"Pythagorean" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and grace of movement, have we not an illustration of the Aristotelian principle, which makes beauty a third part of Good? Nay, I once heard some one hazard a remark, to the effect that the philosophy of Pantomime went still further, and that in the silence of the characters a Pythagorean doctrine was ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... to know and to understand the method by which they have been obtained. You want to follow step by step that glorious progress of discovery which has led us to where we stand now. What is the use of knowing the Pythagorean problem, if we cannot prove it? What would be the use of knowing that the French larme is the same as the German Zhre (tear), if we could not with mathematical exactness trace every step by which these two words have diverged till they became ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... nervous, and (as our critics say) a second Homer, seems lightly to regard what becomes of his promises and Pythagorean dreams. Is not Naevius in people's hands, and sticking almost fresh in their memory? So sacred is every ancient poem. As often as a debate arises, whether this poet or the other be preferable; Pacuvius bears away the character of a learned, Accius, of a lofty writer; Afranius' gown is said ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... 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. I make no charge against Theology in general. I speak of my own. And I say that I saw it to be in many essential respects centuries behind every department of Science I knew. ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... rigidly scientific a thinker to make this assumption. The data at his command did not, as he analyzed them, seem to point to this conclusion. We have seen that Pythagoras probably, and Parmenides surely, out there in Italy had conceived the idea of the earth's rotundity, but the Pythagorean doctrines were not rapidly taken up in the mother-country, and Parmenides, it must be recalled, was a strict contemporary of Anaxagoras himself. It is no reproach, therefore, to the Clazomenaean philosopher ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... planet. But there was no known relation between the distances and times; and the evolution of some harmony between these factors was to him an object of the greatest interest and the most restless curiosity. Long he dwelt in the dream of the Pythagorean harmonies. Then he essayed to determine it from the regular geometrical solids, and afterwards from the divisions of musical chords. Over twenty years he spent in these baffled efforts. At length, on the 8th of March, 1618, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... by telling us he was inconsequent, absurd, and odd in his manners, is as futile as to explain him by saying he was a strange, wonderful genius, of the Platonic or Pythagorean order, always soaring above the atmosphere of common men. To call a man of genius an inspired idiot or an inspired oddity is an easy, but false way of interpreting him. The truth of Shelley's character may be found by a more matter-of-fact ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... According to the Pythagorean teaching, the human soul emanates from the Soul of the World, thus affirming, at the outset, the divine nature of the former. It teaches subsequently that this soul assumes successive bodies until it has fully evolved and ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... if circumstances would permit, of passing the whole term of my wife's absence without speaking a word to any human being; but now my Pythagorean vow has been broken, within three or four hours after ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... The Pythagorean philosophy was well-suited for the purpose of mingling its doctrines with the fabulous narratives of the Poet, as it consisted, in great part, of the doctrine of an endless series of transformations. Its main features may be reduced to two general ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... fathers of the Church, influenced possibly by Pythagorean traditions, but certainly by Aristotle and Plato, were willing to accept this view, but the majority of them took fright at once. To them it seemed fraught with dangers to Scripture, by which, of course, they meant their interpretation of Scripture. Among the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... put out by perfect fools, and suits himself with marvellous dexterity to all men's feelings. For women generally, even for his wife, he has nothing but jests and merriment. You could say he was a second Democritus, or better, that Pythagorean philosopher who saunters through the market-place with a tranquil mind gazing on the uproar of buyers and sellers. None is less guided by the opinion of the herd, but again none is less remote from ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... informs us in his excellent treatise, De Antro Nymph, that it was the opinion of Numenius, the Pythagorean (to which he also assents), that the person of Ulysses in the Odyssey, represents to us a man, who passes in a regular manner, over the dark and stormy sea of generation; and thus, at length, arrives at that region where ...
— An Essay on the Beautiful - From the Greek of Plotinus • Plotinus
... Cargill, "you are like to have a Pythagorean entertainment; but you are a traveller, and have doubtless been in your time thankful ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... of the nineteenth century. He wished to discover everything anew for himself, instead of building upon the discoveries of others. His conversations, usually in the parlors of some philanthropic gentlemen, were made up partly of Pythagorean speculation and partly of fine ethical rhapsody which sometimes rose to genuine eloquence. They served to interest neophytes in the operations of their own minds, and the more experienced found much the same satisfaction in it as in Emerson's discourses. He was an excellent ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... doubt, was planning a serious attack, accustoming himself to dissimulation, and punishing himself for his blunders by Pythagorean muteness. But he did not tell us ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... shiny line of the creases, assigned the date of the purchase some three years back. The roomy garments failed to disguise the lean proportions of the wearer, due apparently rather to constitution than to a Pythagorean regimen, for the worthy man was endowed with thick lips and a sensual mouth; and when he smiled, displayed a set of white teeth which would have done credit ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... Thy leanness, and thy prodigal moustache And dried-up curls. Thy counterpart I saw, A wan Pythagorean, yesterday. He said he came from Athens: shoes he had none: He pined, I'll warrant,—for a ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... the lack in him of some essentialty mystical qualities, more especially reverence, and that ascension of thought so characteristic of Plato and Browning. These shortcomings are very well illustrated in that extraordinary poem, The, Progress of the Soul. The idea is a mystical one, derived from Pythagorean philosophy, and has great possibilities, which Donne entirely fails to utilise; for, instead of following the soul upwards on its way, he depicts it as merely jumping about from body to body, and we are conscious ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... verses of Empedocles and in the fragments of Heracleitus. It was the natural answer to two questions, 'Whence came the soul? What is the origin of evil?' and prevailed far and wide in the east. It found its way into Hellas probably through the medium of Orphic and Pythagorean rites and mysteries. It was easier to think of a former than of a future life, because such a life has really existed for the race though not for the individual, and all men come into the world, if not 'trailing clouds of glory,' at any rate able to enter into the inheritance ...
— Meno • Plato
... in the antiquities of the country as well as in the conversation of the priests. In or about 394 B.C., if we may trust the statement of Aristoxenus about the military service of Plato at Corinth, he was again at Athens. He afterward went to Italy and Sicily, seeking the society of the Pythagorean philosophers, Archytas, Echecrates, Timaeus, etc., at Tarentum and Locri, and visiting the volcanic manifestations of Aetna. It appears that his first visit to Sicily was made when he was about forty years of age, which would be 387 B.C. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... in note 389 of the second book; where he says also that the immortality of the soul was not introduced among the Hebrews till their intercourse with the Assyrians. In other respects, the whole Pythagorean system, properly analysed, appears to be merely a ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... belonged to a clan or served some local prince. Similarly in religious matters they followed some teacher or worshipped some god, and in either case if they were in earnest they tended to become members of a society. Societies such as the Pythagorean and Orphic brotherhoods were also common in Greece from the sixth century B.C. onwards but the result was small, for the genius of the Greeks turned towards politics and philosophy. But in India, where politics had strangely little attraction for the cultured classes, energy and ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... the cause to the effect, or as the end to the means? Shall we say with Aristotle, that the soul is the entelechy or form of an organized living body? or with Plato, that she has a life of her own? Is the Pythagorean image of the harmony, or that of the monad, the truer expression? Is the soul related to the body as sight to the eye, or as the boatman to his boat? (Arist. de Anim.) And in another state of being is the soul to be conceived of as vanishing into infinity, hardly possessing an existence ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... Belief in astrology was once common, and Spenser being a Pythagorean would hold the doctrine of the influence of the stars on ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... injunction to live in a garret, which I have found frequently visited by the echo and the wind. Nor was the tradition wholly obliterated in the age of Augustus, for Tibullus evidently congratulates himself upon his garret, not without some allusion to the Pythagorean precept: ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... Emanuel Swedenborg have been set forth in many biographies, but in none more lucidly and dispassionately than that by William White. Traditions have come to us concerning the clairvoyance of the Greek exponent of the Pythagorean teachings, Apollonius of Tyana, and the case of Cavotte, who predicted his own death and that of Robespierre and others by the guillotine, is on record. The illumination of Andrew Jackson Davis, the Poughkeepsie seer, and that of Thomas Lake Harris of Fountain Grove, are modern ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial
... that 'the sick man might conquer the disease with the help of the physician.' The times at which crises were to be expected were naturally looked for with anxiety; and it was a cardinal point in the Hippocratic system to foretell them with precision. Hippocrates, influenced as is thought by the Pythagorean doctrine of numbers, taught that they were to be expected on days fixed by certain numerical rules, in some cases on odd, in others on even numbers—the celebrated doctrine of 'critical days.' It follows from what has been said that prognosis, or the art ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... necessary, but the Alpha and Omega of the series are the thought and the thing. This shows us that in essence the thing already existed in the thought. Omega is already potential in Alpha, just as in the Pythagorean system all numbers are said to proceed from unity and to be resolvable back again into it. Now it is this general principle of the already existence of the thing in the thought that we have to lay hold of, and as ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... the ancient advice of Timaeus of Locrus, the Pythagorean: [Greek: tas psychas apeirgomes pseudesi logois, ei ka mae agaetai alathesi].[13] And I almost suspect that it is your wish, according to the fashion of to-day, to ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... from the law of Moses and the traditions of the fathers. The esoteric was that which treated of the mysteries of the Divine nature, and other sublime subjects, and was known by the name of the Cabala. The latter was, after the manner of the Pythagorean and Egyptian mysteries, taught only to certain persons, who were bound, under the most solemn anathema, not to divulge it. Concerning the miraculous origin and preservation of the Cabala, the Jews relate many marvellous tales. They derive these mysteries ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... "This Pythagorean inward peace, this deep, untroubled calm, I see daily before me in my Sappho; and struggle to attain it myself, though many a stroke of fate untunes the chords of my poor heart. I am calm now! You would hardly believe what power the mere thought of that first of all thinkers, that ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... suppose it was derived from the East. It is questionable whether the oriental nations had any philosophy distinct from religion. The Germans are fond of tracing resemblances in the early speculations of the Greeks to the systems which prevailed in Asia from a very remote antiquity. Gladish sees in the Pythagorean system an adoption of Chinese doctrines; in the Heraclitic system, the influence of Persia; in the Empedoclean, Egyptian speculations; and in the Anaxagorean, the Jewish creeds. [Footnote: Lewes, Biog. Hist. of Philos., Introd.] But the Orientals had theogonies, not philosophies. ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... transfiguration; there is nothing that has caused me to meditate more on PLATO'S secrecy and sphinx-like nature, than the happily preserved petit fait that under the pillow of his death-bed there was found no "Bible," nor anything Egyptian, Pythagorean, or Platonic—but a book of Aristophanes. How could even Plato have endured life—a Greek life which ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... carrying in his heart the Pagan and Christian traditions of the noble enterprises and the saintly heroism of Olympus and of Calvary, of Homer and the Fathers, of Plato and St. Ignatius; the other was filled with the philosophical thought of the primitive Italian and Pythagorean epochs, fecundated by his own conceptions and by the new age; philosopher and apostle of an idea, Bruno consecrated his life to the development of it in his writings and to the propagation of his principles in Europe by the fire of enthusiasm. The one surprised the world with the melody of ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... treatises—like | Dense and Rare—are experimental and of | limited value. Historians of the philosophy | of science have little trouble in disposing | these early experimentalist efforts of Bacon. | | His work on sound was somewhat better— | experimental-theoretical. It is a | post-pythagorean theory of harmonics and | still not appropriately analyzed. | Contemproary musicologists like to quote | the passages on sound in NEW ATLANTIS | for being compatible with todays approach | to music. | | By the time of the Novum ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... demons, curing sicknesses, raising the dead. He had come, it was said, to reform the doctrine of Pythagoras and Plato. In the third century an empress had the life of Apollonius of Tyana written, to be, as it were, a Pythagorean gospel opposed to the gospel of Christ. The most remarkable example of this confusion in religion was given by Alexander Severus, a devout emperor, mild and conscientious: he had in his palace a chapel where he adored the benefactors of humanity—Abraham, Orpheus, ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... the Pythagorean Philosophers observe the voices of Gods only, but also those of men, ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... Pythagorean doctrine, absolutely opposed to the Holy Scriptures, concerning the mobility of the earth and the immobility of ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... five men in each who obey the commands of Christ, and I will show you five hundred in this very city who observe the dictates of Pythagoras. Every Pythagorean obeys his defunct philosopher; and almost every Christian disobeys his living God. Where is there one who practises the most important and the easiest of His commands, to abstain from strife? Men easily and perpetually ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... Spartans made in and bore them off, but not till Epaminondas had likewise been badly wounded. He was the son of a poor but noble father, said to be descended from one of the men who had sprung from the dragon's teeth; and he had been well taught, and was an earnest philosopher of the Pythagorean school, striving to the utmost of his power to live a good and virtuous life. A close friendship grew up between him and Pelopidas, though the one loved books, and the other, dogs and horses; but Pelopidas tried to be as upright and noble as his friend, and, though ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Moses the old stock was changed by the intermarriage of some of their race with the Egyptians and Arabians. During this period their literature was influenced by Zoroaster, and by the Platonist and Pythagorean schools. This is especially noticeable in the work of Philo of Alexandria, who was ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... quaedam admiranda, &c. some things are to be believed, embraced, followed with all submission and obedience, some again admired. Though Julian the apostate scoff at Christians in this point, quod captivemus intellectum in obsequium fidei, saying, that the Christian creed is like the Pythagorean Ipse dixit, we make our will and understanding too slavishly subject to our faith, without farther examination of the truth; yet as Saint Gregory truly answers, our creed is altioris praestantiae, and much more divine; and as Thomas will, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... 1794, a Greek translation of Fontenelle's Entretiens sur la Pluralite des Mondes. John Camarases, a Constantinopolitan, translated into French the apocryphal treatise, De Universi Natura, attributed to Ocellus Lucanus, a Pythagorean philosopher, who is said to have flourished in Lucania in the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... were necessary to the completion of their buildings (Keller, l. c., p. 4). An important part was played even in the early Christian symbolism by the sacred numbers and the figures corresponding to them, a group of educational symbols which we find likewise in the pythagorean and platonic schools. It is known that the symbolical language of the subterranean rock temples, some of which were used by the earliest Christians for their religious worship, are closely connected with ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... freely—in order that I may not be suspected of secret connivance, which is foreign to my nature—that M. Leroux has my full sympathy. Not that I am a believer in his quasi-Pythagorean philosophy (upon this subject I should have more than one observation to submit to him, provided a veteran covered with stripes would not despise the remarks of a conscript); not that I feel bound to this author by any special consideration for his opposition ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... of profound meditation and thought, Copernicus, in a treatise entitled 'De Revolutionibus Orbium Celestium,' propounded a new theory, or, more correctly speaking, revived the ancient Pythagorean system of the universe. This great work, which he dedicated to Pope Paul III., was completed in 1530; but he could not be prevailed upon to have it published until 1543, the year in which he died. In 1542 Copernicus had an apoplectic seizure, followed ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... ch. v., contains an examination of the Pythagorean doctrine which maintains Number to be the Substance of all things:—[Greek: all' auto to apeiron kai auto to hen ousian ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... the economy of Providence here introduced, as the most proper to calm and satisfy the mind when under the compunction of private evils, seems to have come originally from the Pythagorean school: but of the ancient philosophers, Plato has most largely insisted upon it, has established it with all the strength of his capacious understanding, and ennobled it with all the magnificence of his divine imagination. He has one passage so full ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... back to that, and so on to the beginning. A new world of thought seemed to be opened. That principles so profound should be reached by methods so simple was astonishing. I was so enraptured that I explained to my brother Thomas while walking out of doors one day how the Pythagorean proposition, as it is now called, could be proved from first principles, drawing the necessary diagrams with a pencil on a piece of wood. I thought that even cattle might understand geometry could they only be communicated with and made to pay ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... appointed sole general of the Syracusan army, and then king by the voice of the senate. Damon "the Pythagorean" opposed the appointment, and even tried to stab "the tyrant," but was arrested and condemned to death. The incidents whereby he was saved are to be found under the ...
— 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.
... individual. The nature of language, though not the whole, is perhaps at present the most important element in our knowledge of it. It is not impossible that some numerical laws may be found to have a place in the relations of mind and matter, as in the rest of nature. The old Pythagorean fancy that the soul 'is or has in it harmony' may in some degree be realized. But the indications of such numerical harmonies are faint; either the secret of them lies deeper than we can discover, or nature may have rebelled ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... self-restraint, self-control &c (resolution) 604. frugality; vegetarianism, teetotalism, total abstinence; abstinence, abstemiousness; Encratism^, prohibition; system of Pythagoras, system of Cornaro; Pythagorism, Stoicism. vegetarian; Pythagorean, gymnosophist^. teetotaler &c 958; abstainer; designated driver; Encratite^, fruitarian^, hydropot^. V. be temperate &c adj.; abstain, forbear, refrain, deny oneself, spare, swear off. know when one has had enough, know one's limit. take the pledge, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... number, of proportion, and of harmony; others are relations of phenomena to essential being—relations of qualities to substance, of becoming to being, of the finite to the infinite. The former constituted the field of Pythagorean the latter of Eleatic contemplation. The Pythagoreans sought to explain the universe by numbers, forms, and harmonies; the Eleatics by the a priori ideas of unity, substance, Being in se, the Infinite. ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... was the mountain whence the Greeks got fine honey. [16] Empedocles.—A Pythagorean philosopher who asserted that he had been, before becoming a man, a girl, a boy, a shrub, a bird, and a fish. He is further credited with the vanity of wishing to be thought a god, and hence of throwing himself into Mount Etna to conceal his death. ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... good whether prayed for or unsought by us; But that which we ask amiss, do thou avert.' (The author of these lines, which are probably of Pythagorean origin, is unknown. They are found also in the Anthology ...
— Alcibiades II • An Imitator of Plato
... a treatise of Baader's on the Pythagorean square in nature, or the four quarters of the globe. Whether it be that I have for some years past interested myself more in this species of writing, or that he has contrived to make his intentions clearer, the little work has pleased me and has served ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... PLATO; THEOPHRASTUS.—The school of Plato (not regarding Aristotle as belonging entirely to that school) was continued by Speusippus, Polemo, Xenocrates, Crates, and Crantor. Owing to a retrograde movement, widely different from that of Aristotle, it dabbled in the Pythagorean ideas, with which Plato was acquainted and which he often appreciated, but not blindly, and to which ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... how, without tongue, or hundred tongues, of iron, enumerate the notabilities! Has not Marquis Valadi hastily quitted his quaker broadbrim; his Pythagorean Greek in Wapping, and the city of Glasgow? (Founders of the French Republic (London, 1798), para Valadi.) De Morande from his Courrier de l'Europe; Linguet from his Annales, they looked eager through the London fog, and became Ex-Editors,—that ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... and as the judicious man [Greek: ho Phronimos] would determine.' Such is the doctrine of the Mean, which combines the practical matter-of-fact quality of moderation, recognized by all sages, with a high and abstract conception, starting from the Pythagorean remark quoted by Aristotle, 'the Infinite, or Indefinite, is evil, the Finite or the Definite is good,' and re-appearing in Plato as 'conformity to measure' [Greek: metriotaes], by which he (Plato) proposes to ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... lines, imprinted by a cowboy of precocious intellect. I found these in handsome, neatly executed letters, printed and burnished with leaf-gold, on the wall of his sleeping-room. They were really golden verses, and may well be styled Pythagorean from ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various
... with a view of rivalling the sacred narrative; and accordingly, in the following age, it was made use of in a direct attack upon Christianity by Hierocles,[278] Prefect of Bithynia, a disciple of the Eclectic School, to whom a reply was made by Eusebius of Caesarea. The selection of a Pythagorean Philosopher for the purpose of a comparison with our Lord was judicious. The attachment of the Pythagorean Sect to the discipline of the established religion, which most other philosophies neglected, its austerity, its pretended intercourse ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... you are so lean, and hence comes this long moustache, and these love-locks all adust. Just such a figure was a Pythagorean that came here of late, barefoot and wan,— and said he was an Athenian. Marry, he too was in love, methinks, with a plate ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... [*Contra Jovin. i]: "It matters not for what reason a man behaves as one demented. Hence Sixtus the Pythagorean says in his Maxims: He that is insatiable of his wife is an adulterer," and in like manner one who is over enamored of any woman. Now every kind of lust includes a too ardent love. Therefore adultery is in every kind of lust: and consequently ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... Egypt where he resided twenty-two years; he was initiated into the sacerdotal order, and, from his spirit of inquiry, he has been justly said to have acquired a great deal of Egyptian learning, which he afterwards introduced into Italy. The Pythagorean schools which he established in Italy when writing was taught, were destroyed when the Platonic or new philosophy prevailed over the former. Polybius (lib. ii. p. 175) and Jamblichus (in vita Pythag.) mention many circumstances, relative to these facts, quoted from authors now lost; ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... OMICRON}{GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA}; but there is great uncertainty as to the most material of his philosophical and religious opinions. It is believed that he wrote nothing himself, and that the earliest Pythagorean treatises were the work of Philolaus, a contemporary of Socrates. It appears, however, that he undertook to solve by reference to one single primary principle the problem of the origin and constitution ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... letters extant under the name of this fair Pythagorean. They are addressed to her female friends upon the education of children, the treatment of ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... you, not only to the study of the Pythagorean philosophy as to numbers, but also to the Kabalah, and will aid you in discovering the True Word, and understanding what was meant by "The Music of the Spheres." Modern science strikingly confirms the ideas of Pythagoras in regard to the properties ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... which calls the heliocentric system merely an hypothesis advanced as a basis for astronomical calculations. Copernicus reached his theory rather by speculation than by observation; its first suggestion came from the Pythagorean doctrine of the motion of the earth. On Copernicus cf. Leop. Prowe, vol. i. Copernicus Leben, vol. ii. (Urkunden), Berlin, 1883-84; and K. Lohmeyer in Sybel's ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... generally designated an atheist, probably because there was nothing in his writings to which he might be pinned down, that fate befell two of his contemporaries, Hippo of Rhegium and Diogenes of Apollonia. Very little, however, is known of them. Hippo, who is said to have been a Pythagorean, taught that water and fire were the origin of everything; as to the reason why he earned the nickname atheos, it is said that he taught that Water was the primal cause of all, as well as that ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... Indian widows, gone to bed In flaming curtains to the dead; 640 And men as often dangled for't, And yet will never leave the sport. Nor do the ladies want excuse For all the stratagems they use To gain the advantage of the set, 645 And lurch the amorous rook and cheat For as the Pythagorean soul Runs through all beasts, and fish and fowl, And has a smack of ev'ry one, So love does, and has ever done; 650 And therefore, though 'tis ne'er so fond, Takes strangely to the vagabond. 'Tis but an ague that's reverst, Whose hot fit takes the patient first, That ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... which some of my contemporaries devoted to the fine arts in Boston or Rome, and others to contemplation in India, and others to trade in London or New York, I thus, with the other farmers of New England, devoted to husbandry. Not that I wanted beans to eat, for I am by nature a Pythagorean, so far as beans are concerned, whether they mean porridge or voting, and exchanged them for rice; but, perchance, as some must work in fields if only for the sake of tropes and expression, to serve a parable-maker one day. It ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... don't agree with your Pythagorean speculations about numbers. If both events had happened in the year 63 before Christ, then I would ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... surface—a thin, plausible, superficial existence, and talk of muse and prophet, of art and creation. But out of our shallow and frivolous way of life, how can greatness ever grow? Come now, let us go and be dumb. Let us sit with our hands on our mouths, a long, austere, Pythagorean lustrum. Let us live in corners and do chores, and suffer, and weep, and drudge, with eyes and hearts that love the Lord. Silence, seclusion, austerity, may pierce deep into the grandeur and secret ...
— Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study • Compiled by Grenville Kleiser
... sacrificed to the Olympian Jupiter, which was always the first care of the victor, treated the whole assembly. Leophron did the same, as Athenaeus reports;(158) who adds, that Empedocles of Agrigentum, having conquered in the same games, and not having it in his power, being a Pythagorean, to regale the people with flesh or fish, caused an ox to be made of a paste, composed of myrrh, incense, and all sorts of spices, of which pieces were given ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... abnegation; self-denial, self-restraint, self-control &c. (resolution) 604. frugality; vegetarianism, teetotalism, total abstinence; abstinence, abstemiousness; Encratism[obs3], prohibition; system of Pythagoras, system of Cornaro; Pythagorism, Stoicism. vegetarian; Pythagorean, gymnosophist[obs3]. teetotaler &c. 958; abstainer; designated driver; Encratite[obs3], fruitarian[obs3], hydropot|!. V. be temperate &c. adj.; abstain, forbear, refrain, deny oneself, spare, swear off. know when one has had enough, know one's limit. take the pledge, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... consecutive theory of the development of Jesus' opinions. The sect of Essenes took its rise in the time of the Maccabees, about B. C. 170. Upon the fundamental doctrines of Judaism it had engrafted many Pythagorean notions, and was doubtless in the time of Jesus instrumental in spreading Greek ideas among the people of Galilee, where Judaism was far from being so narrow and rigid as at Jerusalem. The Essenes attached but little importance ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... conscience with sacrilegious acts. And yet thy spirit, indwelling in me, had driven from the chamber of my soul all lust of earthly success, and with thine eye ever upon me, there could be no place left for sacrilege. For thou didst daily repeat in my ear and instil into my mind the Pythagorean maxim, "Follow after God." It was not likely, then, that I should covet the assistance of the vilest spirits, when thou wert moulding me to such an excellence as should conform me to the likeness of God. Again, ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... hands to execute the work of his brain; the latter a guiding brain for his hands. Where the degree of dependence corresponds exactly to the difference of ability, Aristotle, leaving its abuses out of the question, declares slavery to be just. See, also, Eth. Nicom., VIII, 11. Similarly the Pythagorean Bryson in Stoboeus, Florid. LXXXV, 15. But Aristotle would hold up emancipation to all slaves as a reward they might have in prospect. Polit VII, 9, 9; OEcon. I, 5. It is characteristic of the many testaments of philosophers, found in Diogenes Laertius, that they contain declarations ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... Plato's thought to which they clung was, as we shall find from the Neoplatonists, his physical speculations; in which, deserting his inductive method, he has fallen below himself into the popular cacoethes, and Pythagorean deductive dreams about the mysterious powers of numbers, and of the ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... Clavigero, in his history of Mexico, we find the Pythagorean transmigration carried on in the West, and not less fancifully than in the countries of the East. The people of Tlascala believe that the souls of persons of rank went after their death to inhabit the bodies of beautiful and sweet singing birds, and those of the nobler quadrupeds; while ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... 7:9], for now sin began to be reckoned unto me. But Basilides, not noticing that these things ought to be understood of the natural law, according to impious and foolish fables turns this apostolic saying into the Pythagorean dogma, that is, attempts to prove from this word of the Apostle that souls are transferred from one body to another. For he says that the Apostle has said, 'I lived without any law'—i.e., before I came into the body I lived in that sort of ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... Megarian good, or to the theories of Aristippus or Antisthenes respecting pleasure. Nor are we able to say how far Plato in the Philebus conceives the finite and infinite (which occur both in the fragments of Philolaus and in the Pythagorean table of opposites) in the ...
— Philebus • Plato
... more and more confused with grapes, till the Renaissance carvers are content with any kind of boss full of seed, but insist on such boss {104} or bursting globe as some essential part of their ornament;—the bean-pod for the same reason (not without Pythagorean notions, and some of republican election) is used by Brunelleschi for main decoration of the lantern of Florence duomo; and, finally, the ornamentation gets so shapeless, that M. Violet-le-Duc, in his 'Dictionary of Ornament,' ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... honored with one relic of antiquity, a Pythagorean. He has obliged me with his biography. He was, to use his own words, engendered by the sun shining on a dunghill at his father's door,' and began his career as a flea; but his identity was, somehow, shifted to a boy of nine years old. He has had a long ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... was impressed by the Pythagorean philosophy, and very often quotes it in his speeches. Socrates gave Pythagoras as an authority on the simple life, and stated that he was willing to follow him in anything save his injunction to keep silence. Socrates wanted silence optional; whereas ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... Forest Absalom preserved his Pythagorean silence, cultivated his fine dark locks, and worked like a beaver, setting an excellent example of brotherly love, justice, and fidelity by his upright life. He it was who helped overworked Sister Hope with her heavy washes, kneaded ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... went on to argue that Moses taught, in allegory, the natural philosophy of Descartes. More calls Platonism the soul, and Cartesianism the body, of his own philosophy, which he applies to the explanation of the Law of Moses. "This philosophy is the old Jewish-Pythagorean Cabbala, which teaches the motion of the Earth and Pre-existence of the Soul." But it is awkward that Moses does not teach the motion of the earth. More is at no loss; he boldly argues that, though "the motion of the earth has been lost and appears not in the remains of the Jewish ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... versatile of modern designers. His satire is something quite apart from his caricature, and the former is characterized by a strong dramatic element particularly noticeable in serious illustrations, such as his designs to "The Pythagorean," in the second volume of "Once a Week." In caricature he resumes in a measure the manner of the older caricaturists, without retaining a trace of their vulgarity, and a good example will be found in his cartoon of What Nicholas heard in the Shell (1854), in which the features ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... divine concerns through symbols is Orphic, and, in short, accords with those who write fables respecting the gods. But he who does this through images is Pythagoric. For the mathematical disciplines were invented by the Pythagorean in order to a reminiscence of divine concerns, to which through these as images, they endeavour to ascend. For they refer both numbers and figures to the gods, according to the testimony of their historians. But the enthusiastic character, or he who is divinely inspired, ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... present work. His music belongs entirely to the ancient period of monody. He never had a harmony of combined sounds, nor a scale with intervals permitting combined sounds. He was sufficiently scientific to carry out the intonations of the Pythagorean theory, and when he went beyond this and formed a scale for himself he devised one which did not permit the association of sounds into chord masses; and, more fatal still, he not only invented such a scale, but ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... for his unannounced visitation of Montgomery was Sunday at dinner time. He was at once asked to sit down and partake of the chickens and bacon which had just been placed on the table, but here was a dilemma; Sir Richard, although neither a Brahmin nor a Jew, avowed himself a staunch Pythagorean—he could eat no flesh! Luckily there was a plentiful supply of carrots and turnips, and—jelly. But was the latter made from calves' feet? Montgomery assured his guest that it was not; but, added he, with a conscientious regard for his visitor's scruples, from ivory dust. We ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... and scientific study of natural phenomena must always lead to a certain Pythagorean habit of thought. When a string of a certain length is struck, a particular sound is produced. If the string is shortened in certain numeric proportions, other sounds will be produced. The pitch of the sounds may be expressed in figures. Physics also expresses ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... to references to the Pythagorean doctrine of the transmigration of souls in Shakespeare's earlier plays and other Elizabethan literature; and little can be based upon the "Et tu, Brute" quotation, as Ben Jonson may have drawn it from the same source ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... Cf. Herodot. I. 91, quoted by Blomfield: [Greek: ten pepromenen moiren adynata esti apophygeein kai to theo]. On this Pythagorean ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... at their club in Waterloo Place, the Pythagorean, a much humbler establishment than that patronized by Scott, and one that was dignified by no politics. After dinner, as they sat over their pint of sherry, Alaric ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... edition collects 181 fragments attributed to Epictetus, of which but a few are certainly genuine. Some (as xxi., xxiv., above) bear the stamp of Pythagorean origin; others, though changed in form, may well be based upon Epictetean sayings. Most have been preserved in the Anthology of John of Stobi (Stobaeus), a Byzantine collector, of whom scarcely anything is known but that he probably wrote towards the end of the fifth century, and made his ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... established, and people are turned back to the days when the much bescouted alchemist pored with rheumy eyes over the crucible, about to be the tomb of elective affinity, and whence a golden angel was to develop from a leaden saint: when they are reminded of the Pythagorean numbers, and the arithmetic of the realists of old, they may very well imagine that the vain world, like an empty fashion, has cycled around to some primitive phase, and look for the door of that academy 'where none could enter but those ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... from this obnoxious tradition.[5] It is true that neither the Pythagorean nor the Egypto-Tychonic system required epicycles for explaining retrograde motion, as the Ptolemaic theory did. Furthermore, either system could use the excentric of Hipparchus to explain the irregular motion known as the ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... APOLLONIUS OF TYANA, a Pythagorean philosopher, who, having become acquainted with some sort of Brahminism, professed to have a divine mission, and, it is said, a power to work miracles; was worshipped after his death, and has been ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... creation. As he was wont to draw parallels between reckoning and reasoning—witness his Arithmetical Ethics (rechenschaftliche Sittenlehre)—he said that the foundation of the demonstration was this beginning of the Pythagorean Table, once one is one. These repeated unities were the moments of the existence of things, each one of them depending upon God, who resuscitates, as it were, all things outside himself at each moment: ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... its relation to Egypt have been much discussed and the name of the master was clearly extended by later (and perhaps also by early) disciples to doctrines which he never held. But it seems indisputable that there were widely spread both in Greece and Italy societies called Pythagorean or Orphic which inculcated a common rule of life and believed in metempsychosis. The rule of life did not as a rule amount to asceticism in the Indian sense, which was most uncongenial to Hellenic ideas, but it comprised great self-restraint. ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... immortall, and that as soone as any one departeth out of this life, he becommeth a diuel if he haue liued well in this world, if otherwise, that the same diuel changeth him into a bufle, oxe, or dogge. [Marginal note: Pythagorean like.] Wherefore to this diuel they doe much honour, to him doe they sacrifice, praying him that he will make them like vnto himselfe, and not like other beastes. They haue moreouer another sort of temples, wherein ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... Clinker invented a plan, almost Pythagorean in its way, and it proved very helpful ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn |
