"Vishnu" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... into being. No wonder then, that in some sort our noble profession of whaling should have been there shadowed forth. The Hindoo whale referred to, occurs in a separate department of the wall, depicting the incarnation of Vishnu in the form of leviathan, learnedly known as the Matse Avatar. But though this sculpture is half man and half whale, so as only to give the tail of the latter, yet that small section of him is all wrong. It looks more like the tapering tail of ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... after he received his wound. I call Vishnu to witness," yelled the wretched man, "that I did everything for him. Everything which was possible, ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... has been grown in America. Sacred basil (O. sanctum), an oriental species, is cultivated near temples in India and its odoriferous oil extracted for religious uses. Formerly the common species was considered sacred by the Brahmins who used it especially in honor of Vishnu and in funeral rites. An African species, O. fruticosum, is highly valued at the Cape of Good Hope ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... names thought of by the bewildered, hurried tourist. He would be as likely to think of names for waves in a storm. The Eastern and Western Cloisters, Hindu Amphitheater, Cape Royal, Powell's Plateau, and Grand View Point, Point Sublime, Bissell and Moran points, the Temple of Set, Vishnu's Temple, Shiva's Temple, Twin Temples, Tower of Babel, Hance's Column—these fairly good names given by Dutton, Holmes, Moran, and others are scattered over a large ...
— The Grand Canon of the Colorado • John Muir
... attached to the Umbrella, came a feeling of veneration for it, very different from the contempt with which we are now-a-days too apt to regard it. It was represented by many ancient nations as shading their gods. In the Hindoo mythology Vishnu is said to have paid a visit to the infernal regions with his Umbrella over his head. One would think that in few places could an Umbrella have been less appropriate, but doubtless Vishnu knew what he was about, and had his own reasons for carrying his Parapluie under his arm. Perhaps like Mrs. ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... as everywhere, I sometimes expected the Visitor who never comes. The Vishnu Purana says, "The house-holder is to remain at eventide in his courtyard as long as it takes to milk a cow, or longer if he pleases, to await the arrival of a guest." I often performed this duty of hospitality, waited long enough to milk a whole herd of cows, but did not ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... by ancient philosophers that the sun when located in this Rasi or sign is called by the name of Vishnu (see the 12th Skandha of Bhagavata). This sign is intended to represent Vishnu. Vishnu literally means that which is expanded—expanded as Viswam or Universe. Properly speaking, Viswam itself is Vishnu (see Sankaracharya's commentary on Vishnusahasranamam). ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... belly wears no deeper dye; In flashing lightning's golden mantle clad, While cranes, his buglers, make the heaven glad, The cloud, a second Vishnu,[61] mounts the sky. 2 ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... style is as yet an unsolved problem. Its monuments were mainly built between 600 and 1200 A.D., the oldest being in Orissa, at Bhuwanesevar, Kanaruk, and Puri. In northern India the temples are about equally divided between the two forms of Brahmanism—the worship of Vishnu or Vaishnavism, and that of Siva or Shaivism—and do not differ materially in style. As in the Jaina style, the vimana is their most striking feature, and this is in most cases adorned with numerous reduced ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... represented seated on a peacock and playing a stringed instrument of the guitar kind. Brahma, himself, we find depicted as a vigorous man with four handsome heads, beating with his hands upon a small drum. Arid Vishnu, in his incarnation as Krishna, is represented as a beautiful youth playing upon a flute. The Hindoos still possess a peculiar kind of flute which they consider as the favorite instrument of Krishna. Furthermore, they have the divinity of Genesa, the god of wisdom, who is represented ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... respectability—our god—is not only no fetish, it is the unspeakable thing, the Moabitish abomination. He will not bow down to the golden image which our British Nebuchadnezzar, King Demos, has made, and which he asks us to worship. And the British Nebuchadnezzar will never get beyond the worship of his Vishnu, respectability, the deity of the pure and blameless ratepayer. So Ibsen must always remain a sealed book to the vast majority ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... philosophy, and excite a deeper and more reverential awe in the imagination of the Singhalese. As the Hindus in process of time superadded to their exalted conceptions of Brahma, and the benevolent attributes of Vishnu, their dismal dreams and apprehensions, which embody themselves in the horrid worship of Siva, and in invocations to propitiate the destroyer; so the followers of Buddha, unsatisfied with the vain pretensions of unattainable perfection, struck down by this internal consciousness ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Olympos. The Hindu Dyaus, who carried his significance in his name as plainly as the Greek Helios, never attained such an exalted position; he yielded to deities of less obvious pedigree, such as Brahma and Vishnu. ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... gentleman; for the Vishnu Pooran was his Chesterfield, and he had its precepts by heart. "A wise man," he would say to the pert young Kitmudgars, as they bragged and wrangled, between their hubble-bubbles, on the back stairs,—"a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... of the most curious and interesting monuments to be seen in the city. This is an enormous statue of the god Vishnu in his AVATARA as Narasimha, the man-lion. It was hewn out of a single boulder of granite, which lay near the south-western angle of the Krishnasvami temple, and the king bestowed a grant of lands for its maintenance. Though it has been grievously injured, probably ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... ransom they demanded for a native inspector! I have overlooked their taking the horses out of my carriage for their own use. I am content also to believe that my fowls meekly succumb to jungle fever and cholera. But there are some things I cannot ignore. The carrying off of the great god Vishnu from the Sacred Shrine at Ducidbad by The Three for the sake of the ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... fully shared by Caspar. Ossaroo participated in it, but only to a very slight degree. The shikaree was still inclined towards indulging in his superstitious belief that the creature they had seen was not of the earth, but some apparition of Brahma or Vishnu. ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid |
