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Porphyry   Listen
noun
Porphyry  n.  (pl. porphyries)  (Geol.) A term used somewhat loosely to designate a rock consisting of a fine-grained base (usually feldspathic) through which crystals, as of feldspar or quartz, are disseminated. There are red, purple, and green varieties, which are highly esteemed as marbles.
Porphyry shell (Zool.), a handsome marine gastropod shell (Oliva porphyria), having a dark red or brown polished surface, marked with light spots, like porphyry.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Porphyry" Quotes from Famous Books



... Khabiyah) large jars usually of pottery. In the H. V. four shelves of mother o' pearl support ten jars of porphyry rangeed in rows and the Prince supposes (with Galland) that the contents are ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... great square blocks, here and there interspersed with a few cypresses and aloes, the mighty Tower of David, the Cross of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and far above it, alas! the dome of the Mosque of Omar, with its marble gates and porphyry pillars, on the flat space on Mount Moriah, where the Temple had once flashed back the ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... eternity until the now, and you shall hear its history this moment." She stopped for breath, and I wondered if Mrs. Somerville or George Eliot had ever talked in this astounding fashion. I was certain that she must have read Iamblichus and Porphyry. ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... hundred and sixty-five Churches of Rome, I have as yet visited but four, and may find time to see as many more of the most noteworthy. They seem richer in Sculpture, Porphyry, Mosaic, Carving, Tapestry, &c. than anything elsewhere well can be; but not equal in Architecture to the finest Churches in Genoa, the Cathedral at Pisa, and I think not externally to Notre Dame at Paris. Indeed, ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... the mind, masterpiece after masterpiece till art itself became hateful at last and enthusiasm died. He came upon a Madonna by Raphael, but he was tired of Raphael; a figure by Correggio never received the glance it demanded of him. A priceless vase of antique porphyry carved round about with pictures of the most grotesquely wanton of Roman divinities, the pride of some Corinna, scarcely ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac

... lanthorns fashioned from three-coloured shell of the tortoise, and here resound the soft notes of the singer and the lutanist. And the houses of the cities of Cathuria are all palaces, each built over a fragrant canal bearing the waters of the sacred Narg. Of marble and porphyry are the houses, and roofed with glittering gold that reflects the rays of the sun and enhances the splendour of the cities as blissful gods view them from the distant peaks. Fairest of all is the palace of the great ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... steep, ornamental Swiss roof has been built, is in a valley close to a clear, rushing river, which emerges a little higher up from an inaccessible chasm of great sublimity. One side of the valley is formed by cliffs and terraces of porphyry as red as the reddest new brick, and at sunset blazing into vermilion. Through rifts in the nearer ranges there are glimpses of pine-clothed peaks, which, towards twilight, pass through every shade of purple and violet. The sky and the earth combine to form a Wonderland ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird

... famous old Codex Bezae, a copy of the Gospels at Cambridge; yet it is also found in most of the early Latin versions, in the most ancient Syriac, and in the oldest Coptic.—Again, in Matth. xiii. 35, Jerome observes that in the third century Porphyry, the antagonist of Christianity, had found fault with the Evangelist Matthew for having said, 'which was spoken by the prophet Esaias.' A writing of the second century had already witnessed to the same reading; but Jerome ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon

... to attain his ambitious design, the monarch robbed the Temple of the Sun at Baalbek of columns of porphyry, despoiled the Temple of Diana of Ephesus of its finest pillars, took columns of pure white marble from the Temple of Minerva at Athens, and divested the shrines of Isis and Osiris in Egypt of their choicest granite columns. He called upon the quarries of Italy, Greece, ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob

... the tyranny of Rufus—Henry I. In that reign the Abbot of Croyland, to gain money for the rebuilding of his abbey, set up a school where, we are told, Priscian's grammar, Aristotle's logic with the commentaries of Porphyry and Averroes, Cicero and Quintilian as masters of rhetoric, were taught after the manner of the school of Orleans. In the following reign a foreign professor, Vacarius, roused the jealousy of the English monarchy and baronage by teaching Roman law in the schools of Oxford. ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... was marble white so smooth And polish'd, that therein my mirror'd form Distinct I saw. The next of hue more dark Than sablest grain, a rough and singed block, Crack'd lengthwise and across. The third, that lay Massy above, seem'd porphyry, that flam'd Red as the life-blood spouting from a vein. On this God's angel either foot sustain'd, Upon the threshold seated, which appear'd A rock of diamond. Up the trinal steps My leader cheerily drew me. "Ask," ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... objects of experience, but the shadows of symbols, varying with the position and intensity of the light of the individual intelligence. It is a curious amusement to trace many of these thoughts and expressions to Plato, or Plotinus, or Proclus, or Porphyry, to Spinoza or Schelling, but the same tune is a different thing according to the instrument on which it is played. There are songs without words, and there are states in which, in place of the trains ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... atmosphere was close, as if the oxygen had been partly burnt up, and had become unfit for respiration. At every hundred paces they were obliged to stop to take breath. It was therefore past ten o'clock when the engineer and his companion reached the crest of the enormous mass of rocks of basalt and porphyry which composed the ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)

