"Horoscope" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621; and Sir Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or Inquiries into Vulgar and Common Errors, 1646. The former of these was the work of an Oxford scholar, an astrologer, who cast his own horoscope, and a victim himself of the atrabilious humor, from which he sought relief in listening to the ribaldry of barge-men, and in compiling this Anatomy, in which the causes, symptoms, prognostics, and cures of {137} melancholy are ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... the room, tears started from her eyes, and she murmured to herself, "Can it be possible that Donna Nisida suspects the attachment her brother has formed toward me? Oh! if she do, the star of an evil destiny seems already to rule my horoscope!" ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... deprived of a port, can only thrive by her exceptional genius in fine and easily-moved articles de Paris. The site now under our consideration, however, means to have no such one-sided success. If her horoscope be not cast amiss, this American Glasgow will both make whatever human ingenuity can make, and she will also distribute. One of the first things she intends to do is to tap the stream of food, fuel and lumber destined for the South, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... one-eyed merchant, and this card, Which is blank, is something he carries on his back, Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find The Hanged Man. Fear death by water. I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring. Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone, Tell her I bring the horoscope myself: One must be so careful ...
— The Waste Land • T. S. Eliot
... Malvern Hills was won by the splendid fighting of the National troops, without any agency of their commander, and when they were enthusiastic for a forward movement upon Richmond, McClellan consulted his tactical horoscope, and ordered them to retreat just as if they had been beaten. The second battle of Bull Run, with General John Pope in command on the Union side, and Generals Lee, "Stonewall" Jackson and James Longstreet leading the Confederates, ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... within the bounds of possibility that the similarities of folk-lore may have brought to Fouque's knowledge the outline of the story which Scott tells us was the germ of "Guy Mannering"; where a boy, whose horoscope had been drawn by an astrologer, as likely to encounter peculiar trials at certain intervals, actually had, in his twenty-first year, a sort of visible encounter with the Tempter, and came off conqueror by his strong faith in the Bible. Sir Walter, between ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... forbidden— What destined term may be Within the future hidden For us, Leuconoe. Both thou and I Must quickly die! Content thee, then, nor madly hope To wrest a false assurance from Chaldean horoscope. ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... makes it difficult for me to soberly realize that my ten-year dream is actually dissolved; and that is that it reverses my horoscope. The proverb says, "Born ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... fate is then accomplished," replied Boys-Bourredon. "My horoscope predicted that I should die by the love of a great lady. Ah, God!" said he, clutching his good sword, "I will sell my life dearly, but I shall die content in thinking that my decease ensures the ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... this invention is curious. In those dark periods, when the belief of magic was universal, not only amongst the lower ranks, but with the learned and educated classes of the community, it was reported that the Wizard, having cast his own horoscope, had discovered that his death was to be occasioned by a stone falling upon his bare skull. With that anxiety which clings to life, he endeavoured to defeat the demon whom he served, and by repeated incantations constructed this magic casque, which he vainly deemed invulnerable. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various
... some of the chief things, natal and prenatal, which went to the making of my mind before I began to shape that mind for myself. Every man must do this, for whatever be the stars in his horoscope or the good fairies who preside over his cradle, they can only give, as it were, "useful instructions" and a good plan of the route. They leave him also plenty of opportunities for muddling those instructions and plunging into every kind of folly that they showed ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... one simple question," said the other; "and as you answer, I shall read to you your moral horoscope. You have grown in many things more lax; possibly you do right to be so; and at any account, it is the same with all men. But granting that, are you in any one particular, however trifling, more difficult to please with your own ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... bodies and human destiny as more or less affected by them, a science at one time believed in by men of such intelligence as Tacitus and Kepler, and few great families at one time but had an astrologer attached to them to read the horoscope of any new ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... of the services of my friend above-mentioned, I arranged that we should together pay a visit to Professor Smith, of Newington Causeway, quite "permiscuous," as Mrs. Gamp would say. My companion would go with his own horoscope already constructed, as he happened to know the exact hour and minute of his birth—particulars as to which I only possessed the vaguest information, which is all I fancy most of us have; though there was one circumstance connected ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... saw a child with a kaleidoscope, Turning at will the tesselated field; And straight my mental eye became unseal'd, I learnt of life, and read its horoscope: Behold, how fitfully the patterns change! The scene is azure now with hues of Hope; Now sobered gray by Disappointment strange; With Love's own roses blushing, warm and bright; Black with Hate's heat, or white with Envy's cold; Made glorious by Religion's purple light; Or sicklied o'er ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... freight across the blue, May stormless stars control thy horoscope; In keel and hull, in every spar and rope, Be night and day to thy dear office true! Ocean, men's path and their divider too, No fairer shrine of memory and hope To the underworld adown thy westering slope E'er vanished, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Toulouse, underwent the examination, and was admitted; one year and a half afterwards I filled the situation of secretary at the Observatory, which had become vacant by the resignation of M. Mechain's son; one year and a half later, that is to say, four years after the Perpignan "horoscope," associated with M. Biot, I filled the place, in Spain, of the celebrated academician who had died there, a victim to ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... Christmas visit. I felt myself in a new world. A world of brighter flowers, and brighter sunshine; for, although I was eighteen, never until then had I been any thing but a wild, thoughtless, giddy child. And then?—the truth is a new star had burst upon my horoscope, bright and beautiful, that so bewildered my eyes to look upon, I was forced to awake my heart from its long sleep, to supply the place of eyes. Steadfast it gazed into that bright star's heaven-lighted depths, until I recognized it as my guiding ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... our star is, that here all men being free and equal, every man should be fitted for freedom and an independence by his own resources wherever the changeful wave of our mighty stream may take him. But the star of Europe brought a different horoscope, and to mix destinies breaks the thread of both. The Arabian horse will not plough well, nor can the plough-horse be rode to play the jereed. Yet a man is a man wherever he goes, and something precious cannot fail to be gained by one who knows how to abide by a resolution of any kind, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... nor parent dear can know The way those infant feet must go, And yet a nation's help and hope Are sealed within that horoscope. ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... report from the four worthy dames down-stairs—viz., Mistress Carter, Mistress Fairfax, Miss Dorcas Culpeper, spinster, and Aunt Lizzie, the nurse. These inquiring creatures had been casting the new-born babe's horoscope through the medium of tea grounds in their blue-china cups, and each agreed that the child's future was full of shame, crime, disgrace, and ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... Unless I have the horoscope of her highness, cast by skilled hands at the time of her birth, I cannot tell which planet rules ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... her name in the register with her right foot, and that the ring had been placed on the fourth toe of her left foot; for poor Charity was born without arms. Sometimes the time of a birth was recorded with much minuteness, that the astrologers might draw a more accurate horoscope. Unlucky children, with no acknowledged fathers, were entered in a variety of odd ways. In Lambeth (1685), George Speedwell is put down as "a merry begot;" Anne Twine is "filia uniuscujusque." At Croydon, a certain William is "terraefilius" (1582), an autochthonous infant. Among the ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... the one I recreate, with the other I confound, my understanding: for who can speak of eternity without a solecism, or think thereof without an ecstasy? Time we may comprehend; 'tis but five days elder than ourselves, and hath the same horoscope with the world; but, to retire so far back as to appre- hend a beginning,—to give such an infinite start for- wards as to conceive an end,—in an essence that we affirm hath neither the one nor the other, it puts my reason to St Paul's sanctuary: my philosophy dares not say ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... horoscope drawn by an astrologist, foretells unexpected changes in affairs and a long journey; associations with a stranger will ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... an' thou wilt," said Harrington: "when Master Lilly cast my horoscope he bade me ever to eschew travel when Mars comes to his southing, conjunct with the Pleiades, at midnight—the hour of my birth. Last night, as I looked out from where I lay at Preston, methought the red warrior shot his spear athwart their soft scintillating light; and as I gazed, his ray ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... brow, before thoughtful, though not sullen, cleared up benignly. To say truth, the Squire was dying to get rid of the stocks, if he could but do so handsomely and with dignity; and if all the stars in the astrological horoscope had conjoined together to give Miss Jemima "assurance of a husband," they could not so have served her with the Squire, as that conjunction between the altar and the stocks ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... playing at being fluttered, which would have been simply ridiculous; she was doing her best to carry herself as a person so humble that, for her, even embarrassment would have been pretentious; but evidently she had never dreamed of its being in her horoscope to pay a visit, at night-fall, to a friendly single gentleman who lived in theatrical-looking rooms on one of ...
— The American • Henry James
... the sublime thoughts which have the happiness to please you.' One day, when he was charmed with an admirable discourse I had made him, he said, 'Give him a hundred pieces of gold, and invest him with one of my richest robes.' I instantly received the present. I then drew his horoscope, and found it the happiest in the world. Nay I carried my gratitude further; I ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... that the idea of a constant temperature was by far the most natural; but woe to the sciences if they thus included vague considerations which escape all criticism, among the motives for admitting and rejecting facts and theories! Fontenelle, Gentlemen, would have traced their horoscope in these words, so well adapted for humbling our pride, and the truth of which the history of discoveries reveals in a thousand places: "When a thing may be in two different ways, it is almost always that which appears at ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... emanating from Queen Anne, were atrocious. Anne was born in 1664, two years before the great fire of London, on which the astrologers (there were some left, and Louis XIV. was born with the assistance of an astrologer, and swaddled in a horoscope) predicted that, being the elder sister of fire, she would be queen. And so she was, thanks to astrology and the revolution of 1688. She had the humiliation of having only Gilbert, Archbishop of Canterbury, for ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Like the horoscope which foretold the death of Henri III, another royal prophecy was cast in 1610 that reminds one of that which perhaps had not a little to do with the making away with the ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... the tongues of flame Start exulting and exclaim,— "These are prophets, bards, and seers; In the horoscope of nations, Like ascendant constellations, They control ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... mischievous hands, it now stands isolated in the centre of a square, or place, where it can be seen at every side. Poldo d'Albenas, a quaint old writer, whose book I glanced over to-day, attributes the preservation of the Maison Carree to the fortunate horoscope of the spot on which it stands. His lamentations for the insults offered to this building ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... should crowd her hillsides, her valleys, her farms, and her shops all over the four States of New England. For it didn't occur to him, as he looked forward, that one man of them all would ever go west of Connecticut, or west of Massachusetts. [Applause.] He cast his horoscope for a population of seven million people living in the old New England States, in the midst of this century. He did not read, as my friend here does, the missionary spirit of New England. He did not know that they would be willing ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... schedule and without notifying balance control? What do you think this is, a rock-bound coast? Think we're settled in to bedrock like New York City? I should have known," she muttered, forgetting to flip the switch off, "my horoscope said this would be a ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... eyelids were heavy and relaxed. By the morning light, the purplish brown circles under her eyes were pathetic enough, and foretold no long or brilliant future. A singer with a poor digestion and low vitality; she needed no seer to cast her horoscope. If Thea had ever taken the pains to study her, she would have seen that, under all her smiles and archness, poor Miss Darcey was really frightened to death. She could not understand her success any more ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... whether anything farther. But indeed, to speak candidly, I do feel sometimes as if another Book were growing in me,—though I almost tremble to think of it. Not for this winter, O no! I will write an Article merely, or some such thing, and read trash if better be not. This, I do believe, is my horoscope for the next season: an Article on something about New-Year's-day (the Westminster Editor, a good- natured, admiring swan-goose from the North Country, will not let me rest); then Lectures; then—what? I am for some practical subject too; none of your pictures in the air, or aesthetisches Zeug ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... then, Evelyn Hope? What, your soul was pure and true, The good stars met in your horoscope, Made you of spirit, fire and dew— And, just because I was thrice as old And our paths in the world diverged so wide, Each was nought to each, must I be told? We were fellow mortals, ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... the palaces of three hundred years ago were certainly of as delicate fiber, of as keen reason, as ourselves, who merely print calico and build locomotives. What makes me think this, is that I have been calculating my nativity by help of an old book belonging to Sor Asdrubale—and see, my horoscope tallies almost exactly with that of Medea da Carpi, as given by a chronicler. May this explain? No, no; all is explained by the fact that the first time I read of this woman's career, the first time I saw her portrait, ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... one nor the other," answered the stranger;" unless my judgment greatly err, the infant will survive the years of minority, and in temper and disposition will prove all that his parents can wish. But with much in his horoscope which promises many blessings, there is one evil influence strongly predominant, which threatens to subject him to an unhallowed and unhappy temptation about the time when he shall attain the age of twenty-one, which period, the constellations intimate, will he ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... (warning) 668; prognosis, prophecy, vaticination, mantology^, prognostication, premonstration^; augury, auguration^; ariolation^, hariolation^; foreboding, aboding^; bodement^, abodement^; omniation^, omniousness^; auspices, forecast; omen &c 512; horoscope, nativity; sooth^, soothsaying; fortune telling, crystal gazing; divination; necromancy &c 992. [Divination by the stars] astrology^, horoscopy^, judicial astrology^. [Place of Prediction]. adytum prefiguration^, prefigurement; prototype, type. [person ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... SIBYL, L. L. LUCILLE, the only living descendant of Hermes, the Egyptian, who has traveled through all the known parts of the world, now makes her first appearance in Chicago. She will cast the horoscope of all callers; will tell them the events of their past life, and reveal what the future has in store for them. She has cast the horo- scope of all the crowned heads of Eu- rope, Asia, Africa, and Oceanica; she will cast the horoscope, or ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... screw-pine (here a palette de mouton), sharpen a new knife, on one side of the bud write the Surat al-Badr (chapter of Power, No. xxi., thus using the word of Allah for Satan's purpose); on the other side write Vajahata; make an image out of the bud; indite particulars of the horoscope copy from beginning to end the Surat al-Rahman (the Compassionating, No. xlviii.);, tie the image in five places with coir left-hand-twisted (i.e. widdershins or 'against the sun'); cut the throat of a blood-sucker ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... died at Bassorah, where he married the daughter of the Wazir and that she bare him a son; and I will not marry my daughter but to him in honour of my brother's memory. I recorded the date of my marriage and the conception of my wife and the birth of my daughter; and from her horoscope I find that her name is conjoined with that of her cousin; [FN401] and there are damsels in foison for our lord the Sultan.' The King, hearing his Minister's answer and refusal, waxed wroth with exceeding wrath and cried, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... commercial economy, and are (the world being under the guidance of a spiritual, and not a physical Being) finally decided on those spiritual grounds, and according to the just laws of the kingdom of God; and, therefore, the future political horoscope of the East depends entirely on the present spiritual state of its inhabitants, and of us who have (and rightly) taken up their cause; in short, on many of those questions on which I have touched in these Lectures: and next, because I feel bound, in justice to myself, to ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... much about the past history of the Noblesse, I ought to endeavour to cast its horoscope, or at least to say something of its probable future. Though predictions are always hazardous, it is sometimes possible, by tracing the great lines of history in the past, to follow them for a little distance into the future. If it be allowable to apply this ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... was equal to her malice. An occasional deed of alms, done not for charity's sake, but for ostentation; an adroit deal of cards, or a horoscope cast to flatter a foolish girl; a word of sympathy, hollow as a water bubble, but colored with iridescent prettiness, averted suspicion from the darker ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... it is not my own death which these gloomy fancies foretell. I have a strong horoscope, and shall live for fifty years to come. But it is the case of the poor fellow—the Douglas man, whom I struck down at the fray of St. Valentine's: he died last night; it is that which weighs on my conscience, and awakens sad fancies. Ah, father Simon, we martialists, that ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... his burial-sod Harebells bloom, and golden-rod, While the soul's dark horoscope Holds no starry sign of hope! Is the Unseen with sight at odds? Nature's pity ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... own lordship of Church and State, and have put their faith in the oppressive Rebels trying to build an empire on the ruins of the Ten Commandments, are as blind to discern the laws of human nature as they are awkward to raise the horoscope of events. This Western Continent, under God, may it please the despots, is not going to barbarism and desolation. That good missionary of freedom as well as religion, whom New England sent to California in the person of Thomas Starr ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... friendships or to excite prejudices according to their significance. We Chinese are very particular in this matter. When a son is born the father or the grandfather chooses a name for the infant boy which, according to his horoscope, is likely to insure him success, or a name is selected which indicates the wish of the family for the new-born child. Hence such names as "happiness", "prosperity", "longevity", "success", and others, with like propitious import, are common in China. With ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... afterwards James the Second, has been frequently stated as that of the antiquary himself. See my Memoir of Aubrey, 4to. 1845, p. 123. In the same volume, p. 13, will be found an engraving of the horoscope of his nativity, from a sketch in his own hand. So far as his authority is of any value, that curious sketch proves incontestably that "the Native" was born at 14 minutes and 49 seconds past 17 o'clock (astronomical time) on the ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.01 • Various
... the support of the ministry) encouraged his retaining that political tint, which was clearly the most popular in that region. But whatever baggage of political convictions the incorruptible deputy of Arcis might bring with him to Paris, his horoscope was drawn: it was very certain that after his first appearance in the salons of the Tuileries an august seduction would make a henchman of him, if ministerial blandishments had not already produced ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... confer her hand upon another? He had come back to Pinal to set the prophecy at defiance and ask her to be his dearest friend; but now, well, perhaps it would be just as well to stick to the letter of his horoscope. "Beware how you reveal your affections," it said—and he had been rushing back to tell her! And besides, she had met his advances despitefully, and practically called him a coward. Denver brushed off the dust from his shiny phonograph and put on ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... said the astrologer, smiling. "I live in the tower of Sieur Touchet de Beauvais, the lieutenant of the Bailliage, whose daughter the little Duc d'Orleans has taken such a fancy to; it is there that I observe the planets. I have drawn the girl's horoscope, and it says that she will become a great lady and be beloved by a king. The lieutenant, her father, is a clever man; he loves science, and the queen sent me to lodge with him. He has had the sense to be a rabid Guisist while awaiting the reign ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... magician, who had for some years dismissed him from his recollection, determined to inform himself with certainty whether he perished, as he supposed, in the subterranean cave or not. After he had resorted to a long course of magic ceremonies, and had formed a horoscope by which to ascertain Aladdin's fate, what was his surprise to find the appearances to declare that Aladdin, instead of dying in the cave, had made his escape, and was living in royal splendor by the aid of the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... to have himself carried to the first milestone, the hour is chosen from the almanac; if he but rub the corner of his eye, his horoscope having been examined, he seeks the aid of salves."—-Juvenal, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... parents were honoured and given special privileges. The wisdom and prudence of Augustus were strangely accompanied by credulity and superstition. He was a profound believer in omens, and attached great importance to astrology. His horoscope showed that he was born ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... these in Bagdad; and Kaskas, taught by his ill success, thought the advice of his friend deserved attention. The soothsayer drew out his horoscope, and assured him that his star was so malignant, that he must of necessity lose whatever stock he should hazard in commerce. Kaskas, shocked with a prophecy so contrary to his own inclination, attempted ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... nearly as common during his lifetime as it was after his death. One of the duties most congenial to society, and one which it never fails to perform conscientiously, is that judicial astrology, whereby it forecasts the issue of its neighbour's doings. Everybody's social horoscope must be cast by the circle of five-o'clock-tea-drinking astro-sociologists, and, generally speaking, their predictions are not far short of the truth, for society knoweth its own bitterness, and is uncommonly quick in the diagnosis of its ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... my deliverance from evil, Seraphine cast my horoscope (I wonder why she never did this before?), and now much that was previously inexplicable in my life is made clear to me. She says that astrology is not a cheap form of trickery, but a recognized field ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... lesson of history. Another is, that we should draw no horoscope; that we should expect little, for what we expect will not come to pass. Revolutions, reformations,—those vast movements into which heroes and saints have flung themselves, in the belief that they were the dawn of the millennium,—have not borne the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... and the pseudo-science of judicial astrology. The latter was carried to as subtle a pitch of refinement in Mexico as in the old world; and large portions of the ancient writers are taken up with explaining the method adopted by the native astrologers to cast the horoscope, and reckon the nativity of the ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... sufficient time for the operation of those causes. Political evolution in its early stages is generally very slow. It is only after long internal travail that it moves with vertiginous rapidity. De Tocqueville cast a remarkably accurate horoscope of the course which would be run by the Second Empire, but it took some seventeen years to bring about results which he thought would be accomplished in a much shorter period. It has been reserved for the present generation to witness the fulfilment of ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... planets did combine On thy auspicious horoscope to shine, And even the most malicious were in trine. Thy brother angels at thy birth Strung each his lyre, and tuned it high, That all the people of the sky Might know a poetess was born on earth. And then, if ever, mortal ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... be seen that to read a fortune in the tea-cup with any real approach to accuracy and a serious attempt to derive a genuine forecast from the cup the seer must not be in a hurry. He or she must not only study the general appearance of the horoscope displayed before him, and decide upon the resemblance of the groups of leaves to natural or artificial objects, each of which possesses a separate significance, but must also balance the bad and good, the lucky and unlucky symbols, and strike an average. ...
— Tea-Cup Reading, and the Art of Fortune-Telling by Tea Leaves • 'A Highland Seer'
... to have had privileged access to the sibylline leaves of the Cumaean soothsayer to recognize that Vittoria Colonna was born under the star of destiny. Her horoscope seemed to be inextricably entwined with that of Italy; and the events which created and determined the conditions of her life and its panoramic series of circumstances were the events of Italy and of Europe as well—in political aspects and in the influence on general progress, brought to bear ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... has used the wrong word here. She whom the "good stars that met in her horoscope" had made of "spirit, fire, and dew," must, whether it be her desire to do so or not, eternally keep part of herself from the taking of any man. . . . This is a curious lapse in Browning, to whom women are, in the highest sense of the word, individuals—not individualists, ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... before the birth of Louis XIV., an astrologer from Germany, who had been sent for by the Marshal de Bassompierre and other noblemen of the court, had taken up his residence in the palace, to be ready, at a moment's notice, to draw the horoscope of the future sovereign of France. When the queen was taken in labour, he was ushered into a contiguous apartment, that he might receive notice of the very instant the child was born. The result of his observations were the three words, diu, dure, feliciter; meaning, that the new-born ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... however dear he may be to us as a son and brother, has peculiar traits which sometimes repel the admiration of strangers. His impenetrable reserve chills the warmth of enthusiasm, while the fitfulness of his morals produces constant inquietude. He was born under a clouded star, and the horoscope of his destiny is darkened ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... Isis. "The priest," says he, "or chanter, carries one of the symbolic instruments of music, and two of the books of Mercury; one containing hymns of the gods, the other the list of kings. Next to him the horoscope (the regulator of time,) carries a palm and a dial, symbols of astrology; he must know by heart the four books of Mercury which treat of astrology: the first on the order of the planets, the second on the risings of the sun and moon, and the two last on the rising ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... studying at Oxford, had learnt there the rules of divination by the stars. For his own special use he kept in his coffers two astrolabes, one of silver and one of gold. When his queen, Catherine of France, was about to be confined, he himself cast the horoscope of the expected child. And further, as there was a prophecy in England[975] which said that Windsor would lose what Monmouth had gained, he determined that the Queen should not be confined at Windsor. ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... third factor of the problem is brought in the outlook of the horoscope improves. The spirit of the war may be counted upon to balance and prevail against this spirit of individualism, this spirit of suspicion and disloyalty, which I fear more than anything else in ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... than in his own land. Whether I succeed or no, I, too, reaching across the Atlantic and taking the man's dark fortune-telling of humanity and politics, would offset it all, (such is the fancy that comes to me,) by a far more profound horoscope-casting of ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... bargemen, which rarely failed to throw him into a violent fit of laughter." He says himself, "I write of melancholy, by being busie, to avoid melancholy." He was expert in the calculation of nativities, and cast his own horoscope; having determined in which, the time at which his death should occur, it was afterward shrewdly believed that he took measures to insure the fulfillment ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... settlement, or upon any of the roads leading from it, there would be a chance of overtaking them. But what after that? Ah! beyond that I did not trust myself to speculate. I dared not discuss the future. I refrained from casting even a glance into its horoscope—so dark did it appear. I had but little hope that they were anywhere within reach. That phrase of fatal prophecy, "You will be too late—too late!" still rang in my ears. It had a fuller meaning than ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... that a particular star or constellation presided over the birth of each person, and thenceforward exercised over his life a special malign or benignant influence. But his lot depended, not on this star alone, but on the entire aspect of the heavens at a certain moment. To cast the horoscope was to reproduce this aspect, and then to read by means of ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... astrologers made their calculations and looked into his nativity and his ascendant, whereupon their colour changed and they were confounded. Quoth the king to them, 'Acquaint me with his horoscope and ye shall have assurance and fear ye not of aught' 'O king,' answered they, 'this child's nativity denotes that, in the seventh year of his age, there is to be feared for him from a lion, which will attack him; and if he be saved from ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... the east called it "his star." This puts him in the category of heroes, and bars the idea of his being a god. It also shows that the Christians, amongst whom this story originated, were devotees of astrology. Fortune-tellers still decide your "nativity" before they cast your "horoscope." We are aware that many commentators have discussed the star of Christ's birth from various points of view. Some have thought it a real star; others have had enough astronomy to see that this was impossible, and have argued that it was a big will-o'-the-wisp, created and directed ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... This method of determining a point in chronology seems so absurd, according to the ideas of the present day, that we can hardly resist the conclusion, that Varro, in making his investigation, was really guided by other and more satisfactory modes of determining the point, and that the horoscope was not what he actually relied upon. However this may be, the era which he fixed upon has been very generally received, though many others have been proposed by the different learned men who have successively investigated ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... It is like Destiny that way. If one is ignorant of one's Destiny, it comes upon one with a surprise. But if one knows beforehand what one's Destiny is to be, one can make onself the master of it. That is where the horoscope comes in ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... 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 was probably double; to the queen, and to the horoscope of the bearer. The twelve houses of heaven with neither sign nor planet therein, "Dispone" (Dispose). A white shield, "Fatum inscribat Eliza" (Eliza writes my fate). An eye in a heart, "Vulnus alo" (I feed the wound). A ship sinking and the rainbow appearing, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... of Ur includes Nippur. The kings are proud of calling themselves the guardians of the temple of Bel in Nippur, nominated to the office by the god himself, and reviving an old title of the kings of Agade, style themselves also 'king of the four regions.' Another change in the political horoscope is reflected in the subjection of Ur to a district whose center was Larsa, not far from Ur, and represented by the mound Senkereh. There are two kings, Nur-Ramman (i.e., light of Ramman) and Sin-iddina (i.e., Sin judges), who call themselves guardians of Ur and kings of Larsa, showing that the ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... not much like the rest of her sex; that's all I can say," said Sir Hugo, with a slight shrug. "However, she ought to be something extraordinary, for there must be an entanglement between your horoscope and hers—eh? When that tremendous telegram came, the first thing Lady Mallinger said was, 'How very strange that it should be Daniel who sends it!' But I have had something of the same sort in my own life. I was once at a foreign hotel where a lady had been ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot |
