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noun
Isis  n.  
1.
(Myth.) The principal goddess worshiped by the Egyptians. She was regarded as the mother of Horus, and the sister and wife of Osiris. The Egyptians adored her as the goddess of fecundity, and as the great benefactress of their country, who instructed their ancestors in the art of agriculture.
2.
(Zool.) Any coral of the genus Isis, or family Isidae, composed of joints of white, stony coral, alternating with flexible, horny joints. See Gorgoniacea.
3.
(Astron.) One of the asteroids.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Isis" Quotes from Famous Books



... Greek stories can well testify, that the very religion of that time stood upon many and many-fashioned gods, not taught so by the poets, but followed, according to their nature of imitation. Who list, may read in Plutarch, the discourses of Isis, and Osiris, of the cause why oracles ceased, of the divine providence: and see, whether the theology of that nation stood not upon such dreams, which the poets superstitiously observed, and truly, (sith they had not the light of Christ,) did much better in it ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... the word, lifts up the veil. Would you inquire what form there met his eye? I know not,—but, when day appeared, the priests Found him extended senseless, pale as death, Before the pedestal of Isis' statue. What had been seen and heard by him when there He never would disclose, but from that hour His happiness in life had fled forever, And his deep sorrow soon conducted him To an untimely grave. "Woe to that man," He warning ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... been smelled—and by Diana. Heavens! shall I ever forget the intense excitement of the moment? Alas! what is the boasted intellect of man? The rat!—it was there—that is to say, it was somewhere. Diana smelled the rat. I—I could not! Thus it is said the Prussian Isis has, for some persons, a sweet and very powerful perfume, while to others it ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... the piece, and the music is merely an adjunct, often with little reference to the main interest of the play. In 'King Arthur' occurs the famous 'Frost Scene,' the close resemblance of which to the 'Choeur de Peuples des Climats Glaces' in Lulli's 'Isis' would alone make it certain that Purcell was a careful student of the French ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... the elect, allegorically, let into it. In varied ranks following one another came goddesses and saintly women, Christian and heathen women—among them walks as leader the Queen of the Amazons. "Queen" Ceres, who taught the art and practice of agriculture. Queen Isis, who first led mankind to the cultivation of plants. Arachne, who invented the arts of dyeing, weaving, flax-growing, and spinning. Damphile, who discovered how to breed silkworms. Queen Tomyris, who vanquished ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley

... beautiful Diana of the Ephesians! Pardon, O Phoebe, thou pearl-faced goddess of night beloved of Greece! O Isis, thou sympathetic queen of Nile-washed cities! O Astarte, thou favorite deity of the Syrian hills! O Artemis, thou symbolical daughter of Jupiter and Latona, that is of light and darkness! O brilliant sister of the radiant Apollo! enshrined in the enchanting strains of Virgil and Homer, which ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne

... the ploughshare: and the spot Fabled as Echionian Thebes, (17) where once Agave bore in exile to the pyre (Grieving 'twas all she had) the head and neck Of Pentheus massacred. The lake set free Flowed forth in many rivers: to the west Aeas, (18) a gentle stream; nor stronger flows The sire of Isis ravished from his arms; And Achelous, rival for the hand Of Oeneus' daughter, rolls his earthy flood (19) To silt the shore beside the neighbouring isles. Evenus (20) purpled by the Centaur's blood Wanders through Calydon: in the Malian ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... dipped in a sacred river, and dried beneath the influence of Osiris. The figures called a comb and a looking-glass are the lingal emblems of the sacred Phallic worship. The whole hierograph thus combines, in an extremely simple and instructive unity, the symbolisation of Apis, Osiris, Uphon, and Isis, Phallos, Pater AEther, and Mater Terra, Lingam and Yoni, Vishnu, Brama, and Sarsaswete, with their Saktes, Yang and Yiri, Padwadevi, Viltzli-pultzli, Baal, Dhanandarah, Sulivahna and ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... Aristophanes, or for that matter in the Memorabilia of Xenophon—and what kind of picture of Socrates should we see? The humor would not go, for it is a universal quality; it has been said no Adept was ever without it; could you draw aside the veil of Mother Isis herself, and draw it suddenly, I suspect you should surprise a laugh vanishing from her face. So the humor would remain; and with it there would be ... something calm, aloof, unshakable, yet vitally affectioned towards ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... to the temple, or rather chapel, of Isis. The chief remains are a covered cloister; the great altar on which was probably exhibited the statue of the goddess; a little edifice to protect the sacred well; the pediment of the chapel, with a symbolical vase in relief; ornaments ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... work, just as the electric shock always felt by Mesmer at the approach of a particular manservant was the starting-point of his discoveries in magnetism, a science till then interred under the mysteries of Isis, of Delphi, of the cave of Trophonius, and rediscovered by that prodigious genius, close on Lavater, and the precursor ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac

... dear days, in those dear days, All pleasant lay the country ways; The echoes of our stalwart mirth Went echoing wide around the earth And in an endless bliss of sun We lay and watched the river run. And you by Cam and I by Isis Were happy with ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley

... aqueduct. Figure 20., above, is part of another fine unpublished etching, "Windsor, from Salt Hill." Of the published etchings, the finest are the Ben Arthur, AEsacus, Cephalus, and Stone Pines, with the Girl washing at a Cistern; the three latter are the more generally instructive. Hindhead Hill, Isis, Jason, and Morpeth, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... foreigners." The rulers of Jerusalem set about making coalitions with the other nations of western Asia: with the Philistines, the Syrians, the Phoenicians and, most of all, the Egyptians. The gods of the Egyptians were supposed to be especially strong: Osiris and Isis were the chief of their deities and they were believed to be the gods of the underworld—of Sheol, or Hades, the abode of the dead. So when these poor ignorant politicians at Jerusalem finally did succeed in arranging for an alliance with the crafty and ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting

... the minds of the populace, were bound to watch over the city more carefully than others. They had proved themselves powerless; hence were insulted. On the other hand, it happened on the Via Asinaria that when a company of Egyptian priests appeared conducting a statue of Isis, which they had saved from the temple near the Porta Caelimontana, a crowd of people rushed among the priests, attached themselves to the chariot, which they drew to the Appian gate, and seizing the statue placed it in the temple of Mars, overwhelming the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... was visible above her breast, believed her to be the priestess or oracle of their worship. This worship evidently had its origin in Ancient Egypt since, although they did not seem to know it, the priestess was nothing less than a personification of the great goddess Isis, and the Ivory Child, their fetish, was a statue of the infant Horus, the fabled son of Isis and Osiris whom the Egyptians looked upon as the overcomer of Set or the Devil, the murderer of Osiris before his resurrection and ascent to Heaven ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... won't do to play with the world spirits of Evil. I used to know a rich bachelor who had a mania for the occult sciences. He was president of a theosophic society and he even wrote a little book on the esoteric doctrine, in the Isis series. Well, he could not, like the Peladan and Papus tribe, be content with knowing nothing, so he went to Scotland, where Diabolism is rampant. There he got in touch with the man who, if you stake him, will initiate you into the Satanic arcana. My friend made the ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... wife Telethusa, who is pregnant, to destroy the infant, should it prove to be a girl; on which, the Goddess Isis appears to her in a dream, and, forbidding her to obey, promises her her protection. Telethusa is delivered of a daughter, who is called Iphis, and passes for a son. Iphis is afterwards married to Ianthe, on which, Isis, to reward her ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... the laws of physical existence, its gaze was fixed upon the earth, it worshipped the chthonian powers rather than the gods of light." The children of men who had sprung from their mother as the flowers spring from the soil, raised altars to Gaea, Demeter and Isis, the deities of inexhaustible fertility and abundance. These early races of men realised themselves only as a part of nature; they had not yet conceived the idea of rising above their condition and setting their intelligence to battle with its blind laws. ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... dwellers of thy home Blessed the path thy race had trod, Kneeling in the temple dome To a reptile god; Where the shrine of Isis shone Through the veil before its throne, And the priest with fixed eyes Watched his human sacrifice; And the priestess knelt in prayer, Like some dream ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard

... as fast as he could, through valleys and wildernesses, over mountains and streams, toward the land of mystery. Everywhere he inquired—of men and beasts, of rocks and trees,—after the sacred goddess Isis. Many laughed, many held their peace; nowhere did he get an answer. At first he passed through a rugged wild country; mists and clouds threw themselves in his way, but he rushed on impetuously. Then he came to boundless deserts of ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald

... saw that the supernatural was needed not only to conquer the powers of evil but even to restore the good things that should be natural to man. As he put it in the later book, "Nature may not have the name of Isis; Isis may not be really looking for Osiris. But it is true that Nature is really looking for something. Nature is always looking for the supernatural." Yet man, even strengthened by the supernatural, cannot suffice for the fight, without a leader who is more than man. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... pages by many an essayist and poet. We cannot do without the element of mystery in our life, however we may represent it. It is part of the spirit within us, and we find it in everything around us. It is the veil of "Isis" which science, her worshipper, is ever trying to lift, but cannot. The muse of Inspiration pours forth her melodious voice, like the nightingale, in the darkness and the shady covert. We listen to her song with entranced ears; a ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... the great market-place of Pompeii, and look up the silent streets, through the ruined temples of Jupiter and Isis, over the broken houses with their inmost sanctuaries open to the day, away to Mount Vesuvius, bright and snowy in the peaceful distance; and lose all count of time, and heed of other things, in the strange and melancholy sensation of seeing the Destroyed and the ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... extends along the southern part of the island; near the British channel; and the Ikenield-street, which I cannot so soon quit, rises near Southampton, extends nearly North, through Winchester, Wallingford, and over the Isis, at New-bridge; thence to Burford, crossing the Foss at Stow in the Woulds, over Bitford-bridge, in the County of Warwick, to Alcester; by Studley, Ipsley, Beely, Wetherick-hill, Stutley-street; crosses the road from Birmingham to Bromsgrove, at Selley oak, leaving ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... Said the Isis to the Cherwell in a tone of indignation, "With a blush of conscious virtue your enormities I see: And I wish that a reversal of the laws of gravitation Would prevent your vicious current from contaminating me! With your hedonists who grovel on a cushion with a novel (Which is sure to sap ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley

... effort attracted more general notice. In consequence of some disgrace which the University had incurred with Government, by its supposed attachment to the Stuart family, Mason had written his Isis, an Elegy; and in 1749, Warton was encouraged by Dr. Huddesford to publish an answer to it, with the title of the Triumph of Isis. It may naturally be supposed, that so spirited a defence of Oxford against the aspersions ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... perfume which characterises, let us say, St Stanislaus and the odorem suavitatis of Lucifer. He is also an authority on conditions, and gives a ravishing description of the voluptuous enervation diffused over all his limbs when he had a private memorandum from Isis by means of raps during the reception of a master in a blue lodge. On this occasion he tells us that he was inspired to pronounce one of his most wicked and dangerous Masonic discourses. Dear M. Kostka! Dynamite would lose its destroying ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite

... perhaps a little unfortunate that Aida should have been given on the night of the Guards' march through London, for the parade of the Pharaoh's scratch soldiery suffered badly by comparison. The priesthood of Isis, too, furnished more humour than could, I think, have been designed, and I doubt if even Mr. WEEDON GROSSMITH could have given us anything funnier than the spectacle presented by the Egyptian monarch when making his announcement of an Ethiopian raid. Nor shall ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various

... hat den Schleier aufgedeckt. "Nun", fragt ihr, "und was zeigte sich ihm hier?" 75 Ich wei es nicht. Besinnungslos und bleich, So fanden ihn am andern Tag die Priester Am Fugestell der Isis ausgestreckt. Was er allda gesehen und erfahren, Hat seine Zunge nie bekannt. Auf ewig 80 War seines Lebens Heiterkeit dahin, Ihn ri ein tiefer Gram zum frhen Grabe. "Weh dem", dies war sein warnungsvolles Wort, Wenn ungestme Frager ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various

... sullen Moloch, fled, Hath left in shadows dread His burning idol, all of blackest hue: In vain with cymbals' ring They call the grisly[128] king, In dismal dance about the furnace blue. The brutish gods of Nile as fast— Isis and Orus ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald

... Serapis, Osiris, and Isis, I with Jehovah, in vapours and shadows; Thou with the gods' ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... the quiet life of a reading-man; though I varied continually the desk and the book with the "constitutional" up Headington Hill, or the gallop with Mr. Murrell's harriers, or the quick scull to Iffley, or the more perilous sailing in a boat (no wonder that Isis claims her annual victims), or the gig to Blenheim or Newton-Courtnay,—or that only once alarming experience of a tandem when the leader turned round and looked at me in its nostalgic longing to return home,—or the geological ramble with Dr. Buckland's class,—or the botanic searchings ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... roses, And PHARAOH from his throne With more imperious tone Addressed in some such terms rebellious MOSES; And esoteric priests in Theban shrines, Their ritual conned from hieroglyphic signs, Thus muttered incantations dark and deep To Isis and Osiris, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various

... decoration painted on it at first (Fig. 25), and afterwards sculptured (Fig. 26). At a later period of the style we find the plant forms abandoned, and capitals were formed of a fantastic combination of the head of Isis with a pylon resting upon it (Fig. 27). Considerable ingenuity was exercised in adapting the capitals of the columns to the positions in which they were placed: thus in the hypostyle halls, the lofty central row of columns generally had capitals ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith

... themselves. In an older and more superstitious age, the unassisted horrors of Nature herself would have repelled an invading host from the passage of this grizzly canon, as the profane might have been driven from the galleries of Isis or Eleusis. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... his deeds to Osiris, the mighty God who was the Ruler of the Living and the Dead and who judged the acts of men according to their merits. Indeed, the priests made so much of that future day in the realm of Isis and Osiris that the Egyptians began to regard life merely as a short preparation for the Hereafter and turned the teeming valley of the Nile into a land devoted to ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... Isis blessed her noble youngsters as they left her; Father Camus Sped his youths to fame and Putney from his grey and ancient Courts:— "Keep," they said, "the old traditions, and we know you will not shame us When you try the stormy ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann

... animals and plants is as remarkable as their high antiquity. There are in lake Tanganyika or the rivers of Japan exactly the same kinds of shells as in the Thames, and the sedges and reeds of the Isis are found from Cricklade to Kamschatka and beyond Bering Sea to the upper waters of the Mackenzie and the Mississippi. The Thames, our longest fresh-water river, and its containing valley form the largest natural feature in this country. They are an organic whole, in which ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish

... tell to the marines that the seed of Israel flourishing in the borders of [150] Misraim will abandon their flourishing district of Goshen through sensitiveness on account of the idolatry of the devotees of Isis and Osiris! ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... enemy, Dionysius, call not down upon him Isis nor Harpocrates, nor whatever god strikes men blind, but Simon; and you will know what God and ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail

... is, the greatest triad of the Sephiroth, the Crown, King, and Queen; which finds a parallel in the Osiris, Isis, and Horus; the Axieros, Axiochersos, and Axiochersa of ...
— Hebrew Literature

... lovers of the goddesses; they are very plainly the transitory male element needful for fertilisation, and then destined to disappear.[235] We find very early the brother as the husband and dependent of the Mother-goddess. Thus Isis did not change or lose her independent position after her marriage to her brother Osiris; her importance as a deity remained always greater than his.[236] Only at a much later stage—the patriarchal stage—was ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... Egypt—feel less confident about the hypothesis of borrowing. We may, indeed, regard Adonis, and Zeus Bagaeus, and Melicertes, as importations from Phoenicia. In later times, too, the Greeks, and still more the Romans, extended a free hospitality to alien gods and legends, to Serapis, Isis, the wilder Dionysiac revels, and so forth. But this habit of borrowing was regarded with disfavour by pious conservatives, and was probably, in the width of its hospitality at least, an innovation. As Tiele remarks, we cannot derive Dionysus from the Assyrian Daian nisi, 'judge ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang

... turned her eyes, in a flutter of quite mundane excitement, upon the newcomer. Julius March accompanied Richard. Time and thought had moved forward; but the towers and spires of Oxford, her fair cloisters and enchanting gardens, her green meadows and noble elms, her rivers, Isis and Cherwell, remained as when Julius too had been among the young and ardent of her sons. He was greatly touched by this return to the Holy City of his early manhood. He renewed old friendships. He reviewed the past, taking the measure calmly of what life had promised, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... the illustrious Frenchman. LAPLACE sought no more than to subject the celestial movements to the formulas of analysis, and reconcile to common observation terrestrial appearances; but our author is far more ambitious—more venturesome in aim—which is nothing less than to lift the veil of ISIS, and solve the phenomena of universal nature. With what success remains to be considered. That great skill and cleverness, that a very superior mastery is evinced, we have conceded, and, we will also add, great show of ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous

... his indignation by writing a novel called "Marianna," which was intended to drag George Sand's name through the mud, Balzac defended her energetically. About the same time (1839) he brought out his novel "Beatrix," in which she is portrayed as Mlle. de Touches, with "the beauty of Isis, more serious than gracious, and as if struck with the sadness of constant meditation." Her eyes, according to Balzac, were her great beauty, and all her expression was in them, otherwise her face was stupid; but with her splendid black hair and her complexion—olive by ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars

... eare, a maner of aduertisemente of deuellishe delusion. To the whiche Idolles and Images of deuelles he stirred vp men to do the honour (Helas) due onely to God. As to Saturne in Italie, to Iupiter in Candie, to Iuno in Samos, to Bacchus in India, and at Thebes: to Isis, and Osiris in Egypte: in old Troie to Vesta: aboute Tritona in Aphrique, to Pallas, in Germanie and Fraunce to Mercurie, vnder the name of Theuthe: to Minerua at Athenes and Himetto, to Apollo in Delphos, Rhodes, Chio, Patara, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt

... banks of the Isis, about two miles from Oxford, are the remains of Godstow Nunnery. It was founded towards the end of the reign of Henry I. by Editha, a lady of Winchester, and when dissolved in the reign of Henry VIII. it was valued at L274. per annum. A considerable portion of its buildings ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various

... were sitting over your Thucydides close to your window, grappling with a long and complicated passage which was to be the subject of next morning's lecture; and that, glancing for a moment from your book, you saw the two most brilliant young Christ Church men of the day going down to bathe in the Isis. You described the gifts and graces of the pair, who, between them, seemed to combine all that was best and most beautiful in body and mind and soul. And then you told us how, as your friends disappeared towards ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... when the Christians were no longer forced to hide their art in the catacombs, they began to have a sculpture of their own. The first Christians in Rome were brought into contact with the worship of Isis and Pan, Venus and Apollo, and were filled with horror at the sight of the statues of these divinities. They believed that any representation of the human form was forbidden by the commandment which says, "Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement

... adoration; whom, on certain days, [63] they think it lawful to propitiate even with human victims. To Hercules and Mars [64] they offer the animals usually allotted for sacrifice. [65] Some of the Suevi also perform sacred rites to Isis. What was the cause and origin of this foreign worship, I have not been able to discover; further than that her being represented with the symbol of a galley, seems to indicate an imported religion. [66] They conceive it unworthy the grandeur of celestial beings to confine their deities ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus

... commandment, though a very gross breach of the second;—for it is most certain that the ten tribes worshipped the Jehovah, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, under the same or similar symbols:—secondly, that the cow, or Isis, and the Io of the Greeks, truly represented, in the first instance, the earth or productive nature, and afterwards the mundane religion grounded on the worship of nature, or the [Greek (transliterated): to pan], as God. In after times, the ox or bull was added, representing ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... Soft Isis heard his artless tale, Ah, stream for ever dear! Whose waters, as they pass'd the ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams

... imagery and the soft modulation of his verse, he succeeds only in becoming tediously ornate. His stanzas are nerveless, though not unmusical. His college exercise, "The Nativity," 1736, is a Christmas vision which comes to the shepherd boy Thomalin, as he is piping on the banks of Isis. It employs the pastoral machinery, includes a masque of virtues,—Faith, Hope, Mercy, etc.,—and closes with a compliment to Pope's "Messiah." The preface to his "Hymn to May," has some bearing upon our inquiries: "As Spenser is the most descriptive ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... her, she was such a darling. Two beautiful young Nubian women visited me in my boat, with hair in little plaits finished off with lumps of yellow clay burnished like golden tags, soft, deep bronze skins, and lips and eyes fit for Isis and Hathor. Their very dress and ornaments were the same as those represented in the tombs, and I felt inclined to ask them how many thousand years old they were. In their house I sat on an ancient ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... is THAMISIS, compounded of two rivers, Thame and Isis; whereof the former, rising somewhat beyond Thame in Buckinghamshire, and the latter near Cirencester in Gloucestershire, meet together about Dorchester in Oxfordshire; the issue of which happy conjunction is Thamisis, or Thames; ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton

... a small temple to the Egyptian god Isis, and this was the very first object to be discovered. Some men quarrying for stone struck upon it and thus the long-lost site of the town was found. Then we see the public baths with all the arrangements for heating the ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton

... ingenious dexterity every particle of advantage wealth in those days gave a man over his fellow-creatures. A resort to the consolations of religion hindered these operations not at all. He would go and talk with an interesting, experienced and sympathetic Father of the Huysmanite sect of the Isis cult, about all the irrational little proceedings he was pleased to regard as his heaven-dismaying wickedness, and the interesting, experienced and sympathetic Father representing Heaven dismayed, would with a pleasing affectation of horror, suggest simple and easy penances, and ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... it. See, here lies a Temple of Isis flat enough; next to it one of the accursed tribe of Jews. And what ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... courses pivot and swing on these subtle attractions, ancient as themselves. Judith Barrier, tearing the gaudy ribbon from her hat and casting it upon the road under her horse's feet, stood to learn what the priests of Isis knew thousands of years ago, that red is the symbol of pleasure and of mere animal comfort, while blue is the ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan

... owes part of its stream, as well as its appellation, to the Isis; rising a little above Winchelcomb, and being increased with several rivulets, unites both its waters and its name to the Thame, on the other side of Oxford; thence, after passing by London, and being of the utmost utility, ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton

... writers and travellers had prayed for the unveiling of Isis, that is to say, the discovery of the sources of the Nile; but for two thousand years every effort had proved fruitless. Burning to immortalize himself by wresting from the mysterious river its immemorial secret, Burton now planned an expedition for that purpose. Thanks to the good ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... manufactures of Oxford, except gentlemen, are boots, leather- breeches, and boats; these last in great perfection. The regattas and rowing-matches on the Isis are very exciting affairs. From the narrowness of the stream, they are rather chases than races; the winners cannot pass, but must pursue and bump their competitors. The many silent, solitary wherries, urged ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... in the innumerable cheap editions, which make it as accessible as a newspaper. But Plutarch's "Morals" is less known, and seldom reprinted. Yet such a reader as I am writing to can as ill spare it as the "Lives." He will read in it the essays "On the Daemon of Socrates," "On Isis and Osiris," "On Progress in Virtue," "On Garrulity," "On Love," and thank anew the art of printing, and the cheerful domain of ancient thinking. Plutarch charms by the facility of his associations; so that it signifies little where you open his book, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... some have identified with the classical Island of Isis,[EN139] shows a triune profile, what the Brazilians call a Moela or "gizzard." Of its three peaks the lowest is the eastern; and the central is the highest, reaching seven hundred, not a thousand, feet. Viewed from within the Gulf, it is a slope of sand which has been blown in ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... in his absence, being vanquished by the latter in the conflict that followed, was dismembered and cut into pieces, the followers of Typhon each securing a piece and Typhon himself securing the phallus or generative member. Isis, the spouse of Osiris, seems in turn to have secured the control of government, and, having secured all the pieces of the dissected Osiris except the phallus,—Typhon having fled with that, and, according to some traditions, having thrown ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... cheapnesse of the place, fire only being dear since the Kings army was their, who cutted all its woods about) about 10 a cloak bad adieu to Oxford watered with the lovely Thames tho wery litle their; it receives at that place the Isis whence Thamesis. ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder

... alarm, and there to charge, wound, and kill one another, as if they had been enemies come to surprise their city. All things were in disorder and fury till, with prayers and sacrifices, they had appeased their gods—[Diod. Sic., xv. 7]; and this is that they call panic terrors.—[Ibid. ; Plutarch on Isis ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... He loved to hear stories of the wealth and greatness of his progenitors, of their splendid housekeeping, their loyalty, and their valor. On one bright summer day, the boy, then just seven years old, lay on the bank of the rivulet which flows through the old domain of his house to join the Isis. There, as threescore and ten years later he told the tale, rose in his mind a scheme which, through all the turns of his eventful career, was never abandoned. He would recover the estate which had belonged to his fathers. He would be Hastings of Daylesford. This purpose, formed ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Aglaurus, the daughter of Cecrops, at Athens, was black; that Corinth had a black Venus, as also the Thespians; that the oracles of Dodona and Delphi were founded by black doves, the emissaries of Venus, and that the Isis Multimammia in the Capitol ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler

... harp, on Isis strung, To many a Border theme has rung; Then list to me, and thou shalt know Of ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott

... to transacting that year the business mentioned, they voted a temple to Serapis and Isis. [-16-] When Marcus Lepidus and Lucius Plancus became consuls tablets were again exposed, not bringing death to any one any longer, but defrauding the living of their property. They were collecting funds because they were in need of more money, due to the fact that they owed large sums to large ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio

... progress of decay. National thought, fickle as the wind, had turned from an impersonal philosophy to the materialistic cult of Hindu deities, as the Israelites of old hankered after the visible symbol of Isis and Osiris in the Golden Calf. No definite creed succeeded in gaining a permanent hold upon the wandering minds and shallow feelings of a race whose deepest instincts reveal the fleeting fancies and inconstant ideas indigenous to a sea-faring stock, imbued with the spirit of change ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... woman. Sorrow is a potent enchantress. Once she touches the heart, life can never be quite the same again. We never more surrender ourselves entirely to pleasure; and often we find so many of the things we have longed for are after all but dead sea fruit. Sorrow is the veiled Isis of the world, and once we penetrate her mystery and see her deeply-furrowed face and mournful eyes, the magic light of romance dies all away, and we realise the hard bitter fact of life ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume

... rowing against the stream for certain days, I came to the City of the Ford of the Ox. Here the river changes his name, and is called Isis, after the name of the goddess of the Egyptians. But whether the Britons brought the name from Egypt or whether the Egyptians took it from the Britons, not knowing I prefer not to say. But to me it seems that the Britons ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang

... and silence, every Muse's son: Blackmore himself, for any grand effort, Would drink and doze at Tooting or Earl's Court. How shall I rhyme in this eternal roar? How match the bards whom none e'er matched before? The man, who, stretched in Isis' calm retreat, To books and study gives seven years complete, See! strewed with learned dust, his night-cap on, He walks, an object new beneath the sun! The boys flock round him, and the people stare: } So stiff, so mute! some statue ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope

... Moloch, fled, Hath left in shadows dread His burning idol all of blackest hue; In vain with cymbals' ring They call the grisly king, In dismal dance about the furnace blue; The brutish gods of Nile as fast, Isis, and Orus, and the ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various

... theatres comprises a large temple, called the Temple of Neptune or Hercules, a temple of Isis, a temple of AEsculapius, two theatres, the Triangular Forum, and the quarters of the soldiers or gladiators. On the north and east it is bounded by streets; to the south and west it seems to have been enclosed ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... of the anatomist. As a woman, Julie belongs neither to nature nor to artificial society; and if the pages of melting and dazzling eloquence in which Rousseau has garnished out his idol did not blind and intoxicate us, as the incense and the garlands did the votaries of Isis, we should be disgusted. Rousseau, having composed his Julie of the commonest clay of the earth, does not animate her with fire from heaven, but breathes his own spirit into her, and then calls the "impetticoated" ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... a moment than Grace filled Melbury with grief and astonishment. In the pure and simple life he had led it had scarcely occurred to him that after marriage a man might be faithless. That he could sweep to the heights of Mrs. Charmond's position, lift the veil of Isis, so to speak, would have amazed Melbury by its audacity if he had not suspected encouragement from that quarter. What could he and his simple Grace do to countervail the passions of such as those two sophisticated beings—versed ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... had been rendered one of the strongest fortresses in the kingdom. On three sides the waters of the Isis and the Charwell, spreading over the adjoining country, kept the enemy at a considerable distance, and on the north the city was covered with a succession of works, erected by the most skilful engineers. ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc

... position, she could not do so herself. In the same book, George Sand is portrayed as Mademoiselle des Touches, with the complexion, pale olive by day, and white under artificial light, characteristic of Italian beauty. The face, rather long than oval, resembles that of some beautiful Isis. Her hair, black and thick, falls in plaited loops over her neck, like the head-dress with rigid double locks of the statues at Memphis, accentuating very finely the general severity of her features. She has a ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd

... to the water side. More westward is a large yard adjoining to the Savoy, made use of for a coach-house and stables; at the bottom of which are stairs, much used by watermen, this being a noted place for landing and taking water at." The water gate was ornamented with the figures of Thames and Isis, and in the centre of the water-garden was a statue. The principal garden was a kind of raised terrace, (ascended by steps from the water side) in which there was a large basin, once dignified with a fountain. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various

... promise of a life after death. It was still a great religion when the Christian doctrine of immortality was enunciated. In the early centuries of the Christian era, it seemed almost possible that the worship of Osiris and Isis might become the religion of the classical world; and the last stand made by civilized paganism against Christianity was in the temple of Isis at Philae in the sixth century ...
— The Egyptian Conception of Immortality • George Andrew Reisner

... out the separate actions in the disordered conduct of the third Roman emperor will easily rediscover the thread of this idea and the trace of this latent conflict. For instance, we see the new emperor scarcely elected before he introduced the worship of Isis among the official cults of the Roman state and assigned in the calendar a public festival to Isis. In short, he was favoring those Egyptian cults which Tiberius, with his "old-Roman" sympathies, had fiercely combatted. Furthermore, ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero

... the domestic manners of the ancients, the idea of Woman was nobly manifested in their mythologies and poems, whore she appears as Site in the Ramayana, a form of tender purity; as the Egyptian Isis, [Footnote: For an adequate description of the Isis, see Appendix A.] of divine wisdom never yet surpassed. In Egypt, too, the Sphynx, walking the earth with lion tread, looked out upon its marvels in the ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... of Agelastes, from which we are not far distant," said the Anglo-Saxon; "yet he hath a nearer way to it than that by which we now travel, else I should be at a loss to account for the short space in which he could exchange the charms of his garden for the gloomy ruins of the Temple of Isis, and the Imperial palace ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... by the author of the treatise "On Isis and Osiris," attributed to Plutarch (c. 47), already pointed out this doctrine as existing ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... according to the calculations of Biot, the heliacal rising of Sothis at the solstice was noted as early as the year 3285 B.C., and it is certain that this star continued throughout subsequent centuries to keep this position of peculiar prestige. Hence it was that Sothis came to be associated with Isis, one of the most important divinities of Egypt, and that the day in which Sothis was first visible in the morning sky marked the beginning of the new year; that day coinciding, as already noted, with the summer solstice and with the beginning of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... this—they carried the child to Egypt, the home of Mystery and Occultism—the land of Isis! A worthy resting place for the Great Occult Master that was to be! And Occult tradition also has it that one night, wearied with their long journey, the family halted and passed the night in the place of the Sphinx and Pyramids. And that the Mother and Babe rested between the outstretched ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka

... Christ" can be seen, for instance, upon a monument of Isis, the Virgin Mother of the Sun-God, which dates from the second century before our era.[51] Also upon the coins of Ptolemaeus; on one of which is a head of Zeus Ammon upon one side, and an eagle bearing the {image "monogram3.gif"} in its claws upon the ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons

... child of fear; the two react on, and produce each other. The more men dread Nature, the less they wish to know about her. Why pry into her awful secrets? It is dangerous; perhaps impious. She says to them, as in the Egyptian temple of old—"I am Isis, and my veil no mortal yet hath lifted." And why should they try or wish to lift it? If she will leave them in peace, they will leave her in peace. It is enough that she does not destroy them. So as ignorance bred fear, fear breeds fresh and ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... descends into the crypt; visits the Church of the Capucines and beholds the ghastly spectacle of the monks' skulls; drives in the Appian Way; visits the Palace of the Caesars, the Baths of Caracalla—a mass of ruins; the Forum; the Temples of Vesta and Isis; the Coliseum, and the classic old Pantheon. These form a kind of skeleton for the regulation sight-seeing of the Eternal City; things which, once done, are checked off with the feeling that the entire ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... one of great strength and commanding attitude. They were drawn up in three lines upon the brow of a hill, having their front and left flank covered by a branch of the Potomac, and their right resting upon a thick wood and a deep ravine. This river, which may be about the breadth of the Isis at Oxford, flowed between the heights occupied by the American forces and the little town of Bladensburg. Across it was thrown a narrow bridge, extending from the chief street in that town to the continuation of the road, which passed through the very centre ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig

... of Lotus, Sauntered we by Nilus' side; Garrulous old Herodotus Still our mentor, still our guide, Prating of the mystic bliss Of Isis and ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... many thanks to him for the same—though an M.D., he has not sent me a single vial. And so much for my tree of secular knowledge and my tree of spiritual life: I dismiss them with thanks from myself and thanks from my reader. The dual of the Pythagorean system was Isis and Diana; of the Jewish law, Moses and Aaron; and of the City of London, Gog and Magog; of the Paradoxiad, James Smith, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... bas-reliefs, in stucco, representing a woman with a child in her arms—which forcibly remind us of the statues in ancient Babylon representing the goddess mother and son (the same worshipped in Egypt under the names of Isis and Osiris; in India, even to this day, as Isi and Iswara; and also in China, where Shingmoo, the holy mother, is represented with a child in her arms, and a glory round her head). It is impossible, looking at these ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... the priests of Bel, who had a private way of getting into the temple, to take away the offered meats, and made the king believe that the idol consumed them. Mundus, being in love with Paulina, the eldest of the priestesses of Isis, went and told her that the god Anubis, being passionately fond of her, commanded her to give him a meeting. She was afterwards shut up in a dark room, where her lover Mundus (whom she believed to be the god Anubis,) was concealed. This imposture having been discovered, Tiberius ordered ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... Suryastara (p. 110), meaning "he who spreads the worship of the Sun." After it has been laid down (p. 116) that Hebrew was derived from Sanskrit, we are assured that there is little difficulty in deriving Jehovah from Zeus.(65) Zeus, Jezeus, Jesus, and Isis are all declared to be the same name, and later on (p. 130) we learn that "at present the Brahmans who officiate in the pagodas and temples give this title of Jeseus—i. e. the pure essence, the divine emanation—to ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller

... Guinea Coast have broke loose into our streets; now to see the procession of a hundred yoke of oxen, all as august and grave as Osiris, or the droves of neat cattle and milch cows as unspotted as Isis or Io. Such as ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... which you men of war perform. I must follow the rules of my art, and the composition of such a strain as this must be harmonious and majestic, not familiar, or too near the vulgar truth. Si parva licet: if Virgil could invoke the divine Augustus, a humbler poet from the banks of the Isis may celebrate a victory and a conqueror of our own nation, in whose triumphs every Briton has a share, and whose glory and genius contributes to every citizen's individual honour. When hath there been, since our Henrys' and Edwards' days, such a great feat of arms as that from which you ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Persian element was the worship of Mithras; its Egyptian, that of Isis; its Grecian, the Pythagorean doctrines. All these three, however, were much mingled with each other. The Roman legions, who really no longer had any native country, bore these artificial religions throughout ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz

... of gods which were worshipped throughout Egypt. These were mostly mythical beings, who were supposed to perform especial functions in the creation and control of the universe. Among these Osiris and Isis, his wife and sister, were important, and their worship common throughout all Egypt. Osiris came upon the earth in the interests of mankind, to manifest the true and the good in life. He was put to death by the machinations of the ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... had business at the cathedral city of Dorchester, at the junction of the Tame and Isis, and they did not take the more direct route by the Watling Street, the most perfect Roman road remaining. The land was but thinly peopled, forests covered the greater portion, and desolate marshes much of the remainder; thus, through alternate forest and marsh, the travellers advanced along ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... precocious, self-centered, forward-striving child; but the land of the mother is and was Africa. In subtle and mysterious way, despite her curious history, her slavery, polygamy, and toil, the spell of the African mother pervades her land. Isis, the mother, is still titular goddess, in thought if not in name, of the dark continent. Nor does this all seem to be solely a survival of the historic matriarchate through which all nations pass,—it appears to be more than ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... hour from the time Mr. Grey's door closed upon him, Elsmere had caught a convenient cross-country train, and had left the Oxford towers and spires, the shrunken summer Isis, and the flat hot river meadows far behind him. He had meant to stay at Merton, as we know, for the night. Now, his one thought was to get back to Catherine. The urgency of Mr. Grey's words was upon him, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... the interior was a perfect cube of forty feet, all hand-hewn from the cliff, and there were numerous rooms leading out of it that had once been occupied by the priests of Isis, but "the lion and the lizard" had lived in them since their day. We put the prisoners, including Ayisha's four men, in one ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy

... your work and look out of the window! "Who are the newcomers, Arab or Hindoo? Persians, or Japs, or the children of Isis?" —Guesses, surmises— Forth with you, fare Down in the street to draw nearer and stare! Come from your palaces, come from your hovels! Lay down your ledgers, your picks and your shovels, Your trowels ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey

... well What secrets Isis had to tell, How lazy Cherwell loiter'd slow Sweet aisles of blossom'd May below— Whate'er befall, whate'er befell, ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang



Words linked to "Isis" :   Egyptian deity



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