"Theophrastus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... disordered; abandoned to all manner of sensuality and dissoluteness, they would require long sleep, warm baths, and the same indulgence as in perpetual sickness. To effect this was certainly very great; but it was greater still, to secure riches from rapine and from envy, as Theophrastus expresses it, or rather by their eating in common, and by the frugality of their table, to take from riches their very being. For what use or enjoyment of them, what peculiar display of magnificence could there be, where the poor man went to the same refreshment with the rich? Hence ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... 341 B.C. in the island of Samos. At the age of eighteen, he repaired to Athens, where he is supposed to have enjoyed the teaching of Xenocrates or Theophrastus. In 306 B.C., he opened a school in a garden in Athens, whence his followers have sometimes been called the 'philosophers of the garden.' His life was simple, chaste, and temperate. Of the 300 works he is said to have written, nothing has come down to us except three letters, ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... greater figure in this field of occult knowledge and of nature mysticism was the far-travelled man and medical genius, Aureolus Theophrastus Bombast, of Hohenheim, generally known as Paracelsus. He was born in 1493 in the neighbourhood of Einsiedeln, not far from Zurich, the son of a physician of repute. He studied in the University of Basle, and later was instructed by Trithemius, Abbot of St. Jacobs ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... Male Fern (Filix mas) or Shield Fern, grows abundantly in all parts of Great Britain, and has been known from the times of Theophrastus and Dioscorides, as a specific remedy for intestinal worms, particularly the tape worm. For medicinal purposes, the green part of the rhizome is kept and dried; this is then powdered, and its oleo-resin is extracted by ether. The green fixed oil ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... aspects without these prejudices. And hence it is that Seneca observes, wood most expos'd to the winds to be the most strong and solid, and that therefore Chiron made Achilles's spear of a mountain-tree; and of those the best, which grow thin, not much shelter'd from the north. Again, Theophrastus seems to have special regard to places; exemplifying in many of Greece, which exceeded others for good timber, as doubtless do our oaks in the Forest of Dean all others of England: And much certainly there may reasonably be attributed to these advantages for the growth of timber, and of almost ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... Theophrastus was discovered not to be a native of Athens, by so strict an adherence to the Attick dialect, as shewed that he had learned it not by custom, but by rule. A man not early formed to habitual elegance, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... minds of Barbarians who have left us no psychological documents. 'Be sure I have made no fantastic Carthage,' he says proudly, pointing to his documents; Ammianus Marcellinus, who has furnished him with 'the exact form of a door'; the Bible and Theophrastus, from which he obtains his perfumes and his precious stones; Gresenius, from whom he gets his Punic names; the Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions. 'As for the temple of Tanit, I am sure of having reconstructed ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus Paracelsus von Hohenheim (1541), ranked Nature and the Bible, like Agrippa, as the best books about God and the only ones ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... like to read to you a passage out of a round-about paper written by a satirist of Greece about the time of Ezra and Nehemiah in Jerusalem. You will easily remark the difference of tone between the seriousness and pathos of the Hebrew prophet and the light and chaffing touch of Theophrastus. "The Flatterer is a person," says that satirist of Greek society, "who will say to you as he walks with you, 'Do you observe how people are looking at you? This happens to no man in Athens but to you. A fine compliment was paid you yesterday in the Porch. ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... history; for the sake of brevity, a retrospective glance must not be directed beyond the fifteenth century, when the arch priest of "modern quackery" made his appearance upon the medical stage. In the year 1493, Phillippus Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombastus de Hohenheim, was ushered into existence, and at a very early age announced his discovery, that the recognised principles of medical science were erroneous, and that in him alone was vested "the art divine, to heal each lurking ill." Possessing a panacea capable, as he boasted, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... Anaximenes is most worthy of note by nature mystics, as well as by scientists. It is well stated by Theophrastus. "The air differs in rarity and in density as the nature of things is different; when very attenuated it becomes fire, when more condensed, wind, and then cloud; and when still more condensed, water and earth and stone; and all other things are composed of these; ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... regulated the motions to be observed in getting a maidenhead. What was the philosopher Strato's book Of Carnal Conjunction?—[ Diogenes Laertius, v. 59.]—And what did Theophrastus treat of in those he intituled, the one 'The Lover', and the other 'Of Love?' Of what Aristippus in his 'Of Former Delights'? What do the so long and lively descriptions in Plato of the loves of his time pretend to? and the ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... the 'Spectator', although, because lifelike, they were, in the usual way, attributed by readers to this or that individual, and so gave occasion for the statement of Pudgell in the Preface to his 'Theophrastus' that ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... clerical "ghost," the Rev. Chauncey Burr, with whom she had collaborated in her "memoirs." Wielding a ready pen, he gave good value, for the chapters were well sprinkled with choice classical quotations and elegant extracts from the poets, together with allusions to Aristotle and Theophrastus, to Madame ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... Nights,"[178:4] mentioned a traditionary belief that sciatica might be relieved by the soft notes of a flute-player, and quoted the Greek philosopher Democritus (born about B. C. 480) as authority for the statement that the same remedy had power to heal wounds inflicted by venomous serpents. According to Theophrastus, a disciple of Plato and Aristotle (B. C. 374-286), gout could be cured by playing a flute over the affected limb;[179:1] and the Latin author Martianus Capella, who flourished about A. D. 490, asserted that music had ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... the practice of medicine; on obstetrics; on the eye; on the pulse, which he properly referred to contractions of the heart. He was aware of the existence of the lacteals, and their anatomical relation to the mesenteric glands. Erasistratus, his colleague, was a pupil of Theophrastus and Chrysippus: he, too, cultivated anatomy. He described the structure of the heart, its connexions with the arteries and veins, but fell into the mistake that the former vessels were for the conveyance of air, the latter for that of blood. He knew ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... history of Aristotle's library, including the MSS. of his own works, is interesting and even romantic. Aristotle's successor in the school was Theophrastus, who added to the library bequeathed him by Aristotle many works of his own, and others purchased by him. Theophrastus bequeathed the entire library to Neleus, his friend and pupil, who, on leaving Athens to reside at Scepsis in the Troad, took the library with him. There it remained ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... organization, but even more in its objective aspects and with reference to the role of the person in the group. One of the earliest classifications of "kinds of conduct" has been ascribed by tradition to a disciple of Aristotle, Theophrastus, who styled himself "a student of human nature." The Characters of Theophrastus is composed of sketches—humorous and acute, if superficial—of types such as "the flatterer," "the boor," "the coward," "the garrulous man." They are as true to modern life as to the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... identified this drug with the [Greek: komakon], which Theophrastus joins with cinnamomum and cassia as an ingredient in aromatic confections. The inducement to this identification was no doubt the singular resemblance which the word bears to the Javanese name of cubeb pepper, viz., Kumukus. If the foundation were ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... ancients are excellent judges of beauty. Socrates calls beauty (we dare not use the contemptible it,) a short-lived tyranny: Xenophon says "Fire burns only when we are near it; but a beautiful face burns and inflames, though at a distance: Plato calls beauty a privilege of nature: Theophrastus (arch fellow,) a silent cheat: Theocritus, (cunning elf,) a delightful prejudice; Carneades, a solitary kingdom, (which he doubtless would keep to himself): Domitian says that nothing is more grateful, (not even killing flies); Aristotle affirms that beauty ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... said, "that he ought not to think highly of himself because he had many subjects, for anyone who had right notions about the gods was entitled to think quite as highly of himself." And Zeno, observing that Theophrastus was admired for the number of his pupils,[264] said, "His choir is, I admit, larger than mine, but mine ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... historian, Duris of Samos, laughed out of court because he, in common with many others, made this mistake? Has not, again, every writer affirmed that Zaleucus drew up a constitution for the Locrians? Are we on that account to regard Theophrastus as utterly discredited, because your favourite Timams attacked his statement? But not to know that one's own great-grandfather was never censor is discreditable, especially as since his consulship no Cornelius ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... we may very properly consult the meanings given in several standard dictionaries and lexicons, for in them we expect to find precision of statement, although in this instance I believe we shall be disappointed. Theophrastus, who lived several centuries before the Christian era, defines "Superstition" according to the translation given of his definition in the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, as "A cowardly state of mind with respect ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... pear, like that of the apple, is shrouded in obscurity, though Egypt, Greece, and Palestine dispute for the honor of having given birth to the tree which bears this prince of fruits. Theophrastus, a Greek philosopher of the fourth century, speaks of the pear in terms of highest praise; and Galen, the father of medical science, mentions the pear in his writings as possessing "qualities which benefit the stomach." The pear ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... in a word, of as much care and attendance as if they were continually sick. It was certainly an extraordinary thing to have brought about such a result as this, but a greater yet to have taken away from wealth, as Theophrastus observes, not merely the property of being coveted, but its very nature of being wealth. For the rich, being obliged to go to the same table with the poor, could not make use of or enjoy their abundance, nor so much as please their vanity by looking at or displaying it. So that the common ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... voraciously, and must disburden themselves; so they take any general topic, as, Melancholy, or Praise of Science, or Praise of Folly, and write and quote without method or end. Now and then out of that affluence of their learning comes a fine sentence from Theophrastus, or Seneca, or Boethius, but no high method, no inspiring efflux. But one cannot afford to read for a few sentences; they are good only as strings ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... bourgeoisie, appointed preceptor in history to the grandson of the great Conde, saw with the keen eyes of a disenchanted observer the spectacle of seventeenth-century society. In 1688, appended to his translation of the Characters of Theophrastus, appeared his only important work, Les Caracteres ou les Moeurs de ce Siecle; revised and enlarged editions followed, until the ninth was published in 1696. "I restore to the public," he wrote, "what the public lent me." In a series of sixteen chapters, each consisting of ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... the editing of classic texts; the intellect that had been associated with the privately printed "Essay on Woman" was now associated with privately printed editions of Catullus which he fondly believed to be flawless, and of Theophrastus, whose Greek text it pleased him to print without accents. In his tranquil old age he made himself as many friends as in his hot manhood he had made himself enemies. Those who had most hated him came under the spell of his ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... sometimes have such a multitude of names, that it would be a flagrant waste of time, to parse them all separately: for example, that wonderful doctor, Paracelsus, who called himself, "Aureolus Philippus Theophrastus Bombastus Paracelsus de ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Readers interested in the known facts concerning the "master-mind, the thinker, the explorer, the creator," the forerunner of Mesmer and even of Darwin and Wallace, who began life with the sounding appellation "Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus ab Hohenheim," should consult Browning's own learned appendical note, and Mr. Berdoe's interesting essay in the Browning ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... that Shakespeare may have seen both Orange and Lemon trees growing in England. The Orange is a native of the East Indies, and no certain date can be given for its introduction into Europe. Under the name of the Median Apple a tree is described first by Theophrastus, and then by Virgil and Palladius, which is supposed by some to be the Orange; but as they all describe it as unfit for food, it is with good reason supposed that the tree referred to is either the Lemon or Citron. Virgil describes it ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... that the characters of the Spectator were drawn from individual persons. Budgell certainly says of Theophrastus that he 'was the Spectator of the age he lived in; he drew the pictures of particular men', but Tickell, who was Addison's friend and literary executor, speaks expressly of 'the feigned person of the Author, and of the several characters that compose his club', and the Spectator himself ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... departments of science, we may trace a gradual development. Astrology of old taught the influence of the stars upon men, which doctrine was accepted by the great physician Theophrastus Paracelsus (1490-1541). This, however, was only part of his belief: the human body was endowed with a double magnetism; one portion attracted to itself the planets and was nourished by them, the result of which was the mental ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... present day. He engaged a young demy of Magdalen College, Oxford—son of Mr. Lucas, saddler, of the High Street, Harwich—who was much pinched to continue his studies at the University, to extract and translate for him whatever Aristotle, Theophrastus and others of the Peripatetic school had written on the subject; to search the college libraries for information concerning the horticulture of China and Persia, the hanging gardens of Babylon, those planted by the learned ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Gr. adamas, untameable), the modern diamond (q.v.), but also a name given to any very hard substance. The Greek word is used by Homer as a personal epithet, and by Hesiod for the hard metal in armour, while Theophrastus applies it to the hardest crystal. By an etymological confusion with the Lat. adamare, to have an attraction for, it also came to be associated with the loadstone; but since the term was displaced by "diamond'' it has had only a figurative and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... associate editor of The Westminster Review from 1851 to 1853. She was about twenty-seven years of age when her first translation appeared, thirty-three when the first of these magazine articles appeared, thirty-eight at the publication of her first story, and fifty-nine when she finished "Theophrastus Such." Two years after she died, at the age of sixty-one. So that George Eliot's literary life covered a period of ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... with organism of the form in the family of the Araceae, or aroid plants. An enveloping leaf (bract), called the spathe, which is often brilliantly colored, surrounds the florets, or fruits, that are disposed upon a spadix. Even the older writers—Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Galen, and Pliny—devote a considerable amount of attention to several species of this interesting family, especially to the value of their swollen stems as a food-stuff, to their uses in medicine, etc. Some species of Arum were eaten, and even nowadays ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... ([Greek words]) originated in a faint recollection of the salses (mud volcanoes) of Agrigentum, which, as I have already mentioned, eject argillaceous mud with a loud noise. It is much to be regretted, in reference to this subject, that the work of Theophrastus [Greek words] 'On the Volcanic Stream in Sicily', to which Diog. Laert., v., 49, refers, has not ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... the effect of this divorce on philosophy itself less disastrous. Theophrastus continued Aristotle's work on Aristotle's lines, and founded the science of Botany as his predecessor had founded that of Zoology, but the Peripatetic School practically died out with him and had very little influence till the study ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... other ancient writers have mentioned the scarabaeus, mostly in connection with Egypt. Orpheus, Theophrastus, Aristophanes, Pliny, Plutarch, AElian, Clement of Alexandria, Porphyry, Horapollon, Diogenes Laertius, who cites as works in which it was mentioned, the Natural Philosophy by Manetho (circa 286-247 B.C.,) the History of the Philosophy of the Egyptians, by Hecataeus (of Abdera? circa 331 ...
— Scarabs • Isaac Myer
... (Enigmaticall Characters, 1658) and Ralph Johnson's "rules" for character-writing in A Scholar's Guide from the Accidence to the University (1665), are fragmentary and oblique. Nor do either of the two English translations of Theophrastus before Gally—the one a rendering of La Bruyere's French version,[1] and the other, Eustace Budgell's The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1714)—touch more than in passing on the nature of the character. Gally's essay, in ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally
... they say that Theophrastus lived to his hundred and seventh year, and did n't he complain of the shortness of life? At eighty a man has had just about time to get warmly settled in his nest. Do you suppose he doesn't enjoy the quiet of that resting-place? ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... to dark and barbarous ages. Theophrastus pronounced Pericles to be insane in consequence of seeing him with an amulet suspended from his neck. And in the declining era of the Roman Empire, we find this superstitious custom so general that the Emperor Caracalla was induced to ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... to acknowledge how little I have advanced, could I find that ever any Mortal Man from Adam, Noah, Solomon, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Dioscorides, and the rest of Nature's Interpreters, had ever arriv'd to the perfect Knowledge of any one Plant, or Vulgar Weed whatsoever: But this perhaps may yet possibly be reserv'd for another State of Things, and a [3]longer Day; that is, When ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... works passed through many vicissitudes. At the death of the philosopher they were bequeathed to Theophrastus, who continued chief of the Peripatetic school for thirty-five years. Theophrastus left them, with his own works, to a philosophical friend and pupil, Neleus, who conveyed them from Athens to his residence at Scepsis, in Asia Minor. About thirty ...
— Fathers of Biology • Charles McRae
... nor dishonesty, justice nor injustice, good nor evil. He was very solitary, lived to be ninety years old, was highly esteemed in his country, and created chief priest. He lived in the time of Epicurus and Theophrastus, about the 120th Olympiad. His followers were called Phyrrhonians; besides which they were named the Ephecticks and Aphoreticks, but more generally Scepticks. This sect made their chiefest good to consist in a sedateness of mind, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... the natural continuation and development of the work of Hipparchus and of Ptolemy; modern physics of that of Democritus and of Archimedes; it was long before biological science outgrew the knowledge bequeathed to us by Aristotle, by Theophrastus ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... in complete forgetfulness of the daily grind, to say nothing of having filled our lungs with comparatively fresh air, and having taken a little exercise. Best of all, we have started a new set of associations; we have paved the way for new acquaintances, Linnaeus, Gray, Dioscorides and Theophrastus, to say nothing of our friend so-and-so whom we always thought rather tiresome but with whom we now have something in common. We shall take up our daily grind to-morrow with a new zest for having forgotten it for a few hours, and find it less of a grind than usual; ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D. |
