"Pythagorean" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... attached would seem to have been grammar, rhetoric, arithmetic, medicine, and geometry. From one or two passages that are preserved, we should be inclined to fancy that Varro attached a superstitious (almost a Pythagorean) importance to numbers. [32] He himself was not an adherent of any system, but as Mommsen quaintly expresses it, he led a blind dance between them all, veering now to one now to another, as he wished to avoid any unpleasant conclusion or to catch at some attractive ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... order that I may not be suspected of secret connivance, which is foreign to my nature—that M. Leroux has my full sympathy. Not that I am a believer in his quasi-Pythagorean philosophy (upon this subject I should have more than one observation to submit to him, provided a veteran covered with stripes would not despise the remarks of a conscript); not that I feel bound to this author by any special ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... with the sun and moon, composed the attributes of the dual deity Iswara and Isi, representing the male and female natural powers, and, applying this to the famous Pythagorean triangle, we find that the upright symbol or male, which was the number or power 3, when combined with the female prostrate symbol, which was the number or power 4, gives a product in the Hypotenuse of 5, which is the number of the typical elements of the oldest known Hindoo philosophy. ...
— On the Antiquity of the Chemical Art • James Mactear
... Elysium there flowed a gentle, silent stream, called Lethe (oblivion), whose waters had the effect of dispelling care, and producing utter forgetfulness of former events. According to the Pythagorean doctrine of the transmigration of souls, it was supposed that after the shades had inhabited Elysium for a thousand years they were destined to animate other bodies on {134} earth, and before leaving Elysium they drank of the river Lethe, in ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... thinke of the souls departed, they will answere that they be immortall, and that as soone as any one departeth out of this life, he becommeth a diuel if he haue liued well in this world, if otherwise, that the same diuel changeth him into a bufle, oxe, or dogge. [Marginal note: Pythagorean like.] Wherefore to this diuel they doe much honour, to him doe they sacrifice, praying him that he will make them like vnto himselfe, and not like other beastes. They haue moreouer another sort ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... real, or as the whole to the parts, or as the subject to the object, or as the cause to the effect, or as the end to the means? Shall we say with Aristotle, that the soul is the entelechy or form of an organized living body? or with Plato, that she has a life of her own? Is the Pythagorean image of the harmony, or that of the monad, the truer expression? Is the soul related to the body as sight to the eye, or as the boatman to his boat? (Arist. de Anim.) And in another state of being is the soul to be conceived of as vanishing into ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... black breeches, like the cut and the white or shiny line of the creases, assigned the date of the purchase some three years back. The roomy garments failed to disguise the lean proportions of the wearer, due apparently rather to constitution than to a Pythagorean regimen, for the worthy man was endowed with thick lips and a sensual mouth; and when he smiled, displayed a set of white teeth which would have done ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... an atheist, probably because there was nothing in his writings to which he might be pinned down, that fate befell two of his contemporaries, Hippo of Rhegium and Diogenes of Apollonia. Very little, however, is known of them. Hippo, who is said to have been a Pythagorean, taught that water and fire were the origin of everything; as to the reason why he earned the nickname atheos, it is said that he taught that Water was the primal cause of all, as well as that he maintained that ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann |
