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Zodiac   Listen
noun
Zodiac  n.  
1.
(Astron.)
(a)
An imaginary belt in the heavens, 16° or 18° broad, in the middle of which is the ecliptic, or sun's path. It comprises the twelve constellations, which one constituted, and from which were named, the twelve signs of the zodiac.
(b)
A figure representing the signs, symbols, and constellations of the zodiac.
2.
A girdle; a belt. (Poetic & R.) "By his side, As in a glistering zodiac, hung the sword."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Zodiac" Quotes from Famous Books



... age of Christianity), imagine there never to have been any other world than the one we see, and acknowledged no other Gods of all those recognized by the Egyptians, than such as are commonly called planets, signs of the Zodiac, and constellations; whose aspects, that is, rising and setting, are supposed to influence the fortunes of men; to which they add their divisions of the signs into decans and dispensers of time, whom ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... a small building, blackened with age and resembling a tower with a plain round roof. The doors stood open. At both sides of the door were prayer wheels ready to be spun; over it a slab of copper with the signs of the zodiac. Inside two monks, who were intoning the sacred sutras, did not lift their eyes as we entered. The General ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski

... Zoroasteric mysteries of Persia, the temple of initiation was circular, being made so to represent the universe; and the sun in the east, with the surrounding zodiac, formed an indispensable part of the ceremony ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... the air by its color: its little bells betoken the thunder; the pomegranates, the lightning. The ephod, by its many colors, signified the starry heaven; the two onyx stones denoted the two hemispheres, or the sun and moon. The twelve precious stones on the breast are the twelve signs of the zodiac: and they are said to have been placed on the rational because in heaven are the types (rationes) of earthly things, according to Job 38:33: "Dost thou know the order of heaven, and canst thou set down the reason (rationem) ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... sky. Vulcan, the smith of the gods, had made them in his workshop (for Mount-Aetna is one of his forges, and he has the central fires of the earth to help him fashion gold and iron, as men do glass). On the doors blazed the twelve signs of the Zodiac, in silver that shone like snow in the sunlight. Phaethon was dazzled with the sight, but when he entered the palace hall he ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody

... yielded up its secrets to travellers working their way in from the south and the north, so that in the late seventies the white races opened up to view vast and populous districts which imaginative chartographers in other ages had diversified with the Mountains of the Moon or with signs of the Zodiac and ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... odd little hydraulic edifice strike the hour with his hammer on the bell of the clock. Meanwhile they examined the gilt bronze statue of Christ, standing beside the Samaritan, who was leaning on the curb of the well, the astronomic dial with its zodiac, the grotesque stone mask pouring out the water drawn up from the river below, the stout figure of Hercules supporting the whole thing, and the hollow statue, perched on the topmost pinnacle, that served as a weathercock, like the Fortune on the Dogana at Venice and the Giralda at Seville. ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... is from West to East;) then having dug a hole, the scarabaeus deposits this ball in the earth for the space of twenty-eight days, (for in so many days the moon passes through the twelve signs of the zodiac.) By thus remaining under the moon, the race of scarabaei is endued with life; and upon the nine and twentieth day after, having opened the ball, it casts it into the water, for it is aware, that upon that day the conjunction of the ...
— Scarabs • Isaac Myer

... first day of which is amusingly consecrated to fools, and has been so worshippingly set apart in consequence of the belief that was entertained by the Benedictine man of science respecting the Constellation of the Zodiac that is the sign of April—"caput est de complexione Arietis" (Rog. Bacon. Opus Majus. ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... with their upturned faces. Not an inch of room on the globe for any harvest to grow or any creature to move; the world, crowded and imbedded at every point with one continuous multitude of immortal human beings, would have then rolled around the zodiac, presenting this chronic and motionless picture, to ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... have come down to us as finally adopted facts, confirmed by later science. Thus, the division of the year into twelve months corresponding to as many constellations, known as "the twelve signs of the Zodiac," was familiar to them. They had also found out the division of the year into twelve months, only all their months had thirty days. So they were obliged to add an extra month—an intercalary month, as the scientific term is—every ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin

... man goes to see a girl for the first time, and the signs of the zodiac are in the heart, they will one ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various

... around at the room—the heavy drapes, the signs of the zodiac in gold and silver, the big, over-stuffed chairs, all designed to make the "clients" feel comfortable and yet slightly awed by the ancient atmosphere of mysticism. In the dim light, they looked fairly impressive, but she knew that if the lights were ...
— Fifty Per Cent Prophet • Gordon Randall Garrett

... representation of the python, because, according to Pausanias, a similar heap of stones, on the road from Thebes to Elissonte, was called "the serpent's head," and especially because the rows of stones at Carnac present the sinuosities of a serpent. People fond of cosmography discovered a zodiac, like M. de Cambry, who recognised in those eleven rows of stones the twelve signs of the zodiac, "for it must be stated," he adds, "that the ancient Gauls had only eleven signs to ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert

... darkly implied in the fable of Electra, the seventh of the Pleiads, who have been reduced to six since the time of the Trojan war. That nymph, the wife of Dardanus, was unable to support the ruin of her country: she abandoned the dances of her sister orbs, fled from the zodiac to the north pole, and obtained, from her dishevelled locks, the name of the comet. The third period expires in the year six hundred and eighteen, a date that exactly agrees with the tremendous comet of the Sibyl, and perhaps ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... is heaven without thee)? Cynthia, it should be observed, was a favorite fancy-name of the queen's; she was also designated occasionally by that of Astraea, whence the following devices. A man hovering in the air, "Feror ad Astraeam" (I am borne to Astraea). The zodiac with Virgo rising, "Jam redit et Virgo" (The Maid returns); and a zodiac with no characters but those of Leo and Virgo, "His ego praesidiis" (With these to friend). A star, "Mihi vita Spica Virginis" (My life is in Spica Virginis)—a star in the left hand of Virgo so called: here the allusion ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... Time as represented by the year has a nave represented by the six seasons. The number of spokes attached to that nave is twelve as represented by the twelve signs of the Zodiac. This wheel of Time manifests the fruits of the acts of all things. The presiding deities of Time abide in that wheel. Subject as I am to its distressful influence, ye Aswins, liberate me from that wheel of Time. Ye Aswins, ye are this universe of five ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)

... science. There is no science, not even metaphysics, the queen of all sciences, that does not "build upon nature", and that is not, so far, limited by the facts of nature. The poet alone is "not tied to any such subjection"; he alone "freely ranges within the zodiac of his own wit". ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... poem spoken chosen gondola melody police tobacco composition licorice open potato trophy coquet location opponent promotion zodiac cupola locust ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins

... had I power like inclination, I'd heeze thee up a constellation, To canter with the Sagitarre, Or loup the ecliptic like a bar; Or turn the pole like any arrow; Or, when auld Phoebus bids good-morrow, Down the zodiac urge the race, And cast dirt on his godship's face; For I could lay my bread and kail He'd ne'er cast saut upo' thy tail.— Wi' a' this care and a' this grief, And sma', sma' prospect of relief, And nought but peat reek i' my head, How can ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... hour of the day, for each of these spaces of time are under the influence of a star which must support or weaken the action of the medicine. Besides, it is needful to remember what star and what sign of the Zodiac rules the sick person. Only when the leech considers all these can he prescribe ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... life-giving power; thence he pours down life and warmth on his worshippers, giving them his very self to be their life; his substance passes into the grape and the corn, the sustainers of health; around him are his twelve followers, the twelve signs of the zodiac, the twelve months of the year; his day, the Lord's Day, is Sunday, the day of the Sun, and his yearly course, ever renewed, is marked each year, by the renewed memorials of his career. The signs appear in the long array of sun-heroes, making the succession ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... southern Zodiacal Signs, beginning at Libra; in the inside of which sealed Bags lie miscellaneous masses of Sheets, and oftener Shreds and Snips, written in Professor Teufelsdroeckh's scarce legible cursiv-schrift; and treating of all imaginable things under the Zodiac and above it, but of his own personal history only at rare intervals, and then in the ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... chairs, half in a loud, half in a low voice, till he comes to eleven, which he repeats). Eleven! an evil number! Set twelve chairs. Twelve! twelve signs hath the zodiac: five and seven, The holy numbers, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... and equinoxial sacrifices; in making offerings to the manes of their ancestors; in the dread of leaving no offspring behind them, to pay the customary obsequies to their memory; in observing eight cardinal or principal points of the world; in the division of the Zodiac, and in a variety of other coincidences, which the learned Mr. Bryant accounts for by supposing the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Indians, to be derived from one common stock, and that some of these people carried their religion ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... striking resemblance to the constellations of the heavens, especially those of the Zodiac, and if this be their true meaning, we have an infallible key to their chronology. At the beginning of the Christian Era, the constellation Aries, or Ram, occupied the equinoctial place, being in the first degree of that constellation. About 2150 B.C. the first degree ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck

... show'd his prime In manhood where youth ended; by his side As in a glist'ring zodiac hung the sword, Satan's dire dread, and in his hand the ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... nervous laugh, "No, no, I beseech you!" for she is afraid of being tickled. But the best time of all is the return through the country at night, the exquisite odor of new-mown hay, the road lighted by a summer sky where the whole zodiac twinkles, and through which, like a silent stream, the Chemin de St. Jacques ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee

... can't describe St. Peter's no more than a ant can describe the Zodiac, I mean an a-n-t, not mother's sister. Why, the great side chapels are big enough for meetin'-houses and fur grander than we shall ever see in Jonesville or the environin' townships. And the tomb and monuments and altars, etc., are more gorgeous than I could ever ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley

... after the venerable wizard had repeated it, he was obliged to rest for several hours. Then he rose again and drew pentagons on the rocky floor of his cave, and crossed triangles and circles bordered with all the signs of the Zodiac. And he stood in the middle of the pentagons and the crossed triangles and the circles and went through all sorts of strange and secret rites, but all ...
— The Sleeping Beauty • C. S. Evans

... thinks it would be rather better, if he can manage it, to make it look a little like Paradise;— stretches his canvas right over the wall, and his clouds right over his canvas; brings the light through his clouds—all blue and clear—zodiac beyond zodiac; rolls away the vaporous flood from under the feet of saints, leaving them at last in infinitudes of light—unorthodox in the last degree, but, on ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... of this Power was symbolized in many ways, notably by the passage of the sun through the zodiacal signs * (centres in the psychic body) [* "The twelve signs of the Zodiac are hidden in his body."—-Secret Doctrine, II, 619] A stone serpent was found a little while ago in Ireland marked with twelve divisions. The archaic verses alluded to have the ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell

... more than mortal name Mocks with its ray the pallid torch of Fame; So proudly lifted that it seems afar No earthly Pharos, but a heavenly star, Who, unconfined to Art's diurnal bound, Girds her whole zodiac in his flaming round, And leads the passions, like the orb that guides, From pole to pole, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... of book shelves with glass doors bearing silver handles, girded the sides of the room, and the walls were painted in imitation of the Pompeian style; while the corners of the ceiling held lovely frescoes of the season, and in the centre was a zodiac. Bronze and marble busts shone here and there, and where the panels of the wall were divided by representations of columns, metal brackets and wooden consoles sustained delicate figures ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... faith, we are multiplied by our proxies. How easily we adopt their labors! Every ship that comes to America got its chart from Columbus. Every novel is debtor to Homer. Every carpenter who shaves with a foreplane borrows the genius of a forgotten inventor. Life is girt all around with a zodiac of sciences, the contributions of men who have perished to add their point of light to our sky. Engineer, broker, jurist, physician, moralist, theologian, and every man, inasmuch as he has any science, is a definer and map-maker ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... the Creator, extolled be His might and exalted be He! Indeed, God is exalted and magnified above the speech of the deniers. He avouched that it is the planets[FN79] that order the affairs of all creatures and he set down twelve mansions to twelve signs [of the Zodiac] and made each sign thirty degrees, after the number of the days of the month, so that in twelve mansions there are three hundred and threescore [degrees], after the number of the days of the year; ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... and astrology, moreover, occupy a conspicuous place. Astronomy was of old standing in Babylonia, and the standard work on the subject, written from an astrological point of view, which was translated into Greek by Berossus, was believed to go back to the age of Sargon of Akkad. The zodiac was a Babylonian invention of great antiquity; and eclipses of the sun as well as of the moon could be foretold. Observatories were attached to the temples, and reports were regularly sent by the astronomers ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... seemed to flit thro' his glass, "Ha! there it is now," the poor maniac cries; While his fancy with forms but too monstrous, alas! From his own Tory zodiac peoples ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... the boy with an air of vexation. "Tell me, you bold son of man, under what sign of the zodiac were you born?" ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger

... learn several short sentences; for my tutor would order one of my servants to fetch something, to turn about, to make a bow, to sit, or to stand, or walk, and the like. Then I took down the sentence in writing. He showed me also, in one of his books, the figures of the sun, moon, and stars, the zodiac, the tropics, and polar circles, together with the denominations of many plains and solids. He gave me the names and descriptions of all the musical instruments, and the general terms of art in playing on each of them. After he had left ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift

... and eighty-six broad; the form, of it a rhomboid: the walls richly ornamented by Pietro d'Abano, who originally designed, and began to paint the figures round the sides: they have however been retouched by Giotto, who added the signs of the Zodiac to Peter's mysterious performances, which meant to explain the planetary influences, as he was a man deeply dipped in judicial astrology; and there is his own portrait among them, dressed like a Zoroastrian priest, with a planet in the ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... between them at intervals, supporting rare specimens of glass and earthenware. Opposite the fireplace, stood a large clock, curiously painted and decorated with emblematical devices, with the signs of the zodiac, and provided with movable figures to strike the hours on a bell; while from the centre of the roof hung a great ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... at the spring," said he, as he turned from the gate. "You must consider me as the Aquarius of your domestic Zodiac. I should like to be my father's camel-driver, if ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... visible by day (along such a tunnel) as well as by night; thirdly, they must have the means of observing the sun at solar noon on every day in the year; and fourthly, they must also have the entire range of the zodiac or planetary highway brought into view along their ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... heaven, and make me there Many a less and greater sphere: Make me the straight and oblique lines, The motions, lations and the signs. Make me a chariot and a sun, And let them through a zodiac run; Next place me zones and tropics there, With all the seasons of the year. Make me a sunset and a night, And then present the morning's light Cloth'd in her chamlets of delight. To these make clouds to pour down rain, With ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... which all things are enlightened, the breast-plate in the middle of the ephod resembled the earth, which has the middle place in the world. The girdle signified the sea, which goes around the world. The sardonyxes declared the sun and moon. The twelve stones are the twelve months of signs of the zodiac. The mitre is the heaven, because above all. The seven lamps upon the golden candlesticks represent the seven planets, and so on every article had a reference to some particle of the Egyptian Deities. But the ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden

... are identical with those of the Babylonian god Ea and the Egyptian Osiris, and their reputations as warriors with the respective sons and representatives, Marduk and Horus. The composite animal of Ea-Marduk, the "sea-goat" (the Capricornus of the Zodiac), was also the vehicle of Varuna in India whose relationship to Indra was in some respects analogous to that of Ea to Marduk in Babylonia.[151] The Indian "sea-goat" or Makara was in fact intimately associated both with Varuna and with Indra. This monster assumed a great variety ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith

... conferred by the hereditary and psychic influences converging at the conception of an individual, and expressed in the birth. Probably, too, an argument could be established in regard to the influence of the planets ruling at the nativity, and also from the dominion of the signs of the zodiac in the horoscope of birth. But this would be beyond the scope and intention of ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial

... us. Soon perceiv'd That Poet sage how at the car of light Amaz'd I stood, where 'twixt us and the north Its course it enter'd. Whence he thus to me: "Were Leda's offspring now in company Of that broad mirror, that high up and low Imparts his light beneath, thou might'st behold The ruddy zodiac nearer to the bears Wheel, if its ancient course it not forsook. How that may be if thou would'st think; within Pond'ring, imagine Sion with this mount Plac'd on the earth, so that to both be one Horizon, and two hemispheres apart, Where lies the ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... denarius, the words for hour and minute ([Greek: hora, lepton]), and possibly the signs of the zodiac. [R. Caldwell, Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Languages, London, 1856, p. 438.] On the probable Chinese origin of the zodiac see ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith

... seeing through the heavens as through a crystal, wherein is placed the planets, with all the rest of the presaging comets—the whole circuit of the world from east to west, north and south. There shalt thou know, Faustus, whereof the fiery sphere above, and the signs of the Zodiac doth not burn and consume the whole face of the earth, being hindered by placing the two moist elements between them—the airy clouds and wavering waves of water. Yea, Faustus, I will learn thee the secrets of Nature; what the cause is, ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various

... have the greatest admiration for the clock placed in the tower bearing its name, and the mechanism of which shows the progress of the sun and moon through the twelve signs of the zodiac. In a niche above the dialplate is an image of the Virgin, which is gilded and lifesize; and it is said that on certain fete days, each blow of the pendulum makes two angels appear, trumpet in hand, followed by the Three Wise Men, who prostrate themselves at the feet of the Virgin ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... the skilful gard'ner drew Of flowers and herbs this dial new! Where, from above, the milder sun Does through a fragrant zodiac run: And, as it works, th' industrious bee Computes its time as well as we. How could such sweet and wholesome hours Be reckon'd, but with ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... faith in the Heavenly Signs, but often fail to find a Sign of a Fish under the fishiest sign of the Zodiac. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various

... may be, into the Public Library, "where is all the recorded wit of the world, but none of the recording,"—where Shakespeare and Old Sleuth and Pansy look all alike and as readable as the card catalogues, or the boy attendants, or the signs of the Zodiac in the vestibule floor. ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp

... outline, circumference; perimeter, periphery, ambit, circuit, lines tournure[obs3], contour, profile, silhouette; bounds; coast line. zone, belt, girth, band, baldric, zodiac, girdle, tyre[Brit], cingle[obs3], clasp, girt; cordon &c. (inclosure) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... Moses in this passage is speaking of the civil year, then the flood occurred in September or October, an opinion I find Lyra held. It is true that fall and winter are more liable to rains, the signs of the zodiac pointing to humidity. Again, as Moses writes further on, a dove was sent forth in the tenth month and brought back a green olive branch. This fact seems to harmonize with the view that the deluge began ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... several surgeons and doctors in his suite, and consulted them with the most unlimited confidence when ill. He decorated the palace of Marocco: in one of the apartments of the seraglio, of which he had had painted, in a superior style, the twelve signs of the zodiac; for which his ignorant and bigoted subjects accused him of having conspired against the Deity, in imitating, by gross and ill-formed images, the works of the Almighty. This prince was an intolerable drunkard; so that the Marabets and chiefs of the empire called Abdelmelk ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny

... out of the temptation and antagonism of vice? How could Charity ever have appeared in the world, were there no dark ways to be trodden by its bright feet, and no suffering and sadness to require its aid? I look at these asylums, these hospitals, these ragged schools—a zodiac of beautiful charities, girdling all this selfishness and sin—I look at these monuments which humanity will honor when war shall be but a legend, and laurels have withered to dust; and when I think what they have grown out of, and why they stand here, I regard them as so many sublime ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin

... the trembling parturient women; her whom the influence of Juno rendered inexorable to myself. For, when now the natal hour of Hercules, destined for so many toils, was at hand, and the tenth sign {of the Zodiac} was laden with the {great} luminary, the heavy weight was extending my womb; and that which I bore was so great, that you might {easily} pronounce Jupiter to be the father of the concealed burden. And now I was no longer able to endure my labours: ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... Nineveh and Babylon; organized human existence; invented arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and the calendar; counted the planets; numbered the days of the year, divided them into months and weeks; established the Sabbath; decorated the skies with the signs of the zodiac, instituting, in the interim, colleges of savants and priests. These speculated on the origin of things, attributed it to spontaneous generation, the descent of man to evolution, entertaining the vulgar meanwhile with tales of ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus

... pieces of artillery (Rare). 3. Fixed deeply. 4. The girdle of a Jewish priest. 5. A constellation of the zodiac. 6. A long cloak extending from head to feet, worn by women. 7. To counterfeit. 8. A genus of lamellibranchiate bivalves. 9. A state of quiet or tranquility. 10. To throw back. 11. A sixpence. 12. ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various

... why I don't build castles in the sky; You smile, and you are thinking too, He's nothing else on earth to do. It needs, my dear, romantic ware To raise such fabrics in the air— Ethereal bricks, and rainbow beams, The gossamer of Fancy's dreams: And much the architect may lack Who labours in the zodiac To rear what I, from chime to chime, Attempted ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker

... Father of bright Days, Must needs bestow on you both good and many, Who, building trophies of his Children's praise, Run their rich Zodiac ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... His apparel is daubed commonly with statute lace, the suit itself of durance, and the hose full of long pains. He hath many other lasting suits which he himself is never able to wear out, for they wear out him. The zodiac of his life is like that of the sun, marry not half so glorious. It begins in Aries and ends in Pisces. Both head and feet are, all the year long, in troublesome and laborious motions, and Westminster Hall is his sphere. He lives between ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... indeed bold of Buonamico to set himself to make a God the Father five braccia high, the hierarchy, the heavens, the angels, the zodiac, and all the things above to the sky of the moon, and then the element of fire, the air, the earth, and finally the centre. For the two lower corners he did a St Augustine and a St Thomas Aquinas. At ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari

... against itself, the upper half containing the couches and tables, the other reserved for the service and the entertainments that follow, the ceiling was met by columns, the walls hidden by panels of gems. On a frieze twelve pictures, surmounted by the signs of the zodiac, represented the dishes of the different months. Beneath the bronze beds and silver tables mosaics were set in imitation of food that had fallen and had not been swept away. And there, in white ungirdled tunics, ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus

... prosperous, will never so far forsake the traditions of his tribe as to stay long in any one place. His mind is not as ours. A little of our civilisation we can teach him, and he will learn it, as he may learn to repeat by rote the signs of the zodiac or the multiplication table, or to use a table napkin, or to decorously dispose of the stones in a cherry tart. But the lesson sits lightly on him, and he remains in heart as irreclaimable as ever. ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... are to discourse of charity, they take their rise from the river Nilus; or to set out the mystery of the cross, from bell and the dragon; or to dispute of fasting, from the twelve signs of the zodiac; or, being to preach of faith, ground their matter on the square of ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus

... Egyptian art of remote period. These fragments occupy no less than twenty-four cases (77-102). In the first case (77) the visitor should notice the coffin of the mummy Cleopatra, ornamented on the outside with ordinary emblematical drawings and on the inside with a Greek zodiac. The three next cases (78-80) are filled with sepulchral tablets representing various Egyptian divinities, among which the embalmer of the dead, Anubis, ever figures prominently. The cases marked 81, 82, are filled with a collection of rings of ivory, jasper, and cornelian; gold, ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold

... whose intercession was thus secured, "I, the emperor of the Great Illustrious dynasty, have respectfully prepared this paper, to inform the spirit of the sun, the spirit of the moon, the spirits of the five planets, of the constellations of the zodiac, and of all the stars in all the sky," and so on: and the professor adds: "This paper shows how there had grown up around the primitive monotheism of China the recognition and worship of a multitude of celestial and terrestrial spirits." [166] This is ample evidence to prove moon-worship. True, these ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... and his results coincide with those on antiquity to make the American systems quite different from the oriental, Hindu, Jewish, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Celtic systems of days, months, zodiac, and cycles; while they are more like those of Thibet, China, Japan, Lybia, Etruria, &c. At any rate the American systems were anterior to the admission of the week of seven days, being the fourth of a lunation, ...
— The Ancient Monuments of North and South America, 2nd ed. • C. S. Rafinesque

... Chouet, Geneva; aBasilisk and the four elements, Rogny; Bellerophon, the brothers Arnoul and Charles Angeliers; Guillaume Eustace, and Perier, and Bonel, Venice; aBull with the sign Taurus and the Zodiac, Nicholas Bevilacqua, Turin; aCat with a mouse in her mouth, Melchior Sessa and Pietro Nicolini, de Sabio, Venice; two Doves, Jacques Quesnel; an Eagle, Balthazar Bellers, Antwerp, Bladius, Rome, G.Rouille or Roville, Lyons, and the ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts

... accord be heard, Yet all earth hushed at His first word: Then shall be seen Apollo's car Blaze headlong like a banished star; And the Queen of heavenly Loves Dragged downward by her dying doves; Vulcan, spun on a wheel, shall track The circle of the zodiac; Silver Artemis be lost, To the polar blizzards tossed; Heaven shall curdle as with blood; The sun be swallowed in the flood; The universe be silent save For the low drone of winds that lave The shadowed ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various

... hammer, the scraps and odds and ends it contained were found classified in groups under such headings as these—Garlands of Gravity, Poverty's Pot Pourri, Wallat of Wit, Beggar's Balderdash, Octagonal Olio, Zany's Zodiac, Noddy's Nuncheon, Mumper's Medley, Quaffing Quavers to Quip Queristers, Tramper's Twattle, or Treasure and Tinsel from the Tewksbury Tank, and the like. He edited reprints of some rare books—that is to say, he saw them accurately reprinted letter by letter. Of these one ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... three letters to Tiro and one to M. Cicero. Quintus' poetry is now represented only by twenty hexameters on the signs of the zodiac; but he wrote an epic poem, Annales (ad Att. ii. 16, 4 [Quintus] 'ita remittit ut me roget ut annales suos emendem et edam'), and composed tragedies with great rapidity (ad Q.F. iii. 6, 7, 'quattuor tragoedias xvi. diebus absolvisse cum scribas, tu quidquam ab alio mutuaris?'). ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton

... Lead me to those brooks of morn Where a woman's laugh is born,— Let me taste the sap that flows Through the blushes of a rose, Yea, and drain the blood which runs From the heart of dying suns,— Teach me how the butterfly Guessed at immortality,— Let me follow up the track Of Love's deathless Zodiac Where Joy climbs among the spheres Circled by her moon of tears,— Tell me how, when I forget All the schools have taught me, yet I recall each trivial thing In a golden far off Spring,— Give me whispered hints how I May instruct my heart to fly Where ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various

... derived from Arabia, and abounds in mystery and superstition. They regard man as composed of four elements and four essences, and assimilate his constitution and passions to the twelve signs of the zodiac, the seven planets, etc., exaggerating the mysterious sympathy between man and external nature. The successful practice of the hakim or doctor must be based on the principle of "preserving the balance of power" among the four elements, ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... furnish incontrovertible proof of the patience and skill with which astronomy had been cultivated in Mesopotamia, and that, with very inadequate instrumental means, it had reached no inconsiderable perfection. These old observers had made a catalogue of the stars, had divided the zodiac into twelve signs; they had parted the day into twelve hours, the night into twelve. They had, as Alistotle says, for a long time devoted themselves to observations of star-occultations by the moon. They had correct views ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... Faucher-Gudin, from the rectangular zodiac carved upon the ceiling of the great temple of Denderah (Dumichen, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... knows how many thousand years ago The twelvefold Zodiac was made to show The course of stars ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke

... (as she said),—he asked her "whether it wasn't essence of thyme?" On the occasion of starting a convivial club, (he was very fond of such clubs,) somebody proposed that it should consist of twelve members, and be called "The Zodiac,"—each member to be named after a sign. "And what shall I be?" inquired a somewhat solemn man, who feared that they were filled up. "Oh, we'll bring you in as the weight in Libra," was the instant remark of Douglas. A noisy fellow had long interrupted a company ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... I might divine Thy name beyond the zodiac sign Wherefrom our times-to-come descend. He called thee 'Sometime'. Change it, friend: 'Now-time' ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... this capital is, fittingly enough, cosmic. It represents the signs of the Zodiac with the addition, on the facet opposite the Dogana, of Christ blessing a child. Facing S. Giorgio are Aquarius and Capricornus, facing the Lido are Pisces and Sagittarius. Elsewhere are Justice on the Bull, the Moon ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... to us the sun and the moon; those, I mean, that were in the nature of buttons on the high priest's shoulders. And for the twelve stones, whether we understand by them the months, or whether we understand the like number of the signs of that circle which the Greeks call the Zodiac, we shall not be mistaken in their meaning. And for the mitre, which was of a blue color, it seems to me to mean heaven; for how otherwise could the name of God be inscribed upon it? That it was also illustrated with a crown, and that of gold also, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... equipage of opinion—he must walk with a train of self-conceit following him—he must not strip himself to a buff-jerkin, to the doublet and hose of his real merits, but must surround himself with a cortege of prejudices, like the signs of the Zodiac—he must seem any thing but what he is, and then he may pass for any thing he pleases. The world love to be amused by hollow professions, to be deceived by flattering appearances, to live in a state of hallucination; and can forgive every thing but the plain, downright, simple honest truth—such ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... the Spanish territories spread from the Equator northward and southward through all the signs of the Zodiac far into the temperate zone. Thence came gold and silver to be coined in all the mints, and curiously wrought in all the jewellers' shops, of Europe and Asia. Thence came the finest tobacco, the finest ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... noble statue at Palos, Spain. It consists of a fluted column of the Corinthian order of architecture, capped by a crown, supporting an orb, surmounted by a cross. The orb bears two bands, one about its equator and the other representing the zodiac. On the column are the names of the Pinzon brothers, Martin and Vicente Yanez; and under the prows of the caravels, "Colon," with a list of the persons who accompanied him. The column rests upon a prismatic support, from which protrude four prows, and the pedestal of the ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... give proof of a remote antiquity; but the question is very complicated, and there are as many opinions as writers, and certainly no conclusions against the newness of continents and nations can be based on such evidence. The zodiac itself has been considered a proof of antiquity, but the arguments brought forward ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... imagination; doth grow in effect into another nature in making things either better than Nature bringeth forth or quite anew, as the Heroes, Demi-gods, Cyclops, Furies and such like so as he goeth hand- in-hand with Nature, not inclosed in the narrow range of her gifts but freely ranging within the Zodiac of his own art—her world is brazen; the poet ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock

... my court scholar explain that to me. You are probably a neighbor of the North Pole or Zodiac, or ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... have the greatest faith; for I believe Victorian is her lover. I believe That I shall be to-morrow; and thereafter Another, and another, and another, Chasing each other through her zodiac, As Taurus ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... into ten equal parts, each marked with one of the ten "celestial signs," and the circumference of the smaller dial being divided into twelve equal parts each marked with one of the twelve signs of the zodiac. The long hand of the clock, pointing to the larger dial, was supposed to make one revolution in ten years, and the shorter hand, pointing to the small dial, revolved once in twelve years. Thus, starting from the point where the marks on the two dials coincide, the long hand gained upon ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... when he is in the malignant taile of the venemous Scorpion. And looking vpon my selfe, I was ashamed to see my vile habite among suche sumpteous induments, that me thought my selfe no otherwaies but euen lyke that vile and mortiferous beast among the most noble signes of the Zodiac. The bewtifull and honorable damosels sate in order vpon the Benches, compast about all along by the sides of the walles vppon the right side, and the best of the Court, with a rare and strange kinde ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna

... and mingles well with other symbols when it is needed. The crab is always as delightful as a grotesque, for here we suppose the beast inside the shell; and he sustains his part in a lively manner among the other signs of the zodiac, with the scorpion; or scattered upon sculptured shores, as beside the Bronze Boar of Florence. We shall find him in a basket at Venice, at the base of one ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... ball which floats him through the heavens. What angels invented these splendid ornaments, these rich conveniences, this ocean of air above, this ocean of water beneath, this firmament of earth between? this zodiac of lights, this tent of dropping clouds, this striped coat of climates, this fourfold year? Beasts, fire, water, stones, and corn serve him. The field is at once his floor, his work-yard, his play-ground, his ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... virtue, not her virtues, let us call; For one heroic comprehends them all: One, as a constellation is but one, Though 'tis a train of stars, that, rolling on, Rise in their turn, and in the zodiac run: 150 Ever in motion; now 'tis faith ascends, Now hope, now charity, that upward tends, And downwards ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... thousand feet of as good dirt as ever laid out in the rain; but there was men around drulin' to snipe it, and I knowed it was risky to leave. However, I saw what was gnawin' at the boy, and if ever a man needed a friend and criminal lawyer, that was the time. According to the zodiac, certain persons, to the complainant unknown, had a mess of trouble comin' up and I wanted to have ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach

... the authority of Alypius, and dates from about the fourth century A.D. That we could not be absolutely sure of the readings of ancient Greek melodies, even if we possessed any, is evident from the fact that these note characters, which at first were derived from the signs of the zodiac, and later from the letters of the alphabet, indicate only the relative pitch of the sounds; the rhythm is left entirely to the metrical value of the words in the lines to be sung. Two sets of signs were used for musical notation, the vocal system ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell

... well as a 4-spoked driving wheel. One of the smaller fragments (fig. 7, bottom) contains a series of movable rings which may have served to carry movable scales on one of the three dials. The third fragment (fig. 7, top) has a pair of rings carefully engraved and graduated in degrees of the zodiac (this is, incidentally, the oldest engraved scale known, and micrometric measurements on photographs have indicated a maximum inaccuracy of about 1/2 deg. in the 45 ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price

... unequivocal utterances against the annexation scheme, were regarded as hopeful auguries of a thoroughly united party, and its triumph at the polls; while Mr. Webster, always on the presidential anxious-seat, and carefully watching the signs of the political zodiac, now cordially lent his efforts to ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian

... they gave to the sextant. He was on this occasion conducted further into the interior of his residence, than on his two former visits. Clapperton first exhibited a planisphere of the heavenly bodies. The sultan knew all the signs of the zodiac, some of the constellations, and many of the stars by their Arabic names. The looking glass of the sun was then brought forward, and occasioned much surprise. Clapperton had to explain all its appendages. The inverting telescope was an object of intense astonishment, and Clapperton ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... zodiac and spaced at mathematically regular intervals were nine ovoids of intensely living light. They shone like nine gigantic cabochon cut sapphires; they ranged from palest, watery blue up through azure and purple and down to a ghostly mauve shot with ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt

... ratification of the Concordat. The decorations and fireworks were worthy of so remarkable a confluence of solemnities. High on one of the towers of Notre Dame glittered an enormous star, and at its centre there shone the sign of the Zodiac which had shed its influence over his first hours of life. The myriads of spectators who gazed at that natal emblem might well have thought that his life's star was now at its zenith. Few could have dared to think that it was to mount ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... a sixteenth and last figure, completing the series. Then (says our author), the geomant proceeds to examine the sixteen figures thus obtained (each of which has its name and its mansion, corresponding to one of the twelve signs of the zodiac or the four cardinal points, as well as its signification, good or bad, and indicates also, in a special way, a certain part of the elemental world) and to note each figure according to its presage of weal or ill; and so, with the aid of an astrological table giving the ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne

... the fourth century, Attis bears the cognomen of menotyrannus. At that time this name was undoubtedly understood to mean "lord of the months," because Attis represented the sun who entered a new sign of the zodiac every month.[25] But that was not the original meaning of the term. "Men tyrannus" appears with quite a different meaning in many inscriptions found in Asia Minor. Tyrannos ([Greek: Turannos]), "lord," is a word taken by the Greeks from ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... Lord, Northumberland's fair flower, The Muses' love, patron and favourite, That artisans and scholars dost embrace. And clothest Mathesis in rich ornaments, That admirable mathematic skill, Familiar with the stars and Zodiac, To whom the heaven lies open as her book; By whose directions undeceivable, Leaving our Schoolmen's vulgar trodden paths, And following the ancient reverent steps Of Trismegistus and Pythagoras, Through uncouth ways and unaccessible, Doth pass into the pleasant spacious fields Of divine science ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson

... the planets are visible on the side opposite to the sun. See Airy's 'Popular Astronomy,' p. 124. 'Trine' refers to the appearance of planets 'distant from each other 120 degrees, or the third part of the zodiac. 'Trine was considered a favourable conjunction. Cp. note on Par. Lost, X. 659, in ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott

... the particular star in this artistic zodiac was Therese Romain, dazzling chiefly on account of her ethereal beauty. She had a voice, which did not amount to much, and she had done a little acting on the stage and for the screen, but without conspicuous success. She had devoted years to ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell

... that, at no day and hour, will all of these signs conspire at their greatest potency. For clearly, for instance, the Lion and the Scorpion, being both in the Zodiac, and being separated in the Zodiac by the interposition of two entire constellations, can never be in the ascendant at one and the same time, nor can one be near the ascendant when the other is in that position. Yet there ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... 8 leaves unsigned, ^{8}2[bullet]-3[bullet]^{8}4[bullet]^4A-2B^{8}2C^4, folios numbered. Wanting 2C 4 (? blank). Table of contents. Calendar. Almanack for 24 years. Rules for terms, signs of the Zodiac, dog-days, divisions of the year, Vigils, number of days in the months. Epistle dedicatory to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Grafton's address to the reader. Alphabetical table of contents. At the end: list of Colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, Shires, ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg

... pentalpha; pentacle; meteor. Associated Words: astronomy, astronomer, astronomical, astrolatry, astrolater, astrogeny, astrology, astrologer, astrological, astrometry, astromancy, sidereal, astral, horoscope, constellation, zodiac, observatory, galaxy, acronycal, cosmical, astrophotography, astrophysics, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... Washington. An ancient observatory was of more than ordinary interest to us, erected by a famous Hindoo patron of science, Rajah Manu. Though now quite neglected and in partial ruins, a sun-dial, a zodiac, meridian line, and astronomical appliances are still distinctly traced upon heavy stones, arranged for celestial observations. This proves that astronomy was well advanced at Benares hundreds of years before Galileo was born, and it will be remembered ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... Larry in the Sunside Lounge, a cabaret as nice as any terran nightclub she had ever seen. There were stylistic Zodiac drawings on the walls and blue-mirrored columns supporting the roof. Like everything else aboard the Glory of the Galaxy, the Sunside Lounge hardly seemed to belong on a spaceship. For Sheila Kelly, though—herself a third secretary with the department of Galactic Economy—it was all ...
— A Place in the Sun • C.H. Thames

... her moated flat the bride confidently awaited her Persian fruit. A champion welter-weight not find a peach?—not stride triumphantly over the seasons and the zodiac and the almanac to fetch an Amsden's June or a ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry

... seasons, and revolving hours, that still point and barb the anguish of local recollections, telling me of this and that celestial morning that never shall return, and of too blessed expectations, travelling like yourselves through a heavenly zodiac of changes, till at once and for ever they sank into the grave! Often do I think of seeking for some quiet cell either in the Tropics or in Arctic latitudes, where the changes of the year, and the external signs corresponding to them, express themselves ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... belonged. The sun and moon, the planets, are mere symbols. They signify whatever the poet chooses. The planets for the most part stay in conjunction just long enough to flash his thought through their symbolism, and no permanent relation is established between the soul and the zodiac. There is, however, one link of correlation between the external and internal worlds which Emerson considered established, and in which he believed almost literally, namely, the moral law. This idea he drew from Kant through Coleridge and ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman

... spheres concentric with the earth, one within the other, and connected in the following way. Each of the inner spheres revolves about a diameter the ends of which (poles) are fixed on the next sphere enclosing it. The outermost sphere represents the daily rotation, the second a motion along the zodiac circle; the poles of the third sphere are fixed on the latter circle; the poles of the fourth sphere (carrying the planet fixed on its equator) are so fixed on the third sphere, and the speeds and directions of rotation so arranged, that the planet describes on ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... temple. Only the portico was visible under piled houses and a triumphant mosque; but once we were down in the entombed temple itself, it gave a sense of secrecy, and mystic rites, to look up from under the dark roof of heavy stone with its painted zodiac, out from hidden halls of carving and colour, to the clustered houses of dried brick built before the temple was uncovered. There was a sense of tragedy and failure, too, toiling up the steep slope to the town level, and passing, on the half-buried walls, gigantic ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... india-rubbers, a lobster Haliburton had chosen to send, a wooden lion, the wax doll, a Salter's balance, the "New York Observer," the bow and arrows, a Nuremberg nanny-goat, Rose's watering-pot, and the magnetic fishes, which gravely circled round and round them slowly and made the petty zodiac ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale

... times to demonstrate to all the company, and took their testimony of the fact. This I did on account of the ignorance of the common people, who do not know that the sun moves through its circle of the zodiac. At one time I saw our shadow to the south, at another to the north, at another to the west, and at another to the east, and sometimes, for an hour or two of the day, we had ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson

... that of Venus (called in Greek [Greek: Phosphoros]). Before the rising of the sun, it is called the morning-star, and after the setting, the evening-star. It has the same revolution through the zodiac, both as to latitude and longitude, with the other planets, in a year, and never is more than two[134] signs from the sun, whether it ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... to be gained by pressing inquiries upon a gentleman who ordered his affairs by the zodiac. At Buffalo the Governor made earnest efforts to rent a yacht, without confiding to Archie just what use he expected to make of it. No yachts being in the market, the Governor set about hiring a tug, and did in fact lease one for a month from a dredging company, paying cash and the ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson

... to Apollo for protection on this very plea, addressing him as "the Holy One, and an exiled God from heaven." Thus Hercules was compelled to serve Eurystheus; and his twelve labors were typed in the twelve signs of the zodiac. AEsculapius and Prometheus both suffered excruciating tortures and death for the good of men. And Dionysus—himself the centre of all joy—was persecuted by the Queen of Heaven and compelled to ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... closed curves, always a quadrant in advance of the earth, completing their orbits once a year. Those near the pole of the ecliptic will describe circles, being always at right angles to the motion. Those in the plane of the ecliptic (near the zodiac) will be sometimes at right angles to the motion, but at other times will be approached or receded from; hence these will oscillate like pendulums once a year; and intermediate stars will have intermediate motions—that is to say, will describe ellipses of varying ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge

... very much defaced: in the sacristy is a circular-arched door, elaborately sculptured with the signs of the Zodiac; but the formerly-existing stones on which the effigy of the fairy appeared have been entirely ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... my brother-in-law, "when Uranus was in conjunction, Saturn in opposition, and the Conservatives in power. Venus was all gibbous, the Zodiac was in its zenith, and the zenith was in Charles's Wain, commonly called The Cart. My sign was Oleaqua—The Man with the Watering Pot. When I add that a thunderstorm was raging, and that my father had bet five pounds I should be a girl, ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... his Lodgings—which were very mean—and declared that he had invented a perfect and particular System, which he called the Astronomical Terrestrial Cabala. He had run through the whole Pentateuch, and had reduced to the Signs of the Zodiac the words of such Scripture Verses as answered to the same; one to Aries, the second to Taurus, the third to Gemini, and the like. In short, there appeared a kind of Harmony in 'em, particularly when the Terrestrial Cabala (which was ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... ice? And the hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it? The waters are hidden as with stone, And the face of the deep is frozen. Canst thou bind the cluster of the Pleiades, Or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou lead forth the signs of the Zodiac in their season? Or canst thou guide the Bear with her train? Knowest thou the ordinances of the heavens? Canst thou establish the dominion thereof in the earth? Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds, That abundance of ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various

... vain to establish the twelve tribes, seeing that now the death of Joseph hath destroyed the covenant. All the works of God were made to correspond to the number of the tribes—twelve are the signs of the zodiac, twelve the months, twelve hours hath the day, twelve the night, and twelve stones are set in Aaron's breastplate—and now that Joseph hath departed, the covenant of the tribes is set ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... most important point of departure in astronomy. A northern constellation forming the first of the twelve signs of the zodiac, into which the sun enters about the 20th of March. With Musca, Aries contains 22 nebulae, 8 double and 148 single stars, but not above 50 are visible to the unassisted eye. The commencement of this sign, called the first point of Aries, is the origin ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... present from an admiring Marchesa, curiously embroidered with algebraic figures like a conjuror's robe, and with a skull-cap of black satin on his hive of a head, the man of gravity was seated at a huge claw-footed old table, round as the zodiac. It was covered with printer papers, files of documents, rolls of manuscript, stray bits of strange models in wood and metal, odd-looking pamphlets in various languages, and all sorts of books, including many presentation-copies, ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville

... reins or throw them loose; he forgot the names of the horses. But when he beheld the monstrous forms scattered over the surface of heaven,—the Scorpion extending two great arms, his tail, and his crooked claws over the space of two signs of the zodiac,—when the boy beheld him, reeking with poison and menacing with fangs, his courage failed, and the reins fell from his hands. The horses, unrestrained, went off into unknown regions of the sky in among the stars, hurling the chariot over pathless places, now ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... all resplendent and shining with gold who occupies the summit of the tower. He regards the world from on high, he commands all the country. Before him extend the stars of the North, and all the constellations of the zodiac. Under his superb feet he holds the sceptre of the law, and he sees under him all the people of Winchester. The other cocks are humble subjects of this one, whom they see thus raised in mid-air above them: he scorns the winds, that bring the rains, and, turning, ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison

... the planet Venus. The year was divided into twelve months of thirty days each, an intercalary month being inserted from time to time to rectify the resulting error in the length of the year. The months had been originally called after the signs of the zodiac, whose names have come down to ourselves with comparatively little change. But by the side of the lunar year the Babylonians also used a sidereal year, the star Capella being taken as a fixed point in ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce

... been the vassal, was compelled to witness, before he departed, the insolence of a pontiff who took a special pride in insulting and humbling his house, and trampling upon the pride of Charles, Philip and Ferdinand. In France too, the disastrous siege of Metz had taught him that in the imperial zodiac the fatal sign of Cancer had been reached. The figure of a crab, with the words "plus citra," instead of his proud motto of "plus ultra," scrawled on the walls where he had resided during that dismal epoch, avenged more deeply, perhaps, than the jester thought, the previous misfortunes ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... star which made the sun To dazzle if he durst look on, Now mantled o'er in Bethlehem's night, Borrowed a star to show Him light! He that begirt each zone, To whom both poles are one, Who grasped the zodiac in His hand And made it move or stand, Is now by nature man, By stature but a span; Eternity is now grown short; A King is born without a court; The water thirsts; the fountain's dry; And life, being born, made ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris

... older than the bride. Matches are arranged by the parents, the horoscopes of the children being compared among the well-to-do. The zodiacal sign of the boy's horoscope should be stronger than that of the girl's, so that she may be submissive to him in after-life. Thus a girl whose zodiac sign is the lion should not be married to a boy whose sign is the ram, because in that case the wife would dominate the husband. There is no special rule as to the time of the betrothal, and the ceremony is ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... library at Agade have been preserved at Nineveh, from which we learn that the star-charts were even then divided into constellations, which were known by the names which they bear to this day, and that the signs of the zodiac were used for determining the courses of the sun, moon, and of the five planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes

... the proper time for the cross-eyed woman to fool with the garden hose. I have faced death in almost every form, and I do not know what fear is, but when a woman with one eye gazing into the zodiac and the other peering into the middle of next week, and wearing one of those floppy sunbonnets, picks up the nozzle of the garden hose and turns on the full force of the institution, I fly wildly to the ...
— Good Stories from The Ladies Home Journal • Various

... "Darajah"an instant; also a degree (of the Zodiac). We still find this division of time in China and Japan, where they divide the twenty-four hours into twelve periods, each of which is marked by a quasi-Zodiacal ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... his method of interpreting the Scriptures—and alas! through secret political cares also—had arrived at the conviction that the end of the world was near. That again seemed to the learned Melanchthon very dubious. So if Melanchthon began to talk about the signs of the zodiac and aspects, and explained Luther's success by his having been born under the sign of the Sun, then Luther would exclaim, "I don't think much of your Sol. I am a peasant's son. My father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... and over it a pink satin robe, with scarlet ribbons to match. Another, a short blue satin dress, beneath which appeared a handsome purple satin petticoat; the whole trimmed with yellow bows. They looked like the signs of the zodiac. All had diamonds and pearls; old and young, and middle-aged; including little children, of whom ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... October I am the bright side of the moon, and the telescopes of the town are busy observing my phenomena; after which it is as though I had rolled over on my dark side, there to lie forgotten till once more the sun entered the proper side of the zodiac. But let me except always the few steadily luminous spirits I know, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. If any one wishes to become famous in a community, let him buy a small farm on the edge of it and cultivate fruits, berries, ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen

... the path which the sun appears to follow among the stars, and which is known as the ecliptic. It is natural to assume that the small planets also move in the same great highway, which leads them through all the signs of the zodiac in succession. Some of the small planets, no doubt, deviate rather widely from the track of the sun, but the great majority are approximately near it. This consideration at once simplifies the search for new planets. A certain ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... story under consideration is the eleventh of a series of twelve. Each of these answers to a month, and to the corresponding sign of the Zodiac. The Assyrian year began with the spring equinox; consequently, the eleventh month, called "the rainy," answers to our January-February, and to the sign which corresponds with our Aquarius. The aquatic adventure of Hasisadra, therefore, is not inappropriately placed. It is curious, ...
— Hasisadra's Adventure - Essay #7 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley

... was 3.1416: I have the anecdote from the legatee's executor, who opened the book. That a banker should square the circle is very credible: but how could a City man come by the notion that a thousand pounds could be got for it? A friend of mine, one of the twins of my zodiac, will spend a thousand pounds, if he have not done it already, in black and white cyclometry: but I will answer for it that he, a man of sound business notions, never entertained the idea of [pi] recouping him, as they now say. I speak ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... sovereign power, And I could witness his most kingly hour, When he doth lighten up the golden reins, 550 And paces leisurely down amber plains His snorting four. Now when his chariot last Its beams against the zodiac-lion cast, There blossom'd suddenly a magic bed Of sacred ditamy, and poppies red: At which I wondered greatly, knowing well That but one night had wrought this flowery spell; And, sitting down close by, began to muse What it might mean. ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats

... page 31.—A circular and brazen table, sculptured with strange characters and mysterious figures; near it was a couch on which lay several volumes. A cabalistic table, perhaps a zodiac. The books were doubtless Sepher Happeliah, the Book of Wonders; Sepher Hakkaneh, the Book of the Pen; and Sepher Habbahir, the Book of Light. This last unfolds the ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli

... reference of different prepositions to the same objective noun: to wit, "Some writers separate the preposition from its noun, in order to connect different prepositions to the same noun; as, 'To suppose the zodiac and planets to be efficient of, and antecedent to, themselves.' Bentley, Serm. 6. This [construction], whether in the familiar or the solemn style, is always inelegant; and should never be admitted, but in forms of law, and the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... are approaching, six on either side, emblematic of the increase and decrease of the days in the twelve months; and between these is a procession of boats, in which are deities and figures. In the inner side of this diadem the signs of the zodiac are represented. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various

... representation of the sky at the time the temple was built; and finding a division made between the signs of the crab and the lion, and marks for the sun and moon there, they took it into their heads that the sun must have entered the Zodiac at that spot, on the year this Zodiac was made; and, calculating back, found that must be at least seventeen thousand years ago. Hundreds of thousands visited the wonderful antediluvian monument, in the National Library, in ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... the point where the "roof-tree" crosses the Zodiac Ring Is a warm, red star in Scorpio. This is Antares; while, in the North, Etanin marks the ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low

... because, through precession, the stars are all out of place as respects R.A. and Dec. Even the Society's maps, constructed so as to be right for 1830, are beginning to be out of date. But a matter of 20 or 30 years either way is not important.[10] My Maps, Handbook and Zodiac-chart have been constructed for the year 1880, so as to be serviceable for the next ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor

... in a cabinet, may be divided into two great classes—the consular and the imperial; both are numerous and valuable. In the cabinet of the Grand Duke of Tuscany is a set of twelve medals of Antonius Pius, each with one of the signs of the Zodiac on the reverse, and part of another set, eight in number with as many ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner

... it was observed that the stars retained their relative places—that the times of their rising and setting varied with the seasons—that sun, moon, and planets moved among them in a plane, and the belt of the Zodiac was marked out and divided, then a new order of things began. Traces of the earlier stage remained in the names of the signs and constellations, just as the Scandinavian mythology survives now in the names of the days of the week: but for all that, the understanding ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... Calendrier, p. 73,) which Mahomet had studied. 3. The golden chariot does not exist either in science or fiction; but I much fear Dr. Johnson has confounded the Pleiads with the great bear or wagon, the zodiac with a northern constellation:— ''Ark-on q' hn kai amaxan epiklhsin ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... he pulled the zodiac partially over him, and tried to button his alapaca duster a little closer, but his sleep was troubled by the sociability of the coyotes and the midnight twitter of the mountain lion. He ate moss agates rare and spruce gum for breakfast. When he got to the camp he looked like a forty-day starvationist ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... to the gay saloon, Resplendent as a summer noon, Where, 'neath a pendent wreath of lights, A Zodiac of flowers and tapers— (Such as in Russian ball-rooms sheds Its glory o'er young dancers' heads)— Quadrille performs her mazy rites, And reigns supreme o'er ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... b. at Lincoln, studied at both Camb. and Oxf. He was a kinsman of Cecil, who gave him employment in Ireland. He translated from the Latin of Manzolli The Zodiac of Life, a satire against the Papacy, and The Popish Kingdome by T. Kirchmayer, a similar work; also The Foure Bookes of Husbandrie of Conrad Heresbach. In 1563 he pub. a vol. of original ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... year into twelve months, which they name after the signs of the zodiac. The era is ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell

... prelate would not harm me, and having assurance that I should be paid, I armed myself with a large poniard and my good coat of mail, and betook myself to his palace, where he had drawn up all his household. I entered, and Paulino followed with the silver vase. It was just like passing through the Zodiac, neither more nor less; for one of them had the face of the lion, another of the scorpion, a third of the crab. However, we passed onward to the presence of the rascally priest, who spouted out a torrent of such language as only priests and Spaniards have at their command. In return I never raised ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... dignity, for though the pylons and obelisks have gone, and its outside precincts are smothered in a mass of Roman debris, the hypostyle hall which we enter is perhaps more impressive than any other interior in Egypt. The massive stone roof, decorated with illumination and its celebrated zodiac, is supported by eighteen huge columns, each capped by the head of the goddess Hathor, to whom the temple is dedicated, while columns and walls alike ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly

... Good, of whom that great luminary is the visible symbol. In our solemn processions, the chariot sacred to Oromasdes precedes the horse dedicated to Mithras; and there is deep meaning in the arrangement. The Sun and Zodiac, the Balance and the Rule, are but emblems of truths, mysterious and eternal. As the garlands we throw on the sacred fire feed the flame, rather than extinguish it, so the sublime symbols of our religion are intended to preserve, not to conceal, ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child

... direful things happened to this world, which was supposed to be the only world in the universe. As the moon has always been the most observed of all the heavenly bodies, and as she passes most rapidly across the constellations of the zodiac, it is easy to understand that her phases should excite profound wonder, and that strange effects should be predicated upon these phases, called "changes" from time immemorial. In fact, however, the moon is not "changing" at one time any more than at another. She is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... subordinating, who knows? Were it only by the identity of the law, the evolution of the comet in the firmament to the whirling of the infusoria in the drop of water. A machine made of mind. Enormous gearing, the prime motor of which is the gnat, and whose final wheel is the zodiac. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... the first of the signs of the Zodiac, which the sun enters on March 21, though the constellation itself, owing to the precession of the equinoxes, is no longer within the limits of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... by the introduction of dots, and, in some cases, by the insertion of minute sketches of animals, birds, arrows, signs of the zodiac, etc., with here and there one of a humorous, possibly ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green



Words linked to "Zodiac" :   Scorpio, Aquarius, Aries, Taurus, celestial sphere, star sign, planetary house, astrology, welkin, house, vault of heaven, diagram, sign of the zodiac, exaltation, Pisces, Gemini, sphere, sign, zodiacal, empyrean, Libra, firmament, Capricornus, Capricorn, Virgo, star divination, region, cancer, heavens, Sagittarius, Scorpius



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