"Ecliptic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the notion of the world as a disc, or a ball, the centre of the universe, round which moved six celestial circles, of the Meridian, the Equator, the Ecliptic, the two Tropics, and the Horizon, the Arab philosophers on the side of the earth's surface worked out a doctrine of a Cupola or Summit of the world, and on the side of the heavens a pseudo-science of the Anoua or Settings of the Constellations, connected with the twelve ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... imaginary girdle or belt in the celestial sphere, which extends about eight degrees on each side of the Ecliptic. It is divided into twelve portions, called the signs of the Zodiac, within which all the planets make their revolutions. The Zodiac is so called from the animals represented upon it, and is supposed to have originated in remote ages and in latitudes where the camel ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... successive stages marked by those twelve constellations which are still called the Signs of the Zodiac. In time even these observations were excelled, and it now appears certain that the Chaldaeans recognized the annual displacement of the equinoctial point upon the ecliptic, a discovery that is generally attributed to the Greek astronomers. But, like Hipparchus, they made faults of calculation in consequence of ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... evidently consists in this, that it not only assigns a primitive substance, but even undertakes to show by observation and experiment how others arise from it, and transformations occur. As to the discovery of the obliquity of the ecliptic by the aid of a gnomon attributed to Anaximenes, it was merely a boast of his vainglorious countrymen, and altogether beyond the scientific grasp of one who had no more exact idea of the nature of the earth than that it was "like a broad leaf floating ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... Bellatrix and Saiph ... And higher yet—and there flamed the exquisite flower beds of Taurus and Gemini, there burgeoned the riotous wreath of the Crab; there lay the pulsing petals of the Pleiades ... And down the ecliptic garden path, wafted by a stellar breeze, drifted the ...
— Star Mother • Robert F. Young
... Do we not observe that it is the law of nature—do not brooks run into rivers—rivers into seas—mountains crumble down upon the plains?—are not the seasons contented to equalise the parts of the earth? Why does the sun run round the ecliptic, instead of the equator, but to give an equal share of his heat to both sides of the world? Are we not all equally born in misery? does not death level us all aequo pede, as the poet hath? are we not all equally hungry, thirsty, and sleepy, and thus levelled ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... useless. The study of astrology was intermixed with that of astronomy, of which Babylonia may be considered to be the birthplace. The heavens had been mapped out and the stars named; the sun's course along the ecliptic had been divided into the twelve zodiacal signs, and a fairly accurate calendar had been constructed. Hundreds of observations had been made of the eclipses of the sun and moon, and the laws regulating ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... fellow-inquirer, though in a very different guise or attitude towards himself, as matters no longer to be reasoned upon and understood, but to be seen rather, to be looked at and heard. Did not he see the angle of the earth's axis with the ecliptic, the deflexions of the stars from their proper orbits with fatal results here below, and the earth—wicked, unscriptural truth!—moving round the sun, and those flashes of the eternal and unorbed light ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... MAELSTROME roars and foams below; Watch with unmoving eye, where CEPHEUS bends His triple crown, his scepter'd hand extends; 515 Where studs CASSIOPE with stars unknown Her golden chair, and gems her sapphire zone; Where with vast convolution DRACO holds The ecliptic axis in his scaly folds, O'er half the skies his neck enormous rears, 520 And with immense meanders parts the BEARS; Onward, the kindred BEARS with footstep rude Dance round the ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... is all nonsense; it is a proverb set about by Nature to conceal her own want of originality. I am not like that pessimist philosopher who assumed her malignity from the fact of the obliquity of the ecliptic; but the truth is, Nature is a pirate. She has not hesitated to plagiarise from even so humble an individual as myself. Years after I had placed my wicked baronet in his living tomb, she starved to death a hunter in Mexico under precisely ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn |
