"Avatar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been calumniated in his private life, and that his strange fancy of speaking against himself may have contributed toward it. But how do you explain the anger expressed by his pen? Do you forget his misanthropical invectives, his personal attacks, his 'Avatar,' ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... the soul Improvisatore, account of one at Milan 'Ina,' Mrs. Wilmot's tragedy of Inchbald, Mrs., her 'Simple Story' Her 'Nature and Art' Incledon, Charles, singer 'INEZ,' Stanzas to Interlachen Invention Iris, the 'IRISH AVATAR' Irving, Washington, esq. Italian manners Italians, bad translators, except from the classics Italy, the only modern nation in Europe that has a poetical ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... monstrous shape of a creature half man, half lion (his fourth Avatar or incarnation), delivered the three worlds, that is to say, Earth, Heaven, and the lower regions, from the tyranny of an ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... "and that horrifies me. I know also the Hindu dogma of the migrations of souls after death. These disembodied souls stray until they are reincarnated or until they attain, from avatar to avatar, to complete purity. Well, I think it's quite enough to live once. I'd prefer nothingness, a hole in the ground, to all those metamorphoses. It's more consoling to me. As for the evocation of the dead, the mere ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... giving the early June sunshine quite a new brightness in the care-dimmed eyes of that affectionate woman, and making an epoch for her cousins great and small, who were learning her words and actions by heart, as if she had been a transient avatar ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... supremacy over the higher powers of intellect, and gave birth to that voracious despotism of barren dialectics, in the middle ages commonly called the scholastic philosophy. The Greek philosophy, however, even its noblest Avatar, Plato, much less in the case of a Zeno or an Aristotle, was never able to achieve that which must be the practically proposed end of all higher philosophy that is in earnest; viz. the coming out of the narrow sphere of the school ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... As far as any clear thought had been in his mind, or any power of thinking possible to him, his latest idea in reference to her had been a desperate resolve that he would never speak to her again. And now, again, as he saw her, in a new avatar of loveliness, he once again knew that to keep such a resolution was above ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... Brahma as a fish—the Matsya Avatar—is recounted in much Sanscrit; but it appears to be only a symbolical reference to a great division of Nature,—a heathen assertion of God in the sea, as well as elsewhere. The same is true of the marine ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... earlier the civic procession, or pageant, had shown in brilliant tableaux vivants the stories of the Minotaur and Iphigenie. The study of classic art and literature had blossomed in the very streets of Italy in a new avatar of the dramatic dance. From every account we glean testimony that the costuming of these spectacles was admirable. It must follow that so simple a task as the dressing of the characters in Poliziano's "Orfeo" was easily accomplished ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... purpose. But to whatever extent Christianity had insinuated itself into and colored European literature, it was mainly as mythology. The Christian idea had never yet incorporated itself. It was to make its avatar in Dante. To understand fully what he accomplished we must form some conception of what is meant by the Christian idea. To bring it into fuller relief, let us contrast it with the Greek idea as it appears in poetry; for we are not dealing with a question of theology ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... evolution, revolution; diversion; break. transformation, transfiguration; metamorphosis; transmutation; deoxidization[Chem]; transubstantiation; mutagenesis[Genet], transanimation[obs3], transmigration, metempsychosis|; avatar; alterative. conversion &c. (gradual change) 144; revolution &c. (sudden or radical change) 146 inversion &c. (reversal) 218; displacement &c. 185; transference &c. 270. changeableness &c. 149; tergiversation ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... me to understand, that from all he could learn, the Islanders regarded me as a superior being. They had inquired of him, whether I was not white Taji, a sort of half-and-half deity, now and then an Avatar among them, and ranking among their inferior ex- officio demi-gods. To this, Samoa had said ay; adding, moreover, all he could ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... the darling wish of Mother Barringer's heart to see her daughter married and settled with "a stiddy young man that you knowed all about, and his folks before him." She had observed with great disquietude the brilliant avatar of Mr. Bertie Leon and the evident pride of her daughter in the bright-plumaged captive she had brought to Chaney Creek, the spoil of her maiden snare. "I don't more'n half like that little feller." (It is a Western habit to call a well-dressed man ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... Castruccio gave him the packet; and then, utterly engrossed with his own imagined futurity of fame, vanished from the room to indulge his reveries. He cared no longer for Maltravers—he had put him to use—he could not be sorry for his departure, for that departure was the Avatar of His appearance to a ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Stuardo.' But the learned father had communicated the papers about de la Cloche to Lord Acton, who wrote an article on the subject, 'The Secret History of Charles II.,' in 'The Home and Foreign Review,' July 1862. Lord Acton now added the story of the second James, or of the second avatar of the first James, from State Papers in our Record Office. The documents as to de la Cloche are among the MSS. of the Society of Jesus ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... have existed; and he is represented as a doughty crusader, although crusading was not thought of until long after the Karolingian era. The legendary deeds of Charlemagne are not conformed to the ordinary rules of geography and chronology. He is a myth, and, what is more, he is a solar myth,—an avatar, or at least a representative, of Odin in his solar capacity. If in his case legend were not controlled and rectified by history, he would be for ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... they can. If ever I do return to England, (which I sha'n't, though,) I will write a poem to which 'English Bards,' &c. shall be new milk, in comparison. Your present literary world of mountebanks stands in need of such an Avatar. But I am not yet quite bilious enough: a season or two more, and a provocation or two, will wind me up to the point, and then have at the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... Christ, Thou bright Heaven's Morning Star, In whom all live and move and are, Thou Chiefest, altogether lovely, Beauty in Time is Thy avatar! ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... this was the first occasion in the history of the world when the idea of the Avatar found its place in religion. Western scholars are never tired of insisting that Buddhism is of the nature of a moral code, coldly leading to the path of extinction. They forget that it was held to be a religion ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... first month of the Indian year, Vishnu is represented under the form of a golden Fish, and addressed in the following terms: "Wie Du, O Gott, in Gestalt eines Fisches die in der Unterwelt befindlichen Veden gerettet hast, so rette auch mich."[29] The Fish Avatar ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... it. I knew that our soil produced more soldiers even than France, the fertile mother of red-legged heroes; but I did not expect, in the Nineteenth Century and in the State of New York, to have beheld an avatar of the God Mars. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... friend is always a miracle, but at thirty-three years old, such a bird of paradise rising in the sage-brush was an avatar. One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim. King, like Adams, and all their generation, was at that moment passing the critical point ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... confessed that the Hartford Wits did ample injustice to their antagonists. Mr. Jefferson was certainly not an Avatar of the enemy of mankind, nor were his followers atheists, anarchists, and rogues. But in 1799 there were no shabbier Democrats than those of Connecticut. If we may judge of the old race by a few surviving specimens, we may pardon our poets, if they added contempt ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... equal, at least, to Adonais. I have seen the solemn rearing of a mountain peak into the pale dawn that gave me a deep religious appreciation of my significance in the Grand Scheme, as though I had heard and understood a parable from the holy lips of an Avatar. And the vast plains of my native country are as a mystic scroll unrolled, scrawled with a cabalistic writ ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... or fish. In this avatar Vishnu descended in the form of a fish to save the pious king Satyavrata, who with the seven Rishis and their wives had taken refuge in the ark to escape the deluge which then destroyed the earth. ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... audacity, and her sisters participated in her disdain. Upon this affront he brooded night and day; and, after the term of his service was over, and he, in effect, forgotten by the family, one day he suddenly descended amongst the women of the family like an Avatar of vengeance. Right and left he threw out his murderous knife without distinction of person, leaving the room and the ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... There was some heart, too, in the manner in which they gesticulated and declaimed; and I have little doubt but that they were in earnest—especially if any of these happened to have friends or relations down that way, who had been roused out of house and home by the Gallic Avatar. When they were tired with singing, or perhaps presumed that they had therewith tired us, they took to playing the fool. Not merely in a general sense, in which they may be said to have been so engaged all along; but with heavy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... hunt ravenous on this Earth, a well-known phasis of human nature; and now thou art and remainest the most remarkable Attorney that ever lived and hunted in the Upper Air! For, in this terrestrial Course of Time, there was to be an Avatar of Attorneyism; the Heavens had said, Let there be an Incarnation, not divine, of the venatory Attorney-spirit which keeps its eye on the bond only;—and lo, this was it; and they have attorneyed it in its turn. Vanish, then, thou rat-eyed Incarnation ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... incarnations of God Sol the characteristics of heaven-descending, virgin-born, earth-walking, wonder-working, dying, resuscitated and ascending sons of God, the ancient Astrologers attached to them the several titles of Saviour, Redeemer, Avatar, Divine-Helper, Shiloh, Messiah, Christ; and, in reference to their foster-father, that of Son of Man. Teaching that they continued to make intercession for sin, after their ascension to the right hand of the Father, they were also called Intercessors, ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... worldly-minded, or of the plain people who could not understand the enigmatic utterances of the reformers, the dangerous or ludicrous sides of transcendentalism were naturally uppermost. Nevertheless the movement was but a new avatar of the old Puritan spirit; its moral earnestness, its spirituality, its tenderness for the individual conscience. Puritanism, too, in its day had run into grotesque extremes. Emerson bore about the same relation to ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... their descent from serpents, tortoises, swans, and so forth, it is a fair hypothesis that the ancestors of the Greeks once believed in the same fables. In later times the swan, serpent, ant, or tortoise was explained as an avatar of Zeus. The process by which an anthropomorphic god or hero succeeds to the exploits of animals, of theriomorphic gods and heroes, is the most common in mythology, and is illustrated by actual practice in modern ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... on this quotation. I might point out how St. Bridget is called the mother of the Lord, and by others, the Mary of the Irish, the 'Automata coeli regina,' and seems to have been considered at times as an avatar or incarnation of the blessed Virgin. I might more than hint how that appellation, as well as the calling of Christ 'the best of the sons of the Lord,' in an orthodox Catholic hymn, seems to point to the remnants of an older creed, possibly Buddhist, the transition whence towards ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... ducats of the credulous; and of a Sunday walking out, in a shiny frock-coat with his ribbon of the Legion in the buttonhole, a ratty topper crowning his placid brows, a humid grandchild adhering to his hand: a thrifty and respectable bourgeois, the final avatar of ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... desire of accuracy. This is no furniture for the scholar's library, but a book for the winter evening school-room when the tasks are over and the hour for bed draws near; and honest Alan, who was a grim old fire-eater in his day has in this new avatar no more desperate purpose than to steal some young gentleman's attention from his Ovid, carry him awhile into the Highlands and the last century, and pack him to bed with some engaging images to mingle ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which they had welcomed the downfall of the Bastille. Burke's Reflections, the work of a great thinker in a state of irritation bordering upon frenzy, had sounded the note of alarm. The revolution, as Burke maintained, was in fact the avatar of a diabolic power. It meant an attack upon the very organic principles of society. It therefore implied a complete breach of historical continuity, and a war against the reverence for 'prescription' and tradition which ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... formerly appraised that Omar in a way that, I dare say, advanced him to another Edition: he (S.W.) now writes me that he feels moved to write in favour of another Persian who now accompanies Omar in his last Avatar! I have told him plainly that he had better not employ time and talent on what I do not think he will ever persuade the Public to care about—but he thinks he will. {236} He may very likely cool upon it: but, in ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... time, when the presumption against the revivication of poetry shall have attained the appearance of absolute certainty, to witness a Tenth Avatar of Genius—and to witness its effect, too, upon the sapient personages who had been predicting that it was ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... actually came into being. No wonder then, that in some sort our noble profession of whaling should have been there shadowed forth. The Hindoo whale referred to, occurs in a separate department of the wall, depicting the incarnation of Vishnu in the form of leviathan, learnedly known as the Matse Avatar. But though this sculpture is half man and half whale, so as only to give the tail of the latter, yet that small section of him is all wrong. It looks more like the tapering tail of an anaconda, than the broad palms of the true ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... acquiescing in his just will, and returning love for love: such a phase could not be better shadowed out to creatures than by an Eternal Son; the dutiful yet supreme, the subordinate yet coeequal, the amiable yet exalted Avatar of our God. This was probable to have been the second impersonation of Deity. And ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Night, like some mysterious rune, Its beauty makes emphatic with the moon, Thou lutest us no immaterial tune: But where dim whispers haunt the cane and corn, By thy still strain made strong, Earth's awful avatar,—in whom is born Thy own deep music,—labors all night long With growth, assuring Morn Assumes with ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... was the earthly manifestation and avatar of the unseen and mysterious power which oppressed the souls of man with terror. 'I am Pharaoh,' 'By the life of Pharaoh,' 'Say unto Pharaoh whom art thou like in thy greatness.' These familiar phrases of Scripture gain a new emphasis of meaning as we remember them amongst ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... much was patent rouge and Bloom of Ninon. He doubted whether Simpson, Sir Charles's valet, was not Colonel Clay in plain clothes; and he had half an idea that Cesarine herself was our saucy White Heather in an alternative avatar. We pointed out to him in vain that Simpson had often been present in the very same room with David Granton, and that Cesarine had dressed Mrs. Brabazon's hair at Lucerne: this partially satisfied him, but only partially. He remarked ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... to books and study. He was slow and mild, deprecatory and forgiving. Ward Latisan had those saving qualities in a measure, but he was conscious in himself of the avatar of old John's righteous ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... to man, the body and members in which the divine spirit was incarnated, since the Church or mystical community of Christians was the temple of God. Through this lively sense of the divine incarnation, the Christian avatar with which the race had been acquainted under other forms, God was no longer essentially distinguished from mankind in the form of a number of concrete beings, but was spiritually infused into men and acted through them. The Christian as man felt himself to be a participator ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... like to hear," said she, smiling. "I felt sure I could count on you not to indulge in too much nonsense. Well, I'm going to try the next avatar just to remind fate of my existence. I think fate's forgotten me, and I can stand anything but that. I've lost Carly, and I've lost Queen.... Oh, G.J.! Isn't it awful to think that when I offered you Queen she'd already gone, and it was only her dead body I was offering you? ... And I've ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... little influence on the conduct; in religion, on that of the individual; in politics, on that of party. As a general thing, the Mahometan, in the Orient, is far more honest and trustworthy than the Christian. A Gospel of Love in the mouth, is an Avatar of Persecution in the heart. Men who believe in eternal damnation and a literal sea of fire and brimstone, incur the certainty of it, according to their creed, on the slightest temptation of appetite or passion. Predestination insists on the necessity of good works. In Masonry, at the least ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... every day by my colonel as a shining light to the regiment. But of course you must remember that a few months ago I was practically a yob at the game, and now of the fame (and the extreme shyness that seems to come with it) of my later avatar. ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... all that men cared for? What was to become of the race, if the few women who loved art, and through art learned really to love their kind, were forever to be denied? And here was Vina Nettleton with the spiritual power to concentrate her dream into an avatar (if into the midst of her solitary labors, a great man's love should suddenly come)!... Did the Destiny Master fall asleep for a century at a time, that such a genius for motherhood should be denied, while the earth was being replenished with children ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... No wonder then, that in some sort our noble profession .. of whaling should have been there shadowed forth. The Hindoo whale referred to, occurs in a separate department of the wall, depicting the incarnation of Vishnu in the form of leviathan, learnedly known as the Matse Avatar. But though this sculpture is half man and half whale, so as only to give the tail of the latter, yet that small section of him is all wrong. It looks more like the tapering tail of an anaconda, than the broad palms of the true whale's ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... Quetzalcoatl and Viracocha, the culture gods of Mexico and Peru, are familiar instances of this. In the later Brahminism of India, Vishnu, having already accomplished nine avatars, or incarnations, for special emergencies in the past, was yet to have one more avatar for the final destruction of the wicked and the restoration of goodness at the end of the present age; he would then be revealed in the sky seated on a white horse and wielding a blazing sword. I need not specify others: it ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... We may, for instance, return in a measure to the Brunonian stimulating system, but it must be in a modified way, for we cannot go back to the simple Brunonian pathology, since we have learned too much of diseased action to accept its convenient dualism. So of other doctrines, each new Avatar strips them of some of their old pretensions, until they take their fitting place at last, if they have any truth in them, or disappear, if they were mere ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... hold up the hand—because, as I said and say, I am yours, your own—only not to hurt you. So now let us talk of the first of November and of the poems which are to come out then, and of the poems which are to come after then—and of the new avatar of 'Sordello,' for instance, which you taught me to look for. And let us both be busy and cheerful—and you will come and see me throughout the winter, ... if you do not decide rather on going abroad, which ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... Led Striker call it a strike, Or the papers call it a war, They know not much what I am like, Nor what he is, my Avatar." ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... arrived at Marly, and, with the ssistance of much sarcasm from Hohenfels, am getting on with considerable spirit at my Progressive Geography. When man's Hope ceases temporarily to take a merely Human aspect, may it not suffer a fresh avatar and begin in a new and Geographical form its beneficent career? The Dark Ladye has sunk beneath my horizon, but speculations over the Atlantean and Lunar Mountains are still succulent ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... direction of universal education at government expense throughout the two continents. All the populations snatch up their satchels and hurry to school. Athens revives the Academe and reinstates the Olympic games under a literary avatar. Italy follows suit. Hornbooks open and shut with a suggestive snap under the pope's nose, and Young Rome calculates its future with slate and pencil. Gaul, fresh from one year's term in the severest of all schools, adversity, joins the procession, close ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... Thought has been disputed by two Spirits, and none are mightier than they. One, fearful in mysterious beauty, the Queen of all that is occult and inscrutable, rises in cloudy state from the antique Orient—from the Egypt of the Only Isis, and from the Avatar land of Brahma—solemnly breathing the love of the All in One. Infinitely lovely is the dark-browed Queen, and she bears in her hand the lotus. Against her, in laughing sunlight, amid green leaves and birdsong, waving merry warning, stands a brighter form—the incarnation ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... I reflected, to raise one's voice in the wilderness of theories? How do any good by a social enthusiasm merely expressed in theory? Such thin cerebral structures are shattered to pieces in the ordeal of life. Ah, but this anonymous Avatar, this man with the bomb! His instinct was right, but how far short it fell, and must always fall. He had settled the strife within him and become definite to himself: that was all he had done. I too must settle the strife within ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... Pheryllt," and "the writings of Pridian or Hu." "Ceridwen consults them before she prepares the mysterious caldron which shadows out the awful catastrophe of the Deluge." (Faber's "Pagan Idolatry," vol. ii., pp. 150, 151.) In the first Avatar of Vishnu we are told that "the divine ordinances were stolen by the demon Haya-Griva. Vishnu became a fish; and after the Deluge, when the waters had subsided, he recovered the holy books from the bottom of the ocean." Berosus, speaking of the ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... handkerchief, my friend, that I may wipe away my tears. I have a sausage wrapped up in mine, but what are sausages compared with art! How divinely SEEBACH walks. To me, she seems like an incarnation of Pure Reason, an Avatar of the spirit of transcendental philosophy. Come, we will pledge ...
— Punchinello Vol. II., No. 30, October 22, 1870 • Various
... "The avatar of some other Scriptural personages might be equally well carried out by these emblematical ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... after some months' absence, with the effect of having aged considerably in the interval. But this was only his latest avatar; he was no older, as he was no younger, than before; to support a fresh character, he had to put on an appropriate aspect, and having, at former interviews, been a poet, a novelist, a philosopher, a reformer, ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... to claim it. Although he had completed the sixtieth year of his age, so extravagant became his passion for the unknown fair one, that he became (were it possible for a Frenchman of that day to be so) melancholy and miserable. His pain was, however, somewhat appeased by the avatar of the little foot itself, appertaining to a pretty and youthful girl in the very humblest class of life. All distinctions were levelled at once by love: the actor sought the parents of the female, procured their consent to the match, and actually ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 287, December 15, 1827 • Various
... Bible in Spain?" he enquires of John Murray. "I am a frank man, and frankness never offends me. Has anybody put you out of conceit with the book? . . . Tell me frankly and I will drink your health in Romany. Or would the appearance of the Bible on the first of October interfere with the avatar, first or second, of some very wonderful lion or Divinity, to whom George Borrow, who is NEITHER, must of course give place? Be frank with me, my dear Sir, and I will drink your health in ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... bower, and faints like a hero of the Arabian Nights at her name, and has visions of her as St. Francis has of Christ; this younger and brighter Sir Launcelot, is an ideal little figure, whom you might mistake for Love himself as described in the "Romaunt of the Rose;" Love's avatar or incarnation, on whose appearance the year blooms into spring, the fruit trees blossom, the birds sing, the girls dance at eve round the maypoles; behind whom, while reading this poem, we seem to see the corn shine green beneath the olives, the white-blossomed ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... and your pounds; I am your bodies on their rounds Of pain afar: I am you, doing what you would If you were only where you could— Your avatar. ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... extensive regions of country like an ignis fatuus. He appears suddenly like an avatar, or saunters over weary wastes a poor and starving hunter. His voice is at one moment deep and sonorous as a thunder-clap, and at another clothed with the softness of feminine supplication. Scarcely any two persons agree in all the minor circumstances of the story, and scarcely ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... architecture and sculpture in India seem to prove an early connection between that country and Africa.... The Pyramids of Egypt, the colossal statues described by Pausanias and others, the Sphinx, and the Hermes Canis, which last bears a strong resemblance to the Varaha Avatar, indicate the style of the same indefatigable workmen who formed the vast excavations of Canarah, the various temples and images of Buddha, and the idols which are continually dug up at Gaya or in ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... gracious; whence his nine avatars, or incarnations,—as fish, as tortoise, as boar, as man-lion, as dwarf Brahmin, as Pursuram,—the Brahmin-warrior who overthrew the Kshatriya, or soldier-caste; the eighth avatar appeared in the person of Krishna, and the ninth in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... Men were expecting an avatar in old Judaea; and, sure enough, one came. But they were looking for a national leader, a Messiah, to throw off for them the Roman yoke; or else for an ascetic like their prophets of old time: something, in any case, out of the way;—a personality ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... amiable and benevolent of men, spent his life in making a manuscript transcript of Swedenborg's works. His writing was a marvel of calligraphic art; he himself, a curiosity. Swedenborg was for him an avatar; but if he had doubted of Tennyson's ultimate apotheosis, I think he would have elected to seek him in 'the other place.' Anyhow, Mr. Wrightson avowed to me that he repeated 'Locksley Hall' every morning of ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... that they might pass for officers of the old army on half-pay. In 1830 the fortunes of the Constitutionnel had reached the culminant point. It then counted 23,000 subscribers, at 80 francs a year. At that period a single share in the property was a fortune. But the avatar of the Citizen King spoiled in a couple of years the sale of the citizen journal. The truth is, that the heat of the Revolution of July had engendered and incubated a multitude of journals, great and little, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... no longer in the ascendant. The Dalai Lama of Teshoo Loombo is a Gelookpa, as is the Rimbochay Lama, and the Potala Lama of Lhassa, according to Tchebu Lama, but Turner ("Travels in Tibet," p. 315) says the contrary; the Gelookpa consider Sakya Thoba (or Tsongkaba) alias Mahamouni, as their great avatar.] with the yellow-caps, they were driven from that country, and took refuge principally in the Himalaya. The Bhotan or Dhurma* [Bhotan is generally known as the Dhurma country. See note, Chapter V.] Rajah ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... and Buddhism never afterwards exerted the same influence in India; though it remained widely prevalent until the eighth century A.D., and it was not until four centuries later that it became practically extinct. The Brahmans now regained their former ascendency; declared Gautama to be an "avatar"—or incarnation—of their god Vishnu; proceeded to incorporate into their own creed some of the most popular features of the Buddhist system; and then entered upon a destruction of the monasteries, and a severe persecution of all ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... they are not prepared to accept his atonement as their salvation. The same fact is true among the common people. There are not a few who believe that the tenth—that is, the coming—incarnation of Vishnu (Kalki avatar) refers to Christ. A Hindu Saivite devotee told me once that they proposed soon to place in their monastery an image of Christ (as they had one of Vishnu) and thus render to Him worship in common with the others. I am confident ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... quoth I to myself. "I know a publication called Punch very well, but I never heard of a performance so named. I'll go in and see it. Who knows but it may be an avatar[1] of the Editor of that illustrious periodical, who condescends to discard his dread incognito for the nonce, in order to exhibit himself, for one night only, to the eyes and understandings of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 20, 1841 • Various
... The clock of creation runs down and has to be wound up anew. The Brahmans are now expecting the tenth avatar of Vishnu. The Parsees look for Sosiosch to come, to consummate the triumph of good, and to raise the dead upon a renewed earth. The Buddhists await the birth of Maitri Buddha, who is tarrying in the dewa loka Tusita until ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... his sense of nobility into a chasm of possible disaster; not fair to the girl; the animal mastery of male over female, the domination of sex. Beyond doubt, wrapped in his arms, not even the omnipotence of the gods would take her away from him. If there were less innate nobility in his avatar, if he were like men that were called red-blooded men, yet lacking the finer sensibility, this might be; not a villainous rush, just drifting. That was it, the superlative excellence of the Gulab; the very quality that ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... water. Both in its beneficent and destructive aspects water was regarded as animated by the dragon, who thus assumed the role of Osiris or his enemy Set. But when the attributes of the Water God became confused with those of the Great Mother, and her evil avatar, the lioness (Sekhet) form of Hathor in Egypt, or in Babylonia the destructive Tiamat, became the symbol of disorder and chaos, the dragon became identified ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... characteristic. Those transcendental speculations to which even in the West it was attempted to limit Christianity have in Eastern Asia been in reality the only effects of Buddhism. Indeed, the idea of freedom took different forms in the minds of the founders—taking one form in the Indian Avatar which, notwithstanding all his sublimity, bore the mark of his nationality; and taking another form in the Messiah of Judah who saw the light of the world in the midst of a people fired with a never-subdued ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... through the casement pours a ruddy glow over the prostrate figure a marble Venus blushing rosy red. Joseph casts his coarse garment over his companion as one might clothe the beauteous dead, and turns away, the picture of Despair, the avatar of guilty Fear. ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... mystery. The ancient cries of Ah Linus, Ah Adonis, found in him an echo. For votaries ready to accept a new god as simply as we accept a new poet, he was the final manifestation of an old-world mystery, the rejuvenescence of a well-known incarnation, the semi-Oriental realisation of a recurring Avatar. And if we may venture on so bold a surmise, this last flower of antique mythology had taken up into itself a portion of the blood outpoured on Calvary. Planted in the conservatory of semi-philosophical yearnings, faintly tinctured ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... have not yet penetrated. I suspect that the ceremonies are not altogether unlike the Bacchanalian festivals of ancient Greece. At any rate the momentary appearance of the sun at these times is regarded as the avatar of a supreme god, and their whole religious system is based upon it. So universal and profound is the superstition to which it gives rise that the most instructed persons among them are completely under its dominion. The eagle-beaked individual who condemned you, and whom I have ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... the strengthening burdens of freedom. Now it is difficult to represent such a demand in terms of argument. Liberty is no mere conclusion of linked logic long-drawn out: it is an axiom, a flaming avatar. The arguments by which it is defended are important, but they bear to it much the same relation that a table of the wave-lengths of various rays of light bears to the immediate glory of a sunrise. There is another obstacle. Self-government, like other spiritual realities, ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... OF THE TO BE. The comet is the twelfth Avatar, the herald, coming forth from the starry abyss of the infinite, staying with us a little while, and then flashing on his shining way to other worlds than ours, bearing THE DIVINE WORD from sun to planet, as ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... the subject and the cause; From vain philosophies, that try The sevenfold gates of mystery, And, baffled ever, babble still, Word-prodigal of fate and will; From Nature, and her mockery, Art; And book and speech of men apart, To the still witness in my heart; With reverence waiting to behold His Avatar of love untold, The Eternal ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... class acquire the character of a prescriptive canon of conduct for the rest of society, gives added weight and reach to the conservative influence of that class. It makes it incumbent upon all reputable people to follow their lead. So that, by virtue of its high position as the avatar of good form, the wealthier class comes to exert a retarding influence upon social development far in excess of that which the simple numerical strength of the class would assign it. Its prescriptive example acts ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... after identity of consciousness with the One, the Hindu Avatars are only a part of the delusion, the Maya, in which men are steeped. To a pantheist, holding that his own consciousness of individuality is delusion, born of spiritual darkness and ignorance, the conception of an avatar or concrete presentation of deity as an individual is only still grosser delusion. "The name of God and the conventions of piety are as unreal as anything else in Maya," writes a modern British apostle of Hinduism, while advocating the realisation of Maya ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... wept whenever he thought of the death of Lucien de Rubempre. Lucien should have been allowed at least one more "avatar." That is one of the things that pleases me so much in that old ten-penny paper edition published by the great Paris house. We have a list of the characters in the index, with all their other appearances on the stage; just exactly as if it were real life! It was all real enough at any rate ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... demons, bad stolen from the gods the privilege of being invulnerable, and had thus acquired an equality with them. He could not be overcome except by a man, and the gods implored Vishnu to become incarnate in order that Ravana might be conquered. The origin and the development of this Avatar, the departing of Rama for the battlefield, the divine signs of his mission, his love and marriage with Sita, the daughter of the king Janaka, the persecution of his step-mother, by which the hero is sent into exile, his penance in the desert, the abduction of his bride by Ravana, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... documents as traversing the universe in three strides. Relatively insignificant in the earlier period and in the Upanishads, he appears in the epic, and afterwards, as the greatest of the gods, and, in the form of his avatar Krishna, becomes the head of a religion which has often been compared with Christianity in the purity of its moral conceptions. By his side in this later time stands his rival Civa, the chief figure in a sect or ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... was something for my backwoods eyes to be privileged to see this grand room, built, I hear, for the reception of His Gracious Majesty King George the Fourth when he made his visit to Ireland, called the "Irish Avatar." At one side of the round room was a sort of dais, on which was a chair of state that, I suppose, represented a throne. Round the gallery were hung shields, containing the coats-of- arms of the worshipful the Lords Mayor of Dublin. The chair was occupied by the present Lord ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... his coming; adumbrates the new Expurgatorial Divine, Her final effulgent Avatar, Postured outside a trampling mastodon Black as her Baker's charger; towering; visibly gorged With blood of traitors. Knee-grip stiff, Spine straightened, on he rides; Embossed the Patriot's brow ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... that modern impressionism is only a new technique, a new method of execution—we say new, though that is not exactly the case. The home of impressionism is in the East; it may be found in the vivid patterns woven in Persia or in old Japan. In its latest avatar it is the expression of contemporaneous reality. Therein lies its true power. The artist who turns his face only to the past—his work will never be anything but an echo. To depict the faces and things and pen the manners of the present is the task ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker |
