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Porphyry   /pˈɔrfəri/   Listen
Porphyry

noun
(pl. porphyries)
1.
Any igneous rock with crystals embedded in a finer groundmass of minerals.  Synonym: porphyritic rock.






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"Porphyry" Quotes from Famous Books



... Perlmutter and the baby would be in the hall to greet him; but on this occasion he was disappointed. To be sure the appetizing odour of gedampftes kalbfleisch wafted itself down the elevator shaft as he entered the gilt and plaster-porphyry entrance from the street, but when he crossed the threshold of his own apartment the robust wail of his son and heir mingled with the tones of Lina, the Slavic maid. Of Mrs. Perlmutter, ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass

... Chief held them back sternly. Then he himself, half a head taller than all but one or two of his followers, with magnificent chest and shoulders, and a dark, lionlike mane thick-streaked with grey, strode out three or four paces to the front and stood leaning on his huge, porphyry-headed club while he glared down ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... copper, lead, arsenic, iron as sulphide, oxide, carbonate, and tungstate, antimony, bismuth, nickel, zinc, lead, and other metals in one form or another; in slate, quartzite, mica schist, granite, diorite, porphyry, felsite, calcite, dolomite, common carbonate of iron, siliceous sinter from a hot spring, as at Mount Morgan; as alluvial gold in drifts formed of almost all these materials; and once, perhaps the ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson

... with remains of the Ursus, Equus, &c., found in bone-caverns. Eruptive masses intrude in the Balkans and Sredna Gora, as well as in the Archean formation of the southern [v.04 p.0774] ranges, presenting granite, syenite, diorite, diabase, quartz-porphyry, melaphyre, liparite, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... Maimonides actually tells his translator[82] that the only books worth studying are those of Aristotle and his true commentators, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius, Averroes. Alfarabi and Avicenna are also important, but other writings, such as those of Empedocles, Pythagoras, Hermes, Porphyry, represent a pre-Aristotelian philosophy which is obsolete, and are a waste of time. The books of Isaac Israeli on the "Elements" and on "Definitions," are no better, seeing that Israeli was only ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik

... 19 Porphyry, De Antro Nympharum. Tertullian, Prescript. ad Her., cap. xl., where he refers the mimic death and resurrection in the Mithraic Mysteries ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... foreign nations who combined to destroy all the superior arts in Italy had not then appeared. It is true that architecture suffered less than the other arts of design. The bath erected by Constantine at the entrance of the principal portico of the Lateran contains, in addition to its porphyry columns, capitals carved in marble and beautifully carved double bases taken from elsewhere, the whole composition of the building being very well ordered. On the other hand, the stucco, the mosaic and some incrustations of the walls ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari

... most to be shadowed forth in dim oracular utterances. Disraeli's instinctive affinity for some kind of mystic teaching is indicated by Vivian Grey's first request to his father. 'I wish,' he exclaims, 'to make myself master of the latter Platonists. I want Plotinus and Porphyry, and Iamblichus, and Syrianus, and Mosanius Tyrius, and Pericles, and Hierocles, and Sallustius, and Damasenis!' But Vivian Grey, as we know, wanted also to conquer the Marquis of Carabas; and the odd combination between a mystic philosopher and a mere political charlatan displays ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... This is strikingly the case with the Scarabaeus which, under the hands of the Etruscan cutter, lost at once all specific character. He might be Scarabaeus anything: he is not pilularius; and, instead of being made of basalt, porphyry, smalt, and very rarely of pietra dura, as in Egypt, he is engraved in carnelian, onyx, sardonyx, and all the rare and lovely varieties of pietra dura,—which, being essentially the same, change their names with their colors,—but mainly in an opaque carnelian, admirably ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various

... than have them together, and I would not surrender, in an architectural point of view, one mighty line of the colossal, quiet, life-in-death statue mountains in Egypt with their narrow fixed eyes and hands on their rocky limbs, nor one Romanesque facade with its porphyry mosaic of indefinable monsters, nor one Gothic moulding of rigid saints and grinning goblins, for ten Parthenons; and, I believe, I could show some rational ground for this seeming barbarity if this were the place to do so, but at present I can only ask the reader to compare ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin

... the remains of the deceased in a jar of methylated spirit was obviously impracticable. However, I bethought me that we had in our collection a porphyry sarcophagus, the cavity of which had been shaped to receive a small mummy in its case. I tried the deceased in the sarcophagus and found that he just fitted the cavity loosely. I obtained a few gallons of methylated ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman

... set in order my experiences, Gather what most deserves, and give thee all— Or I might add, Judaea's gum-tragacanth Scales off in purer flakes, shines clearer-grained, Cracks 'twixt the pestle and the porphyry, In fine exceeds our produce. Scalp-disease Confounds me, crossing so with leprosy— Thou hadst admired one sort I gained at Zoar— 60 But zeal outruns discretion. ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning

... red porphyry Vase containing the heart of Canova. It is placed in the great hall of the Academy of Arts at Venice, beneath the magnificent picture of the Assumption of the Virgin, by Titian. The vase is ornamented with ormoulu, and bears the inscription Cor magni Canovae, in raised gold letters. M. Duppa describes ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 566, September 15, 1832 • Various

... Poppy-coloured punca. Populace popolo—amaso. Popular populara. Population logxantaro. Populous popola. Porcelain porcelano. Porch vestiblo. Porcupine histriko. Pore trueto. Pork porkajxo. Porous trueta. Porphyry porfiro. Porpoise fokseno. Port (harbour) haveno. Portable portebla. Portend antauxsciigi. Porter (doorkeeper) pordisto. Porter portisto. Portfolio paperujo. Portion (allot) dividi. Portion porcio, parto, doto. Portmanteau valizo, vestkesto. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... covers the walls, he admires the artistically arranged mosaic on the gold groundwork of the dome, he is amazed at the hundred columns which support the cupolas and galleries, some of dark-green marble, others of dark-red porphyry. The Emperor's wealth is inexhaustible. Has he not presented to the church seven crosses of gold, each weighing a hundred pounds? Does not the Church of the Divine Wisdom possess forty thousand chalice veils all embroidered with pearls and precious stones? Are there not in the sacristy ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... of Richard Calmady—seen, as his custom was, only to the waist—seated in a high-backed chair drawn close against an antique, oak table, upon which a small pietra dura cabinet shad been placed. The doors of the cabinet stood open, displaying slender columns of jasper and porphyry, and little drawers encrusted with raised work in marbles and precious stones. The young man sat stiffly upright, as one who listens, expectant. His expression was almost painfully serious. In one hand he held a string of pearls, attached to which, and enclosed by intersecting hoops ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... There between octangular towers loopholed and finished battlement style was a covered passage suggestive of Egypt. Two Victories in high relief blew trumpets at each other across the entrance front. Ponderous benches of porphyry, polished smooth by ages of usage, sat one on each side for the guards; fellows in helmets of shining brass, cuirasses of the same material inlaid with silver, greaves, and shoes stoutly buckled. Those of them sitting sprawled their bulky limbs broadly over the benches. The few ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... formation as the beds; quartz, gravel, and red clay, all disposed in the usual direction. Women's washings were seen everywhere along the road, and in some places oozings of iron from the soil heavily charged the streamlets. Some of the quartz-boulders were coloured outside like porphyry by the oxide. About three-quarters of the way from Tumento to Apankru is a hill rich in outcrops of quartz. I believe ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron

... of his talents, he resolved on dedicating them to the service of the Church; and, after being admitted into reader's orders, he began to distinguish himself by his opposition to philosophical infidelity. His work against Porphyry, the most valuable and elaborate of his writings, was extended to as many as thirty books. During the reign of Julian, when the Christian schools were shut up, and the Christian youth were debarred from the use of the classics, the two Apollinares, ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... extraordinary success. The researches of this gentleman, among the remains of Neomagus Lexoviorum, have already brought to light a large number of valuable medals, both in silver and bronze, as well as a considerable quantity of fragments of foreign marble, granite, and porphyry, some of them curiously wrought. The most important of his discoveries has been recently made: it is that of a Roman amphitheatre, in a state of great perfection, the grades being covered only by a thin layer of soil, which a trifling ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner

... others. The Aristotelians' belief that objects are made what they are called by the inherence of a certain general substance in the individuals which get from it all their essential properties, prevented even Porphyry (though more reasonable than the mediaeval Realists) from seeing that the only difference between altering a non-essential (or accidental) property, which, he says, makes the thing [Greek: alloion], and altering an essential one, which makes it [Greek: allo] (i.e. a different thing), is, that ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing

... a palace fit to receive the Princess Buddir al Buddoor. Let its materials be made of nothing less than porphyry, jasper, agate, lapis-lazuli, and the finest marble. Let its walls be massive gold and silver bricks laid alternately. Let each front contain six windows, and let the lattices of these (except one, which must be left unfinished) be enriched with diamonds, rubies, and emeralds, ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... cloak fluttered where the drive turns down hill. From under the fore-wheel of Juggernaut I struggled back to life with a great sob, that died before it sounded. I looked about the library for some staff to help me to my feet again. The porphyry vases were filled with gorgeous boughs, leaves of deep scarlet, speckled, flushed, gold-spotted, rimmed with green, dashed with orange, tawny and crimson, blood-sprinkled, faint clear amber; all hues and combinations of color rioted and ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... Its porphyry stairs and fountained base Shone, houried with voluptuous forms, Where Andalusia vied in grace With old ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein

... around it, in which the carriages pass, it is paved with marble of every color, having magnificent mosaics. In the center of it is placed an immense basin of antique marble, fed by abundant springs of water, which fall continually into a large porphyry vase. This court of honor is surrounded by a row of white marble statues, of the finest execution, bearing torches of gilded bronze, from whence floods of dazzling gas are poured out. Alternating with these statues, Medicean vases, raised on their richly-sculptured pedestals, contain enormous rose-laurels, ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... this moment cased in a court-suit of cut velvet, with our hair curled, our whiskers crisped, and a masonic apron decorating our middle man. Having subsided into our chair—it is in most respects like the porphyry piece of furniture of the Pope—and our housekeeper having played the Dead March in Saul on our chamber organ (BULWER wrote "The Sea Captain" to the preludizing of a Jew's-harp), we enter on our this week's labour. We state thus much, that our readers may ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... of my women dance the Grecian Dances silently before me, the while I lave myself with roses in a bath of porphyry. Then let them circle me, with interlacing arms, that I may see on all sides alabaster forms in graceful evolution, swaying like tall reeds bending over an ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert

... afterwards improved and perfected by Henry Hugford, a monk, of Vallambrosa. It was first used to counterfeit marbles; and the altar of St. Antonio, in the church of St. Nicolo, at Carpi, is still preserved as a monument of extraordinary skill and beauty. It consists of two columns, representing porphyry, and adorned with a pallium, embroidered as it were with lace; while it is ornamented in the margin with medals bearing ...
— The Lady's Album of Fancy Work for 1850 • Unknown

... apse, on a platform raised several steps above the presbytery. To the right and left the seats of the cardinals followed the line of the apse. At the centre of the chord stood the high altar beneath a ciborium, resting on four pillars of porphyry. Beneath the altar was the subterranean chapel, the centre of the devotion of so large a portion of the Christian world, believed to contain the remains of St Peter; a vaulted crypt ran round the foundation wall of the apse ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... the floor whereof was laid with tiles of chinaware, and the roof and walls were of crystal; but he particularly fixed his eyes on four shelves, a little raised above the rest of the floor, on each of which were ten urns of porphyry. He fancied they were full of wine: "Well," said he, "that wine must be very old, I do not question but it is excellent." He went up to one of the urns, took off the cover, and with no less joy than surprise ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... animals, or creatures of sense, a wider difference: between them and man, a far greater: and if the proportion hold on, between man and angels there should be yet a greater. We do not comprehend their natures, who retain the first definition of Porphyry; and distinguish them from ourselves by immortality: for, before his fall, man also was im- mortal: yet must we needs affirm that he had a different essence from the angels. Having, therefore, no certain knowledge of their nature, 'tis no bad method of the schools, whatsoever perfection ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne

... consulted the haruspices; if he summoned the Council of Nicea, he also honored the statue of Fortune; if he accepted the rite of baptism, he also struck a medal bearing his title of "God." His statue, on the top of the great porphyry pillar at Constantinople, consisted of an ancient image of Apollo, whose features were replaced by those of the emperor, and its head surrounded by the nails feigned to have been used at the crucifixion of Christ, arranged so as to form ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... Emperor of Byzantium heard of me he left his porphyry chamber and set sail in his galleys. His slaves bare no torches that none might know of his coming. When the King of Cyprus heard of me he sent me ambassadors. The two Kings of Libya who are brothers brought me gifts ...
— A Florentine Tragedy—A Fragment • Oscar Wilde

... and the princess retired into a large room of marble and porphyry, where several bubbling fountains, refreshed the air with an agreeable coolness. As soon as she entered the music began, a sumptuous supper was served up, and the birds from several aviaries on each side of the room, of which Abricotina had the chief care, ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik

... Every part of Rome is replete with relics of ancient times. The meanest streets are strewed with truncated columns, broken capitals—Corinthian and Ionic, and sparkling fragments of granite or porphyry. The walls of the most penurious dwellings enclose a fluted pillar or ponderous stone, which once made part of the palace of the Caesars; and the voice of dead time, in still vibrations, is breathed from these dumb things, animated and glorified ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... on up the ravine, and in some places the banks rose almost perpendicularly from the bed of the dry torrent, presenting on both sides vast walls of black porphyry—for this is the principal rock composing the giant chain of the Andes. Above their heads screamed small parrots of rich plumage of the species Conurus rupicola, which make their nestling places, and dwell upon these rocky cliffs. This is a singular fact, as ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... of rotunda shape, of a grandeur and size which surprised me. Gold, painting, sculpture, the richest ornaments of all kinds, are distributed everywhere with prodigality but taste. The architecture is correct and admirable, the marble is most exquisite; jasper, porphyry, lapis, polished, wreathed, and fluted columns, with their capitals and their ornaments of gilded bronze, a row of balconies between each altar with little steps of marble to ascend them, and the cage encrusted; the altars and that which accompanied ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... so as to deceive the eye with interminable colonnades; and groups of columns of the finest Scagliola work of variegated marbles—emerald-green and gold, St. Pons veined with silver, Sienna with porphyry—supported a resplendent fresco ceiling, arched like a bower, and thickly clustering with mimic grapes. Through all the East of this foliage, you spied in a crimson dawn, Guide's ever youthful Apollo, driving forth the horses ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... It would seem that some demons are naturally wicked. For Porphyry says, as quoted by Augustine (De Civ. Dei x, 11): "There is a class of demons of crafty nature, pretending that they are gods and the souls of the dead." But to be deceitful is to be evil. Therefore some demons are ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... pillars of a mosque, and each represented a different portion of the building—presumably that of St. Sophia. The capitals of the pillars were exquisite, few being duplicated, and the shafts were solid columns of black marble, supported on bases of porphyry. The floor was a network of mosaics, and the walls were a blaze of colored marbles. The altar, which stood in the central room, was of silver, with trappings of gold-embroidered velvet, and paraphernalia of gold. Dartmouth was entranced. He had a keen love of and appreciation for art, but he ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... British Mercantile Company, have overrun and plundered India, but have left it the same unintelligible, unchangeable, and marvellous country as before. It is the same land now which the soldiers of Alexander described,—the land of grotto temples dug out of solid porphyry; of one of the most ancient Pagan religions of the world; of social distinctions fixed and permanent as the earth itself; of the sacred Ganges; of the idols of Juggernaut, with its bloody worship; the land of elephants and tigers; of fields of rice ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... tells us that only by losing its life does the cell save it. The new science exhibits the body as a temple, constructed out of cells, as a building is made of bricks. Just as some St. Peter represents strange marble from Athens, beauteous woods from Cyprus, granite from Italy, porphyry from Egypt, all brought together in a single cathedral, so the human body is a glorious temple built by those architects called living cells. When the scientist searches out the beginning of bird or bud or acorn he comes to a single cell. Under the microscope that cell ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... Porphyry says: "By images addressed to sense, the ancients represented God and his powers—by the visible they typified the invisible for those who had learned to read in these types, as in a book, a treatise on ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... followed by loud shrieks. The Empress rushed into the room, and the Emperor jumped out of bed in his shirt and followed her. There the children, the governess, and the nurses were screaming out that Constantine (the second boy, of two years old) was destroyed; a huge vase of porphyry had been thrown down and had fallen over the child, who was not to be seen. So great was the weight and size of the vase that it was several minutes before it could be raised, though assistance was immediately fetched, and all that time the Emperor and Empress stood ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... colours is to be found, and also enormous quantities of mica and amianth; porphyry and porphyroid granite, carbonated and hydroxided iron, argillaceous ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... wall behind the high altar, and began to address himself to devotion, but he was distracted at first by the splendour of the tomb, the porphyry and the glass-work below, that Master Peter the Roman had made, and the precious shrine of gold above where the body lay, and the golden statues of the saints on either side. All about him, too, were such marvels that there is little ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson

... unconsciously—that it was a gradual and instinctive process of becoming. The reason, in one word, was not awake; the mind of man was ignorant of its own treasures and its own capacities. It is pathetic to think of the mediaeval students poring over a single ill-translated sentence of Porphyry, endeavoring to extract from its clauses whole systems of logical science, and torturing their brains about puzzles hardly less idle than the dilemma of Buridan's donkey, while all the time, at Constantinople and at Seville, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... true of the individual lives of men as it is of great events. If the ages have to be reconstructed, so also must the men of the ages. If only a mummy now turn over in his porphyry sarcophagus, a papyrus is generally found under him; and the finder, with the papyrus in his hand, may go forth fully warranted to revise every event from the first cataclysm of the Devonian age to the last earthquake in Java, and every man ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various

... origin? These questions are not trifling ones. Infidels have given as many different answers to them as there are days in the week. There is no agreement among them that amounts to a settlement of the questions among themselves. The Scriptures are ancient. Porphyry, born at Tyre in 233, wrote a book against them, which was burned by order of Theodosius the Great, in the year 304. ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 8, August, 1880 • Various

... ambitious design, the monarch robbed the Temple of the Sun at Baalbek of columns of porphyry, despoiled the Temple of Diana of Ephesus of its finest pillars, took columns of pure white marble from the Temple of Minerva at Athens, and divested the shrines of Isis and Osiris in Egypt of their choicest granite columns. He called upon the quarries of ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob

... prospect burst upon their view; the horizon seemed bounded by majestic mountains of porphyry—this third element or place of deposit of the enchanting primeval earth, out of which mighty but formless mass our living, breathing, and beautiful world sprang into creation, and the stars sang together for joy. In the midst of these mountains stood the "Giant," with his snow-crowned ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... narrow noisy street. The beauty of an Oriental palace is inside the walls. Within the blank outer wall of stone and mud-brick, arched roofs, painted and gilded within, were upheld by slender round pillars of fine stone—marble, jasper, porphyry, onyx, red syenite, highly polished and sometimes brought from old palaces and temples in other lands. Intricate carving in marble or in fine hard wood adorned the doorways and lattices, and the balconies with their high lattice-work ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey

... horizontal beds of sandstone, overlying inclined beds of non-fossiliferous limestone. Between the latter and the Paras-nath gneiss, come (in order of superposition) shivered and undulating strata of metamorphic quartz, hornstone, hornstone- porphyry, jaspers, etc. These are thrown up, by greenstone I believe, along the north and north-west boundary of the gneiss range, and are to be recognised as forming the rocks of Colgong, of Sultangunj, and of Monghyr, on ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... armies of Italy, Spain, and France poured into Germany, and which, at a later date, were made use of by the hordes of barbarians when rushing into the ancient Roman world; at another, on its surface it floated peaceably the fir-trees of Murg and of Saint Gall, the porphyry and the marble of Bale, the salt of Karlshall, the leather of Stromberg, the quicksilver of Lansberg, the wine of Johannisberg, the slates of Coab, the cloth and earthenware of Wallendar, the silks and linens of Cologne. It majestically performs its double function of flood of war and flood of peace, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various

... professors of conviction and enthusiasm, in the true sense, never actually teach anything new; all they do is to give new forms to beliefs already in being, to arrange the bits of glass, onyx, horn, ivory, porphyry and corundum in the mental kaleidoscope of the populace into novel permutations. To change the figure, they may give the medulla oblongata, the cerebral organ of the great masses of simple men, a powerful diuretic or emetic, but they seldom, if ever, add anything to its primary supply of ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan

... church. Outside it, towards the market-place, is a noble gallery, and above it four famous horses, cut in brass by the ancient Romans, and seem all moving, and at the very next step must needs leap down on the beholder. About the church are six hundred pillars of marble, porphyry, and ophites. Inside is a treasure greater than either, at St. Denys, or Loretto, or Toledo. Here a jewelled pitcher given the seigniory by a Persian king, also the ducal cap blazing with jewels, and on its crown a diamond and a chrysolite, each as big as an almond; two golden crowns and twelve golden ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... once, as by the blow of a hand out of the ether, broke in two, and the ravished Sun, like the eye of a Venus floating through her ancient heavens—for she once stood even here—looked mildly in from the upper deep; then a holy radiance filled the temple, and burned on the porphyry of the pavement, and Albano looked around him in an ecstasy of wonder and delight, and said with low voice: "How transfigured at this moment is everything in this sacred place! Raphael's spirit comes forth from his ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... 29 degrees, longitude 120 degrees. Bare granite rocks sometimes in the vicinity, though not attached. (May 4th.) : Two small specimens of Micaceous Iron-ore with brown Haematite. Impossible to state the age. Similar ore occurs in Victoria, in Elvans in Porphyry, but it also occurs in ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest

... custom of the Regents to dictate, to the students their observations on such parts of the writings of Aristotle, Porphyry, and others, as were read in their classes. This was done in Latin which was the only language allowed to be used by the students even in their common conversation. At a meeting of commissioners from the different universities of Scotland, which was held at Edinburgh on the 24th of July, 1648, one ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... have I seen a sight so beautiful, so romantic, and so sad. Whoever knows Rome knows the peculiar solemn grandeur of that piazza, scene of the first triumph of Rienzi, and whence may be seen the magnificence of the "mother of all churches," the baptistery with its porphyry columns, the Santa Scala with its glittering mosaics of the early ages, the obelisk standing fairest of any of those most imposing monuments of Rome, the view through the gates of the Campagna, on that side so richly strewn with ruins. The sun was setting, the crescent moon rising, the flower ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... the return, in 1840, of the ashes of Napoleon to rest on "the banks of the Seine, amid the French people whom he loved so well," where in a massive urn of porphyry, and beneath the gilded dome of the Invalides, in the most splendid tomb of the centuries, sleeps now the soldier of Lodi, Marengo, Austerlitz, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... circle of the heavy eyebrows ended at the wide nostrils; the mouth was a crescent, but bowed downwards; the heavy shoulders were rounded. Indeed, the only straight line to be discerned about him was that of his hair, black as bitumen, banged across his forehead; even his polished porphyry eyes were constructed on some curvilinear principle, and never seemed to focus. It might be said of Mr. Gorse that he had an overwhelming impersonality. One could never be quite sure that ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... furnish nothing better than a faint outline. We are not fortunate enough to possess the work on Plato's life composed by his companion and disciple, Xenocrates, like the life of Plotinus by Porphyry, or that of Proclus by Marinus. Though Plato lived eighty years, enjoying extensive celebrity, and though Diogenes Laertius employed peculiar care in collecting information about him, yet the number of facts recounted is very small, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... that vein of granite will be very soft from containing so much felspar; and this granite, a familiar example of which can be seen in the material of Waterloo Bridge, the learned, who give names, call porphyry. ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn

... perceived that this artist, in place of giving body to his phantasy in porphyry and marble, or defining his thoughts by the creation of massive caryatides, rather effaced the contour of his works, and, had it been necessary, could have elevated his architecture itself from the soil, to suspend it, like the floating palaces of the Fata Morgana, in the fleecy clouds, through ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt

... its supply on the rains falling here. The deep cracks on the plains, so abundant as to impede the traveller, seemed capable of absorbing not only the water which falls upon them, but also any which may descend from the low hills around. During our day's journey I found grey porphyry, the base consisting apparently of granular felspar with embedded crystals of common felspar and ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... well take up the lamentation of the learned Leland, who, regretting the downfall of the conventual libraries, exclaims, like Rachel weeping for her children, that if the Papal laws, decrees, decretals, clementines, and other such drugs of the devilyea, if Heytesburg's sophisms, Porphyry's universals, Aristotle's logic, and Dunse's divinity, with such other lousy legerdemains (begging your pardon, Miss Wardour) and fruits of the bottomless pit,had leaped out of our libraries, for the accommodation of grocers, candlemakers, soapsellers, ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... the sea-level. I no longer travel upon horizontal paths, but over hills and steep ridges, across deep valleys and ravines. The hoof of my horse no longer sinks in light sand or dark alluvion. It rings upon rocks of amygdaloid and porphyry. The soil is changed; the scenery has undergone a change, and even the atmosphere that surrounds me. The last is perceptibly cooler, but not yet cold. I am still in the piedmont lands—the tierras calientes. The templadas ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid

... dimensions in the transparent atmosphere of Arizona. Siva's Temple, for example, stands upon a platform four or five miles square, from which rise domes and pinnacles a thousand feet in height. Some of their summits call to mind immense sarcophagi of jasper or of porphyry, as if they were the burial-places of dead deities, and the Grand Canon a Necropolis for pagan gods. Yet, though the greater part of the population of the world could be assembled here, one sees no worshipers, save an occasional devotee of Nature, standing on the Canon's rim, lost ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard

... Hume ought not to have overlooked, but which he has, however, overlooked: he himself observes, very justly, that PROPHECY is a distinct species of the miraculous; and, no doubt, he neglected the Scriptural Prophecies, as supposing them all of doubtful interpretation, or believing with Porphyry, that such as are not doubtful, must have been posterior to the event which they point to. It happens, however, that there are some prophecies which cannot be evaded or 'refused,' some to which neither objection ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... more zeal and diligence than ever. I would have you build me, as soon as you can, a palace opposite, but at a proper distance from, the sultan's, fit to receive my spouse, the Princess Badroulboudour. I leave the choice of the materials to you, that is to say, porphyry, jasper, agate, lapis lazuli, or the finest marble of various colours, and also the architecture of the building. But I expect that on the terraced roof of this palace you will build me a large hall crowned with a dome, and having four equal fronts; and that instead of layers of bricks, the ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown

... elaborate stone carving as decorates the outside. There are beautiful "Rose" windows close to the ground, and the Lilies of France, of course, are everywhere. The chief drawing-room is a charming room, hung with pale yellow satin damask, and with beautiful Louis Quinze furniture. The porphyry hall is considered one of the sights, the roof, walls, and floor are all ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden

... dazzling radiance under the noonday sun. A bank of grey-blue mist lay over the South, and marked the domain where winter was felt. Up above me stood great grey rocks, stained here and there the colour of rose porphyry. The tops of these rocks, even here as I look up at them from Yalta, are outlined with a bright white line—winter and hoar-frost hold sway ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... of Porphyry,[69] has treated the matter of genii and their apparition more profoundly than any other author of antiquity. It would seem, to hear him discourse, that he knew both the genii and their qualities, and that he had with them the most intimate and continual converse. He affirms that our eyes ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... composed of various eruptive rocks. At one part we have breccia of altered marl or slate in quartz, and various amygdaloids. It is curious to observe the different forms which silica assumes. We have it in claystone porphyry here, in minute round globules, no larger than turnip-seed, dotted thickly over the matrix; or crystallized round the walls of cavities, once filled with air or other elastic fluid; or it may appear in similar cavities as tufts of yellow asbestos, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... the wall of a temple, the arch of an aqueduct, rose crowned with wall-flower and weeds out of the rank grass, the briars and nettles, the heaps of broken masonry and plaster, among which shone beneath the darting lizards, scraps of vermilion wall-fresco, the chips of purple porphyry or dark-green serpentine; long avenues of trees early sere, closed in by arum-fringed walls, or by ditches where the withered reeds creaked beneath the festoons of clematis and wild vine; solemn and solitary wildernesses within the city walls, ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... their way lay straight across the broad well-grassed plains, marked with ripples as though the retiring sea had but just left it. Then a green swamp; through the tall reeds the native companion, king of cranes, waded majestic; the brilliant porphyry water hen, with scarlet bill and legs, flashed like a sapphire among the emerald green water-sedge. A shallow lake, dotted with wild ducks; here and there a group of wild swan, black with red bills, floating calmly on its bosom. ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... therefore it was possible for carving in the North to be rendered as deeply and as roundly as the sculptor desired. In Southern countries, however, and chiefly in Italy, the stone used for building was not ordinary, but semi-precious stone. Marble, porphyry, and alabaster were available; and the use of such material led to a different ideal in architecture and decoration,—that of incrustation instead of solid piling. These valuable stones of Italy could not be used, generally ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison

... leap Across the chasm, and crown the western rim Of alabaster with a far-away Rampart of pearl, and flowing down by walls Of changeful opal, deepen into gold Of topaz, rosy gold of tourmaline, Crimson of garnet, green and gray of jade, Purple of amethyst, and ruby red, Beryl, and sard, and royal porphyry; Until the cataract of colour breaks Upon the blackness of the ...
— Songs Out of Doors • Henry Van Dyke

... corrupted age Could scarcely rear: the lofty ceiling shone With richest tracery, the beams were bound In golden coverings; no scant veneer Lay on its walls, but built in solid blocks Of marble, gleamed the palace. Agate stood In sturdy columns, bearing up the roof; Onyx and porphyry on the spacious floor Were trodden 'neath the foot; the mighty gates Of Maroe's throughout were formed, He mere adornment; ivory clothed the hall, And fixed upon the doors with labour rare Shells of the tortoise gleamed, from ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... as subtle as that of flowers. A man or two, hoary with marble-dust and ennobled by the "bloom" of it, stood tall and sad about the wheel, and we handed to these refined creatures our treasures of giallo-antico and porphyry and other marbles picked up "for remembrance" (and no doubt once pressed by a Caesar's foot or met by a Caesar's glance), in order to observe the fresh color leap to the surface,—yellow, ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... geological excursion, and had a very pleasant ramble about the base of the Andes. The whole country appears composed of breccias (and I imagine slates) which universally have been modified and oftentimes completely altered by the action of fire. The varieties of porphyry thus produced are endless, but nowhere have I yet met with rocks which have flowed in a stream; dykes of greenstone are very numerous. Modern volcanic action is entirely shut up in the very central parts (which cannot ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... of the divine afflatus," says Jamblichus, citing Porphyry, "is, that he who induces the numen into himself, sees the spirit descending, and its quantity and quality. Also, he who receives the numen sees before the reception a certain likeness of a fire; sometimes, also, this ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... are older and harder than the rocks of the plains; and as you travel from the south to the north, the older and harder they become. The highest mountains of Wales, and some of its hills, have crests of the very oldest and hardest rock—granite, porphyry, and basalt; and these rocks are given their form by fire. But the greater part of the country is made of rocks formed by water—still the oldest of their kind. In the north-west, centre, and west—about two-thirds of the whole country,—the ...
— A Short History of Wales • Owen M. Edwards

... the works of this last philosopher are particularly valuable to all who desire to penetrate into the depths of this divine wisdom. From the exalted nature of his genius, he was called Intellect by his contemporaries, and is said to have composed his books under the influence of divine illumination. Porphyry relates, in his life, that he was four times united by an ineffable energy with the divinity; which, however such an account may be ridiculed in the present age, will be credited by everyone who has ...
— An Essay on the Beautiful - From the Greek of Plotinus • Plotinus

... not have gained anything by objecting: they would only have lost their situations. You need not fear for your house front. I will order a porch with porphyry steps and alabaster pillars ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... sarcophagi were undoubtedly the three in Mr. Trelawny's room. Of these, two were of dark stone, one of porphyry and the other of a sort of ironstone. These were wrought with some hieroglyphs. But the third was strikingly different. It was of some yellow-brown substance of the dominating colour effect of Mexican onyx, which it resembled in many ways, excepting ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker

... Nelson's funeral. So perfectly adapted for sound is St. Paul's, that though the walls were muffled with black cloth, the Dean's voice could be heard distinctly, even up in the western gallery. The sarcophagus which holds Wellington's ashes is of massive and imperishable Cornish porphyry, grand from its perfect simplicity, and worthy of the man who, without gasconade or theatrical display, trod ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... Cellini, remained, as also did the prie-dieu, enriched with silver daisies, which Michelangelo had designed for Margaret of Navarre. The jewelled crucifix was gone, together with the old chain bible and ebony lectern from the Cistercian Monastery at La Trappe. The curious chalice, too, of porphyry starred with beryl, taken at the sack of Panama, and recovered a century later from an inn at Saragossa, had disappeared from its place; and where illuminated missals and monkish books had formerly lain upon the long ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer

... its vast spaces, its airy dome, its great arches and galleries, its walls of variegated marble, its glittering mosaics and columns of porphyry, to-day made her realize that in her life of adventure and passion she was driven, as if by a demon with a whip, and that her horrible situation with Dion was but the culmination of a series of horrible situations. She had escaped from them only after ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... them in bright coruscations for a short distance into the mouth of the tunnel, the other end of which, diminished by the distance, opened into the daylight like the eye-piece of an inverted telescope. I found in the bed of the river fragments of marble and porphyry, cut and polished, that had doubtless come from the pavement of some palace or temple, and attested the truth of the report that has come down to us, that the buildings of Veii were stately and magnificent. ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... ascending, through a barren district, along the dry bed of a river, called the Rio Seco. The last half-league of the way is very steep, and leads to the ridge of a chain of hillocks running diagonally across the valley. The ground is strewed with fragments of porphyry and other kinds of rock, like the bed of the Rimac. On reaching the ridge of the line of hillocks, the traveller beholds on the other side a hollow basin, like the dry bed of a lake: a furrow, extending lengthwise through this hollow, is the continuation of the bed of the ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... pavements and potteries of every age, from the glossy Greco-Roman ware whose delicately embossed shell devices are emblematic of this sea-girt city, down to the grosser products of yesterday. Of marbles I have found cipollino, pavonazzetto, giallo and rosso antico, but no harder materials such as porphyry or serpentine. This, and the fact that the mosaics are pure white, suggests that the houses here must have dated, ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... Buddhism, which were then flourishing in Central and Eastern Asia, infected the Alexandrian schools, and impressed philosophy with a new and dreamy character, which became the source of subsequent and frightful errors. The Neo-Platonism of Porphyry and Plotinus was intended, in the minds of its originators, to lay a scientific basis for polytheism; and, in Jamblichus finally, became an open justification of the most absurd fables of ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... throne of gold, its sixteen columns of Phrygian and Numidian marble and its eight niches containing colossal statues; there were the hall of justice, the vast dining-room, the peristylium, the sleeping apartments, where granite, porphyry, and alabaster overflowed, carved and decorated by the most famous artists, and lavished on all sides in order to dazzle the world. And finally, many years later, a last palace was added to all the others—that of Septimius Severus: again a building ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... bath-tubs in its hotels, can testify to this. It is a city that enticed and still entices the mighty of the earth; Roman Emperors in the past came to appease the wrath of its gods, a German Emperor to-day comes to pilfer its temples. For the Acropolis in the poplar grove is a mine of ruins. The porphyry pillars, the statues, the tablets, the exquisite friezes, the palimpsests, the bas-reliefs,—Time and the Turks have spared a few of these. And when the German Emperor came, Abd'ul-Hamid blinked, and the Berlin Museum is now ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... moment lost sight of the need for secrecy. We were drilling when Blackwell's shadow fell across the mouth of the pit, but we had taken the precaution to cover the gold-bearing vein with spalls and chippings of the porphyry, and to see to it that none of the gold-bearing material showed in the small dump ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde

... staircase, the door opening showed us at the end of a small vaulted corridor a beautiful statue by Rossi of St. Anthony and the infant Jesus. At the back, fixed in the wall, is a large slab of red porphyry, circular at the top and surrounded by an elegant inlay of Sienna verd, antique border surrounding the whole figure of the Saint, and has a most rich effect; it is difficult to believe that the Sienna is not gold. The light descending from above gives that ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown

... first landing in any new country is very interesting, and especially when, as in this case, the whole aspect bears the stamp of a marked and individual character. At the height of between two and three hundred feet above some masses of porphyry a wide plain extends, which is truly characteristic of Patagonia. The surface is quite level, and is composed of well-rounded shingle mixed with a whitish earth. Here and there scattered tufts of brown wiry grass are supported, and still more rarely, ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... several churches—rich, on the outside, with all the luxury of architecture,—withinside, gorgeous with painting, sculpture, and many-coloured marbles. The prodigality with which the most splendid and costly materials are lavished here is perfectly amazing: pillars of lapis-lazuli, columns of Egyptian porphyry, and pavements of mosaic, altars of alabaster ascended by steps incrusted with agate and jasper:—but to particularize would be in vain. I will only mention three or four which I wish to recollect: the Church of the ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... done me the honor to call here in your service. But now have you given of it the last and highest proof. Never has the wit of man before compounded an essence like that which lies buried in this porphyry vase.' ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... and buzzed in such a manner that their advance and retreat could be plainly heard. In passing by me, the noise was more of a crackling and humming nature, while a million faint sparks flashed from the stones (porphyry and rhyolite) as the wave passed over. But the effect on me became constant. Every muscle was almost immovable. I could climb only a few steps without weakening to the stopping-point. I breathed only by gasps, and my ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... decoration had so declined that Constantine was forced to rob the cities of Greece of their finest works in order to supply the deficiencies of his own artists: Athens and Asia were despoiled to adorn his semi-barbarous capital. The city was provided with a forum, in which was placed a column of porphyry upon a white marble base, in all one hundred and twenty feet high, upon which stood a bronze figure of Apollo. A hippodrome, or circus of great size, and the baths and pleasure-grounds, recalled the memory of those of Rome. Schools and theatres, aqueducts, ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence

... gateway, but without gates, into an inner court, surrounded on all sides by great marble pillars supporting galleries above, I saw a large fountain of porphyry in the middle, throwing up a lofty column of water, which fell, with a noise as of the fusion of all sweet sounds, into a basin beneath; overflowing which, it ran into a single channel towards the interior of the building. Although ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald

... the banks of Peel's river contained limestone of so peculiar an aspect as to resemble porphyry, and it was associated with a rock having a base of chocolate-coloured granular ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... side. In spite of the rain, we remained on deck until a late hour, enjoying the bold scenery of the outer fjord—here, precipitous woody shores, gashed with sudden ravines; there, jet-black rocky peaks, resembling the porphyry hills of the African deserts; and now and then, encircling the sheltered coves, soft green fields glowing with misty light, and the purple outlines of snow-streaked ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor

... beneath the portico:—"There," said she to Lord Nelville, "was a most beautiful urn of porphyry, now transferred to St John of Lateran; it contained the ashes of Agrippa, which were placed at the foot of the statue that he had raised to himself. The ancients took so much care to soften the idea of dissolution that they knew how to strip it ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael

... Mercury was the King's bed of state, before which was a balustrade of silver. In all the Grand Apartments were hangings and furniture of extraordinary richness. There were tables of gilded wood and mosaic, Florentine marbles, pedestals of porphyry for vases of precious metal, ebony cabinets inlaid with copper, columns of jasper, agate and lapis lazuli, silver chandeliers, branched candle-sticks, baskets, vessels for liqueurs, silver perfuming pans. Windows were draped with ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne

... glittering stone, heated like an oven by a burning sun, which seemed to hang for that very purpose right above the gorge. When we raised our eyes towards the crests, we stood dazzled and stupefied by what we saw. They looked red and notched like festoons of coral, for all the summits are made of porphyry; and the sky overhead seemed violet, lilac, discolored by the vicinity of these strange mountains. Lower down the granite was of scintillating gray, and under our feet it seemed rasped, pounded; we were walking over shining ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... retaining their white coating, and 2 feet long by 18 inches broad, in beds worked for phosphatic nodules at Foxhall, four miles south-east of Ipswich. These must have been tranquilly drifted to the spot by floating ice. Mr. Prestwich also mentions the occurrence of a large block of porphyry in the base of the Coralline Crag at Sutton, which would imply that the ice-action had begun in our seas even in this older period. The cold seems to have gone on increasing from the time of the ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell

... forum, enters a court-yard, stoops under a gate, and he arrives before the front of the palace, adorned with a group in wax representing the Emperor Constantine hurling the dragon to the earth. A porphyry basin supports in its centre a golden conch filled with pistachio-nuts. His guide informs him that he may take some of them. He ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert

... of the interior fittings is a porphyry altar, placed by Sacheverell, who was Rector from 1713 to 1724, and who is buried beneath it. A marble font, at which Disraeli was baptized at the age of twelve, is also interesting, and the pulpit of richly-carved wood, ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... from the real world, lying outside of all mind, and attainable only by strict mental discipline. This notion, simplified by Aristotle into the notion of a transcendent God, eternally thinking himself, was developed into a hierarchic system of being by the Neo-Platonists, Plotinus, Porphyry, etc., and from them passed into the Christian Church, partly through Augustine and the Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita (q.v.), and partly through the Muslim and Jewish thinkers of later times. Though at first regarded with suspicion by the Western Church, it was too closely ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... production oPeri tes ton Euangelion diaphonias, the latter Concordia Evangelii Mattaei et Lucae. But by far the ablest of the ancient writings on this subject is the De Consensu Evangelistarum of St. Augustine. Many authors, such as Porphyry, in his Kata Christianon logoi, had pointed with an air of triumph to the seeming discrepancies in the Evangelic records as an argument subversive of their claim to paramount authority ("Hoc enim solent ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various

... *slow **quick Which that was made? and of the care and woe That we had in our matters subliming, And in amalgaming, and calcining Of quicksilver, called mercury crude? For all our sleightes we can not conclude. Our orpiment, and sublim'd mercury, Our ground litharge* eke on the porphyry, *white lead Of each of these of ounces a certain,* *certain proportion Not helpeth us, our labour is in vain. Nor neither our spirits' ascensioun, Nor our matters that lie all fix'd adown, May in our working nothing us avail; ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... hand, he swung down into the ore bin underneath the crusher. "Here's where it is," said he to himself. "With the jaw screwed that tight, how cud ye hope to handle this stuff—especially since the intilligent and discriminatin' mine-boss was sendin' down quartz that's more'n half porphyry! Yer little donkey injin, and yer little sugar mashers, and yer little lemon squeezer of a crusher—yah! It's a grocery store ye've got, and not a stamp mill. Loose off yer nut on the lower jaw, ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough

... the travellers was amid the wrecks of an extinct volcano. It seemed here as if the genius of fire had striven to outdo the grotesque extravagances of the genii of the waters. Crags, towers, and pinnacles of porphyry were mingled with huge convoluted masses of light brown trachyte, of tufa either pure white or white veined with crimson, of black and gray columnar basalts, of red, orange, green, and black scoria, with adornments of obsidian, amygdaloids, rosettes ...
— Overland • John William De Forest

... Endymion, the other Venus and Mars, decorate the chamber; and a little niche, which contains the statue of a domestic god. The floor is composed of a rich mosaic of the rarest marbles, agate, jasper, and porphyry; it looks to the marble fountain and the snow-white columns, whose entablatures strew the floor of the portico they supported. The houses have only one story, and the apartments, tho not large, are very lofty. A great advantage results from this, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various

... though they were carrying grain, and all manner of great things were brought to the city. Copper ore was brought from the mountain of copper in the land of Kimash, and gold was brought in powder from the mountains, and silver was brought from the mountains and porphyry from the land of Melukhkha, and marble from the mountain of marble. And the patesi installed goldsmiths and silversmiths, who wrought in these precious metals, for the adornment of the temple; and he brought smiths who worked in copper and lead, who were priests of Nin-tu-kalama. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall

... it ceased to be earnestly cultivated wherever their direct domination was established. The great astronomers, mathematicians, and physicians, like the originators or defenders of the great metaphysical systems, were mostly Orientals. Ptolemy and Plotinus were Egyptians, Porphyry and Iamblichus, Syrians, Dioscorides and Galen, Asiatics. All branches of learning were affected by the spirit of the Orient. The clearest minds accepted the chimeras of astrology and magic. Philosophy claimed more and more to derive its inspiration from the fabulous wisdom ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... discussions of classification make reference to the so-called bifurcate scheme of division as the only one by which exhaustive division can be surely achieved. This is commonly illustrated by the ancient tree of Porphyry. By this method any subject it is desired to subdivide is first divided by writing the name of one selected species at one branch and writing at the other branch the name of the same species prefixed by "Not." Thus the Agassiz ...
— The Classification of Patents • United States Patent Office

... too. There were treasures from Mexico and Peru, from every romantic bit of the wonderful countries south of us— blocks of porphyry with quaint grecques and hieroglyphic painting from Mitla, copper axes and pottery from Cuzco, sculptured stones and mosaics, jugs, cups, vases, little gods and great, sacrificial stones, a treasure house of Aztec ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve

... be more graceful, nor more unlike what I mean. The Pales and Terminus I wish you to put up in the fields are familiar images, that you may cut out of an oak tree,—not beautiful marble statues, on porphyry pedestals, twenty feet high." ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... gallery with columns inclosing the sanctuary. The north and south sides are inclosed by piazzas with many noble columns. There are two hundred and fifty of these, formed of single stones of granite and porphyry, which are known to have come from Memphis and Heliopolis. The whole deserted temple constitutes the most important monument of Arabian architecture in Cairo. Seen as it was in the dull gray of early morning, before the sun had fairly lighted the ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... lowest stair was marble white, so smooth And polished, that therein my mirrored form Distinct I saw. The next of hue more dark Than sablest grain, a rough and singed block Cracked lengthwise and across. The third, that lay Massy above, seemed porphyry, that flamed Red as the life-blood spouting from a vein. On this God's Angel either foot sustained, Upon the threshold seated, which appeared A rock of diamond. Up the trinal steps My leader cheerily drew me. "Ask," said he, "With humble heart, ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier

... held the "solemn fast" in high favour. The Egyptians, according to Herodotus, before they offered in sacrifice the cow to Isis, to purify themselves from impurities, fasted and prayed. This custom he also ascribes to the Cyrenian women. Porphyry relates that the fasts of the Egyptians were sometimes continued for six weeks, and that the shortest ordained by their priests was seven days, during which they abstained from nearly all kinds of food. These rites they communicated to the Greeks, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various

... the aviation field near the magnificent ruins of ancient Lebna. The extent of these ruins, great arches, portals and columns of marble, porphyry and cut stone overlooking the sea, though half buried by sand dunes, presents conclusive evidence of a former ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... dark forest, where the elv seems to collect within itself nature's whole deep gravity. The stream rolls its clear waters over a porphyry soil where the mill-wheel is driven, and the gigantic porphyry bowls ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen

... Sechem earth- tillers killed a scribe who was collecting taxes. In Melcatis and Pi- Hebit also earth-tillers wrecked the houses of Phoenician tenants. At Kasa they refused to repair the canal, declaring that pay from the treasury was clue them for that labor. Finally in the porphyry quarries the convicts killed their overseers and tried to escape in ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... basalt, black granite, porphyry, and red and yellow breccia, which are only found in the desert, were rarely used for architectural purposes. In order to procure them, it was necessary to organise regular expeditions of soldiers and workmen; therefore they were reserved for ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero

... and her husband did not share this passion with the other Romans, one would certainly not have looked in vain in her house for the cherished productions of modern art—cups and vases of marble and porphyry, and the gold ornaments of the jewelers. The most essential thing in every well ordered Roman house was above all else the credenza, a great chest containing gold and silver table and drinking vessels and beautiful majolica; ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius

... hands—Lamartine's Chute d'un Ange. Do you know the Seventh and Tenth Visions of that poem, which describe the favourite amusements of the Men-gods? Before the Deluge, beyond the rude tents of the nomad shepherds, there rose city upon city of palaces built of jasper and porphyry, splendid and utterly corrupt; inhabited by men who called themselves gods and explored the subtleties of all sciences to minister to their vicious pleasures. At ease on soft couches, in hanging gardens set with fountains, these beings feasted with every refinement of cruelty. Kneeling ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... own neighbourhood with poisonous fumes; and that I was approaching it. I must have somehow crawled, or dragged myself forward. There is an impression on my mind that it was a purple land of pure porphyry; there is some faint memory, or dream, of hearing a long-drawn booming of waves upon its crags: I do not know whence I have them. I think that I remember retching with desperate jerks of the travailing intestines; ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... picture to myself the mosque before the Christians laid their desecrating hands upon it. The floor was of coloured tiles, tiles such as may still be seen in the Alhambra of Granada and in the Alcazar at Seville. The columns are of marble, of porphyry and jasper; tradition says they came from Carthage, from pagan temples in France and Christian churches in Spain; they are slender and unadorned, they must have contrasted astonishingly with the roof of larch wood, all ablaze with gold ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham

... apparently scriptural basis, was taken over from the Jewish and Greek philosophers and theologians who employed it in the study of their sacred books. Origen, it should be added, contributed not a little to a sound grammatical interpretation as well. For Porphyry's criticism of Origen's methods of exegesis see Eusebius, Hist. Ec., ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... Byblus, a frontier town of Phoenicia, who wrote in the first century after Christ, and till the alleged discovery of the MS. from which Wagenfeld professed to publish, the only portion of Philo's version known to exist consisted of fragments preserved by Eusebius and Porphyry. Wagenfeld's statement was, that the MS. in his possession had been obtained from the Portuguese monastery of St. Maria de Merinhao (the existence of which there is reason to doubt), and the portion which he first ventured to print appeared with ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... Commynes, writing of his entry into Venice in 1495, observed instantly the distinction between the elder palaces and those built 'within this last hundred years; which all have their fronts of white marble brought from Istria, a hundred miles away, and besides, many a large piece of porphyry ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... all there, all, As the swarming hollow of a hive, The whole Basilica alive! Men in the chancel, body and nave, Men on the pillars' architrave, Men on the statues, men on the tombs With popes and kings in their porphyry wombs, All famishing in expectation Of the main-altar's consummation. For see, for see, the rapturous moment Approaches, and earth's best endowment Blends with heaven's; the taper-fires Pant up, the winding brazen spires Heave loftier yet the ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... come down to see her brother's work, and the work that he had put into the mind of the king to make his servants do. And she was displeased at it; because she saw only pieces of dark clay; and no porphyry, nor marble, nor any fair stone that men might engrave the figures of the gods upon. And she blamed her brother, and said, "Oh, Lord of truth! is this then thy will, that men should mold only foursquare pieces of clay: and the forms of the gods no ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin

... of Nero leaves me cold: Poems of porphyry and of gold, Palatial poems, chill my heart. I gaze—I wonder—I depart. Not to Byzantium would I roam In quest of beauty, nor Babylon; Nor do I seek Sahara's sun To blind me to the hills of home. Here am I native; ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps

... called it—of which he now found himself lord, seemed to him to be a new world fresh-fashioned for his delight; and as soon as he could escape from the council-board or audience-chamber, he would run down the great staircase, with its lions of gilt bronze and its steps of bright porphyry, and wander from room to room, and from corridor to corridor, like one who was seeking to find in beauty an anodyne from pain, a sort ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde

... in a building not far from the imperial palace. The pavement was of polished marble, and columns of porphyry supported a paneled dome. An altar with a statue of a heathen deity was at one end of the apartment. Magistrates in their robes occupied raised seats on the opposite end. In front of them were ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous

... cracks. For a man unaccustomed to walk on land, the Captain climbed the steep slopes with an agility I never saw equalled and which a hunter would have envied. We were two hours getting to the summit of this peak, which was half porphyry and half basalt. From thence we looked upon a vast sea which, towards the north, distinctly traced its boundary line upon the sky. At our feet lay fields of dazzling whiteness. Over our heads a pale azure, free ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne

... cheek had rained the morning light, Thrice on his lips the mildewed kiss of night, Crouched by some porphyry column's shining plinth, Or stretched beneath ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... from their situation; others from the worship there established. The Egyptians had many subordinate Deities, which they esteemed so many emanations, [Greek: aporrhoiai] from their chief God; as we learn from Iamblichus, Psellus, and Porphyry. These derivatives they called [198]fountains, and supposed them to be derived from the Sun; whom they looked upon as the source of all things. Hence they formed Ath-El and Ath-Ain, the [199]Athela and Athena of the Greeks. These were two titles appropriated to the same personage, ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant

... seen her face; for she lived apart with the maidens who waited on her, in a lofty tower which her father had built specially for her. It was really a noble palace, with ten great rooms, one over the other. The first room was paved with porphyry and lined with slabs of coloured marbles, and the roof was of gold: and it was a kind of chapel for Aseneth. It had golden and silver images of all the gods of Egypt, and Aseneth worshipped them and burnt incense to them every day. The second chamber ...
— Old Testament Legends - being stories out of some of the less-known apochryphal - books of the old testament • M. R. James

... crocodiles, with small beryl eyes, that crawl over the green steaming mud; he began to brood over those verses which, drawing music from kiss-stained marble, tell of that curious statue that Gautier compares to a contralto voice, the "monstre charmant" that couches in the porphyry-room of the Louvre. But after a time the book fell from his hand. He grew nervous, and a horrible fit of terror came over him. What if Alan Campbell should be out of England? Days would elapse before ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde

... I noble with me; and after passing through Maestricht we came to Gulpen, and from there to Aix on Sunday; there I have spent up till now, with the fare and all, 3 florins. At Aachen I saw the well- proportioned pillars with their good capitals of green and red porphyry and granite which Carolus [Charlemagne] had brought from Rome and set up there. These are made truly according to Vitruvius's writings. At Aachen I bought an ox horn for 1 gold florin. I have taken the portraits of Herr Hans Ebner and George ...
— Memoirs of Journeys to Venice and the Low Countries - [This is our volunteer's translation of the title] • Albrecht Durer

... system of Logic, namely, that of Aristotle and the Schools. 2. A concise and simple, yet full statement of the Aristotelian Logic, with reference annexed to the authors, and the name and page of the work to which each part may be traced, so that it may be at once seen what is Aristotle's, what Porphyry's, what the addition of the Greek Commentators, and what of the Schoolmen. 3. An outline of the History of Logic in general, 1st Chapter. The Origin of Philosophy in general, and of Logic 'speciatim'. 2d Chap. Of the Eleatic and Megaric ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull

... moraine about two hundred yards in length and fifty feet wide. It rests on sandstone about fifteen feet above the present sea-level and the boulders consist of polished and sub-angular blocks of sandstone and porphyry of various sizes. It evidently belongs to the valley or to a later stage of glaciation. The rocks along the coast are all a volcanic series, and basic dykes ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... to fragments of mediaeval walls and a great tower which crowns the summit of the hill. At the feet of this height lie the two isles of Lerins, set in the blue waters of the bay; on the east the eye ranges over the porphyry hills of Napoul to the huge masses of the Estrelles; landwards a tumbled country with bright villas dotted over it rises gently to the Alps. As a strictly winter resort Cannes is far too exposed for the more delicate ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... cost of charcoal, due to the scarcity of wood, has greatly crippled the iron industry. There are important soapstone quarries in the Gudbransdal and the Trondhjem basin; green colored slate in the Valders and at Vossevangen; and granite, syenite, and porphyry in ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough

... their claim to Mycale, a verse of Homer gave it to the Milesians. The Athenians were put in possession of Salamis by another which was cited by Solon, or (according to some) interpolated by him for that purpose; and Porphyry says, that the catalogue was so highly esteemed, that the youths of some nations were required to commit it ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... of 'Psychical Research,' few collections of books on 'Bogles' as Scott called them. We possess Palaephatus, the life of Apollonius of Tyana, jests in Lucian, argument and exposition from Pliny, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Plutarch, hints from Plato, Plautus, Lucretius, from St. Augustine and other fathers. Suetonius chronicles noises and hauntings after the death of Caligula, but, naturally, the historian does not record similar ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang

... Ferdinand Andri executed the frescoes on the facade and Meinrich Tomec those in the department for waterways. The Emperor's bust, which was made of Lassar marble and which had been executed in the workshop of the Tyrol Marble and Porphyry Company (Fritz Zeller), Laas (Tyrol), was a copy ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... He was on the point of giving Plotinus a ruined city of Campania to try the experiment of realizing Plato's Republic. See the Life of Plotinus, by Porphyry, in Fabricius's Biblioth. Graec. l. iv.] [Footnote 155: A medal which bears the head of Gallienus has perplexed the antiquarians by its legend and reverse; the former Gallienoe Augustoe, the latter Ubique Pax. M. Spanheim supposes that the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... form makes a thing otherwise (alterum) so does substantial form make another thing (aliud) as Porphyry says (Praedic.). Now in Christ there are two substantial natures, the human and the Divine. Therefore Christ is one thing and another. Therefore Christ ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... statues; and the centre of the Forum was occupied by a lofty column, of which a mutilated fragment is now degraded by the appellation of the burnt pillar. This column was erected on a pedestal of white marble twenty feet high; and was composed of ten pieces of porphyry, each of which measured about ten feet in height, and about thirty-three in circumference. On the summit of the pillar, above one hundred and twenty feet from the ground, stood the colossal statue of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... not also attribute to the worship of stones some of the religious and funeral rites of antiquity? According to Porphyry, Pythagoras, on his arrival on the island of Crete, was purified with thunder-stones by the dactyl priests of Mount Ida. The Etruscans wore flint arrow-heads on their collars. They were sought after by the Magi, and the Indians gave them an honored place in their temples. According ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... the temple of AEgina; but more rich and refined. I drew with accurate care, and with measured profile of every moulding, the tomb built for Roger II. (afterwards Frederick II. was laid in its dark porphyry). And it is a perfect type of the Greek-Christian form of tomb—temple over sarcophagus, in which the pediments rise gradually, as time goes on, into acute angles—get pierced in the gable with foils, and their sculptures thrown outside on their flanks, and become ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin

... application; while on well drained and light soils a smaller quantity suffices. Thin soils also require only a small application. The geological origin of the soil is also not without its influence, and its beneficial effect is peculiarly seen on granite, porphyry, and gneiss soils, both because these are naturally deficient in lime, and because the decompositions by which their valuable constituents are liberated ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson

... the valleys and gorges are filled with formations of every possible variety, sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous. Down many of them run long streams of trap or basalt; occasionally there are dykes of porphyry and greenstone, and then patches of sandstone, before the limestone and flint recur."[133] Some slopes are composed entirely of soft sandstone; many patches are of a hard metallic-sounding trap or porphyry; but the predominant formation ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... obviously a man who had come from afar. There was not a square inch about him that had anything to do with modern English life. His visage, which was of the colour of light porphyry, had little of its original surface left; it was a face which had been the plaything of strange fires or pestilences, that had moulded to whatever shape they chose his originally supple skin, and left it pitted, puckered, ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... opening just big enough for a man to wriggle through. Passing into it, they entered a long underground passage, which led out on to a wide field, above which spread a blue sky. In the middle of the field stood a magnificent castle, built out of porphyry, with a roof of gold and with glittering battlements. And his beautiful guide told him that this was the palace in which her father lived and reigned over ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang

... immediate neighbourhood of Cape York is a porphyry with soft felspathic base, containing numerous moderately-sized crystals of amber-coloured quartz, and a few larger ones of flesh-coloured felspar. It often appears in large tabular masses split horizontally and vertically ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... three orders of Magi enumerated by Porphyry, abstained from wine and women, and the first of these ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian



Words linked to "Porphyry" :   porphyritic rock, groundmass, igneous rock, porphyritic



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