... Nelson's funeral. So perfectly adapted for sound is St. Paul's, that though the walls were muffled with black cloth, the Dean's voice could be heard distinctly, even up in the western gallery. The sarcophagus which holds Wellington's ashes is of massive and imperishable Cornish porphyry, grand from its perfect simplicity, and worthy of the man who, without gasconade or theatrical display, trod stedfastly the path ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... swore her laughter had the lilt Of chiming waters that are spilt In sprays of spurted melody From founts of carven porphyry, And in the billowy turbulence Of her dusk hair drowned soul and sense— Dark ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis

... From either of the side doors, a few paces will bring you to the middle of the nave, and to the point opposite the middle of the third arch from the west end; where you will find yourself—if well in the mid-wave—standing on a circular slab of green porphyry, which marks the former place of the grave of the bishop Zenobius. The larger inscription, on the wide circle of the floor outside of you, records the translation of his body; the smaller one round the stone at your feet—"quiescimus, ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin

... a mass of volcanic rocks, thrust up to a great height above the sea-level. The plateau of Mexico is 8,000 feet high, and that of Puebla 9,000 feet. This central mass consists principally of a greyish trachytic porphyry, in some places rich in veins of silver-ore. The tops of the hills are often crowned with basaltic columns, and a soft porous amygdaloid abounds on the outskirts of the Mexican valley. Besides this, traces of more recent volcanic action abound, in the shape of numerous extinct craters in the high ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor

... circular hall, the arched roof of which was supported on colonnades of what I took to be pillars of porphyry. Down the middle and round the sides ran tables of the same material; the walls were clothed in hangings of sable velvet, on which, in infinite reproduction, was embroidered in cypher the motto of the society. ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel

... antique, the execution of them is modern, and ascribed to the celebrated sculptor, SILVIO DA VELETRI, who lived in the beginning of the seventeenth century. Indeed, M. VISCONTI affirms that antiquity affords not their equal; assigning as a reason that porphyry was introduced into Rome at a period when the fine arts were tending to their decline. Notwithstanding the hardness of the substance, they are executed with such taste and perfection, that the porphyry is reduced ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... upon a tide Shoreless on every side, Save where the eye Of Fancy sweeps far lands Shelved slopingly with sands Of gold and porphyry. Where shall ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley

... this fine old house might have been more beautiful than it is; its best features are the two exquisite fifteenth-century bay windows. The original hall and porch-room also survive, the latter being now known as the "Porphyry Room." Perhaps some visitors will take a deeper interest in the residence of Sir A. T. Quiller-Couch, the "Haven," standing pleasantly by the waterside, facing the mouth of the harbour. Thousands of readers have made the acquaintance of "Troy Town" ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon

... colours were relieved by the burnished gilding. The corporation trod tremblingly over the gorgeous carpet of Axminster, which displayed, in vivid colours and colossal proportions, the shield and supporters of Bellamont, and threw a hasty glance at the vases of porphyry and malachite, and mosaic tables covered with precious toys, ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... ought not to have overlooked, but which he has, however, overlooked: he himself observes, very justly, that PROPHECY is a distinct species of the miraculous; and, no doubt, he neglected the Scriptural Prophecies, as supposing them all of doubtful interpretation, or believing with Porphyry, that such as are not doubtful, must have been posterior to the event which they point to. It happens, however, that there are some prophecies which cannot be evaded or 'refused,' some to which neither objection will apply. One, we will here cite, by way of example:—The prophecy ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... when cooked it has a slight degree of bitterness with it which cultivation may remove. Mica schist crowned some of the heights on the watershed, then gneiss, and now, as we descend further, we have igneous rocks of more recent eruption, porphyry and gneiss, with hornblende. A good deal of ferruginous conglomerate, with holes in it, covers many spots; when broken, it looks like yellow haematite, with black linings to the holes: this is probably the ore used in former times by the smiths, of whose existence ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... rich harvest in the icy regions of the north; the mineral wealth is immense, including iron, gold, silver, platinum, copper, and lead; precious stones are widely found, among them the diamond, emerald, topaz, and amethyst; and of ornamental stones may be named malachite, jasper, and porphyry, from which magnificent vases, tables, and other articles of ornament are made. The region on the Amur and its tributaries is particularly valuable and rich, and a great population is destined in the future to find an ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... to the fact that in the circular huts of primitive man it was necessary to have a hole at the apex of the roof. Still, it is interesting to note that, as in the Imperial palace at Constantinople, so on the floor of St. Peter's at Rome, and elsewhere, is a flat circular slab of porphyry, associated ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor

... The revenues of Bengal, under the administration established by Clive, did not yield such a surplus as had been anticipated by the Company; for at that time, the most absurd notions were entertained in England respecting the wealth of India. Palaces of porphyry, hung with the richest brocade, heaps of pearls and diamonds, vaults from which pagodas and gold mohurs were measured out by the bushel, filled the imagination even of men of business. Nobody seemed to be aware of what nevertheless was most undoubtedly the truth, that ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... First a thing is useful, you say, then it has to become routine; then the habit, being a habit, gets a sacred idea attached to it. So with bridges: e.g. Pontifex; Dervorguilla, our Ballici saint that built a bridge; the devil that will hinder the building of bridges; cf. the Porphyry Bridge in the Malay cosmogony; Amershickel, Brueckengebildung im kult-Historischer. Passenmayer; Durat, Le pont antique, etude sur les origines Toscanes; Mr Dacre's The Command of Bridges in Warfare; Bridges and Empire, by ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... pupil of Fassi, applied the art to monuments. Giovanni Cavignani, also a pupil of Fassi, far surpassed his master, and executed an altar of St. Antonio, for the church of S. Niccolo, at Carpi, which is still pointed out as something extraordinary. It consists of two columns of porphyry adorned with a pallium, covered with lace, which last is an exact imitation of the covering of an altar, while it is ornamented in the margin with medals, bearing beautiful figures. In the Cathedral at Carpi, is ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner

... clear glass-like six-sided prismatic crystals, and associated with silver, copper, lead, arsenic, iron as sulphide, oxide, carbonate, and tungstate, antimony, bismuth, nickel, zinc, lead, and other metals in one form or another; in slate, quartzite, mica schist, granite, diorite, porphyry, felsite, calcite, dolomite, common carbonate of iron, siliceous sinter from a hot spring, as at Mount Morgan; as alluvial gold in drifts formed of almost all these materials; and once, perhaps the most curious matrix of all, a small piece of apparently alluvial ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson

... City of the Heavens. Having made the necessary arrangements, he repaired to the island on the 8th of August, and his friend Charles Danzeus laid the foundation stone of the new observatory, which consisted of a slab of porphyry, ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster

... is free To pierce the crust of the outer wall, And I view inside, and all there, all, As the swarming hollow of a hive, The whole Basilica alive! Men in the chancel, body and nave, Men on the pillars' architrave, Men on the statues, men on the tombs With popes and kings in their porphyry wombs, All famishing in expectation Of the main-altar's consummation. For see, for see, the rapturous moment Approaches, and earth's best endowment Blends with heaven's; the taper-fires Pant up, ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... edifices, and four lofty pyramids at the angles of the walls. The entrance was by vast halls, followed by saloons, which conducted to grand porticos, the ascent to which was by a flight of ninety steps. The interior was decorated with columns of porphyry and colossal statues of Egyptian gods. The whole was surrounded by a wall, but the passages were so intricate that no stranger could find the way without a guide. The substructions of this famous labyrinth ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner

... essay in a suit of old canonicals, with a tie-wig askew upon our beating temples, and are at this moment cased in a court-suit of cut velvet, with our hair curled, our whiskers crisped, and a masonic apron decorating our middle man. Having subsided into our chair—it is in most respects like the porphyry piece of furniture of the Pope—and our housekeeper having played the Dead March in Saul on our chamber organ (BULWER wrote "The Sea Captain" to the preludizing of a Jew's-harp), we enter on our this week's labour. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... and all manner of trumpery gew-gaws, hanging at the saintly shrines. The rust and dinginess that have dimmed the precious marble on the walls; the pavement, with its great squares and rounds of porphyry and granite, cracked crosswise and in a hundred directions, showing how roughly the troublesome ages have trampled here; the gray dome above, with its opening to the sky, as if heaven were looking down into the interior of this place of worship, left unimpeded ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... beetle as a living and breathing image of the sun, quoth Porphyry.[5] That will account for this restless delver's extraordinary talismanic renown. I think the lady-bird is "the speckled beetle" which was flung in hot water to avert storms.[6] Pignorius gives us the figure of the beetle, crowned with the sun, and encircled with the ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.26 • Various

... executed in their territory; then the Florentines bought a plot of ground near the camp, and killed him there. When the fleet returned and heard this, they determined to send Florence a present to show their gratitude. Now, among the spoil were some bronze gates and two rosy pillars of porphyry, very precious. Then they besought the Florentines to choose one of these, the gates or the pillars, as a gift. And Florence chose the pillars, which stand to-day beside the eastern gate of the Baptistery ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton

... near of polished porphyry. 35 They seemed to wear a beauty from the eye That looked on them—a fragrance from the touch Whose warmth ... checked their life; a light such As sleepers wear, lulled by the voice they love, which did reprove 40 The childish pity that ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... S[a]nkhya reappear as the Gnostic 'three classes,' [Greek: pneumagikoi], [Greek: psuchikoi], [Greek: ulikoi].[32] In regard to Neo-Platonism, Garbe says: "The views of Plotinus are in perfect agreement with those of the S[a]nkhya system."[33] Porphyry, the disciple of Plotinus, has the Yoga doctrine of immediate perception of truth leading to union with the deity. As is well known and undisputed, this Porphyry copies directly from the treatise of Bardesanes, which ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... you trace it clearly, grasp the detail, note that every two bow windows were separated by one rain pipe, every two porches sustained by one pillar, one diminutive magnificent purple pillar, simulating porphyry and crowned with a rich Corinthian capital in freestone, the outline of each porch being picked out and made clear and decisive with woodwork painted white. Then, and not till then, did you see that the all-important detail was the porphyry pillar, for it was as if every two ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair

... mankind, and this Plato learned in Egypt, that they quarrelled with Jupiter, and were driven by him down to hell. [1158]That which [1159]Apuleius, Xenophon, and Plato contend of Socrates Daemonium, is most absurd: That which Plotinus of his, that he had likewise Deum pro Daemonio; and that which Porphyry concludes of them all in general, if they be neglected in their sacrifice they are angry; nay more, as Cardan in his Hipperchen will, they feed on men's souls, Elementa sunt plantis elementum, animalibus plantae, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... Cicely's party at the Porphyry Restaurant had grown to imposing dimensions. Every one whom she had asked had come, and so had Joan Mardle. Lady Shalem had suggested several names at the last moment, and there was quite a strong infusion of the Teutonic military and official world. It was just as well, ...
— When William Came • Saki

... a large room in a building not far from the imperial palace. The pavement was of polished marble, and columns of porphyry supported a paneled dome. An altar with a statue of a heathen deity was at one end of the apartment. Magistrates in their robes occupied raised seats on the opposite end. In front of them were some soldiers guarding ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous

... and hard, and contain a vast preponderance of quartz, the flinty; and that vein of granite will be very soft from containing so much felspar; and this granite, a familiar example of which can be seen in the material of Waterloo Bridge, the learned, who give names, call porphyry. ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn

... the hall to greet him; but on this occasion he was disappointed. To be sure the appetizing odour of gedampftes kalbfleisch wafted itself down the elevator shaft as he entered the gilt and plaster-porphyry entrance from the street, but when he crossed the threshold of his own apartment the robust wail of his son and heir mingled with the tones of Lina, the Slavic maid. Of Mrs. Perlmutter, ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass

... the crusher. "Here's where it is," said he to himself. "With the jaw screwed that tight, how cud ye hope to handle this stuff—especially since the intilligent and discriminatin' mine-boss was sendin' down quartz that's more'n half porphyry! Yer little donkey injin, and yer little sugar mashers, and yer little lemon squeezer of a crusher—yah! It's a grocery store ye've got, and not a stamp mill. Loose off yer nut on the lower ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough

... transcendent God by thought and the ways explained by Plato in the Symposium, that there actually came a vision of that God who is without shape or form, established above the understanding and all the intelligible world. To whom I, Porphyry, being now in my sixty-eighth year, profess that I once drew near and was made one with him. At any rate he appeared to Plotinus "a goal close at hand." For his whole end and goal was to be made One and draw near to the supreme God. And he attained that goal four times, I think, ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... his cheek had rained the morning light, Thrice on his lips the mildewed kiss of night, Crouched by some porphyry column's shining plinth, Or stretched beneath the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... highest honor, above the central doorway, sits in tight-buttoned uniform a fitting idol for so ugly a shrine, the double-chinned effigy of the reigning monarch. We turned for comfort to a chapel on the right, where in four sarcophagi of porphyry are deposited the remains of the Northern sovereigns. The bones of Roger repose in a plain oblong chest with a steep ridged roof, and the other three coffins, though somewhat more elaborate, are yet simple and massive, as befits their ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... manner as the others had fled from Madame's apartments. The prince then flew into the wildest rage. He kicked over a chiffonier, which tumbled on the carpet, broken into pieces. He next went into the galleries, and with the greatest coolness threw down, one after another, an enameled vase, a porphyry ewer, and a bronze candelabrum. The noise summoned every one ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... France. The vaulted ceilings were done in wonderful mosaic. The walls decorated with marbles and rare sea shells. In every nook were marble pedestals and antique statuary, while the fountain in the centre, supplied from an underground stream, was of porphyry inlaid with mosaic. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... refused them. In Sechem earth- tillers killed a scribe who was collecting taxes. In Melcatis and Pi- Hebit also earth-tillers wrecked the houses of Phoenician tenants. At Kasa they refused to repair the canal, declaring that pay from the treasury was clue them for that labor. Finally in the porphyry quarries the convicts killed their overseers and tried to escape in ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... totally different from what they are now, and long before "the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy to see the abodes prepared which man was soon to fill." The imbedded pieces in the conglomerate are of gneiss, clay shale, mica and sandstone schists, trap, and porphyry, most of which are large enough to give the whole the appearance of being the only remaining vestiges of vast primaeval banks of shingle. Several little streams run among these rocks, and in the central part of the pillars stands the village, completely environed by well-nigh inaccessible rocks. ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... them." [Footnote: This axiom is certainly opposed to modern ontology, which denies all ideas to the brute creation, and explains each proof of their intellectual activity by the unintelligible word "instinct." The ancients held very different opinions, particularly the new Platonists, one of whom (Porphyry, liber ii. De abstinentia) treats largely of the intellect and language of animals. Since Cartesius, however, who denied not only understanding, but even feeling, to animals, and represented them as mere animated machines (De passionib. Pars i. Artic. ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold

... gleaming of the golden ground through the leaves beside them, interrupted and dim, like the morning light as it faded back among the branches of Eden, when first its gates were angel-guarded long ago. And round the walls of the porches there are set pillars of variegated stones, jasper and porphyry, and deep-green serpentine spotted with flakes of snow, and marbles, that half refuse and half yield to the sunshine, Cleopatra-like, "their bluest veins to kiss"[155]—the shadow, as it steals back from them, revealing line ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... King in St. Peter's itself. Here, a short way from the entrance, was the rota porphyretica, a round porphyry stone inserted in the pavement, on which the King and Pope knelt. The imperial candidate here made his profession of faith, the Cardinal-bishop of Portus placed himself in the middle of the rota and pronounced the second oration. The King was then draped in new vestments, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... passage leads to a vertical facade 46 feet high, pierced by a door between 17 and 18 feet in height, which was bordered by columns carrying a cornice, above which was a triangular relieving space, masked by slabs of red porphyry adorned with spiral decorations, while the whole facade appears to have been enriched with bronze ornaments and coloured marbles. The massive lintel of the door is 29 feet 6 inches long, 16 feet 6 inches deep, and 3 feet 4 inches high, with a weight of about 120 tons—a mass of stone ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie

... height sublime, The spectral march of some approaching Doom! Nor these alone, oh! Mother of the world, People thy chambers, echoless and vast; Their dewy freshness like ambrosial cools Life's fever-thirst, and to the fainting soul Their porphyry walls are touched with light, and gleams Of shining wonder dazzle through the void, Like those bright marvels which the travele'rs torch Wakes from the darkness of three thousand years, In rock-hewn sepulchres of Theban ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various

... regretting the downfall of the conventual libraries, exclaims, like Rachel weeping for her children, that if the Papal laws, decrees, decretals, clementines, and other such drugs of the devilyea, if Heytesburg's sophisms, Porphyry's universals, Aristotle's logic, and Dunse's divinity, with such other lousy legerdemains (begging your pardon, Miss Wardour) and fruits of the bottomless pit,had leaped out of our libraries, for the accommodation of grocers, candlemakers, ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... the King's bed of state, before which was a balustrade of silver. In all the Grand Apartments were hangings and furniture of extraordinary richness. There were tables of gilded wood and mosaic, Florentine marbles, pedestals of porphyry for vases of precious metal, ebony cabinets inlaid with copper, columns of jasper, agate and lapis lazuli, silver chandeliers, branched candle-sticks, baskets, vessels for liqueurs, silver perfuming pans. Windows were draped ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne

... of William Porphyry Benham is the story of a man who was led into adventure by an idea. It was an idea that took possession of his imagination quite early in life, it grew with him and changed with him, it interwove at last completely with his being. His story is its story. It was traceably ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... three orders of Magi enumerated by Porphyry, abstained from wine and women, and the first of ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... still lying on the crests of the Maritime Alps and the intermediate ranges broken into fantastic forms, the lovely range of red porphyry Esterel to the south, with the intensely blue sea drawing a thread of silver about its base, together made a picture ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... Anorus. Some of these were so called from their situation; others from the worship there established. The Egyptians had many subordinate Deities, which they esteemed so many emanations, [Greek: aporrhoiai] from their chief God; as we learn from Iamblichus, Psellus, and Porphyry. These derivatives they called [198]fountains, and supposed them to be derived from the Sun; whom they looked upon as the source of all things. Hence they formed Ath-El and Ath-Ain, the [199]Athela and Athena of the Greeks. These were two titles appropriated to the same personage, ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant

... almost at haphazard, though always getting higher up the mountains. At last he was obliged to stop short. They were in a narrow valley, one of those gorges called by the Indians "quebrads," and on reaching the end, a wall of porphyry rose perpendicularly before them, and barred further passage. The CATAPEZ, after vain attempts at finding an opening, dismounted, crossed his arms, and waited. Glenarvan went up to him and asked if he had lost ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... towards the main and the peninsula; but a natural terrace runs along under the cliff in the direction of Camden Sound, which I believe would form a good road to that harbour. The tract thus enclosed appears to be very fertile. Porphyry and basalt are the common rocks. The soil is rich vegetable mould, mixed with gravel and covered with the most luxuriant grass. The trees were in general small. We only found three springs here; these ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey

... the sarcophagi were undoubtedly the three in Mr. Trelawny's room. Of these, two were of dark stone, one of porphyry and the other of a sort of ironstone. These were wrought with some hieroglyphs. But the third was strikingly different. It was of some yellow-brown substance of the dominating colour effect of Mexican onyx, which it resembled in many ways, excepting that ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker

... glittering stone, heated like an oven by a burning sun which seemed to hang for that very purpose right above the gorge. When we raised our eyes toward the crests we stood dazzled and stupefied by what we saw. They looked red and notched like festoons of coral, for all the summits are made of porphyry; and the sky overhead seemed violet, lilac, discolored by the vicinity of these strange mountains. Lower down the granite was of scintillating gray, and under our feet it seemed rasped, pounded; we were ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant

... scarcely rear: the lofty ceiling shone With richest tracery, the beams were bound In golden coverings; no scant veneer Lay on its walls, but built in solid blocks Of marble, gleamed the palace. Agate stood In sturdy columns, bearing up the roof; Onyx and porphyry on the spacious floor Were trodden 'neath the foot; the mighty gates Of Maroe's throughout were formed, He mere adornment; ivory clothed the hall, And fixed upon the doors with labour rare Shells of the tortoise gleamed, from Indian seas, ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... petal, now the white; Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk; Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font: The fire-fly ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... But the recommendation given to his servants was superfluous. Porthos, refreshed, had already commenced the descent, and his heavy step resounded amongst the cavities, formed and supported by columns of porphyry and granite. As soon as the Seigneur de Bracieux had rejoined the bishop, the Bretons lighted a lantern with which they were furnished, and Porthos assured his friend that he felt as ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... determined the basilica shape of the Cathedral of Monreale. Its bronze doors were wrought by smiths of Trani and Pisa. Its walls were incrusted with the mosaics of Constantinople. The woodwork of its roof, and the emblazoned patterns in porphyry and serpentine and glass and smalto, which cover its whole surface, were designed by Oriental decorators. Norman sculptors added their dog-tooth and chevron to the mouldings of its porches; Greeks, Frenchmen, and Arabs may have tried their skill ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... on Nineteenth Street into which Potash & Perlmutter proposed to move was an imposing fifteen-story structure. Burnished metal signs of its occupants flanked its wide doorway, and the entrance hall gleamed with gold leaf and plaster porphyry, while the uniform of each elevator attendant would have graced the high admiral of a ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass

... beautiful "Rose" windows close to the ground, and the Lilies of France, of course, are everywhere. The chief drawing-room is a charming room, hung with pale yellow satin damask, and with beautiful Louis Quinze furniture. The porphyry hall is considered one of the sights, the roof, walls, and floor are all ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden

... that, three spear-lengths wide, spanned the green plain and led from the royal city to the Palace of the Hill, the wonderful rural retreat of the good 'Hualpilli, the 'tzin[Z] or lord of Tezcuco. Through the sculptured gate-way he sped, past the terraced gardens and the five hundred porphyry steps, past the three reservoirs of the Marble Women, past the Winged Lion and the Rock of the Great 'Tzin to where, in the midst of a grove of giant cedars, rose the fairy-like walls of the beautiful summer palace of ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks

... the Women's Franchise Union, and hung with flags and blazoned banners. The silk standards and the emblems of the Women's Suffrage Leagues and Societies, supported by their tall poles, stood ranged along three walls. They covered the sham porphyry with gorgeous and heroic colours, purple and blue, sky-blue and sapphire blue and royal blue, black, white and gold, vivid green, pure gold, pure white, dead-black, orange and scarlet ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair

... the unseen bees came louder than ever, from a doorway in the wall upon Katharine's right hand, a wall of black polished marble, decorated with an inlaid ornament in porphyry of yellow and red and pale green. The curtain of dyed and threaded reeds did not hide what lay beyond the doorway. You saw a long, high-pitched whitewashed room, cooled by big wooden electric fans working under the ceiling, and traversed by avenues of creamy-white Chinese ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton

... us a desert of glittering stone, heated like an oven by a burning sun, which seemed to hang for that very purpose right above the gorge. When we raised our eyes towards the crests, we stood dazzled and stupefied by what we saw. They looked like a festoon of coral; all the summits are of porphyry; and the sky overhead was violet, purple, tinged with the coloring of these strange mountains. Lower down, the granite was of scintillating gray, and seemed ground to powder beneath our feet. At our right, along ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... See the Lives of the Sophists, by Eunapius; the Life of Plotinus, by Porphyry; that of Proclus, by Marinus; and that ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan

... each one dressed in flowing robes, and with a large glowing pearl in the front of their turbans. They advanced to meet him, saying, 'Welcome to Aklis, thou that art proved worthy! 'Tis holiday now with us'; and they took him by the hand and led him with them in silence past fountain-jets and porphyry pillars to where a service with refreshments was spread, meats, fowls with rice, sweetmeats, preserves, palateable mixtures, and monuments of the cook's art, goblets of wine like liquid rubies. Then one of the youths said to Shibli Bagarag, 'Thou hast come to us crowned, O our guest! ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... slave, who has done me the honor to call here in your service. But now have you given of it the last and highest proof. Never has the wit of man before compounded an essence like that which lies buried in this porphyry vase.' ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... the pottery rings and glass beads worn by the poor. As might be expected in an Egyptian collection, the scarabaeus, or sacred beetle, frequently meets the eye. Here are scarabaei in gold, cornelion, chalcedony, heliotrope, torquoise, lapis-lazuli, porphyry, terra cotta, and other materials; many of them having ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various

... again at the man in the shadow, half expecting to find his host swollen to giant size. Instead, he found the same meager form, the same old suggestion of youth which would not age, the same pale hands, of almost feminine litheness. Lee Haines talked on—about a porphyry dyke somewhere to the north—a ledge to be found in the space of ten thousand square miles—a list of vague clues—an appeal for Barry to help them find it—and Barry was held listening though ever seeming to ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand

... thy shores! Over thy broad savannahs I spur my noble steed, whose joyous neigh tells that he too is inspired by the scene. I rest under the shade of the corozo palm, and quaff the wine of the acrocomia. I climb thy mountains of amygdaloid and porphyry— thy crags of quartz, that yield the white silver and the yellow gold. I cross thy fields of lava, rugged in outline, and yet more rugged with their coverture of strange vegetable forms—acacias and cactus, yuccas and zamias. I traverse thy table-plains through bristling rows of ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... plan of immersing the remains of the deceased in a jar of methylated spirit was obviously impracticable. However, I bethought me that we had in our collection a porphyry sarcophagus, the cavity of which had been shaped to receive a small mummy in its case. I tried the deceased in the sarcophagus and found that he just fitted the cavity loosely. I obtained a few gallons of methylated ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman

... transparent atmosphere of Arizona. Siva's Temple, for example, stands upon a platform four or five miles square, from which rise domes and pinnacles a thousand feet in height. Some of their summits call to mind immense sarcophagi of jasper or of porphyry, as if they were the burial-places of dead deities, and the Grand Canon a Necropolis for pagan gods. Yet, though the greater part of the population of the world could be assembled here, one sees no worshipers, save an occasional devotee of Nature, standing on the Canon's rim, ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard

... pavement of sapphires, like the body of heaven in its clearness, sown with silver stars. From the four corners of the roof hung four golden magic-wheels, called the tongues of the gods. At the eastern end, behind the altar, there were two dark-red pillars of porphyry; above them a lintel of the same stone, on which was carved the figure of a winged archer, with his arrow set to the ...
— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke

... great white dump of bleached porphyry to which the citizens of Sulphide were accustomed to point with pride as an indication of the immense amount of work it had taken to make the Pelican the important mine it was, we scrambled up to the engine-house, where for some ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp

... it is witnessed to by the Latin, Syriac[211], Gothic, and Egyptian versions, as well as by [Symbol: Aleph]BDL[Symbol: Delta], and (according to Tischendorf) by nearly twenty-five cursives; besides the following ancient writers: Irenaeus, Origen, Porphyry, Titus, Basil, Serapion, Epiphanius, Severianus, Victor, Eusebius, Victorinus, Jerome, Augustine. I proceed to shew that this imposing array of authorities for reading [Greek: en to Esaia to prophete] instead of [Greek: en tois prophetais] in St. Mark i. 2, which has ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon

... myself the mosque before the Christians laid their desecrating hands upon it. The floor was of coloured tiles, tiles such as may still be seen in the Alhambra of Granada and in the Alcazar at Seville. The columns are of marble, of porphyry and jasper; tradition says they came from Carthage, from pagan temples in France and Christian churches in Spain; they are slender and unadorned, they must have contrasted astonishingly with the roof of larch wood, all ablaze with ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham

... come down a little by natural steps from the master to the disciples, we have, six or seven centuries later, the Platonists,— who also cannot be skipped,—Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus, Synesius, Jamblichus. Of Jamblichus the Emperor Julian said, "that he was posterior to Plato in time, not in genius." Of Plotinus, we have eulogies by Porphyry and Longinus, and the favor of the Emperor Gallienus,—indicating the respect he inspired among his contemporaries. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... of the rocks is in general basaltic, but white, black, and green marble, red porphyry, jaspar, red and grey granite, abound east of the Buonaventura. Quartz, upon some of the mountains near the sea-shore, is found in immense blocks, and principally in that mountain range which is designated in the map as the "Montagne du Monstre," ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... Porphyry says: "By images addressed to sense, the ancients represented God and his powers—by the visible they typified the invisible for those who had learned to read in these types, as in a book, a treatise on the Gods. We need not wonder if the ignorant consider the images to be nothing ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... barbarous and foreign nations who combined to destroy all the superior arts in Italy had not then appeared. It is true that architecture suffered less than the other arts of design. The bath erected by Constantine at the entrance of the principal portico of the Lateran contains, in addition to its porphyry columns, capitals carved in marble and beautifully carved double bases taken from elsewhere, the whole composition of the building being very well ordered. On the other hand, the stucco, the mosaic and some incrustations of the walls made by the masters of the time ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari

... accidental form makes a thing otherwise (alterum) so does substantial form make another thing (aliud) as Porphyry says (Praedic.). Now in Christ there are two substantial natures, the human and the Divine. Therefore Christ is one thing and another. Therefore ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... interest to the traveler. One enters the walls of an oblong court, the east end being formed of a gallery with columns inclosing the sanctuary. The north and south sides are inclosed by piazzas with many noble columns. There are two hundred and fifty of these, formed of single stones of granite and porphyry, which are known to have come from Memphis and Heliopolis. The whole deserted temple constitutes the most important monument of Arabian architecture in Cairo. Seen as it was in the dull gray of early morning, before the sun had fairly lighted the well-preserved minarets, it presented ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... suspense, as to the ultimate destination of his talents, he resolved on dedicating them to the service of the Church; and, after being admitted into reader's orders, he began to distinguish himself by his opposition to philosophical infidelity. His work against Porphyry, the most valuable and elaborate of his writings, was extended to as many as thirty books. During the reign of Julian, when the Christian schools were shut up, and the Christian youth were debarred from the use of the classics, ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... the use of men, but once were an abomination and destruction to them, and to which the blind people paid divine honour. I shall also pass over the bygone times of our cruel tyrants, whose notoriety was spread over to far distant countries; so that Porphyry, that dog who in the east was always so fierce against the church, in his mad and vain style added this also, that "Britain is a land fertile in tyrants."* I will only endeavour to relate the evils which Britain suffered in the times of the Roman emperors, and also ...
— On The Ruin of Britain (De Excidio Britanniae) • Gildas

... their apparently divergent views. To form the idea was a silent judgment on the learning of his day; to realize it was more than one man could accomplish; but Boethius accomplished much. He translated the [Greek: Eisagogae] of Porphyry, and the whole of Aristotle's Organon. He wrote a double commentary on the [Greek: Eisagogae] and commentaries on the Categories and the De Interpretatione of Aristotle, and on the Topica of Cicero. He also composed original treatises on the categorical and hypothetical syllogism, ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

... was as subtle as that of flowers. A man or two, hoary with marble-dust and ennobled by the "bloom" of it, stood tall and sad about the wheel, and we handed to these refined creatures our treasures of giallo-antico and porphyry and other marbles picked up "for remembrance" (and no doubt once pressed by a Caesar's foot or met by a Caesar's glance), in order to observe the fresh color leap to the surface,—yellow, red, ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... life God has given to them. Man and his works perish, but the monuments of the infusoriae are the flinty ribs of the sea, the giant bones of huge continents, heaped into mountain-ranges over which the granite and porphyry have set their stony seal for ever. Man thrives in his little zone: the populous infusoriae crowd every nook of earth from the remote poles to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various

... is the form of a great cross, with the dome in the centre, the altar screen 150 feet long and 70 feet high, of white marble, encrusted with porphyry, jasper and other precious stones, and enriched with eight Corinthian columns of malachite and two lapis lazuli 42 feet high, and the doors into the chancel of silver, containing scriptural expressions 35 feet high and 14 wide, the whole costing 52 millions ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood

... Zeno Buddha Isaiah Daniel Empedocles Socrates Plato Aristotle Porphyry John Wesley Franklin Goldsmith Ray Paley Isaac Newton Jean Paul Richter Schopenhauer Byron Gleizes Hartley Rousseau Iamblichus Hypatia Diogenes Quintus Sextus Ovid Plutarch Seneca Apollonius The Apostles Matthew James James the Less Peter The ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon

... quartz, gravel, and red clay, all disposed in the usual direction. Women's washings were seen everywhere along the road, and in some places oozings of iron from the soil heavily charged the streamlets. Some of the quartz-boulders were coloured outside like porphyry by the oxide. About three-quarters of the way from Tumento to Apankru is a hill rich in outcrops of quartz. I believe it to ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron

... almost touched our vessel on either side. In spite of the rain, we remained on deck until a late hour, enjoying the bold scenery of the outer fjord—here, precipitous woody shores, gashed with sudden ravines; there, jet-black rocky peaks, resembling the porphyry hills of the African deserts; and now and then, encircling the sheltered coves, soft green fields glowing with misty light, and the purple outlines of snow-streaked ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor

... then, he hath ordered that his bath shall be prepared in the holy porphyry vase in which once bathed ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton



Words linked to "Porphyry" :   porphyritic rock, porphyritic



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