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noun
Isis  n.  
1.
(Myth.) The principal goddess worshiped by the Egyptians. She was regarded as the mother of Horus, and the sister and wife of Osiris. The Egyptians adored her as the goddess of fecundity, and as the great benefactress of their country, who instructed their ancestors in the art of agriculture.
2.
(Zool.) Any coral of the genus Isis, or family Isidae, composed of joints of white, stony coral, alternating with flexible, horny joints. See Gorgoniacea.
3.
(Astron.) One of the asteroids.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Isis" Quotes from Famous Books



... another fine unpublished etching, "Windsor, from Salt Hill." Of the published etchings, the finest are the Ben Arthur, AEsacus, Cephalus, and Stone Pines, with the Girl washing at a Cistern; the three latter are the more generally instructive. Hindhead Hill, Isis, Jason, and ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... the real. He the baseless feud shall heal That estrangeth wide apart Science from her sister Art. Hold! look through this glass for me? Artist, tell me what you see?" "I!" cried Ralph. "I see in place Of Astarte's silver face, Or veiled Isis' radiant robe, Nothing but a rugged globe Seamed with awful rents and scars. And below no longer Mars, Fierce, flame-crested god of war, But a lurid, flickering star, Fashioned like our mother earth, Vexed, belike, with ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... whenever he spoke of home. Then she would tell of Babylon and Persepolis, and Mardonius of forays beside the wide Caspian, and Roxana of her girlhood, while Gobryas was satrap of Egypt, spent beside the magic river, of the Pharaohs, the great pyramid, of Isis and Osiris and the world beyond the dead. Before the Athenian was opened the golden East, its glitter, its wonderment, its fascination. He even was silent when his hosts talked boldly of the coming war, how soon the Persian power ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... in civilized states. The ancient kings of Teneriffe, if they could not find mates of equal rank, married their sisters to prevent the admixture of plebeian blood.[1687] In the Egyptian mythology Isis and Osiris were sister and brother as well as wife and husband. The kings of ancient Egypt married their sisters and daughters. The doctrine of royal essence was very exaggerated, and was applied with quantitative ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... superb columns of that same Saint Agnes, columns of various marbles filched from various gods; the one and twenty columns of Santa Maria in Trastevere, columns of all sorts of orders torn from a temple of Isis and Serapis, who even now are represented on their capitals; also the six and thirty white marble Ionic columns of Santa Maria Maggiore derived from the temple of Juno Lucina; and the two and twenty columns of Santa Maria in Ara Coeli, these varying in substance, size, and workmanship, and certain ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... Bulwer's Last Days of Pompeii; and on this occasion that whole story, with all its descriptions and all its incidents, was brought vividly before him by the surrounding scene. Most of all was the Temple of Isis associated with that story, and it seemed more familiar to him than anything else that he had found in the city. Glaucus and Ione, the Christian Olynthus, and the dark Arbaces seemed to haunt the place. In one of the chambers of this very temple, as Michael Angelo ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille

... high (perhaps hidden among the ruins of that fortress-castle where once the temple of Isis stood) must have spied the odd procession; for as the tall white girl and the little blue one, with the brown young man, reached the last step of the steep mule path, a tidal wave of children swept down upon them, out from the mystery of dark ...
— Rosemary in Search of a Father • C. N. Williamson

... been enemies come to surprise their city. All things were in disorder and fury till, with prayers and sacrifices, they had appeased their gods—[Diod. Sic., xv. 7]; and this is that they call panic terrors.—[Ibid. ; Plutarch on Isis and Osiris, c. 8.] ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... the spiritual perfume which characterises, let us say, St Stanislaus and the odorem suavitatis of Lucifer. He is also an authority on conditions, and gives a ravishing description of the voluptuous enervation diffused over all his limbs when he had a private memorandum from Isis by means of raps during the reception of a master in a blue lodge. On this occasion he tells us that he was inspired to pronounce one of his most wicked and dangerous Masonic discourses. Dear M. Kostka! Dynamite would lose its destroying ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite

... the women of ancient Egypt had their share in all the interests of life. Were there not artists among them who decorated temples and tombs with their imperishable colors? Did not women paint those pictures of Isis—goddess of Sothis—that are like precursors of the pictures of the Immaculate Conception? Surely we may hope that a papyrus will be brought to light that will reveal to us the part that women had in the decoration of the monuments of ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement

... on the Isis, Bonfires and bumps and BOFFIN'S cakes and tea, Nor ever dreamed a European crisis Would make a British soldier out of me— The mute inglorious kind That push the beastly ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various

... into what night have the Orient dieties strayed? Swart gods of the Nile, in dusk splendors arrayed, Brooding Isis and somber Osiris, You were gone ere the fragile papyrus, (That bragged you ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis

... Earth-worship and Sabaeanism of earlier ages, the Grecian genius acted to humanize and idealize, but, still, with some regard to the original principle. What was a seed, or a root, merely, in the Egyptian mind, became a flower in Greece,—Isis, and Osiris, for instance, are reproduced in Ceres and Proserpine, with some loss of generality, but with great gain of beauty; Hermes, in Mercury, with only more grace of form, though with great loss of grandeur; but the loss of grandeur was also an advance in ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... Armenians. And, as soon as they had saluted their parents, the one was received by a guard of Macedonians, the other by one of Armenians. Cleopatra was then, as at other times when she appeared in public, dressed in the habit of the goddess Isis, and gave audience to the people under the name of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... Fortune, his Fortune. Oh let him mary a woman that cannot go, sweet Isis, I beseech thee, and let her dye too, and giue him a worse, and let worse follow worse, till the worst of all follow him laughing to his graue, fifty-fold a Cuckold. Good Isis heare me this Prayer, though thou denie ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... we see the King's palace at Memphis. Ramphis, the Highpriest of Pharaoh announces to the Egyptian General Radames, that the Ethiopians are in revolt and that the goddess Isis has decided who shall be leader of the army sent out against them. Radames secretly hopes to be the elected, in order to win the Ethiopian slave Aida, whom he loves, not knowing that she is ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley

... Sayce writes. "On the voyage from Luxor to Assuan I stopped at Gebelon, and found that the Bedouin squatters there had unearthed some fragments of sculptured and inscribed stones on the summit of the fortress built by the priest-king Ra-men-kheper and queen Isis-m-kheb to defend this portion of the Nile. On examination they turned out to belong to a small temple which must once have stood on the spot. The original temple, I found, had been constructed of limestone by Hor-m-hib, the ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various

... who invented coffee of course I knew, and often utter, but the libation is new to me. You see the ancient religion crops up even through the severe faith of Islam. If I could describe all the details of an Arab, and still more of a Coptic, wedding, you would think I was relating the mysteries of Isis. At one house I saw the bride's father looking pale and anxious, and Omar said, 'I think he wants to hold his stomach with both hands till the women tell him if his daughter makes his face white.' It was ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... course she will pursue?" asked Lorry, as the Countess concluded her story. Isis face was ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... roaming on the earth, but all nations are in a state of wandering. The difference between them and us is that their gods are mortal, while Israel's God lives. Where is Zeus, the god of the Greeks? Where is the Romans' Jupiter? Where are the Egyptians' Isis, Osiris, and Ptha? Where is the Woutan of the Germans, the Teutates of the Gauls? They are all dead, but Israel's God lives; He cannot die. We are at any rate in Canaan, in our fathers' land, even if Zion is no longer ours, ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg

... slept in the innermost part of the tent and by his side lay a beautiful-cheeked woman, whom he had brought from Lesbos. On the other side lay Patroclus with the fair Isis by his side, the ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... the priestess or oracle of their worship. This worship evidently had its origin in Ancient Egypt since, although they did not seem to know it, the priestess was nothing less than a personification of the great goddess Isis, and the Ivory Child, their fetish, was a statue of the infant Horus, the fabled son of Isis and Osiris whom the Egyptians looked upon as the overcomer of Set or the Devil, the murderer of Osiris before his ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... Fancy fires With pictured glories of illustrious sires, With duteous zeal their pilgrimage shall take From the blue mountains, or Ontario's lake, With fond adoring steps to press the sod By statesmen, sages, poets, heroes trod; On Isis' banks to draw inspiring air, [11] From Runnymede to send the patriot's prayer; In pensive thought, where Cam's slow waters wind, To meet those shades that ruled the realms of mind; In silent halls to sculptured marbles bow, And hang fresh wreaths round Newton's awful brow. Oft shall they ...
— Eighteen Hundred and Eleven • Anna Laetitia Barbauld

... added.... This pyramid was visited by M. Dupe, a captain in the service of the King of Spain. He possesses the bust, in basalt, of a Mexican, which I employed M. Massard to engrave, and which bears great resemblance to the calautica of the heads of Isis." ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... As goddess Isis, when she went Or glided through the street, Made all that touched her, with her scent, And whom she ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... older and more superstitious age, the unassisted horrors of Nature herself would have repelled an invading host from the passage of this grizzly canon, as the profane might have been driven from the galleries of Isis or Eleusis. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... polytheism to its earliest stages we find that it results from combinations of monotheism. In Egypt even Osiris, Isis, and Horus (so familiar as a triad) are found at first as separate units in different places, Isis as a virgin goddess, and Horus as a self-existent god. Each city appears to have but one god belonging to it, to whom others were added. Similarly ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie

... veil of Isis sees divine Life everywhere, the Life that animates forms, builds them up, uses them, and finally breaks them to pieces when they have ceased to be of use; and this Life—God—thus spread about in numberless forms, by means of its many rays, develops in itself centres—souls—which gradually ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal

... reading-man; though I varied continually the desk and the book with the "constitutional" up Headington Hill, or the gallop with Mr. Murrell's harriers, or the quick scull to Iffley, or the more perilous sailing in a boat (no wonder that Isis claims her annual victims), or the gig to Blenheim or Newton-Courtnay,—or that only once alarming experience of a tandem when the leader turned round and looked at me in its nostalgic longing to return home,—or the geological ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... Confederate Soldiers' Home,—that rose-embowered, rambling place of gray-coated, white-haired old men with broken hearts for a lost cause,—it flows, unimpeded by the faintest conception of man, and we love it all the more that, like the Priestess of Isis, it is calm-browed, ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar

... of the host of pleasant, moneyed, well-bred young gentlemen, who do a little learning and much boating by Cam and Isis, the vision is a pleasant one; and, as a patriot, I rejoice that the youth of the upper and richer classes of the nation receive a wholesome and a manly training, however small may be the modicum of knowledge they gather, in the intervals of ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley

... Osiris, and Isis, I with Jehovah, in vapours and shadows; Thou with the gods' joy-enhancing devices, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... their mythology with narratives of Phoenician or Egyptian origin. The story of Io probably came from Egypt. Isis was one of the chief divinities of that country, and her worship naturally passed, with their colonies, into foreign countries. Greece received it when Inachus went to settle there, and in lapse of time Isis, under the name of Io, was supposed to have been his daughter, and the fable was ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... males then of the ox kind, both full-grown animals and calves, are sacrificed by all the Egyptians; the females however they may not sacrifice, but these are sacred to Isis; for the figure of Isis is in the form of a woman with cow's horns, just as the Hellenes present Io in pictures, and all the Egyptians without distinction reverence cows far more than any other kind of cattle; for which ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus

... stretched in Isis' calm retreat, To books and study gives seven years complete; See, strowed with learned dust, his nightcap on, He walks, an object new beneath the sun. The boys flock round him, and the people stare; So stiff, so mute! some statue you would swear, Stept from its pedestal ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell

... Ceres among the Phigalenses was black. She adds that Minerva Aglaurus, the daughter of Cecrops, at Athens, was black; that Corinth had a black Venus, as also the Thespians; that the oracles of Dodona and Delphi were founded by black doves, the emissaries of Venus, and that the Isis Multimammia in the ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler

... LAPLACE sought no more than to subject the celestial movements to the formulas of analysis, and reconcile to common observation terrestrial appearances; but our author is far more ambitious—more venturesome in aim—which is nothing less than to lift the veil of ISIS, and solve the phenomena of universal nature. With what success remains to be considered. That great skill and cleverness, that a very superior mastery is evinced, we have conceded, and, we will also add, great show of ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous

... of Ministers, a mysterious resignation—an episodical and futile attempt to re-construct a Whig government—and the return of Sir Robert Peel to power. Still there was no explanation. Men were left to guess, as they best might, at the Eleusinian drama performing behind the veil of Isis—to speculate for themselves, or announce to others at random the causes of this huge mystification. "The oracles were dumb." This only was certain, that Lord Stanley was no longer ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various

... rowing man that listens and his heart is crying out In the City as the sun sinks low; For the barge, the eight, the Isis, and the coach's whoop and shout, For the minute-gun, the counting and the long dishevelled rout, For the howl along the tow-path and a fate that's still in doubt, For a roughened oar to handle and a race to think about In the land where the ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... the geographical range of these animals and plants is as remarkable as their high antiquity. There are in lake Tanganyika or the rivers of Japan exactly the same kinds of shells as in the Thames, and the sedges and reeds of the Isis are found from Cricklade to Kamschatka and beyond Bering Sea to the upper waters of the Mackenzie and the Mississippi. The Thames, our longest fresh-water river, and its containing valley form the largest natural feature in this country. They are an organic ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish

... artificial society; and if the pages of melting and dazzling eloquence in which Rousseau has garnished out his idol did not blind and intoxicate us, as the incense and the garlands did the votaries of Isis, we should be disgusted. Rousseau, having composed his Julie of the commonest clay of the earth, does not animate her with fire from heaven, but breathes his own spirit into her, and then calls the "impetticoated" paradox a woman. He makes her a peg ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... Hath left in shadows dread His burning idol all of blackest hue; In vain with cymbals' ring They call the grisly king, In dismal dance about the furnace blue; The brutish gods of Nile as fast, Isis, and Orus, ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various

... himself from their thrall will do well to begin with a study of the beliefs and practices of other sects than his own—a field where he is free to observe and examine without fear of sacrilege. Let him look into Madame Blavatsky's "Secret Doctrine", or her "Isis Unveiled"—encyclopedias of the fantastic inventions which terror and longing have wrung out of the tortured soul of man. Here are mysteries and solemnities, charms and spells, illuminations and transmigrations, angels and demons, guides, controls and masters—all ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... of their Roman dens, instead of living in a house of public entertainment, as every honest man and good Christian should. Besides, on Friday he stuck by the salt beef and carrot, though there were as good spitch-cocked eels on the board as ever were ta'en out of the Isis." ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... some incense and do a chant or two," Rick suggested. "How's this? Oh, Osiris, son of Isis, please get the bugs out ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin

... know, when he met the lady — did I tell you that her professional name is Isis? — what would happen if her Soul was before her and her horoscope back of her. But Isis just simply ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis

... gives them an additional authority that they would desire to maintain. So we find that in the days of Marcus Aurelius an ancient Salian liturgy was used in the Roman temples which had become almost unintelligible to the worshippers. The ritual of the religion of Isis in Greece was, at the same period, conducted in an unknown tongue. In the present age Church Slavonic, the ecclesiastical language of the orthodox Slavs, is only just intelligible to the peasantry of Russia ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill

... dead, brother and husband of Isis. Osiris is identical with Adonis and Thammuz. All three represent the sun, six months above the equator, and six months below it. Adonis passed six months with Aphrod[i]t[^e] in heaven, and six months with Perseph[)o]n[^e] in hell. So Osiris in heaven was the ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... for a moment than Grace filled Melbury with grief and astonishment. In the pure and simple life he had led it had scarcely occurred to him that after marriage a man might be faithless. That he could sweep to the heights of Mrs. Charmond's position, lift the veil of Isis, so to speak, would have amazed Melbury by its audacity if he had not suspected encouragement from that quarter. What could he and his simple Grace do to countervail the passions of such as those two sophisticated beings—versed ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... The word "Dun," the appanage of all dignity consecrated by Druidical worship, proves a religious and military settlement of the Celts. Beneath the Dun of the Gauls must have lain the Roman temple to Isis. From that comes, according to Chaumon, the name of the city, Issous-Dun,—"Is" being the abbreviation of "Isis." Richard Coeur-de-lion undoubtedly built the famous tower (in which he coined money) above the basilica of the fifth century,—the third monument of ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... she climbed, nor spent a thought on the sudden changes to which at that season, and amongst those hills, the weather is subject. With no anxiety as to how she might fare, she was yet already not without some awe: she was at length on her pilgrimage to the temple of Isis! ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... gave a man over his fellow-creatures. A resort to the consolations of religion hindered these operations not at all. He would go and talk with an interesting, experienced and sympathetic Father of the Huysmanite sect of the Isis cult, about all the irrational little proceedings he was pleased to regard as his heaven-dismaying wickedness, and the interesting, experienced and sympathetic Father representing Heaven dismayed, would with a pleasing affectation of horror, suggest simple and easy penances, and recommend ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... galleries are supported by the most precious columns which ancient art could afford: among them eight shafts of green marble, from the Temple of Diana, at Ephesus; eight of porphyry, from the Temple of the Sun, at Baalbek; besides Egyptian granite from the shrines of Isis and Osiris, and Pentelican marble from the sanctuary of Pallas Athena. Almost the whole of the interior has been covered with gilding, but time has softened its brilliancy, and the rich, subdued gleam of the walls ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... down to the pier, where he took a boat for H.M.S. Isis, to see Jack Wilmore, whom he had not met since his return from his last cruise, and first he tried the efficacy of a dive in salt water, as a specific for irritation. It gave the edge to a fine appetite that he continued to satisfy while Wilmore talked of those famous dogs to which the navy has ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... all-comprehensive divine energy. Not that they ever embraced monotheism—or the belief in one personal God distinct from the Universe. But if Plutarch be accurate—as there seems no reason to doubt, in his record of an inscription in a temple of Isis—they, or at least the most spiritual of them, found refuge in Pantheism. For the transfigured and glorified goddess was not regarded as the maker of the Universe, but as identical with it, and therefore unknowable, "I am all that ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton

... enlightened public school. If he has passed through Harrow and Eton there is no very abrupt transition between the life which he has led in the sixth form and that which he finds awaiting him on the banks of the Cam and the Isis. Certain rooms are found for him which have been inhabited by generations of students in the past, and will be by as many in the future. His religion is cared for, and he is expected to put in an appearance at hall and at chapel. He must be within bounds at a fixed ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... and deeper while I gaze, till I dare not do so any longer. So, without more words, I'm a golden blonde. You see me now: not too tall,—five feet four; not slight, or I couldn't have such perfect roundings, such flexible moulding. Here's nothing of the spiny Diana and Pallas, but Clytie or Isis speaks in such delicious curves. It don't look like flesh and blood, does it? Can you possibly imagine it will ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various

... his wife Telethusa, who is pregnant, to destroy the infant, should it prove to be a girl; on which, the Goddess Isis appears to her in a dream, and, forbidding her to obey, promises her her protection. Telethusa is delivered of a daughter, who is called Iphis, and passes for a son. Iphis is afterwards married to Ianthe, on which, Isis, to reward her mother's piety, transforms ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... Fabled as Echionian Thebes, (17) where once Agave bore in exile to the pyre (Grieving 'twas all she had) the head and neck Of Pentheus massacred. The lake set free Flowed forth in many rivers: to the west Aeas, (18) a gentle stream; nor stronger flows The sire of Isis ravished from his arms; And Achelous, rival for the hand Of Oeneus' daughter, rolls his earthy flood (19) To silt the shore beside the neighbouring isles. Evenus (20) purpled by the Centaur's blood Wanders through Calydon: in ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... believe, like virtue, its own exceeding great reward. I can conceive few human states more enviable than that of the man to whom—panting in the foul laboratory, or watching for his life in the tropic forest—Isis shall for a moment lift her sacred veil and show him, once and for ever, the thing he dreamed not of, some law, or even mere hint of a law, explaining one fact: but explaining with it a thousand more, connecting them all with each other and with the mighty whole, till order and meaning shoots ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley

... complete in themselves, for the female element is needed for the production of life; hence, we find that in most nations a fourth person is joined to the trinity, as Isis, the mother of Horus, in Egypt, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, in Christendom; the Egyptian trinity is often represented as Osiris, Horus, and Isis, but we more generally find the female constituting the fourth element, in addition to the triune, and symbolised by an oval, or circle, typical of ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... intense excitement of the moment? Alas! what is the boasted intellect of man? The rat!—it was there—that is to say, it was somewhere. Diana smelled the rat. I—I could not! Thus it is said the Prussian Isis has, for some persons, a sweet and very powerful perfume, while to ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... 833)] [Sidenote:—24—] Another fire, above ground, in the following year spread over a very large portion of Rome while Titus was absent on business connected with the catastrophe that had befallen in Campania. It consumed the temple of Serapis, the temple of Isis, the Saepta, the temple of Neptune, the Baths of Agrippa, the Pantheon, the Diribitorium, the theatre of Balbus, the stage-building of Pompey's theatre, the Octavian buildings together with their books, and the temple of Capitoline Jupiter with its surrounding ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio

... plainly, as I have done before with more observance, that when you bring your carnal learning and judgment, as it is but too much your nature to do, to investigate the hidden things of another world, you might as well measure with the palm of your hand the waters of the Isis. Indeed, good sir, you err in this, and give men too much pretence to confound your honourable name with witch-advocates, free-thinkers, and atheists, even with such as this man Bletson, who, if the discipline ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... terrestrial movement, on the multiplicity of habitable worlds, on the principle of the universe, and on the infinite modes of psychical metamorphosis. Such topics were not calculated to endear him to people of importance on the banks of Isis. That he did not humor their prejudices, appears from a Latin epistle which he sent before him by way of introduction to the Vice Chancellor.[95] It contains these pompous phrases: 'Philotheus ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... explaining in a few words who Isis was, which interested him but moderately. His masterpiece, as a faithful reproduction of nature, is his marsh ranunculus, which I had introduced to him under the Latin name of ranuncula scelerata. He has so exquisitely represented these insignificant little yellow flowers that it is ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne

... would sing the nymphs of Hertfordshire as indeterminate of feature, with hair obfuscated by the London smoke. Their eyes would be sad, and averted from their fate towards the Northern flats, their leader not Isis or Sabrina, but the slowly flowing Lea. No glory of raiment would be theirs, no urgency of dance; but they ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster

... York), astounded the hounds as much as he disgusted the huntsman, laming one of the former by persisting in riding amongst the pack, and receiving a speech from the latter, more remarkable for energy of language, than any oration he had ever heard since he left the bargemen on the banks of Isis. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the original and which was the translation. Johnson could be nowhere without learning, and he learned something at Oxford; but in any case his stay was short, and he drifted back to Lichfield, leaving on the {42} banks of the Isis an amazing memory of a sullen savage creature, brimmed with the strangest miscellaneous learning. In Lichfield his father's death, following hard upon his return from Oxford, left him lonelier and poorer than ever, troubled by the grim ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... the Gypsies are Egyptians, and even that they are the followers of Pharaoh, perhaps not yet gotten home from that Red Sea journey. Otherwise that they are the descendants of the vagabond votaries of Isis, who were in Rome just what the Gypsies are in modern Europe. It has been argued that they were Grecian heretics; that they were persecuted Jews; that they were Tartars; that they were Moors; and that they were Hindoos, Grellman accepted (as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... was Isis under a substantial form. She is the goddess of the pure, light heaven, and bears the Sun-disk between cow-horns on a cow's head or on a human head with cow's ears. She was named the Fair, and all the pure joys of life are ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... have been found in some of the tombs in Egypt. They also appeared on the "systrum," which was a sacred instrument used by the ancient Egyptians in the performance of their religious rites, particularly in their sacrifices to the goddess Isis. This, therefore, may be considered one of their sacred stones, whilst there is some analogy between the cat's-eye stones and the sacred cat of the Egyptians which recurs so often in their hieroglyphics; it is well known that our domestic cat is not descended from the wild cat, ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin

... cliff, lost in M. Lenepveu's copper ceiling, figures grinned and grimaced, laughed and jeered at MM. Richard and Moncharmin's distress. And yet these figures were usually very serious. Their names were Isis, Amphitrite, Hebe, Pandora, Psyche, Thetis, Pomona, Daphne, Clytie, Galatea and Arethusa. Yes, Arethusa herself and Pandora, whom we all know by her box, looked down upon the two new managers of the Opera, who ended by clutching at some piece of wreckage and from there stared silently ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux

... which make it as accessible as a newspaper. But Plutarch's "Morals" is less known, and seldom reprinted. Yet such a reader as I am writing to can as ill spare it as the "Lives." He will read in it the essays "On the Daemon of Socrates," "On Isis and Osiris," "On Progress in Virtue," "On Garrulity," "On Love," and thank anew the art of printing, and the cheerful domain of ancient thinking. Plutarch charms by the facility of his associations; so that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... "Monogram of Christ" can be seen, for instance, upon a monument of Isis, the Virgin Mother of the Sun-God, which dates from the second century before our era.[51] Also upon the coins of Ptolemaeus; on one of which is a head of Zeus Ammon upon one side, and an eagle bearing ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons

... could not long daunt the mind of the hardy freebooter; and, after a short hesitation, he resolved to make a digression from his way, and ascertain the cause of the phenomenon. Unconsciously, the martial tread of the barbarian passed over the site of the famed, or infamous, Temple of Isis, which had once witnessed those wildest orgies commemorated by Juvenal; and came at last to a thick and dark copse, from an opening in the centre of which gleamed the mysterious light. Penetrating the ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... Europeans, chiefly from Ireland; the greatest part of them engaged voluntarily in Col. McLean's corps, but about a dozen of them deserting in the course of a month, the rest were again confined, and not released till the arrival of the Isis, when they were again taken ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... thought. A complete translation may be found in "Egypt's Place in Universal History," by Bunsen (second edition), and specimens in almost every museum of Europe. There are other theological remains, such as the Metamorphoses of the gods and the Lament of Isis, but their meaning is disguised in allegory. The hymns and addresses to the sun abound ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... desert sands had hid a thousand years, And heard the Nile-crier across the gloom Calling, "The flood has come! beseech the gods!" I rose in haste, as one who blindly hears, And sought the barterers of grain and wine Culled for the praise and service of divine Great Isis, by the slave who for her plods. But as I passed along, woe! what was this, Strange faces and strange fashions and strange fanes Standing upon the midnight; Oh, the pains That swept across my startled thought's abyss! I moaned. My body crumbled into dust. And ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice

... ancient Egyptians the "earth-mother," the "parent of all things born," was Isis, the wife of the great Osiris. The natal ceremonies of the Indians of the Sia Pueblo have been described at great length by Mrs. Stevenson (538. 132-143). Before the mother is delivered of her child the priest repeats in a low ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... defence of this hypothesis is that made by Herbert Spencer. See, in his volume of Essays, No. 2 of the Haythorne Papers. Also see Oken, Entstehung des ersten Menechen, Isis, 1819, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... the water, and they appear like the islands in the AEgean Sea." He tells of the religious ceremonies among the Egyptians, their sacrifices, their ardour in celebrating the feasts in honour of their goddess Isis, which took place principally at Busiris (whose ruins may still be seen near Bushir), and of the veneration paid to both wild and tame animals, which were looked upon almost as sacred, and to whom they even rendered funeral honours at their death. He depicts in the most faithful colours, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... Tom his Quad the Bloods no longer flourish; Balliol is bare of all but mild Hindoos; The stalwart oars that Isis used to nourish Are in the trenches giving Fritz the Blues, And many a stout D.D. Is digging trenches ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch

... questions and philosophies," scornfully stormed Cleopatra. "Fire seeks fire, and clay, clay. Isis send me Antony, and every philosopher in Alexandria may go drown in the Nile! Shall I blind my eyes with scrolls of papyrus when there is a goodly Roman to be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... religions and Christianity, and in such a way as to make the triumph of Christianity an evolution, not a revolution. The Great Mother and Attis, with self-consecration, enthusiasm, and asceticism; Isis and Serapis, with the ideals of communion and purification; Baal, the omnipotent dweller in the far-off heavens; Jehovah, the jealous God of the Hebrews, omniscient and omnipresent; Mithra, deity of the sun, with the Persian ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... Adonis, are ruins of an ancient temple in which can still be seen a few Corinthian columns. This, too, we are told, was consecrated to Tammuz; and in this valley the women of Byblus bemoaned every year the fate of their god. Isis and Osiris, Tammuz and Ashtaroth, Venus and Adonis,—these, I believe, are one and the same. Their myth borrowed from the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, and the Romans, from either of the two. But the Venus of Rome is ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... of ghastliness and distress, the court made merry. Joined by fair women and gallant men, their majesties played at bowls and tennis in the grassy meads of the college grounds; rode abroad in great hawking parties; sailed through summer days upon the smooth waters of the river Isis; and by night held revelry in the massive-beamed oak-panelled halls, from which scarce five-score candles ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... imitate those opinions already induced. For all the Greek stories can well testify, that the very religion of that time stood upon many and many-fashioned gods, not taught so by the poets, but followed, according to their nature of imitation. Who list, may read in Plutarch, the discourses of Isis, and Osiris, of the cause why oracles ceased, of the divine providence: and see, whether the theology of that nation stood not upon such dreams, which the poets superstitiously observed, and truly, (sith they ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... Diminutive Isis in profile had emerged part-way from the background of papyrus, and the sculptor lifted his pen to sketch in the farther shoulder as the law required. The young man leaned forward and watched. But as the addition was made, ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... who, under names of old renown, Osiris, Isis, Orus, and their train, With monstrous shapes and sorceries, abused Fanatic ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... was fought on the Isis or the Cam, I forget which. But carry the O'Rapley's theory into daily life, and test it by common observation, what do you find? Why, that this round square is by no means a modern invention. It has been worked in all periods ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris

... delusion. To the whiche Idolles and Images of deuelles he stirred vp men to do the honour (Helas) due onely to God. As to Saturne in Italie, to Iupiter in Candie, to Iuno in Samos, to Bacchus in India, and at Thebes: to Isis, and Osiris in Egypte: in old Troie to Vesta: aboute Tritona in Aphrique, to Pallas, in Germanie and Fraunce to Mercurie, vnder the name of Theuthe: to Minerua at Athenes and Himetto, to Apollo in Delphos, Rhodes, Chio, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt

... vanishing before the sight had time to be startled at their appearing. All was marvel. And the marvel of all was there—where the light glimmered faintly through the foliage. He approached the house with an awe akin to that with which an old poetic Egyptian drew near to the chamber of the goddess Isis. ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... of the church; he never belonged to any confession; he was one of the "great diocese"—that of the independent seekers of truth, and he allowed himself no final moment of hypocrisy. He would have nothing to do with any one except God only—or rather the mysterious Isis beyond the veil. Being unmarried, he died in the arms of his secretary. He was sixty-five years old. His power of work and of memory was immense and intact. What is Scherer thinking about this ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... to penetrate into the mysteries of Isis, in which I am not initiated. When M. Andrea Cavalcanti has become one of the family, you can ask him that question." The carriage stopped. "Here we are," said Monte Cristo; "it is only half-past ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... the deeds which you men of war perform. I must follow the rules of my art, and the composition of such a strain as this must be harmonious and majestic, not familiar, or too near the vulgar truth. Si parva licet: if Virgil could invoke the divine Augustus, a humbler poet from the banks of the Isis may celebrate a victory and a conqueror of our own nation, in whose triumphs every Briton has a share, and whose glory and genius contributes to every citizen's individual honour. When hath there been, since our Henrys' and Edwards' days, such ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... worship with which it competed for the popular favour, it contained the necessary elements of mystery-cult, of ethical rule, of social brotherhood, and of personal devotion. But besides many genuine points of superiority, it had a decisive advantage over the religions of Isis and Mithra in the exclusiveness and intolerance which it derived from the Jewish tradition. When the failure of the last persecution forced the Empire to make a concordat with the Church, the transformation of the ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... the time Mr. Grey's door closed upon him, Elsmere had caught a convenient cross-country train, and had left the Oxford towers and spires, the shrunken summer Isis, and the flat hot river meadows far behind him. He had meant to stay at Merton, as we know, for the night. Now, his one thought was to get back to Catherine. The urgency of Mr. Grey's words was upon him, and love had a miserable pang that ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... give, with greater instance crave. Make a small price, while thou thy nets dost lay; Lest they should fly; being ta'en, the tyrant play. 70 Dissemble so, as loved he may be thought, And take heed lest he gets that love for naught. Deny him oft; feign now thy head doth ache: And Isis now will show what 'scuse to make. Receive him soon, lest patient use he gain, Or lest his love oft beaten back should wane. To beggars shut, to bringers ope thy gate; Let him within hear barred-out lovers prate. And, as first wronged, the wronged sometimes banish; Thy ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... now abominable everywhere except amongst the overcrowded poor of great and civilised cities. Yet such unions were common and lawful amongst ancient and highly cultivated peoples, as the Egyptians (Isis and Osiris), Assyrians and ancient Persians. Physiologically they are injurious only when the parents have constitutional defects: if both are sound, the issue, as amongst the so-called "lower animals " ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton



Words linked to "Isis" :   Egyptian deity



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