big — Eve Langlais

We have no idea who we really are. Whatever glory bestowed, whatever glory is being restored, we thought the whole Christian thing was about ... something else. Trying not to sin. Going to church. Being nice. Jesus says it is about healing your heart, setting it free, restoring your glory. A religious fog has tried to veil all that, put us under some sort of spell or amnesia, to keeup us from coming alive. — John Eldredge

Any musical person who has never heard a Negro congregation under the spell of religious fervor sing these old songs has missed one of the most thrilling emotions which the human heart may experience. — James Weldon Johnson

But out under the Moon, Chestnut Ridge and Cheat behind them, and Monongahela to cross, into an Overture of meadow to the Horizon, low-lands become to them a dream whilst under a Spell, the way it gives back the Light, the way it withholds its Shadows, - who might not come to believe in an Eternal West? In a Momentum that bears all away? "Men are remov'd by it, and women, from where they were, - as if surrender'd to a great current of Westering. You will hear of gold cities, marble cities, men that fly, women that fight, fantastickal creatures never dream'd in Europe, - something always to take and draw you that way, — Thomas Pynchon

Michael Koryta is that rare author who is at once a compelling story teller and a fantastic writer. From the first sentence of THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD, you'll be under his spell. His characters are living, breathing people you'll care about; his setting is a place you'll visit and stay-long after you've decided to leave because you're scared. You can't leave; you're trapped. There are too many nerve-jangling, beautifully written, razor sharp moments and you won't want to miss a single one. This is an absolute sizzler. — Lisa Unger

The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

In our household, which was essentially under an evil spell, my father 'Chaplin' was all the magic. A great man draws magic into himself, like reverse lightning. There's nothing to spare for anyone else. — Joyce Carol Oates

I watched him walk behind the bamboo bars. Black stripes and sunlit white fur flashed through the slits in the dark bamboo; it was like watching the slow-down reels of an old black-and-white film. He was walking in the same line, again and again - from one end of the bamboo bars to the other, then turning around and repeating it over, at exactly the same pace, like a thing under a spell. He was hypnotizing himself by walking like this - that was the only way he could tolerate this cage — Aravind Adiga

Because the next moment, when I was hauled out from under the bed and up to a pair of so-familiar green eyes, I just hung there limply. And stared. At a face that was hard to look at. Not that it was unattractive. There had been a time when I'd thought so-the overlarge nose, the hard-as-glass eyes, the I-couldn't-be-bothered-to-shave-today-and-possibly-not-yesterday-either stubble didn't exactly spell out movie-star good looks. But there was a lot more to John Pritkin than looks, although even there I'd started to come around recently. The strong, stubborn jawline, the rock-hard body, and the flashes of humor behind the taciturn expression-hell, even the rigid blond spikes he called hair might not add up to handsome, but they added up to something. Something that might have been disturbing if I hadn't had plenty of other things to disturb me right now. — Karen Chance

The tints of autumn ... a mighty flower garden blossoming under the spell of the enchanter, frost. — John Greenleaf Whittier

After every rainfall there's a rainbow because rainbows are a promise. A promise that there will always be a light in the darkness. That's why they are too beautiful to overlook.' His hand crept along my cheek, brushing away the fallen strands of my hair. The same strange look came over him, as if he wasn't present at all, but somewhere else, in a strange memory. "You, Norah, are our light."
I swallowed hard. "Where's the darkness?"
His eyes were trained, like he was under a spell, unable to move away or stop looking at me. "Where you aren't. — Angela Parkhurst

Sometimes I think this planet is under a spell," Elias said. "We are asleep or in a trance, and something causes us to see what it wants us to see and remember and think what it wants us to remember and think. Which means we're whatever it wants us to be. Which in turn means that we have no genuine existence. We're at the mercy of some kind of whim. — Philip K. Dick

Rather than fall completely under his spell, she huffed, "I should like to see you submissively fond of your wife. Given your professed opinions, I cannot expect much fondness from you as a husband, can I?"
"Fondness, yes. Ridiculous, romantic, calf-eyed love, no, you may not," he confirmed. "But when I am fond, Bess, I am very fond. — Miranda Davis

A feeling settled over Cora. She had not been under its spell in years, since she brought the hatchet down on Blake's doghouse and sent the splinters into the air. She had seen men hung from trees and left for buzzards and crows. Women carved open to the bones with the cat-o'-nine-tails. Bodies alive and dead roasted on pyres. Feet cut off to prevent escape and hands cut off to stop theft. She had seen boys and girls younger than this beaten and had done nothing. This night the feeling settled on her heart again. It grabbed hold of her and before the slave part of her caught up with the human part of her, she was bent over the boy's body as a shield. — Colson Whitehead

At first the beauty of the melodies and of the interwoven words in elven-tongues, even though he understood them little, held him in a spell, as soon as as he began to attend to them. Almost it seemed that the words took shape, and visions of far lands and bright things that he had never yet imagined opened out before him; and the firelit hall became like a golden mist above the seas of foam that sighed upon the margins of the world. Then the enchantment became more and more dreamlike, until he felt that an endless river of swelling gold and silver was flowing over him, too multitudinous for its pattern to be comprehended; it became part of the throbbing air about him, and it drenched and drowned him. swiftly he sank under its shining weight into a deep realm of sleep. — J.R.R. Tolkien

This plague ... This curse ... I have an idea where it came from. I don't think it's from any spell or virus or nuclear rays. I think it's from a deeper place. I think we brought it here. I think we crushed ourselves down over the centuries. Buried ourselves under greed and hate and whatever other sins we could find until our souls finally hit the rock bottom of the universe. And then they scraped a hole through it, into some ... dark place. We released it. We poked through the seabed and the oil erupted, painted us black, pulled our inner sickness out for everyone to see. Now here we are in this dry corpse of a world, rotting on our feet till there's nothing left but bones and the buzz of flies. — Isaac Marion

He drops his head, his cheek pressed to mine, and he whispers in my ear. "If we go, we can't come back. Not ever. Things will never be the same."
I lean into him, needing to feel every inch of him, wishing he could absorb me and put me out of my misery.
"I'm not perfect Cami. I'm not a thoroughbred like he is. I never will be."
I'm under his spell, but I hear what he's saying. And I don't care. I don't care about anything but having Trick, having him in my life, having as much as he can give me.
"I hear sometimes the wild ones are the best."
He says nothing at first, but I can almost hear his smile as he no doubt recognizes his own words. — M. Leighton

Later traded to Jacques Caboche, another settler, it was in 1850 lost in a game of chess or poker to a newcomer named Hans Zimmerman; being used by him as a beer-stein until one day, under the spell of its contents, he suffered it to roll from his front stoop to the prairie path before his home - where, falling into the burrow of a prairie-dog, it passed beyond his power of discovery or recovery upon his awaking. — H.P. Lovecraft

I've been under the spell of the North ever since my childhood in Alaska. More and more, I've been returning to Alaska, and sometimes my adventures inspire a story. — Will Hobbs

He's a bad kitty. Sexy kitty. Trying-to-suck-her-under-his-spell-again kitty. A sensual smile tugged his lips. "If you don't start telling me what this is about, I am going to put you over my knee and warm that sweet ass of yours with the palm of my hand. Naked. — Eve Langlais

Every guy likes a little slut in his woman. Make no mistake about it. Under the spell of a slutty woman, a guy will betray his wife, his children, even his country. — Jack Dancer

Ojiugo often asked, 'But are they treating you well? Are they treating you well?' as though the treatment was what mattered, rather than the blighted reality of it all, that he was in a holding center, about to be deported. Nobody behaved normally. They were all under the spell of his misfortune. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Guyal of Sfere had been born one apart from his fellows and early proved a source of vexation for his sire. Normal in outward configuration, there existed within his mind a void that ached for nourishment. It was as if a spell had been cast upon his birth, a harassment visited on the child in a spirit of sardonic mockery, so that every occurrence, no matter how trifling, became a source of wonder and amazement. Even as young as four he was expounding such inquiries as:
'Why do squares have more sides than triangles?'
'How will we see when the sun goes dark?'
'Do flowers grow under the ocean?'
'Do stars hiss and sizzle when rain comes by night? — Jack Vance

The world wasn't real anymore. Everything in it was a fraudulent copy of what it should have been, and everything that happened in it shouldn't have been happening. For a long time afterward, Ferguson lived under the spell of this illusion, sleepwalking through his days and struggling to fall asleep at night, sick of a world he had stopped believing in, doubting everything that presented itself to his eyes. — Paul Auster

The anima in projection is responsible for man's state of being in love or in hate. One has now met one's soul image, the ideal and only woman, or conversely an absolutely unbearable bitch. Both reactions are found to be fascinating and irresistable. In such situations there tends to be a compulsive involvement which we can neither deal with nor let alone. Were it simply the fact that the woman is so wonderful or so awful, we could either love her or leave her. But if we can do neither, then we are under the arresting spell of the archetype. — Edward C. Whitmont

He was as bold as a lion about it, and 'mightily convinced' not only himself, but everybody that heard him; - but then his idea of a fugitive was only an idea of the letters that spell the word, - or at the most, the image of a little newspaper picture of a man with a stick and bundle, with "Ran away from the subscriber" under it. The magic of the real presence of distress, - the imploring human eye, the frail, trembling human hand, the despairing appeal of helpless agony, - these he had never tried. He had never thought that a fugitive might be a hapless mother, a defenseless child, - like that one which was now wearing his lost boy's little well-known cap; and so, as our poor senator was not stone or steel, - as he was a man, and a downright noble-hearted one, too, - he was, as everybody must see, in a sad case for his patriotism. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

I have forsaken her for a place I will never belong, but will always remain under her spell, forever to be, a child of my motherland. — B.G. Bowers

The sleeping princess is a symbol of the sleeping earth. The spell she is under is the chill of winter and the kiss of life... the kiss of the sun wakes her. — Elise Forier Edie

person could make his mind free from thoughts by fixing his gaze at a certain point or a certain flame. As he would slowly and steadily strengthen the magnetic power of his eyes, he himself would soon fall to hypnotic sleep. No doubt he could derive for himself the benefits one normally derived from other persons under hypnotic spell. — Narayan Dutt Shrimali

For me, it was like this: pronounced antipathy to conversing about matters of practical life, the future, dates, politics. You are fixated on the intellectual sphere as a man possessed may be fixated on the sexual: under its spell, sucked into it. — Walter Benjamin

Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to
Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.
Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin' ship
My senses have been stripped, my hands can't feel to grip
My toes too numb to step, wait only for my boot heels
To be wanderin'
I'm ready to go anywhere, I'm ready for to fade
Into my own parade, cast your dancing spell my way
I promise to go under it. — Bob Dylan

We pray Thee, O Christ, to keep us under the spell of immortality. My we never again think and act as if Thou were dead. Let us more and more come to know Thee as a living Lord who hath promised to them that believe: "Because I live, ye shall live also." Help us to remember that we are praying to the Conqueror of Death, that we may no longer be afraid nor dismayed by the world's problems and threats, since Thou hast overcome the world. In Thy strong name, we ask for Thy living presence and Thy victorious power. Amen. — Peter Marshall

Lucy is the first to find the secret of the wardrobe in the Professor's mysterious old house. At first, her brothers and sister don't believe her when she tells of her visit to the land of Narnia. But soon Edmund, then Peter and Susan step through the wardrobe themselves. In Narnia they find a country buried under the evil enchantment of the White Witch. When they meet the Great Lion, Aslan, they realize they've been called to a great adventure and bravely join the battle to free Narnia from the Witch's sinister spell. — C.S. Lewis

You know, like Prince Charming. Because you never know, maybe he's an enchanted prince under an evil spell."
"Life isn't a fairy tale, you know," Sam said.
"Wanna bet?" The teen smirked at him. — Deborah Blake

All it took was a lot of seemingly decent people to put the wrong person in power and then fall under their spell. Troy — Hugh Howey

Of all weapons in the world, I now know love to be the most dangerous. For I have suffered a mortal wound. When did I fall so deeply under your spell, Miss Bennet? I cannot fix the hour or the spot or the look or the words which lay the foundation. I was in the middle before I knew I began. But a proud fool I was. I have faced the harsh truth: that I can never hope to win your love in this life. — Seth Grahame-Smith

Running outdoors is to be in a sort of magical kingdom under whose spell I feel happiest. — Robin Harvie

But the moment our eyes meet, I'm right back under his spell, a helpless hunk of steel to his irresistible magnet. — Alyson Noel

The talk shows are stuffed full of sufferers who have regained their health
congressmen who suffered through a serious spell of boozing and skirt-chasing, White House aides who were stricken cruelly with overweening ambition, movie stars and baseball players who came down with acute cases of wanting to trash hotel rooms while under the influence of recreational drugs. Most of them have found God, or at least a publisher. — Calvin Trillin

Think of it : zillions and zillions of organisms running around, each under the hypnotic spell of a single truth, all these truths identical, and all logically incompatible with one another : 'My hereditary material is the most important material on earth; its survival justifies your frustration, pain, even death'. And you are one of those organisms, living your life in the thrall of a logical absurdity. — Robert Wright

It's kind of weird," she told Qi. "Gilly doesn't run up and kiss people. She doesn't dance. Se's usually so quiet. I mean, it's cool as hell, but for Gilly, it's weird."
"Part of it is Maggie," Qi said. "She has a talent for making people fall in love with her."
Sam started to nod, then she remembered she was talking to a witch. "So is Gilly like ... under like ... "
"A spell?" A hint of a smile crossed Qi's face. "Don't worry. Maggie just loves everybody, finds something good in everybody. And when people see the way she sees them, they tend to fall in love right back. — Kristopher Reisz

Aren't hidden doors the most alluring? The old stories point that out surely. Even the greatest heroes and heroines fall under the spell of a locked door. — Jane Yolen

Whatever our bedtime was as kids, we could stay up an extra half hour if we were reading. My parents didn't care as long as I was under the spell of a Stephen King or a Douglas Adams. Now I read in bed. I read at work. I read standing in line. It's like, 'Hello, my name is Nathan and I am a reader.' — Nathan Fillion

His sensitive nature was still smarting under the lashes of an undivided and squalid way of life. His soul was still disquieted and cast down by the dull phenomenon of Dublin. He had emerged from a two years' spell of revery to find himself in the midst of a new scene, every event and figure of which affected him intimately, disheartened him or allured and, whether alluring or disheartening, filled him always with unrest and bitter thoughts. All the leisure which his school life left him was passed in the company of subversive writers whose jibes and violence of speech set up a ferment in his brain before they passed out of it into his crude writings. — James Joyce

Ingersoll could not understand the mind of those who, once having been told the truth, preferred to remain under the spell of superstition and in ignorance. He could not understand why people would not accept 'new truths with gladness.'
He also knew, however, that once a person's mind had been poisoned with religious superstition, it was almost impossible to free it from the paralyzing fear which destroyed its ability to think. — Joseph Lewis

But again that sense of peace descended, that spell of perfect happiness, and I was traveling back through the years to the little French church of my childhood as the hymns began. Through my tears I saw the shining altar. I saw the icon of the Virgin, a gleaming square of gold above the flowers; I heard the Aves whispered as if they were a charm. Under the arches of Notre Dame de Paris I heard the priests singing Salve Regina. — Anne Rice

By degrees, he acquired a certain influence over me that took away my liberty of mind: his praise and notice were more restraining than his indifference. I could no longer talk or laugh freely when he was by, because a tiresomely importunate instinct reminded me that vivacity (at least in me) was distateful to him. I was so fully aware that only serious moods and occupations were acceptable, that in his presence every effort to sustain or follow any other became vain: I fell under a freezing spell. When he said 'go', I went; 'come', I came; 'do this', I dit it. But I did not love my servitude [ ... ]. — Charlotte Bronte

Uninvited, the thought of you stayed too late in my head,
so I went to bed, dreaming you hard, hard, woke with your name,
like tears, soft, salt, on my lips, the sound of its bright syllables
like a charm, like a spell.

Falling in love
is glamorous hell; the crouched, parched heart
like a tiger ready to kill; a flame's fierce licks under the skin.
Into my life, larger than life, beautiful, you strolled in.

I hid in my ordinary days, in the long grass of routine,
in my camouflage rooms. You sprawled in my gaze,
staring back from anyone's face, from the shape of a cloud,
from the pining, earth-struck moon which gapes at me

as I open the bedroom door. The curtains stir. There you are
on the bed, like a gift, like a touchable dream.

"You — Carol Ann Duffy

Under the warm light cast by the reading lamp, I was plunged into a new world of images and sensations peopled by characters who seemed as real to me as my surroundings. Page after page I let the spell of the story and its world take me over, until the breath of dawn touched my window and my tired eyes slid over the last page. I lay in the bluish half-light with the book on my chest and listened to the murmur of the sleeping city. My eyes began to close, but I resisted. I did not want to lose the story's spell or bid farewell to its characters just yet. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

We can be under the power of a spell, but we must overcome such a power; we must liberate ourselves from evil. Everyone can fight. — Hazrat Inayat Khan

I feel," Simon went on, "that this evening DJ Bat is doing a singularly exceptional job. Don't you agree?" Clary rolled her eyes and didn't answer; Simon hated trance music. Her attention was on the girl in the white dress. Through the darkness, smoke, and artificial fog, her pale dress shone out like a beacon. No wonder the blue-haired boy was following her as if he were under a spell, too distracted to notice anything else around him - even the two dark shapes hard on his heels, weaving after him through the crowd. — Cassandra Clare

When we come under the spell of the deeper domain of technology, its economic character and even its power aspect fascinate us less than its playful side. Then we realize we that we are involved in a play, a dance of the spirit, which cannot be grasped by calculation. What is ultimately left for science is intuition alone - a call of destiny.
This playful feature manifests itself more clearly in small things than in the gigantic works of our world. The crude observer can only be impressed by large quantities - chiefly when they are in motion - and yet there are as many organs in a fly as in a leviathan. — Ernst Junger

I was forever under his spell and I never wanted to be without him, ever again. And if being with him, like this, turned out to be a mistake, it would be the best mistake I'd ever make. — C.J. English

lemme spell it out it's not an equation you're the border and
i'm the nation you're talkin peace
i'm under occupation so what's better? isolation? oh fuck that i need a relation a station without limitation another minute before i begin my invasion and then we can rise to the sweet occasion — Antonio Pagliarulo

He was watching me, and he chuckled.
"Do you know how a man tames a wolf?" he asked me.
"No," I said.
"You get some clothing that you've been wearing for a while, and you toss it in with her. In the cage or the cavern where she sleeps. That first one, she rips up, shreds it to nothing. The second one, she just mouths it a bit, gets a taste. Inhales, like you're doing there. The third but of clothing, she starts dragging it around, loving on it, sleeping with it. And then you've got her under your spell. She's got the scent of you, wants to keep it around. She'll follow you everywhere."
"Are you calling me a wolf?" I asked.
"Are you calling me a man?" he said. — Delilah S. Dawson

There was a moment of silence, and he was aware of the servants' chiding stares. Suddenly, as a group, they broke into effusive compliments in an effort to atone for their master's boorishness.
"You're as lovely as a picture, miss!"
"...no one there will outshine you..."
"...a queen in that gown..."
A hot, troubling feeling expanded in Grant's chest, and he wanted to snap at them for being so ungodly solicitous of the feelings of a professional harlot. But he couldn't... because he was as much under her spell as the rest of them. — Lisa Kleypas

The fact was that despite himself, without knowing why or how it had happened and very much against his better judgement, he had fallen hopelessly in love. He had fallen as if into some deep and muddy hole. By nature he was a delicate and sensitive soul. He had had ideals and dreamed of an exquisite and passionate affair. And now he had fallen for this little cricket of a creature. She was as stupid as every other woman and not even pretty to make up for it. Skinny and foul-tempered, she had taken possession of him entirely from tip to toe, body and soul. He had fallen under the omnipotent and mysterious spell of the female. He was overwhelmed by this colossal force of unknown origin, the demon in the flesh capable of hurling the most rational man in the world at the feet of a worthless harlot. There was no way he could explain its fatal and total power. — Guy De Maupassant

Just do your best - in any circumstance in your life. It doesn't matter if you are sick or tired, if you always do your best there is no way you can judge yourself. And if you don't judge yourself there is no way you are going to suffer from guilt, blame, and self-punishment. By always doing your best, you will break a big spell that you have been under. — Miguel Ruiz

In anyone's life there can be only a few such moments - moments when a long, ringing hush fills your hearing, the world stands still as if under a magic spell, and thoughts and feelings course freely through your being, traversing the whole of eternity in the duration of a minute, so that when time resumes and you return from whatever nameless, dazzling void you briefly inhabited, you find yourself changed, changed irrevocably, and from then on, whether you want it or not, your life flows in a different direction. This was such a moment for me. — Olga Grushin

For years they've grumbled that England is a cesspool governed by an immoral king under the spell of the Whore of Babylon, which is their cute nickname for the pope. — Sarah Vowell

I must be the latest in a long line of freshly dismembered men to fall under the spell of Lola Shanks. — Max Barry

She remembered the story from her childhood, about Adam and Eve in the garden, and the talking snake. Even as a little girl she had said - to the consternation of her family - What kind of idiot was Eve, to believe a snake? But now she understood, for she had heard the voice of the snake and had watched as a wise and powerful man had fallen under its spell.
Eat the fruit and you can have the desires of your heart. It's not evil, it's noble and good. You'll be praised for it.
And it's delicious. — Orson Scott Card

Wherever he went, my eyes followed. Whenever he spoke, all I could hear was his voice. I lingered on every word, every tone - completely and utterly under his spell. It was a frightening realization. — Avylinn Winter

I went to a hypnotist. He put me under a spell, and every time I had a craving for a cigarette, I would throw up. It's very embarrassing right after sex. I find it pretty hard to get that second date after that. Girls get all snobby after you barf on them. — Norm MacDonald

Mama says love is a sickness of the heart. Only the weak fall under its spell. — Katlyn Charlesworth

You saved me, you know. Life had me running. Had me by the throat, and I really was falling under, losing hope. And then I met you, and you gave me a reason to keep my head above water. You taught me to swim. You taught me to life. And instead of giving up, I fell in love. I fell under your spell, Kylie, and ever single day since, I've fallen further and further under for you. — Jasinda Wilder

A child who can love the oddities of a fantasy book cannot possibly be xenophobic as an adult. What is a different color, a different culture, a different tongue for a child who has already mastered Elvish, respected Puddleglums, or fallen under the spell of dark-skinned Ged? — Jane Yolen

Under the spell of the right song, passion is within reach ... love is close by ... and you are not alone! With such potency, music should be treated with care. The sound, the feel, the presentation ... everything! It is a medicine. It is a teacher! — Dave Sitek

There are some who possess the magic touch, the infectious spirit of enthusiasm; who have the same effect as a beautiful morning that never reaches noon. Under this spell one's mind is braced, one's spirit recreated; one is ready for any adventure, even if it only be the doing of the next distasteful task light-heartedly. — Kate Douglas Wiggin