"Zodiac" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Faucher-Gudin, from the rectangular zodiac carved upon the ceiling of the great temple of Denderah (Dumichen, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the fourth century A.D. That we could not be absolutely sure of the readings of ancient Greek melodies, even if we possessed any, is evident from the fact that these note characters, which at first were derived from the signs of the zodiac, and later from the letters of the alphabet, indicate only the relative pitch of the sounds; the rhythm is left entirely to the metrical value of the words in the lines to be sung. Two sets of signs were used for musical notation, the ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... its astronomers, who had fixed the duration of the year, were acquainted with the zodiac, and as early as the middle of the fourth century B.C., already possessed astronomical records extending over 1,900 years. They were also far-famed astrologers, and as such were in great demand as late as the last ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... suggestion of suffering. They have pictured Christ and His Mother in all the other events of their lives; they have represented evangelists; apostles; the twenty-four old men of the Apocalypse; saints, prophets, kings, queens, and princes, by the score; the signs of the zodiac, and even the seven liberal arts: grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music; everything is there ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... 4-spoked driving wheel. One of the smaller fragments (fig. 7, bottom) contains a series of movable rings which may have served to carry movable scales on one of the three dials. The third fragment (fig. 7, top) has a pair of rings carefully engraved and graduated in degrees of the zodiac (this is, incidentally, the oldest engraved scale known, and micrometric measurements on photographs have indicated a maximum inaccuracy of about 1/2 deg. in the ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... emblematic of the increase and decrease of the days in the twelve months; and between these is a procession of boats, in which are deities and figures. In the inner side of this diadem the signs of the zodiac are represented. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... table [of shew-bread], and the altar of incense. Now the seven lamps signified the seven planets; for so many there were springing out of the candlestick. Now the twelve loaves that were upon the table signified the circle of the zodiac and the year; but the altar of incense, by its thirteen kinds of sweet-smelling spices with which the sea replenished it, signified that God is the possessor of all things that are both in the uninhabitable and habitable parts of the earth, ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... the spirits associated with the solstitial worship, whose intercession was thus secured, "I, the emperor of the Great Illustrious dynasty, have respectfully prepared this paper, to inform the spirit of the sun, the spirit of the moon, the spirits of the five planets, of the constellations of the zodiac, and of all the stars in all the sky," and so on: and the professor adds: "This paper shows how there had grown up around the primitive monotheism of China the recognition and worship of a multitude of celestial and terrestrial spirits." [166] This ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... man goes to see a girl for the first time, and the signs of the zodiac are in the heart, they will one day ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... a splendid Norman doorway carved with the signs of the zodiac; St. Mary's Castlegate is an Early English or Transitional building transformed and patched in Perpendicular times; St. Mary's Bishophill Junior has a most interesting tower, containing Roman materials, and the list could ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... motion of the planets from east to west. This is the case when the planets are visible on the side opposite to the sun. See Airy's 'Popular Astronomy,' p. 124. 'Trine' refers to the appearance of planets 'distant from each other 120 degrees, or the third part of the zodiac. 'Trine was considered a favourable conjunction. Cp. note on Par. Lost, X. 659, in ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... denarius, the words for hour and minute ([Greek: hora, lepton]), and possibly the signs of the zodiac. [R. Caldwell, Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Languages, London, 1856, p. 438.] On the probable Chinese origin of the ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith
... bold of Buonamico to set himself to make a God the Father five braccia high, the hierarchy, the heavens, the angels, the zodiac, and all the things above to the sky of the moon, and then the element of fire, the air, the earth, and finally the centre. For the two lower corners he did a St Augustine and a St Thomas Aquinas. At the top of this Campo ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... a beautiful table, "wherein Saturn was of copper, Jupiter of gold, Mars of iron, and the Sun of silver, the eyes were charmed, and the mind instructed by beholding the circles. The Zodiac and all its signs formed with wonderful art, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... occasion of starting a convivial club, somebody proposed that it should consist of twelve members, and be called "The Zodiac," each member to be named after ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... of bright Days, Must needs bestow on you both good and many, Who, building trophies of his Children's praise, Run their rich Zodiac through, not missing any. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... from an admiring Marchesa, curiously embroidered with algebraic figures like a conjuror's robe, and with a skull-cap of black satin on his hive of a head, the man of gravity was seated at a huge claw-footed old table, round as the zodiac. It was covered with printer papers, files of documents, rolls of manuscript, stray bits of strange models in wood and metal, odd-looking pamphlets in various languages, and all sorts of books, including many presentation-copies, embracing history, mechanics, ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... Pelasgic; Pyramids and Pur-tors, all signs of races whose handwriting was on their walls; landscapes to display the influence of Nature upon the customs, creeds, and philosophy of men,—here showing how the broad Chaldean wastes led to the contemplation of the stars; and illustrations of the Zodiac, in elucidation of the mysteries of symbol-worship; fantastic vagaries of earth fresh from the Deluge, tending to impress on early superstition the awful sense of the rude powers of Nature; views of the rocky defiles of Laconia,—Sparta, neighbored by the "silent Amyclae," explaining, as it were, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Immaculate Lady, Star of the Sea, Queen of Heaven, Mother of God. We see her in pictures standing on the crescent moon, star-crowned; she nurses her child Horus, and the cross appears on the back of the seat in which he sits on his mother's knee. The Virgo of the Zodiac is represented in ancient drawings as a woman suckling a child—the type of all future Madonnas with their divine Babes, showing the origin of the symbol. Devaki is likewise figured with the divine Krishna in her arms, as is Mylitta, or Istar, of Babylon, also with the recurrent crown ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... convents and boarding-schools,—if every human feeling that sighs, or smiles, or curses, or shrieks, or groans, should bring all their innumerable images, such as come with every hurried heart-beat,—the epic that held them all, though its letters filled the zodiac, would be but a cupful from the infinite ocean of similitudes and analogies ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... and make me there Many a less and greater sphere: Make me the straight and oblique lines, The motions, lations and the signs. Make me a chariot and a sun, And let them through a zodiac run; Next place me zones and tropics there, With all the seasons of the year. Make me a sunset and a night, And then present the morning's light Cloth'd in her chamlets of delight. To these make clouds to pour ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... swinging slowly around in a circle. On the walls, were hung several charts and mystic symbols, while the floor was covered with a close matting of white straw, upon which was painted the common representation of the signs of the zodiac. A number of small globes stood upon a low shelf in one corner, and on a table in the centre of the room was a large globe standing on a chart. With the exception of one large easy-chair and a lounge, ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... different kinds of chess: one had 10 x 10, or 100 squares; another was oblong, 16 x 4, which employed dice as well as the usual pieces; another board was circular, with a central spot for the king, where he could intrench himself in safety; another represented the zodiac, with spaces for each planet, according to the number of houses or mansions assigned by astrologers. The ingenuity did not end here: chess was made to illustrate dreams, and to embellish many amusing games and recreations. Odes and poems were written upon it, and the poets at times ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... lavender (as she said),—he asked her "whether it wasn't essence of thyme?" On the occasion of starting a convivial club, (he was very fond of such clubs,) somebody proposed that it should consist of twelve members, and be called "The Zodiac,"—each member to be named after a sign. "And what shall I be?" inquired a somewhat solemn man, who feared that they were filled up. "Oh, we'll bring you in as the weight in Libra," was the instant remark of Douglas. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... varied by the introduction of dots, and, in some cases, by the insertion of minute sketches of animals, birds, arrows, signs of the zodiac, etc., with here and there one of a humorous, possibly ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... flickering of stars in the summer sky. In the centre of the room, immediately under the dome, stretched a billiard-table, and near it was a circular one of black marble, inlaid with red onyx and lapis lazuli, which formed a miniature zodiac similar to that at Denderah, while in the middle of this table sat a small Murano hour-glass, filled with sand from the dreary valley of El Ghor. A huge plaster Trimurti stood close to the wall, on a triangular pedestal ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... initiates with signs and passwords by which they could know each other in the dark as well as in the light. The Mithraic or Persian Mysteries celebrated the eclipse of the Sun-god, using the signs of the zodiac, the processions of the seasons, the death of nature, and the birth of spring. The Adoniac or Syrian cults were similar, Adonis being killed, but revived to point to life through death. In the Cabirie Mysteries on the island of Samothrace, Atys the Sun was killed by his brothers ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... be paid, I armed myself with a large poniard and my good coat of mail, and betook myself to his palace, where he had drawn up all his household. I entered, and Paulino followed with the silver vase. It was just like passing through the Zodiac, neither more nor less; for one of them had the face of the lion, another of the scorpion, a third of the crab. However, we passed onward to the presence of the rascally priest, who spouted out a torrent of such language as only priests and Spaniards have ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... of it immediately, without hesitation and astonishment, in an illustrated magazine. I saluted as old acquaintances two gods with hawk heads that were cut in profile upon a stone and placed at each end of a strangely depicted Zodiac, and although I saw the picture for the first time upon an overcast day, there came to me, and of that I am sure, a sudden impression of great heat given out ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... flower, The Muses' love, patron and favourite, That artisans and scholars dost embrace. And clothest Mathesis in rich ornaments, That admirable mathematic skill, Familiar with the stars and Zodiac, To whom the heaven lies open as her book; By whose directions undeceivable, Leaving our Schoolmen's vulgar trodden paths, And following the ancient reverent steps Of Trismegistus and Pythagoras, Through uncouth ways and unaccessible, ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... become as versatile and humbly useful as the letter L itself: that is, in the commonplace routine photoplay. We turn the cardboard over and the lion becomes a resource of glory and terror, a symbol of cruel persecutions or deathless courage, sign of the zodiac that Poe in Ulalume calls ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... on higher ground than any science. There is no science, not even metaphysics, the queen of all sciences, that does not "build upon nature", and that is not, so far, limited by the facts of nature. The poet alone is "not tied to any such subjection"; he alone "freely ranges within the zodiac ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... concentric dials, the circumference of the larger dial being divided into ten equal parts, each marked with one of the ten "celestial signs," and the circumference of the smaller dial being divided into twelve equal parts each marked with one of the twelve signs of the zodiac. The long hand of the clock, pointing to the larger dial, was supposed to make one revolution in ten years, and the shorter hand, pointing to the small dial, revolved once in twelve years. Thus, starting from the point where the marks on the two dials coincide, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... world, And the grand rebel flaming downward hurl'd. Virtue, dominion, praise, omnipotence, Support the train of their triumphant prince. A zone, beyond the thought of angels bright, Around him, like the zodiac, winds its light. Night shades the solemn arches of his brows, And in his cheek the purple morning glows. Where'er serene, he turns propitious eyes, Or we expect, or find, a paradise: But if resentment reddens their mild beams, The Eden kindles, and the world's in flames. On one ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... contemplated. And in this very greatness of the world the beauty of it appears. View all things: that which contains the rest carries a beauty with it, as an animal or a tree. Also things which are visible to us accomplish the beauty of the world. The oblique circle called the Zodiac in heaven is with different ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... side of the earth's surface worked out a doctrine of a Cupola or Summit of the world, and on the side of the heavens a pseudo-science of the Anoua or Settings of the Constellations, connected with the twelve Pillars of the Zodiac and the twenty-eight ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... Set within this zodiac and spaced at mathematically regular intervals were nine ovoids of intensely living light. They shone like nine gigantic cabochon cut sapphires; they ranged from palest, watery blue up through azure and purple and down to a ghostly mauve shot ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... that the sun, which hid his face at noonday, must at that time have been in Aries, the Ram. Find me the signs of the Zodiac." Thora did so. "Now look well at Aries the Ram. What month of ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... of pure gold, and stood upon pillars of crystal and precious stones, which represented the zodiac and all the wonders of nature; all the arts and sciences; the sea, with all the variety of fish therein contained; the earth, with all the various creatures which it produces; the chases of Diana and her nymphs; the noble exercises of the Amazons; the amusements of ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... a fad popular enough to spread through the entire school was an unheard of thing at Warwick Hall, but A.O. Miggs had that distinction early in the term. Her birthday was in October, and when she appeared that morning with a zodiac ring on her little finger, set with a brilliant fire opal, there was a mingled ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... also extant three letters to Tiro and one to M. Cicero. Quintus' poetry is now represented only by twenty hexameters on the signs of the zodiac; but he wrote an epic poem, Annales (ad Att. ii. 16, 4 [Quintus] 'ita remittit ut me roget ut annales suos emendem et edam'), and composed tragedies with great rapidity (ad Q.F. iii. 6, 7, 'quattuor tragoedias ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... two hundred and fifty-six feet long, and eighty-six broad; the form, of it a rhomboid: the walls richly ornamented by Pietro d'Abano, who originally designed, and began to paint the figures round the sides: they have however been retouched by Giotto, who added the signs of the Zodiac to Peter's mysterious performances, which meant to explain the planetary influences, as he was a man deeply dipped in judicial astrology; and there is his own portrait among them, dressed like a Zoroastrian priest, with a planet in the corner. At the bottom of the hall hangs the ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... dimensions supported by a single mast. In his right hand he held a dart, in his left a shield emblazoned with the arms of France. Inside, the roof of the pavilion represented the canopy of heaven ornamented with stars and figures of the zodiac. The lodgings of the queen, of the Duchess d'Alencon, the king's favorite sister, and of other ladies and princes of the blood, were covered with cloth of gold. The rest of the tents, to the number of three or four hundred, emblazoned with the arms of their owners, were pitched on the banks of a ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... late set forth against long cloaks and wide ruffs, which do ill please her, for Anstace loveth to ruffle it of a good ruff. Thence gat she to their Cicely, which is but ill at ease, and Dr Bell was fetched to her this last even: who saith that on Friday and Saturday the sign [of the Zodiac] shall be in the heart, and from Sunday to Tuesday in the stomach, during which time it shall be no safe dealing with physic preservative, whereof he reckoneth her need to be: so she must needs tarry until Wednesday come seven-night, and from ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... similar heap of stones, on the road from Thebes to Elissonte, was called "the serpent's head," and especially because the rows of stones at Carnac present the sinuosities of a serpent. People fond of cosmography discovered a zodiac, like M. de Cambry, who recognised in those eleven rows of stones the twelve signs of the zodiac, "for it must be stated," he adds, "that the ancient Gauls had only ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... The Zodiac Company also constructed a number of small ships which were utilized during the war for anti-submarine patrol. It cannot be said, however, that the French have fulfilled their early promise as airship designers, the ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... wall—Tintoret thinks it would be rather better, if he can manage it, to make it look a little like Paradise;— stretches his canvas right over the wall, and his clouds right over his canvas; brings the light through his clouds—all blue and clear—zodiac beyond zodiac; rolls away the vaporous flood from under the feet of saints, leaving them at last in infinitudes of light—unorthodox in the last degree, but, on ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... I saw a bill-sticker at work upon a line of dead wall which at that time reached from the Red Lion Inn to the corner of Pitcairn's Lane. His posters were printed in enormous type, and decorated with a florid bordering in which the signs of the zodiac conspicuously figured Being somewhat idly disposed, I followed the example of other passers-by, and lingered to watch the process and read the advertisement. It ran ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... recorded wit of the world, but none of the recording,"—where Shakespeare and Old Sleuth and Pansy look all alike and as readable as the card catalogues, or the boy attendants, or the signs of the Zodiac ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... when I knew him was much consulted as a medicine-man. His chief charms, or amulets, were a large bull's-eye silver watch, and a copy of "Ayer's Family Almanac," in which was displayed the human body encircled by the signs of the zodiac. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... by which the Indians are regulated in proceedings dependant on the seasons; and that, in this respect, they answer to the household Gods of the patriarchal times, which are supposed to have been calendars, and the figure of each an emblem of some portion of the year, or sign of the Zodiac. It would be foreign to the nature of this work to investigate the evidence which may be adduced on this subject, or to collect those various and scattered hints which have given rise to the opinion, and with a faint, but not fallacious ray, have penetrated ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... fervoro. Zealot fervorulo. Zealous fervora. Zebra zebro. Zenith zenito. Zephyr venteto. Zero nulo. Zest gusto. Zigzag zigzago. Zinc zinko. Zinc-worker zinkisto. Zodiac zodiako. Zone terzono. Zoology zoologio. Zoophyte ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... our heroes and our heroines In that fair clime which don't depend on climate, Quite independent of the Zodiac's signs, Though certainly more difficult to rhyme at, Because the sun, and stars, and aught that shines, Mountains, and all we can be most sublime at, Are there oft dull and dreary as a dun— Whether a sky's ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... fourth century, Attis bears the cognomen of menotyrannus. At that time this name was undoubtedly understood to mean "lord of the months," because Attis represented the sun who entered a new sign of the zodiac every month.[25] But that was not the original meaning of the term. "Men tyrannus" appears with quite a different meaning in many inscriptions found in Asia Minor. Tyrannos ([Greek: Turannos]), "lord," is a word taken by the Greeks from the Lydian, and ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... the mysteries of light and shade, than did Whittier. To Carleton, a true son of New Hampshire, who had himself so often in boyhood watched and discriminated the mystery-play of light in its variant forms at dawn, midday, and sunset, by moon and star and zodiac, at the equinoxes and solstices, the imagery of his favorite ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... might divine Thy name beyond the zodiac sign Wherefrom our times-to-come descend. He called thee 'Sometime'. Change it, friend: 'Now-time' sounds so much ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... in the middle, And planets around him so grand, Are swinging in space, Held forever in place, In the Zodiac girdle or band. ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... apparent from minute to minute. But, as regarded our own position, the appearance was as opposite as their direction. Zeelna, traversing in twelve hours only one-fifth of the visible hemisphere, while crossing in the same time 144 deg. on the zodiac—twelve degrees per hour, or our Moon's diameter in two minutes and a half—was left behind by the stars; and fixing what I may call the ocular attention on her, she seemed to stand still while they slowly ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... into account the ideas expressed by their precursors; they had repeated them, expressing them from their own point of view in their personal tongue; thus, for instance, they had introduced a second version of the signs of the seasons and of the zodiac. The sculptors of the twelfth century had made a calendar in stone on the western front; those of the thirteenth did the same in the right-hand doorway of the north porch, justifying this reduplication ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... Power was symbolized in many ways, notably by the passage of the sun through the zodiacal signs * (centres in the psychic body) [* "The twelve signs of the Zodiac are hidden in his body."—-Secret Doctrine, II, 619] A stone serpent was found a little while ago in Ireland marked with twelve divisions. The archaic verses alluded to have the ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... of Time as represented by the year has a nave represented by the six seasons. The number of spokes attached to that nave is twelve as represented by the twelve signs of the Zodiac. This wheel of Time manifests the fruits of the acts of all things. The presiding deities of Time abide in that wheel. Subject as I am to its distressful influence, ye Aswins, liberate me from that wheel of Time. Ye Aswins, ye are this universe of five elements! Ye are the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... string at the corner so that they might be hung on a nail behind the stove, and of a crude green or yellow or blue. Each of them made much of a calm-featured man who seemed unaware of the fact that his internal organs were opened to the light of day. Lines radiated from his middle to the signs of the zodiac. I never knew what all this meant, but it gave me a sense of something esoteric and remote. Just what "Aries" and "Pisces" had to do with healing or the weather is still ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... of letters, more or less distorted, either through unskilfulness or from actual design, were intermingled with sundry delineations of half-moons, stars, and other natural objects, and the whole ended in a rude representation of the Mexican zodiac. The conclusion was irresistible, that some cunning fellow had prepared the paper in question, for the purpose of imposing upon the countryman who brought it, and I told the man so, without any hesitation. ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... the point where the "roof-tree" crosses the Zodiac Ring Is a warm, red star in Scorpio. This is Antares; while, in the North, Etanin marks the ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low
... gods, had made them in his workshop (for Mount-Aetna is one of his forges, and he has the central fires of the earth to help him fashion gold and iron, as men do glass). On the doors blazed the twelve signs of the Zodiac, in silver that shone like snow in the sunlight. Phaethon was dazzled with the sight, but when he entered the palace hall he could hardly bear ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... He was no astrologer, but he was dotingly fond of his wife, and he could not bear the idea of losing her. He promised to obey, and having sold his little stock, bought an astrolabe, an astronomical almanac, and a table of the twelve signs of the zodiac. Furnished with these, he went to the marketplace, crying, "I am an astrologer! I know the sun, and the moon, and the stars, and the twelve signs of the zodiac; I can calculate nativities; I can foretell everything that is to happen." No man was better known than Ahmed the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... Giving unto earth their ashes. I, an orphan, then remained Carefully and kindly guarded By a very holy matron, Underneath whose rule I hardly Had completed one brief lustrum — Five short years had scarce departed — Five bright circles of the sun Wheeling round on golden axles, Twelve high zodiac signs illuming And one earthly sphere, when happened Through me an event that showed God's omnipotence and marvels; Since of weakest instruments God makes use of, to enhance his Majesty the more, to show That for what men think the grandest And most strange effects, to Him Should alone the ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... impossible to say. But it is evidently a careful memorandum of something, set down by somebody when the manuscript was at hand; and so many of the characters resemble those adopted to represent the planets and the signs of the zodiac, that one is led to suspect in it a note of the positions of the heavenly bodies at the time of some remarkable accident;—perhaps the plague, of which 30,578 persons died in London, during the year ending 22nd December, 1603. The period of the commencement, ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... Olympia were of Egyptian original, is manifest from Eusebius; who tells us, that in Egypt the moon was called Olympias; and that the Zodiac in the heavens had antiently the name of Olympus. [Greek: He gar Selene par' Aiguptiois kurios Olumpias kaleitai, dia to kata mena peripolein ton Zodiakon kuklon, on hoi palaioi auton OLYMPON ekaloun.] Chronicon. p. 45. l. ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... seven lotus-leaves of ['S]veta-dvipa, the first continental home of the race; the Hacha de cobre of the Miztecs and the ever-turning spear of jade of the Japanese story of the place where the gods first descended on earth; or the whole question of the origin of the Zodiac. These things, and a host of others, need a different explanation—all the more since the more we are learning of them the more we find that they enclose facts of which the hypothetical "savage children" ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates
... spread from the Equator northward and southward through all the signs of the Zodiac far into the temperate zone. Thence came gold and silver to be coined in all the mints, and curiously wrought in all the jewellers' shops, of Europe and Asia. Thence came the finest tobacco, the finest chocolate, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... temple. Only the portico was visible under piled houses and a triumphant mosque; but once we were down in the entombed temple itself, it gave a sense of secrecy, and mystic rites, to look up from under the dark roof of heavy stone with its painted zodiac, out from hidden halls of carving and colour, to the clustered houses of dried brick built before the temple was uncovered. There was a sense of tragedy and failure, too, toiling up the steep slope to the town level, and passing, on ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... Marcellus Palingenius Stellatus employed a similar artifice in his ZODIACUS VITAE, "The Zodiac of Life:" the initial letters of the first twenty-nine verses of the first book of this poem forming his name, which curious particular was probably unknown to Warton in his account of this work.—The performance is ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... extolled be His might and exalted be He! Indeed, God is exalted and magnified above the speech of the deniers. He avouched that it is the planets[FN79] that order the affairs of all creatures and he set down twelve mansions to twelve signs [of the Zodiac] and made each sign thirty degrees, after the number of the days of the month, so that in twelve mansions there are three hundred and threescore [degrees], after the number of the days of the year; and ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... full), and of the Ram, —particularly at the beginning of April, the first day of which is amusingly consecrated to fools, and has been so worshippingly set apart in consequence of the belief that was entertained by the Benedictine man of science respecting the Constellation of the Zodiac that is the sign of April—"caput est de complexione Arietis" (Rog. ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... smote us. Soon perceiv'd That Poet sage how at the car of light Amaz'd I stood, where 'twixt us and the north Its course it enter'd. Whence he thus to me: "Were Leda's offspring now in company Of that broad mirror, that high up and low Imparts his light beneath, thou might'st behold The ruddy zodiac nearer to the bears Wheel, if its ancient course it not forsook. How that may be if thou would'st think; within Pond'ring, imagine Sion with this mount Plac'd on the earth, so that to both be one Horizon, and two hemispheres apart, Where lies the ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... and the synodic periods of the planet Venus. The year was divided into twelve months of thirty days each, an intercalary month being inserted from time to time to rectify the resulting error in the length of the year. The months had been originally called after the signs of the zodiac, whose names have come down to ourselves with comparatively little change. But by the side of the lunar year the Babylonians also used a sidereal year, the star Capella being taken as a fixed point in the sky, from which the distance ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... gardener drew Of flowers and herbs this dial new! Where, from above, the milder sun Does through a fragrant zodiac run: And, as it works, th'industrious bee Computes its time as well as we: How could such sweet and wholesome hours Be reckoned, but with ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... antediluvian days, the sons of God did verily wed with our mothers, the irresistible daughters of Eve. Thus all generations are blended: and heaven and earth of one kin: the hierarchies of seraphs in the uttermost skies; the thrones and principalities in the zodiac; the shades that roam throughout space; the nations and families, flocks and folds of the earth; one and all, brothers in essence—oh, be we then brothers indeed! All things form but one whole; the universe a Judea, and God Jehovah ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... that the son is saved! It is difficult to paint in words this extraordinary performance, which I have several times seen; but you feel that it is transcendent. You think of Sagittarius, in the broad circle of the Zodiac; you recollect that archery is as old as Genesis; you are reminded that Ishmael, the son of Hagar, wandered about the Judaean ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... religions and which it is important to remember, viz. that the powers of nature were first identified with animals. The zoomorphic stage of the nature-gods comes before the anthropomorphic (cf. the signs of the zodiac), and in many savage ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... this chimed accord be heard, Yet all earth hushed at His first word: Then shall be seen Apollo's car Blaze headlong like a banished star; And the Queen of heavenly Loves Dragged downward by her dying doves; Vulcan, spun on a wheel, shall track The circle of the zodiac; Silver Artemis be lost, To the polar blizzards tossed; Heaven shall curdle as with blood; The sun be swallowed in the flood; The universe be silent save For the low drone of winds that lave The shadowed great world's ashen sides ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... of the moon, and the telescopes of the town are busy observing my phenomena; after which it is as though I had rolled over on my dark side, there to lie forgotten till once more the sun entered the proper side of the zodiac. But let me except always the few steadily luminous spirits I know, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. If any one wishes to become famous in a community, let him buy a small farm on the edge of it and cultivate fruits, berries, and flowers, which he freely ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... Immediately the stout man sprang from the type-case, ran in great haste to a chest near the wall, opened the lid and drew forth a long red cloak and a fez-shaped cap of the same color, each embroidered with signs of the zodiac in tarnished gold. He hurriedly put on the gown and cap, and again diving into the chest, drew forth a long black coat, a broad Quaker hat, a false beard, and a white wig. These he tossed to the blackamoor, then ran across the room, opened a concealed panel in the wall, ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... crab. "It's no place for me, anyhow, for I belong in the Constellations, you know, with Taurus and Gemini and the other fellows. But I had the misfortune to tumble out of the Zodiac some time ago. My name is Cancer, but I'm not a disease. Those who examine the heavens in these days, alas! can ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... Rijks shows us in various episodes Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden from the Creation until the Fall. Around the edge are signs of the zodiac. The colour is rich, the figures delicate. The story is clearly told and is not unlike a "continuous performance." You see Adam asleep and over him stoops the Almighty; then Eve is shown. The apple scandal and the angel with the flaming ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... exhibited a planisphere of the heavenly bodies. The sultan knew all the signs of the zodiac, some of the constellations, and many of the stars by their Arabic names. He was greatly interested with the sextant, or, as he called it, "the looking-glass of the sun." Clapperton showed him how to obtain an observation ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... Signs, beginning at Libra; in the inside of which sealed Bags lie miscellaneous masses of Sheets, and oftener Shreds and Snips, written in Professor Teufelsdroeckh's scarce legible cursiv-schrift; and treating of all imaginable things under the Zodiac and above it, but of his own personal history only at rare intervals, and then in the most ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... like inclination, I'd heeze thee up a constellation, To canter with the Sagitarre, Or loup the ecliptic like a bar; Or turn the pole like any arrow; Or, when auld Phoebus bids good-morrow, Down the zodiac urge the race, And cast dirt on his godship's face; For I could lay my bread and kail He'd ne'er cast saut upo' thy tail.— Wi' a' this care and a' this grief, And sma,' sma' prospect of relief, And nought but peat reek i' my head, How can I write what ye can read?— ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... white band supposed by the ancients to circle the earth and called the zodiac. He may here mean the Milky Way as ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... intelligent beings that managed these things, we would accuse them of being the authors of all the sufferings of Chrisna. And as they and the constellation of Leo were below the horizon, and consequently cut off from the end of the zodiac, there were but eleven constellations of the zodiac to be seen; the three at the end were wanted, but those three would be accused of bringing Chrisna into the troubles which at last ended in his death. All this would be expressed in the Eastern language by saying ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... important point of departure in astronomy. A northern constellation forming the first of the twelve signs of the zodiac, into which the sun enters about the 20th of March. With Musca, Aries contains 22 nebulae, 8 double and 148 single stars, but not above 50 are visible to the unassisted eye. The commencement of this sign, called the first point of Aries, is the origin ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... this distribution arose, perhaps, the scheme of our modern astrologers, who assign the different parts of the body to the different constellations, or signs of Zodiac: as the head to Aries, the neck to Taurus, the shoulders to Gemini, the heart to Cancer, the breast to Leo, and so on. The pretended issues of astrology have been always inseparable from stellar influence, and the zodiac has ever been the fruitful ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... an outer annulus of 240 degrees. Brown has suggested a correlation of the Euphratean names with those of the Greeks and moderns. His results may be exhibited in the following form:—the central line gives the modern equivalents of the names in the Euphratean zodiac; the upper line the modern equivalents of the northern paranatellons; and the lower line those of the southern paranatellons. The zodiacal constellations have an interest peculiarly their own; placed in or about the plane of the ecliptic, their rising and setting with ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... whom it was not reasonable to disturb for so little, and launched innumerable reproaches at them, since without their invention of arms a penknife would never have been made. If the heavens cleared up after a long rain, all the signs of the zodiac were laid under contribution and charged to give an account of their performance. If somebody died, he instantly poured forth rivers of tears in company with the nymphs of Eridanus and the Heliades; he upraided Phaethon, Themis, the Shades of Erebus, ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... the bride. Matches are arranged by the parents, the horoscopes of the children being compared among the well-to-do. The zodiacal sign of the boy's horoscope should be stronger than that of the girl's, so that she may be submissive to him in after-life. Thus a girl whose zodiac sign is the lion should not be married to a boy whose sign is the ram, because in that case the wife would dominate the husband. There is no special rule as to the time of the betrothal, and the ceremony is very simple, consisting in the presentation of a cocoanut ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... kings; above, is the burial of the Virgin, and crowning all, Our Lady in glory. On the archivolts are angels, patriarchs, prophets, and kings. The jambs and casements are decorated with thirty-seven marvellously vivid reliefs of the signs of the Zodiac, the seasons and labours of the year, a kind of almanac of stone of rare invention and execution. On the embrasures of the door are, among others, the favourite Parisian saints: Denis, Genevieve and Stephen. On the central pier, below the Virgin and Child, are the ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... airships of war are concerned, the fleet is somewhat heterogeneous, although the non-rigid type prevails. The French aerial navy is represented by the Bayard-Clement, Astra, Zodiac, and the Government-built machines. Although the rigid type never has met with favour in France, there is yet a solitary example of this system of construction—the Spiess, which is 460 feet in ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... the carpet and advances towards Antony. Her robe of gold brocade, regularly divided by furbelows of pearls, jet and sapphires, is drawn tightly round her waist by a close-fitting corsage, set off with a variety of colours representing the twelve signs of the Zodiac. She wears high-heeled pattens, one of which is black and strewn with silver stars and a crescent, whilst the other is white and is covered with drops of gold, with a sun ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... quadrant in advance of the earth, completing their orbits once a year. Those near the pole of the ecliptic will describe circles, being always at right angles to the motion. Those in the plane of the ecliptic (near the zodiac) will be sometimes at right angles to the motion, but at other times will be approached or receded from; hence these will oscillate like pendulums once a year; and intermediate stars will have intermediate motions—that is to say, will describe ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... riveted my eyes to the dancer. Presently I saw those mystic, twinkling feet of hers—as the dance became swifter—were performing a measured round amongst the planet signs—spelling out something, I knew not what, with quick, light touch amongst the zodiac figures, dancing out a soundless invocation of some kind as a dumb man might spell a message by touching letters. Quicker and quicker, for minute after minute, grew the dance, swifter and swifter the swing of the light blue drapery as the priestess, ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... then found prognostics on these local positions of the planets. It is evident, however, that the apparent position of a planet depends on the varying position of the earth, and that an inferior planet may be in exactly the same point of space, and yet be seen from the earth in every sign of the zodiac; though, according to the astrologers, it would in that same place have very different powers! This doctrine was admissible when the earth was considered as the centre of the universe; when the geocentric phenomena were considered as absolute; and when the apparently ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... each. The method of citing a date by means of signs and numbers is quite similar with Asiatics and Mexicans. He further shows satisfactorily that the majority of the names of the twenty days employed by the Aztecs are those of a zodiac used since the most remote antiquity among the peoples ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... move from east to west in four-and-twenty hours upon the poles of the world; but differ in their motions upon the poles of the zodiac. ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... principal centre, draw a line of circumference equivalent to what is to be the perimeter at the bottom, and in it inscribe four equilateral triangles, at equal distances apart and touching the boundary line of the circle, as the astrologers do in a figure of the twelve signs of the zodiac, when they are making computations from the musical harmony of the stars. Taking that one of these triangles whose side is nearest to the scaena, let the front of the scaena be determined by the line where that side cuts off a segment of the circle (A-B), and ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... of 1919, the particular star in this artistic zodiac was Therese Romain, dazzling chiefly on account of her ethereal beauty. She had a voice, which did not amount to much, and she had done a little acting on the stage and for the screen, but without conspicuous success. She had devoted ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... thought about, Carlyle assumed the position of one who was translating and editing the old professor's manuscripts, which are supposed to consist of numerous sheets stuffed into twelve paper bags, each labeled with a sign of the zodiac. The editor pretends to make order out of this chaos; but he is free to jump from one subject to another and to state the most startling opinion by simply using quotation marks and adding a note that he is not responsible for Teufelsdroeckh's ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... a cabinet, may be divided into two great classes—the consular and the imperial; both are numerous and valuable. In the cabinet of the Grand Duke of Tuscany is a set of twelve medals of Antonius Pius, each with one of the signs of the Zodiac on the reverse, and part of another set, eight in number with as many ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... whole structure. However, ere she could tarry to reflect, the nature of the vision changed as if her eye had been turned suddenly from the lense of a Microscope to that of an immense Telescope. Before her view stretched the starry Zodiac, in outline, the same as its prototype, the human body—the Grand Temple. The Sun and its solar system corresponding to various vital functions in the human organism, but the crowning wonder of all came as she comprehended the relation which our planet, mother Earth, bore to the Grand Man ...
— Within the Temple of Isis • Belle M. Wagner
... peculiar brightness, pyramidal or wedge-like in form, seen at certain periods of the year in the eastern or western sky, before sunrise and after sunset. Its direction is in the line of the zodiac, whence its name—not perpendicular to the horizon, but at a varying angle, being in the spring from 60 to 70 degrees. The base of the wedge, which has a breadth generally of from 10 to 12 degrees, is below, and the sides rise ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... "non est habitabilis aestu," is rendered healthy and pleasant by these gently-blowing breezes. The ship glides smoothly on, and you soon find yourself within the northern tropic. When you are on it Cancer is just over your head, and betwixt him and Capricorn is the high-road of the Zodiac, forty-seven degrees wide, famous for Phaeton's misadventure. His father begged and entreated him not to take it into his head to drive parallel to the five zones, but to mind and keep on the turnpike which runs obliquely ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... 2. Small pieces of artillery (Rare). 3. Fixed deeply. 4. The girdle of a Jewish priest. 5. A constellation of the zodiac. 6. A long cloak extending from head to feet, worn by women. 7. To counterfeit. 8. A genus of lamellibranchiate bivalves. 9. A state of quiet or tranquility. 10. To throw back. 11. A sixpence. ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... sit down in the evening and pore over its mystic signs. Indeed, I fear you do not know what a zodiac is, or what the meaning of "Cancer the Crab" and "Gemini the Twins" may be. It is more than likely you will reply, "Oh, yes; if the Crab had a Cancer, he would cry Gemini to the Twins"—and in that light and flippant way you will try to hide your brutal ignorance, if a male, your shallow ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... and Odyssey. The Greeks adopted Oriental fables, and accommodated them to those heroes who figured in their own country in the earliest times. "The labors of Hercules originated in Egypt, and relate to the annual progress of the sun in the zodiac. The rape of Proserpine, the wanderings of Ceres, the Eleusinian mysteries, and the orgies of Bacchus were all imported from Egypt or Phoenicia, while the wars between the gods and the giants were celebrated in the romantic annals of Persia. The oracle of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord |
