"Pythagoras" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of great experience say that they have often regretted having spoken, but never once regretted holding their tongue. "Be silent," says Pythagoras, "or say something better than silence." "Speak fitly," says George Herbert, "or be silent wisely." St. Francis de Sales, whom Leigh Hunt styled "the Gentleman Saint," has said: "It is better to remain silent than to ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... religion, metempsychosis, charity, and detachment from all passions and desires in order to arrive at absolute calm (nirvana). The literature it inspired was primarily gnomic, that is, sententious, analogous to that of Pythagoras, with a tendency towards little moral tales and parables, as in ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... From that exalted cathedra the Mosaic theory of Creation must still be expounded; but in the security of these surroundings—the catacombs of the new faith—why keep up the forms of an obsolete creed? As long ago as Pythagoras, man was taught that all things were in a state of flux, without end as without beginning, and must we still, after more than two thousand years, pretend to regard the universe as some gigantic toy manufactured in six days by a Superhuman ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... what Pythagoras had taught about the stars moving in their great orbits with sounds of awful harmony, too grandly loud for the human organ to vibrate in response to their music—hence unheard of men. And Ericson spoke as if he believed it. But after he had spoken, his face grew sadder than ever; and, as if to change ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... since the conquests of Cyrus and Darius, the active attention of the Greeks had been drawn toward the doctrines and religious practices of the new masters of the Orient.[8] A number of legends representing Pythagoras, Democritus and other philosophers as disciples of the magi prove the prestige of that powerful sacerdotal class. The Macedonian conquest, which placed the Greeks in direct relations with numerous votaries of Mazdaism, gave a new impetus to works treating that religion, ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... that even when in the first dim vision, the organizing hand of Law moved among the unordered truths of my Spiritual World, poor and scantily-furnished as it was, there seemed to come over it the beauty of a transfiguration. The change was as great as from the old chaotic world of Pythagoras to the symmetrical and harmonious universe of Newton. My Spiritual World before was a chaos of facts; my Theology, a Pythagorean system trying to make the best of Phenomena apart from the idea of Law. ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... HIPPOMACHUS. Pythagoras stole that and all his other opinions from Asia and Egypt. The transmigration of the soul and the vegetable diet are derived from India. I met a ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... geometric material used in connection with altar construction, and also numerous examples of rational numbers the sum of whose squares is also a square, i.e. "Pythagorean numbers," although this was long before Pythagoras lived. Whitney[46] places the whole of the Veda literature, including the Vedas, the Br[a]hma[n.]as, and the S[u]tras, between 1500 B.C. and 800 B.C., thus agreeing with Buerk[47] who holds that the knowledge of the ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith
... dazzled their eyes and filled their imaginations with the outward lustre, as neither to regard nor consider the person or the parts of the owner within. A misfortune we undergo with somewhat less reluctancy, because it has been common to us with Pythagoras, AEsop, Socrates, and other ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... conformable to pre-apprehensions.' It is traceable to the bifurcation of the root; a formation, however, which is frequently found 'in carrots, parsnips, briony, and many others.' There is no other importance, therefore, to be attached to 'the epithet of Pythagoras, who calls it anthropomorphon, and that of Columella, who terms it semihomo;' nor to Albertus, 'when he affirmed that mandrakes represent mankind with the distinction of either sex.' The roots, which were commonly sold in various parts ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... verse, asked for alms all his life. Socrates, whose conversation and example gave such admirable lessons to the Athenians, was sentenced by them to be poisoned. His sublime disciple, Plato was delivered over to slavery by the order of the very prince who protected him; and, before them, Pythagoras, whose humanity extended even to animals, was burned alive by the Crotoniates. What do I say?—many even of these illustrious names have descended to us disfigured by some traits of satire by which they became characterized, ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... alphabet? they asked simply, Can you spin? There was no higher epitaph than Queen Amalasontha's,—Domum servavit, lanam fecit. In Boeotia, brides were conducted home in vehicles whose wheels were burned at the door, in token that they were never to leave the house again. Pythagoras instituted at Crotona an annual festival for the distaff; Confucius, in China, did the same for the spindle; and these celebrated not the freedom, but ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... intelligent but nevertheless somewhat immoral Apollonian. What a deep breath he draws when he succeeds in raising yet another dark corner of antiquity to the level of his own intelligence!—when, for example, he discovers in Pythagoras a colleague who is as enthusiastic as himself in arguing about politics. Another racks his brains as to why OEdipus was condemned by fate to perform such abominable deeds—killing his father, marrying his mother. Where lies the blame! Where the poetic justice! Suddenly it occurs to him: OEdipus ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... is the poet Alcaeus. Behind him stands Mnesicles, the architect of the Propylae, with a plan of that work in his hand; next him is Solon, the lawgiver. On the other side stand Herodotus, Pindar, Sophocles, AEschylus, and Pythagoras, their features all marked with attention and interest; while a priest of a more ancient faith looks on in gloomy displeasure at the new singer and the impression he produces; and Bakis, the old soothsayer, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... disputantur de Jure Summarum Potestatum in Hollandia, Westfrisi[^ae], & Magistratuum in oppidis. The disputes of the Province of Holland with the States-General probably gave occasion to this treatise. Grotius intended to publish the Golden verses of Pythagoras[537], with a translation by himself: but what he could not do in his life-time was done in England after his death, ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... the gods with such depth and with such pictorial details, as if they had been bodily present at the Olympian feasts. The reader of these books makes new acquaintance with his own mind; new regions of thought are opened. Jamblichus's "Life of Pythagoras" works more directly on the will than the others; since Pythagoras was eminently a practical person, the founder of a school of ascetics and socialists, a planter of colonies, and nowise a man ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... notably show itself that the philosophers of Greece durst not a long time appear to the world but under the mask of poets; so Thales, Empedocles, and Parmenides sang their natural philosophy in verses; so did Pythagoras and Phocylides their moral counsels; so did Tyrtaeus in war matters; and Solon in matters of policy; or rather they, being poets, did exercise their delightful vein in those points of highest knowledge, which before them lay hidden to the world; ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... his hands in protest. "Thank Heaven they do die. It must needs be so. Purge yourself of such folly. Poetry died with the ancients. Virtue, my young friend, not verses. Will you dine with me? We will eat beans and defy Pythagoras." ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the four "ultimate elementary particles" of Empedocles. The number was sacred to Hermes, and lay at the root of the physical philosophy of Pythagoras. The quotation in the text is from the "Golden Verses," given in Passow's lexicon under the word tetraktys: nai ma ton hametera psycha paradonta tetraktyn, pagan aenaou physeos. "The most sacred of all things," said this famous ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... for that reason that Demeter is the Madonna of Greece, as her ethereal daughter was the saviour. The myth of it all, brought by Pythagoras from Egypt is very old. Known in Memphis, it was known too in Babylon, perhaps before Memphis was. But the legend of Isis and that of Ishtar—both of whom descended into hell—lack the transparent charm which this idyl unfolds and of which the significance was revealed only ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... wood ye see, You can make a Mercury. Pythagoras allegorically said that Mercury's statue could not be made of every sort of ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... Krishna in India, and the apologies for idolatry and caste. The most recent stage of the Theosophical Society in India reveals it as virtually a Hindu revival society. Finally, we read, the old philosopher Pythagoras, Apollonius of Tyana, and others were represented on the stage dressed in imitation of Christ Himself, and the Emperor Alexander Severus [A.D. 222-235] placed the figure of Christ in his lararium ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... striking of the precepts contained in what are called the Golden Verses of Pythagoras, is couched in ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... Niti," said the Professor, in a voice which had something like a note of awe in it, "that when Pythagoras thought out that problem—which, of course, is not Euclid's at all—he almost saw across the horizon of the world that we ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... average academically-trained man to offer? He has an assortment of second-hand ideas borrowed from Plato and Socrates, from Ovid and Virgil and Horace; he can echo Voltaire, Goethe, Kant, Shakespeare, Dante; he can dish up Aristotle, Pythagoras, Bacon, Galileo, Newton, Lavoisier, Davy, Faraday and Darwin. He can borrow illustrations from classical mythology; he knows the Dynasties of ancient Egypt; and he is able to furnish, without reference to history, the exact date upon which King John signed Magna Charta, and ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... Pythagoras was the first (followed by Plutarch) who gave to this plant the name of [Greek: anthrôpomorphos] (man-likeness), an appellation which became very generally used; but why he gave it is not precisely known: Calmet, ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... that were not destitute of genius and abilities; but none who rendered their names immortal by productions that were worthy of being transmitted to posterity" (p. 219). So low, under the influence of Christianity, had sunk the literature of Greece—Greece Pagan, which once brought forth Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Euclid, Zenophon, and many another mighty one, whose fame rolls down the ages—that Greece had become Greece Christian, and the vitality of her motherhood had been drained from her, and left her without strength to conceive men. In the ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... is the perfect number." He wrote nothing, but is supposed to have said that the earth, moon, five planets, and fixed stars all revolve round the sun, which itself revolves round an imaginary central fire called the Antichthon. Copernicus in the sixteenth century claimed Pythagoras as the founder of the ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... celestial models. Perfection of form and manly strength were the pride of the wisest and most learned men of the nation, denoting that physical excellence was considered the necessary concomitant of moral or intellectual worth. Authentic annals tell us that Plato and Pythagoras appeared as wrestlers at the public games; and who shall say that these philosophical gymnasts did not derive much of their mental vigor from this exciting exercise? In this age it is easy to see that sculpture must ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... or thatof the former Greek colonists in this country who by their schools and teaching made Southern Italy [Footnote: Latin Magna Graecia-the name given to the cluster of Greek colonies that were scattered thick along the shore of Southern Italy. At Croton in Magna Graecia Pythagoras established his school and the colonies were the chief seat and seminary of his philosophy which taught the immortality of the soul.]—now in its decline, then flourishing—a seat of learning, or that of ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... tabernacles of the soul; hardly is this done, when — There she blows! —the ghost is spouted up, and away we sail to fight some other world, and go through young life's old routine again. Oh! the metempsychosis! Oh! Pythagoras, that in bright Greece, two thousand years ago, did die, so good, so wise, so mild; I sailed with thee along the Peruvian coast last voyage — and, foolish as I am, taught thee, a green simple boy, how to splice a ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... replacing disinterested arbitration. This means that decisions are being made on the principle of compromise, dictated by the expediency of the moment, not by reference to any third party, or to some fixed and mutually recognized standards. This is as old as Pythagoras and as new as Bergson and Croce; it assumes that the concept of justice is man-made, produced and to be altered by expediences and practicalities, always in flux. But the essence of a civilization is the humanistic conviction that there is something fixed and abiding around which ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... Plotinus Shelley Spenser Vaughan on beauty on love Phaedrus, Republic Symposium system of Platonists, Cambridge Plotinus Enneads Letter to Flaccus Plato's influence on system of Pope Porphyry Pratt, J. B., Religious Philosophy of William James Pre-existence, belief in Pythagoras ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... approached soon passed, as none of them noticed the flowers she wore over a very happy heart. Demi meantime was escorting certain venerable personages about the college, and helping his grandfather entertain them with discussion of the Socratic method of instruction, Pythagoras, Pestalozzi, Froebel, and the rest, whom he devoutly wished at the bottom of the Red Sea, and no wonder, for his head and his heart were full of love and roses, hopes and fears. He piloted the 'potent, grave, and reverend seigniors' ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... as one of the symbols of the third degree, that it was introduced into Masonry to teach the Brethren the value of the arts and sciences, and that the Mason, like the discoverer of the problem, our ancient Brother Pythagoras, should be a diligent cultivator of learning. Our lectures, too, abound in allusions which none but a person of some cultivation of mind could understand or appreciate, and to address them, or any portion of our charges which refer to the improvement of ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... Stephen's face that he should have misjudged him. He had come to patronize. He had remained to worship. And in after years, when he thought of this new vital force which became part of him that day, it was in the terms of Emerson: "Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... cohesion, and refused to indulge in the free trade in religious ideas and social habits adopted by civilized peoples. The popular feeling was fanned by a party that had a more particular grievance against them. Though certain philosophical sects, notably the schools of Pythagoras and Aristotle, were struck with admiration for the lofty spiritual ideas and the strict discipline of Judaism, another school, and that the most powerful of the time, was smitten ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... owing to the unlucky number or the richness of the cakes I cannot say, but the fact remains that the MASTER was seriously indisposed on the following day and unable to deliver a lecture on the Stoic Philosophy, to which I had greatly looked forward. I cannot help thinking that PYTHAGORAS, who enjoined his disciples to "abstain from beans," would, if he were now alive, be inclined to revise that cryptic precept and bid us "abstain from potatoes," or, at any rate, from over-indulgence in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 19, 1917 • Various
... derisively denied admission, presumably because he was beyond the legitimate age for juvenile contestants. Nothing daunted, the youth entered the lists of men, and turned the laugh on his critics by coming off victor. The youth who performed this feat was named Pythagoras. He was the same man, if we may credit the story, who afterwards migrated to Italy and became the founder of the famous Crotonian School of Philosophy; the man who developed the religion of the Orphic mysteries; who conceived the idea of the music of the spheres; who promulgated the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Plato,** five thousand before the Trojan war,*** one thousand before Moses, and six hundred before Xerxes' campaign against Athens; while some few only affirmed that he had lived at a comparatively recent period, and made him out a disciple of the philosopher Pythagoras, who flourished about the middle of the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... not so much as drunk, or litter'd here; I wonder, though thyself be thus deceas'd, Thou hast the spite to coffin up thy beast; Or is the palfrey sick, and his rough hide With the penance of one spur mortified? Or taught by thee—like Pythagoras's ox— Is then his master grown more orthodox Whatever 'tis, a sober cause't must be That thus long bars us of thy company. The town believes thee lost, and didst thou see But half her suff'rings, now distress'd for thee, ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... Gilbert are Pythagoras, Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Galen, Rufus, Maerobius, Boetius, Alexander of Tralles, Theodorus Priscianus, Theophilus Philaretes, Stephanon (of Athens?), the Arabians Haly Abbas, Rhazes, Isaac Judaeus, Joannitius, Janus Damascenus, Jacobus ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... already at her post, though suffering from violent nervous headache. Mary seated herself with her back to the door, and called one of her classes. Arithmetic it proved; and if the spirits of the departed were ever allowed to return in vindication of their works, the ghost of Pythagoras would certainly have disturbed the equanimity of the "muchachos," who so obstinately refused the assistance and co-operation of his rules and tables. In vain she strove to impress on one that 2 from 8 left 6. Like the little girl that Wordsworth met, he persisted "it was seven." Despairing ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... 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, Doth pass into the pleasant spacious fields Of divine science and ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... supposed that in the very dawn of science, Pythagoras or his disciples explained the apparent motion of the heavenly bodies about the earth by the diurnal revolution of the earth on its axis. But this theory, though bearing so deeply impressed upon it the great ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett
... absent, they do not measure what they have done. And it is the thought and consideration that affects us more than the weariness itself. Plato was not content with the learning that Athens could give him, but sailed into Italy, for Pythagoras' knowledge: and yet not thinking himself sufficiently informed, went into Egypt, to the priests, and learned their mysteries. He laboured, so must we. Many things may be learned together and performed in one point of time; as musicians exercise their memory, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... which had attracted the attention of other writers, such as the historian Diodorus Siculus and the Christian theologian Clement of Alexandria, was the resemblance of their doctrine concerning the immortality and transmigration of the soul to the views of Pythagoras. Ancient writers, however, did not always remember that a religious or philosophical doctrine must not be treated as a thing apart, but must be interpreted in its whole context in relation to its development in history and in the social life of the community in which ...
— Celtic Religion - in Pre-Christian Times • Edward Anwyl
... form a perfect right angle, or, as it was called, the "Square," without possibility of Error, and this I have called "the Knowledge of the Square." Vitruvius, who, at the beginning of our Era, wrote his thesis on Tectonic art, which is still the text-book of Architecture for Ancient buildings, says Pythagoras taught his followers to form a gnomon, or square, as follows: "Take three rods, of three lengths, four lengths, and five lengths long; with these form a triangle, and, if each rod be squared, you have 9, 16, and 25, and the ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... mythological superstitions, than venture to expose and oppose them. Hence it was that the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, continued polytheists through the most brilliant epochs of their history; and hence their philosophers, as Pythagoras, Plato, and others, gave to the whole the plausibility of system, by affecting to demonstrate that the FIRST CAUSE necessarily and proximately generates immortal gods! Hence too it is that philosophers have, in different ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... CROTO'NA'S SAGE, Pythagoras, so called because his first and chief school of philosophy was established at Crotna ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... that it turned on its axis in twenty-four hours. The earth and the other planets were revolving round the central fire of the system; but the sun was a reflection of this central fire, not the fire itself. Even Pythagoras, moreover, made the heavens a solid sphere revolving, with its stars, round the central fire; and the truth he discovered was mingled with so much mysticism, and confined to so small and retired a school, that it was quickly lost again. In the next generation ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... power to release, provided their surviving friends paid liberally for their propitiatory offices; and, from this assumption, the clergy of the Catholic church derived the idea of saying masses for the repose of the soul. These doctrines were carried by Pythagoras from Egypt to Greece about 550 years before the beginning of our era; and passing from thence to Rome, the Greek and Latin poets vied with each other in portraying Hades and the joys and terrors ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... death? A voice, a call, some sudden strange or familiar message on old paths, to the consciousness that lies under that apparent unconsciousness, will waken all these semblances of inanimation into new life of arms and fins and wings. Let me try her thus! My grandfather was a pupil of Pythagoras who had seen many such death-semblances among the peoples of the white sacred mountains of far India. Ha! Akron ...
— The Flutter of the Goldleaf; and Other Plays • Olive Tilford Dargan and Frederick Peterson
... under the fostering hand of the Alexandrian monarchs, the means of cultivating the sciences, and repaying with interest to the country of Thoth and Osiris the benefits which had been conferred on the infancy of Greece by Thales and Pythagoras. Alexandria became in this manner the repository of all the learning and knowledge of the civilized world; and while other nations were sinking under the effects of internal animosities and mutual dissensions, or ravaging the earth with the evils of war, the Egyptian ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... can pretend that printing is so great a discovery as writing, or algebra, or language. What are the most brilliant of our chemical discoveries compared with the invention of fire and the metals?' Hipparchus ranks with the Keplers and Newtons; and Copernicus was but the champion of Pythagoras. To say nothing of the characteristic assumption that somebody 'discovered' language and fire in the same sense as modern chemists discovered spectrum analysis, the argument is substantially that, ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... agreeable recollections will soon bring you hither again; whereas there would be little joy in returning to a house where the remembrance of hours of weakness, the result of pleasure, would mingle with your future enjoyment." In this her guests agreed, and Ibykus named her a thorough disciple of Pythagoras, in praise ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said to-day.—"Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood."—Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras[186] was misunderstood, and Socrates,[187] and Jesus, and Luther,[188] and Copernicus,[189] and Galileo,[190] and Newton,[191] and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... placed, and their several inventors are named. But on the exterior all the inventors in science, in warfare, and in law are represented. There I saw Moses, Osiris, Jupiter, Mercury, Lycurgus, Pompilius, Pythagoras, Zamolxis, Solon, Charondas, Phoroneus, with very many others. They even have Mahomet, whom nevertheless they hate as a false and sordid legislator. In the most dignified position I saw a representation of Jesus Christ ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... The Heliocentric Theory. Its rise among the Greeks—Pythagoras, Philolaus, Aristarchus Its suppression by the charge of blasphemy Its loss from sight for six hundred Years, then for a thousand Its revival by Nicholas de Cusa and Nicholas Copernicus Its toleration as a hypothesis Its prohibition as soon as Galileo teaches it as a truth Consequent timidity ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... the earth, was the centre about which the system really revolved. It is, however, one thing to state a scientific fact; it is quite another thing to be in possession of the train of reasoning, founded on observation or experiment, by which that fact may be established. Pythagoras, it appears, had indeed told his disciples that it was the sun, and not the earth, which was the centre of movement, but it does not seem at all certain that Pythagoras had any grounds which science could recognise ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... outstretched arms could just embrace. At the bottom they were eighty-four feet round, and sixty where the boles became cylindrical. By counting the rings of such parts as could be reached, they arrived at the conclusion that they were of the age of Homer, and 332 years old in the days of Pythagoras. One estimate, indeed, reduced their antiquity to 2052 years old; while another (counting, I presume, two rings of fresh wood for every year) carried it ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... which is a very different thing. Materialism is the outcome of Indian doctrines, transmitted through the mysteries of Isis to Chaldea and Egypt, and brought to Greece by Pythagoras, one of the demigods of humanity. His doctrine of re-incarnation is the mathematics of materialism, the vital law of its phases. To each of the different creations which form the terrestrial creation belongs the power of retarding the movement which ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... such as those of Magini, Fiore, Coronelli, and Cluver; and the latter writes that "near the mouth of the Crati there flows into the same sea a river vulgarly called Cochile." [Footnote: In the earlier part of Rathgeber's astonishing "Grossgriechenland und Pythagoras" (1866) will be found a good list of old maps ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... one has the impression that one is reading the fragmentary and broken utterances of some great ancient poet-philosopher—some Pythagoras or Empedocles—through whose gnomic oracles runs the rhythm of the winds and tides, and for whose ears the stars in their courses have ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... budge a foot until he hears the well-known whistle of his black driver and companion. And from their amazing skill at casting up accounts upon their fingers, they are regarded with as much veneration as were the disciples of Pythagoras of yore, when initiated into ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... chaos, light, and yet more light; For—as I watched the planets—Venus, Mars, Appeared to wax and wane from month to month As though they moved, now near, now far, from earth. Earth could not be their centre. Was the sun Their sovran lord then, as Pythagoras held? Was this great earth, so 'stablished, so secure, A planet also? Did it also move Around the sun? If this were true, my friends, No revolution in this world's affairs, Not that blind maelstrom where imperial Rome Went ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... PYTHAGORAS.—A noble walled-plain, 95 miles in diameter, which no one who observes it fails to lament is not nearer the centre of the disc, as it would then undoubtedly rank among the most imposing objects of its class. Even under all the disadvantages of position, it is by far the most striking formation ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... evince that each of the dogmas accords with Platonic principles and the mystic traditions of theologists. For all the Grecian theology is the progeny of the mystic doctrine of Orpheus; Pythagoras first of all learning from Aglaophemus the origins of the gods, but Plato in the second place receiving an all-perfect science of the divinities from the Pythagoric and Orphic writings. For in the Philebus, ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... "is a proposition in Euclid (lib. i. theor. 33. prop. 47.), which was found out by Pythagoras after a whole years' study, and much beating of his brain; in thankfulness whereof he sacrificed an ox to the gods, which sacrifice he ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 37. Saturday, July 13, 1850 • Various
... divulged after the exoteric ones have been taught, is not a peculiarity of Christianity alone, but also of philosophic systems in which certain truths are exoteric and others esoteric. Some of the hearers of Pythagoras were content with his ipse dixit; while others were taught in secret those doctrines which were not deemed fit to be communicated to profane and insufficiently prepared ears. Moreover, all the Mysteries that are celebrated everywhere throughout Greece and barbarous ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... had taken firm hold on his imagination. He was versed in the dialectics of the previous age, had mastered mediaeval cosmography and mathematics, and was probably already acquainted with Copernicus. The fragments of the Greek philosophers, especially of Pythagoras and Parmenides, whose metaphysics powerfully influenced his mind, had been assimilated. Perhaps the writings of Cardinal Cusa, the theologian who applied mathematics to philosophy, were also in ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Balaam's ass, they speak marvelously to the point if a miracle loosens their tongues. So M. de Bargeton bore himself like a man of uncommon sense and spirit, and justified the opinion of those who held that he was a philosopher of the school of Pythagoras. ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... Gallienus, therefore, could not patronise exact science; and the great literary light of the age, Longinus, irradiated the court of Palmyra. But the Emperor bestowed his favour in ample measure on the chief contemporary philosopher, Plotinus, who strove to unite the characters of Plato and Pythagoras, of sage and seer. Like Schelling in time to come, he maintained the necessity of a special organ for the apprehension of philosophy, without perceiving that he thereby proclaimed philosophy bankrupt, and placed himself on the level of the Oriental hierophants, with whose sublime quackeries ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... thing of greatest importance is, that we should not teach him to estimate his powers at too low a rate. One of the wisest of all the precepts comprised in what are called the Golden Verses of Pythagoras, is that, in which he enjoins his pupil to "reverence himself." Ambition is the noblest root that can be planted in the garden of the human soul: not the ambition to be applauded and admired, to be famous and looked up to, to be the darling theme of "stupid ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... a central gutter. That these narrow streets were populous with students remains certain, however much discount we allow on contemporary bills of reckoning. And the crowd was noisy. Men have always been ingenious in their ways of celebrating academical success. Pythagoras, for example, sacrificed an ox on solving the theorem numbered 47 in the first book of Euclid; and even to-day a Professor in his solitary lodge may be encouraged to believe now and then, from certain ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... religion, all the Japonians, excepting some few who make profession of atheism, and believe the soul mortal, are idolaters, and hold the transmigration of souls, after the doctrine of Pythagoras. Some of them pay divine worship to the sun and moon; others to the Camis, those ancient kings of whom we have made mention; and to the Potoques, the gods of China. There are divers of them who adore some kinds of beasts, and many who adore ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... which Plato and Zeno, Pythagoras and Socrates, could not do, was done by men whose ignorance would have been a by-word in the schools of the Greek. The gods of the vulgar were dethroned; the face of the world was changed! This thought may make us allow, indeed, that there are agencies more powerful than mere knowledge, and ask, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... years before Jesus Christ, which makes him the contemporary of Zoroaster, with whom, in my opinion, they confound him. It is certain that his doctrine notoriously existed at that epoch; it is found entire in that of Orpheus, Pythagoras, and the Indian gymnosophists. But the gymnosophists are cited at the time of Alexander as an ancient sect already divided into Brachmans and Samaneans. See Bardesanes en Saint Jerome, Epitre a Jovien. ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... for himself and his family. "We will first go to England," said M. Casaux; "we will then, if you prefer it, pass our exile in America. Have no anxiety, I have property; I can, without inconvenience to myself, undertake all the expenses. Pythagoras said: 'In solitude the wise man worships echo;' but this no longer suffices in France; the wise man must fly from a land that ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... Philistion and Phoebus and Origanion. Now turn thy thoughts to the other kinds [of men]. To that place then we must remove, where there are so many great orators, and so many noble philosophers, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Socrates; so many heroes of former days, and so many generals after them, and tyrants; besides these, Eudoxus, Hipparchus, Archimedes, and other men of acute natural talents, great minds, lovers ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... obtained a foothold in Europe through the dogma of Metempsychosis. It was introduced into the Hellenes by Pythagoras; but never became popular among the Greeks. This Metempsychosis (or the transmigration of souls) was believed by the Indians from the earliest period, and their whole history is built upon it. A very ancient connection can be traced between India and Egypt, ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... many others we could have adduced, as, columns are cold, they are hard, they are a composition of carbonate of lime, etc. It is only the capacity for such a selection which makes reasoning possible. When, for example, in the demonstration of the theorem of Pythagoras, children handle the various pieces of the metal insets, they should start from the point at which they become aware that a rectangle is equal to the rhomb, and a square is equal to the same rhomb. It is the perception of this ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... from a set of premisses. All that happens is that the conclusion is no longer asserted by itself as a truth; what is asserted is that the conclusion is true if the premisses are true. Thus we no longer assert the 'theorem of Pythagoras' as a categorical proposition; what we assert is that the theorem follows as a consequence from the assertion of some half-dozen ultimate postulates which will be found on analysis to be the premisses of Euclid's ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... this point of the arcade round the angle of the palace, that its inscriptions are no longer legible, and great part of its figures are gone. Selvatico states them as follows: Solomon, the wise; Priscian, the grammarian; Aristotle, the logician; Tully, the orator; Pythagoras, the philosopher; Archimedes, the mechanic; Orpheus, the musician; Ptolemy, the astronomer. The fragments actually ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... town of Gundavee is a Banian, and one of those people who observe the law of Pythagoras. They hold it a great sin to eat of any thing that hath life, but live on that which the earth naturally produces. They likewise hold the cow in great honour and reverence, and also observe the ancient custom of burning their dead. It has also been an ancient custom among them, for the women ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... change of diet. "At home," said he, "I can put up with anything; my Sabine table wine seems to me delicious; and I regale myself with vegetables from my garden seasoned with a slice of bacon. But when I have once left my house, I become more particular, and beans, beloved though they be of Pythagoras, no longer suffice me." So before starting in the direction of Salerno, where he did not often go, he takes the precaution to question one of his friends as to the resources of the country; whether one can get fish, hares, and venison there, that he may come back ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... to be eternal. It was just as true at the dawn of creation that the square described on the hypotenuse of a right-angle triangle is equal to the square described on the other two sides, as it was when Pythagoras enunciated the theorem. "Thou shall not kill," is a law written by the Divine hand amid tempest and fire, but it stands. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," rings from the portals of heaven through the gates of humanity and its command will not go unheeded. They are all great fundamental truths. ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... guarantees the formation of capital and keeps up the courage of all; which, from a superior point of view, explains, corrects, and completes the theories of association hitherto proposed, from Plato and Pythagoras to Babeuf, Saint Simon, and Fourier; a system, finally, which, serving as a means of ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... Socrates had delivered this special revelation in the course of the night. "My friend, I hope you are pretty well. There are two in this railway carriage. How do you do? There are seventeen thousand four hundred and seventy-nine spirits here, but you cannot see them. Pythagoras is here. He is not at liberty to mention it, but hopes you like travelling." Galileo likewise had dropped in, with this scientific intelligence. "I am glad to see you, AMICO. COME STA? Water will freeze when it is cold enough. ADDIO!" In the course of the night, also, the following phenomena ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... scales show much ingenuity, but their accounts are so vague that one cannot get any clear idea of what these were really like. When art is mature, people do not tell of city walls being overthrown, of savage animals being tamed—as run the stories of Orpheus and Amphion. One Greek there was, Pythagoras, who discerned the association between the distant music of the spheres with the seven notes of the scale. "He discovered the numerical relation of one tone to another."[28] It was about the time of Pythagoras that a scheme of tetrachords ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... spiritual faculties, without the aid of external revelation, we appeal to all the religions of mankind, Heathen, Mohammedan, and Christian. Every one of these appeals to revelations from God. Every lawgiver of note professed to have communication with heaven, Zoroaster, Minos, Pythagoras, Solon, Lycurgus, Numa, Mohammed, down to the chief of the recent revolution in China. "Whatever becomes of the real truth of these relations," says Strabo of those before his day, "it is certain that men ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl? Mal. That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird. Clown. What thinkest thou of his opinion? Mal. I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... chief, with the Crows; I have "interviewed" Princes and Queens; I have climbed the Caucasian snows; I abstain, like the ancients, from beans, - I've a guess what Pythagoras means, When he says that to eat them's a crime, - I have lectured upon the Essenes, But—I am not ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang
... or Turkish castanets and Quinternas. He heard blare the two hundred thousand curved trumpets which Solomon had made for his temple, and the forty thousand which accompanied the Psalms of David. Jubal played his Magrepha; Pythagoras came with his Monochord; Plato listened to the music of the spheres; the priests of Joshua blew seven times upon their Shofars or Rams-Horns. And the ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... knowledge of these Divine truths Pythagoras built the theory of the "music of the spheres." Let us pause and listen to this ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... madness, the other an elaborate and divine skill. Greek traditions made them believe that the magic science was brought from Egypt or Asia by their old philosophic and legislating sages. Some of the most eminent of the founders of philosophic schools were popularly accused of encouraging it. Pythagoras (it is the complaint of Plato) is said to have introduced to his countrymen an art derived from his foreign travels; a charge which recalls the names of Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Galileo, and others, who had to pay the penalty of a premature knowledge ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... damn'd, inexorable dog! And for thy life let justice be accus'd. Thou almost mak'st me waver in my faith, To hold opinion with Pythagoras, That souls of animals infuse themselves Into the trunks of men: thy currish spirit Govern'd a wolf, who, hang'd for human slaughter, Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet, And, whilst thou lay'st in thy unhallow'd dam, Infus'd itself in thee; for thy ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... collection of maxims and precepts which form a part of their literature to which he is known to have contributed most largely (1 Kings, iv. 32). In the same way the Greeks attributed most of their sayings to Pythagoras; the Arabs to Lokman, Abu Obeid, Al Mofaddel, Meidani, and Samakhshari; the Persians to Ferid Attar; and the ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... Italian nature philosophers contributed much more to the science of medicine, and in certain of the colonial towns there were medical schools as early as the fifth century B.C. The most famous of these physician philosophers was Pythagoras, whose life and work had an extraordinary influence upon medicine, particularly in connection with his theory of numbers, and the importance of critical days. His discovery of the dependence of the pitch of sound on the length of the vibrating chord is one of ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... of physiognomy belongs to those disciplines which show a decided variability in their value. In classical times it was set much store by, and Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Pythagoras were keenly interested in its doctrines. Later on it was forgotten, was studied in passing when Baptista Porta wrote a book about human physiognomy, and finally, when the works of Lavater and the closely related ones of Gall appeared, ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... poore, what affinitie is betwixt them twoo? Marie, in this poynct thei bothe agree, that like as the poore man ever lacketh and desireth to have, so the covetous manne ever lacketh, wantyng the use of that whiche he hath, and desireth styl to have." "To a covetous ma he (Pythagoras) sayde:—"O fole, thy ryches are lost upon the, and are very pouertie."—Baldwin's Treatise of ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... glass of wine came the inspiring toast of "The Ladies," to which Mr. Philotus Wantley demurred, not on account of the sex, for he could assure us he was a fervent admirer, but having studied the wise maxims of Pythagoras, and being a disciple of the Brahma school, abominators of flesh and strong liquors, he hoped to be excused, by drinking the ladies in aqua pura.—" Water is a monstrous drink for Christians!" said the alderman, "the sure precursor of coughs, colds, consumptions, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... infatuated; better to be wounded, a captive, and a slave, than always to walk in armor. As to magnetism, that is only a matter of fancy. You sometimes need just such a field in which to wander vagrant, and if it bear a higher name, yet it may be that, in last result, the trance of Pythagoras might be classed with the more infantine transports ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... extraordinary sensitiveness to all such impressions many curious tales are told. The sight of refulgent jewels, of flowers, and of fair landscapes, had the same effect upon his nerves as the sound of the Dorian mood upon the youths whom Pythagoras cured of passion by music. He found in them an anodyne for pain, a restoration from sickness. Like Walt Whitman, who adheres to nature by closer and more vital sympathy than any other poet of the modern world, Alberti felt the charm ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... and in their frantic exclamations to cry out [423]Eva, Eva; and sometimes Evan, Evan: all which related to some history of a serpent. Apollo, who is supposed by most to have been victor in his conflict with the Pytho, is by Porphyry said to have been slain by that serpent: Pythagoras affirmed, that he saw his tomb at Tripos in [424]Delphi; and wrote there an epitaph to his honour. The name of Tripos is said to have been given to the place, because the daughters of Triopus used to lament there the fate of Apollo. But Apollo and the Python ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... in questions connected with the interests of society, he thus uniformly advocates the tenets of the Porch, so in discussions of a physical character we find him adopting the sublime and glowing sentiments of Pythagoras and Plato. Here, however, having no object of expediency in view to keep him within the bounds of consistency, he scruples not to introduce whatever is most beautiful in itself, or most adapted to his present purpose. At one time he describes the Deity as the all-pervading Soul of the world, the ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... race. There is perhaps a high Algebra of the Soul by which, if we understood its laws, we could revive the history of any past epoch, discover its thought and modes of living, as we discover the value of the unknown factor in an equation. Pythagoras must have his pupils understand music and geometry; and by music he intended, all the arts, every department of life that came under the sway of the Nine Muses. Why?—Because, as he taught, God is Poet and Geometer. Chaos is only on the outer rim of existence; as you get nearer the heart ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... of Rebirths is met with in the Orphic tradition, continued by Pythagoras and Plato. Up to the present time, this tradition has probably found its best interpreter in ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... life of follies, what think you? Some other mischief I've been joining in; But what's the use of idle pondering On things so troublesome and as abstruse, It were prepost'rous even to begin, What was there that could possibly induce Pythagoras to turn his pen to such ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... Pythagoras, we are told, maintained that the souls of men after death expiated the crimes committed by them in this world, by animating certain brute animals; and that the souls of those animals, in their turns, ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... in the abstract fascinates a philosopher by its mystery, so a personality of uncommon purity, intensity, and completeness fascinates all men, and thus, perhaps, is explained the high estimation in which Horner was held. He was regarded by those who knew him, as Pythagoras was by his disciples, with the deference ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... time they traveled only by night and some of their toughest generals had underground chambers built for them during their campaigns. I can imagine, for instance, some young and ardent lover of art, in the days when Pythagoras taught under those glittering colonnades of Croton, when the fleets of Metapontum swept the blue Ionian and Sybaris taught the world how to live a life of ease—I can almost see this youth," he pursued enthusiastically, "flitting from a hot palace on the ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... philosophers and poets hold grave converse there. The Graces and the Muses formed sprightly choirs upon the grass. Old Homer sang, accompanying himself upon his rustic lyre. His eyes were closed, but divine images shone upon his lips. I saw Solon, Democritus, and Pythagoras watching the games of the young men in the meadow, and, through the foliage of an ancient laurel, I perceived also Hesiod, Orpheus, the melancholy Euripides, and the masculine Sappho. I passed and recognised, as they sat on the bank of a fresh rivulet, the ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... by certain objective theories of life. I refer, not to my own philosophy alone, but to the wisdom of all ages, as expressed in Brahmanism and Buddhism, and in the sayings of Greek philosophers like Empedocles and Pythagoras; as also by Cicero, in his remark that the wise men of old used to teach that we come into this world to pay the penalty of crime committed in another state of existence—a doctrine which formed part of the initiation into the mysteries.[3] And Vanini—whom his contemporaries burned, finding ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... stars. He who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other men,—from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions. "In the morning, solitude," said Pythagoras,—that Nature may speak to the imagination, as she does never in company, and that her favorite may make acquaintance with those divine strengths which disclose themselves to serious and abstracted thought. 'Tis very certain that Plato, Plotinus, Archimedes, Hermes, Newton, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... effeminacy was become the national character. Nothing could be more popular than that work. It was thought a great consolation to us, the light people of this country, (who were and are light, but who were not and are not effeminate,) that we had found the causes of our misfortunes in our vices. Pythagoras could not be more pleased with his leading discovery. But whilst, in that splenetic mood, we amused ourselves in a sour, critical speculation, of which we were ourselves the objects, and in which every ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... we are now considering was the almost universal use of bronze. This metal is excellent for displaying the minute features of the nude parts of statues, but it is not equal to marble in the representation of draperies or for giving expression to the face. PYTHAGORAS OF RHEGIUM was a famous artist who worked entirely in bronze. The only copies from his works of which we know are on two gems, one of which is in the Berlin Museum. He made exact studies of the body in ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... with this unexpected discovery of his taste, that she could not forbear making it known to her friends; especially to a literary gentleman of her acquaintance, who sent young Saumarez a present of the Golden Verses of Pythagoras, which he also committed to memory, ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... colours, he lashes them with ridicule. In the "Umbrae Idearum" he initiates the work of reconstruction, giving colour to his thought and sketching his idea. The philosophy of Bruno is based upon that of Pythagoras, whose system penetrates the social and intellectual history of Italy, both ancient and modern. The method of Pythagoras is not confined, as most philosophies are, to pure metaphysical speculations, but connects these with scientific observations and social practice. Bruno having resuscitated ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... of the fable is not Buddhistic: we must especially shun that "Indo-Germanic" school which goes to India for its origins, when Pythagoras, Solon, Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle and possibly Homer sat for instruction at the feet of the Hir-seshtha, the learned grammarians of the pharaohnic court. Nor was it AEsopic, evidently AEsop inherited the hoarded ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... was the counsel of Hecataios; but Aristagoras was most inclined to go forth to Myrkinos. He therefore entrusted the government of Miletos to Pythagoras, a man of repute among the citizens, and he himself sailed away to Thrace, taking with him every one who desired to go; and he took possession of the region for which he had set out. But starting ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... to have been one of those which primeval revelation made known throughout the heathen world. It is a fanciful mysticism which finds a Trinity in the Eicton, Cneph, and Phtha of the Egyptians, the Oromasdes, Mithras, and Arhimanius of the Persians, and the Monas, Logos and Psyche of Pythagoras and Plato. There are abundant Triads in ancient mythology, but no real Trinity. The case of Asshur is, however, one of simple unity, He is not even regularly included in any Triad. It is possible, however, that the triple figure shows him to us in temporary combination ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... frequently the numeral "three" is used. Various explanations have been offered for the propensity of mankind to use that number, one deriving the habit from the fact that primitive man divided the universe into three regions, heaven, earth, and water. Pythagoras, it will be remembered, called three the perfect number; Jove is depicted with three-forked lightning; Neptune bears a trident; Pluto has his three-headed dog. Again, there are three Fates, three Furies, three Graces and three Muses. It is natural, then, to find the numeral so often employed ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... which has once given me disgust. But as for you, whoever you be who are more successful [than me], and now strut proud of my misfortune; though you be rich in flocks and abundance of land, and Pactolus flow for you, nor the mysteries of Pythagoras, born again, escape you, and you excel Nireus in beauty; alas! you shall [hereafter] bewail her love transferred elsewhere; but I shall laugh ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... been accepted in India and Egypt for at least three thousand years. It was taught secretly in the Eleusinian mysteries. The philosophy of Pythagoras and of Plato is deeply impregnated with it. The Early Christian Church, as well as the Gnostics, admitted it tacitly, but in the fourth century it was condemned by the Fathers of the Church and banished from orthodox Christianity. Nevertheless it has always had an irresistible attraction for ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... the noblest garment with which a man may clothe himself—the most elevating feeling with which the mind can be inspired. One of Pythagoras's wisest maxims, in his 'Golden Verses,' is that with which he enjoins the pupil to "reverence himself." Borne up by this high idea, he will not defile his body by sensuality, nor his mind by servile thoughts. This sentiment, carried into daily life, will be found ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... my own minute observations," he said rather frigidly. "I notice certain animals masquerading—to some extent—as human beings, and I draw my own conclusions. If they happen to fit in at all with the conclusions of Pythagoras—or anyone else, for that matter—well and good. If not, I am not much concerned. Surely you notice the animal—and not merely the animal, but definite animals—reproduced in man. There are men whose whole demeanour suggests the monkey. I have met women who in manner, appearance, ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... style—"to make dreams as well as their interpretations; and physicians will tell us that some food makes turbulent, some gives quiet dreams. Cato, who doated upon cabbage, might find the crude effects thereof; and Pythagoras might have had calmer sleeps if he ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... gods are in no wise to be despised; but the things which they are wont to give are withheld from many that would gladly possess them.' Such would have been my reply. I should have added that philosophers are not forbidden to possess a handsome face. Pythagoras, the first to take the name of 'philosopher', was the handsomest man of his day. Zeno also, the ancient philosopher of Velia, who was the first to discover that most ingenious device of refuting hypotheses by the method of self-inconsistency, that same Zeno was—so Plato ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... S. You know the opinion of Pythagoras respecting fowls. That 'the soul of our granddam might haply inhabit a bird.' I hope that yellow hen which Bob chased into the purple night is not the grandmamma of any friend ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... political and religious subjects which were not in accord with the opinions of those in power. The public hangman was often directed to make bonfires of the works of offending authors. At Athens, the common crier was instructed to burn all the prohibited works of Pythagoras which could be found. It is well known that Numa Pompilius did much to build up the glory of Rome. It was he who gave to his countrymen the ceremonial laws of religion, and it was under his rule that they enjoyed the blessings of peace. His death was keenly felt by a grateful people, and he was ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... safely moor us in a peaceful harbor, where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary shall find rest. The FORTY-SEVENTH PROBLEM OF EUCLID—this was an invention of our ancient friend and brother, the great Pythagoras, who, in his travels through Asia, Africa, and Europe, was initiated into several orders of priesthood, and raised to the sublime ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... is uncertain. He is generally called the Samian, and we know, at all events, that he lived for some time in that island, during or immediately before the famous tyranny [43] of Polycrates. All manner of legends are told of the travels of Pythagoras to Egypt, Chaldaea, Phoenicia, and even to India. Others tell of a mysterious initiation at the sacred cave of Jupiter in Crete, and of a similar ceremony at the Delphic oracle. What is certain is that at some date towards the end of the sixth century B.C. he removed ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... sonest chosen with all mennes consent, bothe in peace and warre, to administre the commune wealth as maisters and counsaillours, Iudges and Capitaines. Suche ware thancient sages of Grece and of Italy, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Antisthenes, Aristippus, Zeno, and Pythagoras, who through their wisedomes and estimacion for trauailes wan them greate nombres of folowers, and brought furthe in ordre the sectes named Socratici, Academici, Peripateci, Cynici, Cyrenaici, Stoici, and Pythagorici, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... will be no lack of answer. Nay, the answer has already been given from the dark antiquity of ages, that even for her own exceeding loveliness has Truth been canonized. If there was any thing of self in the Eureka of Pythagoras, there was not in the acclamations of his country who rejoiced with him. But we may doubt the feeling, if applied to him. If wealth or fame has sometimes followed in the track of Genius, it has followed as an accident, but never preceded, as the efficient conductor to any great discovery. For what ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... think that it was ever anything but a more or less puerile playing with sound; therefore there is no separating modern Chinese music from that of antiquity. To be sure, Confucius (about 500 B.C.) said that to be well governed a nation must possess good music. Pythagoras, Aristotle, and Plato, in Greece, said the same thing, and their maxims proved a very important factor in the music of ancient times, for the simple reason that an art controlled by government can have nothing ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... lived but a little while before the Persian expedition into Greece. But then for those that first introduced philosophy, and the consideration of things celestial and divine among them, such as Pherceydes the Syrian, and Pythagoras, and Thales, all with one consent agree, that they learned what they knew of the Egyptians and Chaldeans, and wrote but little And these are the things which are supposed to be the oldest of all among the Greeks; and they have much ado ...
— Against Apion • Flavius Josephus
... good deal of gray in his hair that they think his protestations at all worthy of attention. Young ladies take their notions of our sex from the novels written by their own, and compared with the monstrosities that masquerade for men in the pages of that nightmare literature, Pythagoras' plucked bird and Frankenstein's demon were fair ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... the Gaulish troubles, and that those which are now extant were composed by interested persons, by whose means men who had no right to such honours claimed descent from the noblest families. Though Numa is said to have been a friend of Pythagoras, yet some deny that he had any tincture of Greek learning, arguing that either he was born with a natural capacity for sound learning, or that he was taught by some barbarian.[A] Others say that ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... was above all conspicuous Pythagoras Pythagoravitch Tchertokoutski, one of the leading aristocrats of the district of B—, the most fiery orator at the nobiliary elections and the owner of a very elegant turn-out. He had served in a cavalry regiment and had even passed for ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... A century of discovery is ending with the greatest of all discoveries—foreseen by Pythagoras, prepared for by Albertus and Paracelsus and first carried out by our guest of honour. You will permit me to give this feeble expression of our admiration for the greatest man of a great century. A laurel ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... world to which the mind of man returns after its long exile. Yes, there is music in light! Hence, Phoebus is god of the Sun and of the Lyre, and Memnon yields sweet sounds to welcome approaching day. For this reason, the disciples of Zoroaster and Pythagoras hail the rising sun with the melody of harps; and the birds pour forth their love of light in song. Perchance the order of the universe is revealed in the story of Thebes rising to the lyre of Amphion; and Ibycus might have spoken sublime truth, ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... a remarkable fact that Pythagoras, one of the most celebrated philosophers of antiquity, represented the Great Author of all things to be possessed of a threefold form (Cudworth System. Intell. cap. iv. p. 446, June 1733). Nor is it less wonderful, as a learned writer ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... King Tarquinius the Second, although he was already grown up at the time of his father's death and did not begin to reign till thirty-nine years afterwards, is nevertheless still a young man when he ascends the throne. Pythagoras, who came to Italy about a generation before the expulsion of the kings, is nevertheless set down by the Roman historians as a friend of the wise Numa. The state- envoys sent to Syracuse in the year 262 transact business with Dionysius the elder, who ascended the throne eighty-six ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... to the city being lower than the other. "That city," said he, "is called Athens, the lower hill Parnassus, and the higher Helicon. They are so called, because in the city and around it dwell the wise men who formerly lived in Greece, as Pythagoras, Socrates, Aristippus, Xenophon, with their disciples and scholars." On my asking him concerning Plato and Aristotle, he said, "They and their followers dwell in another region, because they taught principles of rationality which ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... spread misery and death around the social hemisphere. Marriage is the basis of community, and the cement of society;—it is, or ought to be, that state of perfect friendship in which there are, according to Pythagoras, "two bodies with but one soul." It is in the genial atmosphere of this noble communion of sentiment and affection that the virtue of continence comes forth in all its dazzling splendour. Milton has touched this subject with so chaste and elegant a pen, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various
... an audience about him, under a portico, and unwind his well-written scroll for an hour or two; but there must have been a vast deal of secret machinery, and influence, and agitation, to keep up his name with the people. The followers of Pythagoras, in another country, we know, said he had a golden leg, and this satisfied the people that his philosophy was divine. Truly were they the dark ages before the invention of newspapers. Besides, what became of literature when the poet's voice in the public bath, or library, where he recited, was ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... The Man in the Moon," first published in 1591; it is "one great and elaborate piece of flattery addressed to 'Elizabeth Cynthia'," that is, the Queen; she instructs her ladies in Morals and Pythagoras in Philosophy. "Her kiss breaks the spell" which put Endymion into his forty-years sleep, upon which, and upon his deliverance from which, "the action principally turns within the space of forty years." Can any impartial reader trace this "manner of Lilly" in ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... Then again, Pythagoras and those who came after him in his school thought it proper to employ the principles of the cube in composing books on their doctrines, and, having determined that the cube consisted of 216[6] lines, held that there should be no more than three cubes ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius |
