"Orphic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that the fashion of making favourites of boys was introduced into Greece from Crete, for Malthusian reasons said Aristotle (Pol. ii. 10), attributing it to Minos. Herodotus, however, knew far better, having discovered (ii. c. 80) that the Orphic and Bacchic rites were originally Egyptian. But the Father of History was a traveller and an annalist rather than an archaeologist and he tripped in the following passage (i. c. 135), "As soon as they (the Persians) hear of any luxury, they instantly make it their own, and hence, among ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... were civilised: by witchery of the Orphic fiddle-bow, and Euterpean rhythm; by the Graces, by the Smiles! Thermidorian Deputies are there in those soirees; Editor Freron, Orateur du Peuple; Barras, who has known other dances than the Carmagnole. Grim Generals of the Republic are there; in enormous horse-collar ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... under the influence of the School of Alexandria, endeavored in general to make their doctrines harmonize with the traditions of Greece; and thence came, in the doctrines of the Therapeuts, as stated by Philo, the many analogies between the Pythagorean and Orphic ideas, on one side, and those of Judaism on the other: while the Jews of Palestine, having less communication with Greece, or contemning its teachings, rather imbibed the Oriental doctrines, which they drank ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... worn out with hard service, nor yet indulging in feasting and wine-drinking, as though that were the end and reward of his military achievements; like that life of eternal drunkenness which Plato sneers at the Orphic school for promising to their ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... the day of seers and "Orphic" utterances; the air was fall of the enthusiasm of humanity and thick with philanthropic projects and plans for the regeneration of the universe. The figure of the wild-eyed, long-haired reformer—the man with ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... shall only say that they are by their nature plainly, like the last, meant as preservatives against unseen malarias or contagions, possible or impossible. He assists every month with his children at the mysteries of the Orphic priests; and finally, whenever he sees an epileptic patient, he spits in his own bosom to avert the ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... singer grew into the centre of a great religious creed. The cult of Orphism, higher and more spiritual than that of either Eleusis or Dionysus, appears as early as the sixth century B.C., and reaches its greatest in the fifth and fourth centuries. The Orphic hymns proclaim the high doctrine of the divineness of all life, and open, at least for the hopes of men, the gates of immortality. The secret societies which professed the cult had the strongest possible influence upon the thought of early Athens, but their most prominent ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... is expressed that the soul upon leaving the body may vanish away like smoke or air. Socrates in answer appeals first of all to the old Orphic tradition that the souls of the dead are in the world below, and that the living come from them. This he attempts to found on a philosophical assumption that all opposites—e.g. less, greater; weaker, stronger; ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... The bard of mystery scrawls his crooked "runes." Yes, thou art gone, with all the tuneful hordes That candied thoughts in amber-colored words, And in the precincts of thy late abodes The clattering verse-wright hammers Orphic odes. Thou, soft as zephyr, wast content to fly On the gilt pinions of a balmy sigh; He, vast as Phoebus on his burning wheels, Would stride through ether at Orion's heels. Thy emblem, Laura, was a perfume-jar, And thine, young Orpheus, is a pewter star. The balance trembles,—be its verdict ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. |
