"Terrestrial" Quotes from Famous Books
... everything that he did not clearly define, uttered one day to his disciples these beautiful words: 'There are two Venuses: one celestial, called Urania, the heavenly, who presides over all pure and spiritual affections; and the other Polyhymnia, the terrestrial, who excites sensual and gross desires.'" The history of love is the eternal struggle between these two divinities,—the one seeking to elevate and the other to degrade. Plato, for the first time, in his beautiful hymn to the Venus Urania, displayed ... — Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... the sun, he thinks, may be comparatively cool,—as cool, perhaps, as our tropical climates,—by the favor of cloud-curtains, which operate as screens, and reflect off into space the heat of the combustion overhead. He might have given more reasons than he has for this conclusion. Whether our terrestrial aurora-borealis is caused by the combustion of gases that have been generated by internal heat or not, we know that the combustion of gas in the upper regions of our atmosphere would not warm the surface of the earth much more ... — Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... the heavens, nor in the earth, that proves to us positively that the sun holds the planets, and the planets their satellites, by attraction, as we are taught that the moon attracts the water of our world. We see that all terrestrial bodies tend toward the center of the earth, and we call this gravitation; but we cannot see how a body moves around the earth without falling on it, by this law. We say in dynamic philosophy, that ... — Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... modifications of structure or of habits. The Coleoptera, the Diptera, or the Hymenoptera, on the other hand, present far greater and more essential variations. In either of these orders we have both vegetable and animal-feeders, aquatic, and terrestrial, and parasitic groups. Whole families are devoted to special departments in the economy of nature. Seeds, fruits, bones, carcases, excrement, bark, have each their special and dependent insect tribes from among them; whereas ... — Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... in numerous ways so as to become an efficient flexible paddle, while the hind limbs have shifted posteriorly, very much as screw propellers have evolved in the history of steam vessels. How the members of the seal tribe have changed in their descent from purely terrestrial ancestors is partly explained by such intermediate animals as the otter. This form is adapted by its slender body and partly webbed feet to a semi-aquatic life; it seems to have halted at a point beyond which all of the seals have ... — The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
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