"Democritus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... instrument. In one place, where they are more thickly sown than elsewhere, Sir William Herschel reckoned that fifty thousand passed over a field of view two degrees in breadth in a single hour. It was first surmised by the ancient philosopher, Democritus, that the faintly white zone which spans the sky under the name of the Milky Way, might be only a dense collection of stars too remote to be distinguished. This conjecture has been verified by the instruments of modern astronomers, and some speculations of a most remarkable ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... too well What mischief HUDIBRAS befell. And straight the spiteful tidings bears Of all to th' unkind widow's ears. 80 DEMOCRITUS ne'er laugh'd so loud To see bawds carted through the crowd, Or funerals with stately pomp March slowly on in solemn dump, As she laugh'd out, until her back, 85 As well as sides, was like to crack. She vow'd she would go see the sight, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... of Greek thought. The Ionian philosophers had speculated on the physical constitution of the universe, the Pythagoreans on the mystical properties of numbers; Heraclitus had propounded his philosophy of fire, Democritus and Leucippus had struck out a rude form of the atomic theory, Socrates had raised questions relating to man, Plato had discussed them with all the freedom of the dialogue, while Aristotle had systematically worked them ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock
... Locke falls into two parts, one strictly physical and scientific, the other critical and psychological. In respect to the composition of matter, Locke accepted the most advanced theory of his day, which happened to be a very old one: the theory of Democritus that the material universe contains nothing but a multitude of solid atoms coursing through infinite space: but Locke added a religious note to this materialism by suggesting that infinite space, in its sublimity, must ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... regard to the theological opinions of the Greek philosophers, we shall venture this general lemma—the majority of them recognized an "incorporeal substance"[394] an uncreated Intelligence, an ordering, governing Mind. Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus, who were Materialists, are perhaps the only exceptions. Many of them were Pantheists, in the higher form of Pantheism, which, though it associates the universe with its framer and mover, still makes "the moving ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... hour together upon it. Nay, I believe, that Lord M.'s recovery, should it happen, would not affect me above a quarter of an hour. Only the new scenery, (and the pleasure of aping an Heraclitus to the family, while I am a Democritus among my private friends,) or I want nothing that the old peer can leave me. Wherefore then should grief sadden and distort such blythe, such ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... it. I did this for another reason,—because Tigellinus, seeing how such things succeed, will wish surely to imitate me, and I imagine what will happen. The moment he starts a witticism, it will be as if a bear of the Pyrenees were rope-walking. I shall laugh like Democritus. If I wished I could destroy Tigellinus perhaps, and become pretorian prefect in his place, and have Ahenobarbus himself in my hands. But I am indolent; I prefer my present life and even Caesar's ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Their pamphleteers each day their venom spit; They thrive by treason, and we starve by wit. Confess the truth, which of you has not laid 20 Four farthings out to buy the Hatfield maid? Or, which is duller yet, and more would spite us, Democritus his wars with Heraclitus? Such are the authors who have run us down, And exercised you critics of the town. Yet these are pearls to your lampooning rhymes, Ye abuse yourselves more dully than the times. Scandal, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... Christian man to invent. We are naturally curious to know how a man, educated in a Christian country, could have fallen into it. But it is, in fact, no new discovery, but an old heathen superstition. Some four hundred years before Christ, when the world had almost wholly apostatized into idolatry, Democritus, among the Greeks, became offended with the vulgar heathen gods, and set himself to invent a plan of the world without them. From Eastern travelers the Greeks knew that the Brahmins, in India, had a theory of the world developing itself from a primeval egg. He set himself to refine upon ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... Descartes, had materialism for its antagonist from its hour of birth. In person this antagonist confronted Descartes in the shape of Gassendi, the restorer of Epicurean materialism. French and English materialism always remain in close relationship with Democritus and Epicurus. ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... our Democritus boasted fewer years, there was not so much ceremony in his banquet, neither was there so much state; nor was the friendship less keen or the intimacy less enjoyable in Leigh's humbler days of "off-n-off." A wonderful company—a brilliant company; with ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... Dissection—already practiced by Alcmaeon, Democritus, Diogenes and others—was conducted on a large scale, but the human body was still taboo. Aristotle confesses that the "inward parts of man are known least of all," and he had never seen the human kidneys or uterus. In his physiology, I can refer to but one point—the pivotal ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... and romantic mythologies of the first Christians stiffened into syllogisms and ossified in the huge fabric of the Summa. But Aristotle and Ptolemy were now dethroned. Bruno, in a far truer sense than Democritus before him, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... ability, but the ability to discover ability in others is the true test. While Pericles lived, there also lived AEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Pythagoras, Socrates, Herodotus, Zeno, Hippocrates, Pindar, Empedocles and Democritus. Such a galaxy of stars has never been seen before nor since—unless we have it now—and Pericles was their ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... place, I conceived this exercise of wit would not be least approved by you; inasmuch as you are wont to be delighted with such kind of mirth, that is to say, neither unlearned, if I am not mistaken, nor altogether insipid, and in the whole course of your life have played the part of a Democritus. And though such is the excellence of your judgment that it was ever contrary to that of the people's, yet such is your incredible affability and sweetness of temper that you both can and delight to carry ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... produced from moisture. I have further heard Anaximines' doctrine that air was the source of all things; Pherecydes' doctrine of ether as the original principle; Heraclitus' doctrine of fire. Anaximander has taught me that the universe came from some primitive substance; Leucippus and Democritus spoke to me of empty space with primitive corpuscles or atoms. Anaxagoras made believe that the atom had reason. Xenophanes wished to persuade me that God and the Universe were one. Empedocles, the wisest of the whole company, ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... long, that their eyes did water by the vehement concussion of the substance of the brain, by which these lachrymal humidities, being pressed out, glided through the optic nerves, and so to the full represented Democritus ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... deeply indebted to their mythological legends. The Grecian poetry, like the Grecian religion, was at once half human, half divine—majestic, vast, august —household, homely, and familiar. If we might borrow an illustration from the philosophy of Democritus, its earthlier dreams and divinations were indeed the impressions of mighty and spectral ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... This seems to have been the opinion of Democritus. The modern doctrine of radiation from the human body, if established, would go nearly as far as the supposition in the text. Up till ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... the States-general sent from their several and respective shops, stalls, and garrets. They are full of controversy, and every one of a several judgment concerning the business under present consideration, whether it be mountebank, show, hanging, or ballad-singer. They meet, like Democritus's atoms, in vacuo, and by a fortuitous jostling together produce the greatest and most savage beast in the whole world; for though the members of it may have something of human nature while they ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... to avenge Epicurus, that truly holy philosopher, that divine genius," Lucian tells us in his Alexander, or the False Prophet. Lange, in his History of Materialism, sets down Epicurus as a disciple and imitator of Democritus. ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... Is Democritus right after all? Is chance the foundation of everything, all laws being but the imaginations of our reason, which, itself born of accident, has a certain power of self-deception and of inventing laws which it believes to be real and ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... attractive force, which draws bodies towards the centre of the earth, was entertained by Anaxagoras and his pupils, by Democritus, Pythagoras, and Epicurus; and the conjectures of these ancients were renewed by Galileo, Huyghens, and others, who stated that bodies attract each other as a magnet attracts iron. Kepler applied the notion to bodies beyond the surface of the earth, and affirmed the ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... evinces a credulity far more extravagant than has ever been displayed by the most superstitious of religionists. Yet no consistent materialist can refuse to accept this colossal chance hypothesis. All the explanations of the order of the universe which materialists, from Democritus and Epicurus to Diderot and Lange, have devised, rest on the assumption that the elements of matter, being eternal, must pass through infinite combinations, and that one of these must be our present world—a special collocation among the countless ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... poetry Lucretius inherited as part of his birthright. This is the sense of Roman greatness. It pervades the poem, and may be felt in every part; although to Athens, and the Greek sages, Democritus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Heraclitus, and Epicurus, as the fountain-heads of soul-delivering culture, he reserves his most magnificent periods of panegyric. Yet when he would fain persuade his readers that the fear of death is nugatory, and that the future will be to them even as the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... The shades of philosophers and poets hold grave converse there. The Graces and the Muses formed sprightly choirs upon the grass. Old Homer sang, accompanying himself upon his rustic lyre. His eyes were closed, but divine images shone upon his lips. I saw Solon, Democritus, and Pythagoras watching the games of the young men in the meadow, and, through the foliage of an ancient laurel, I perceived also Hesiod, Orpheus, the melancholy Euripides, and the masculine Sappho. I passed and recognised, ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... capo of the old story of Democritus and the Abderitans, and our worthy Hippocrates would needs exhaust whole plantations of hellebore, were it proposed to remedy this mischief by a ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... for extinguishing the sight was tried by the philosopher Democritus on himself, when he sought to withdraw his mind from the visible world: a foolish story! The word abacinare, in Latin and Italian, has furnished Ducange (Gloss. Lat.) with an opportunity to review the various modes of blinding: the more ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... the mouth thence proceeding appears as wisdom. Hereupon one of the young scholars said, "How stupid are the minds of the inhabitants of the earth at this day! I wish we had here the disciples of Heraclitus, who weep at every thing, and of Democritus, who laugh at every thing; for then we should hear much lamentation and much laughter." When the assembly broke up, they gave the three novitiates the insignia of their authority, which were copper plates, on which were engraved some ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... at him. In Pisa, Florence, Bologna, Venice, Padua, Many have seen the moons. These witnesses Are silent and uncertain. Do you wonder? Most of them could not, even when they saw them, Distinguish Mars from Jupiter. Shall we side With Heraclitus or Democritus? I think, my Kepler, we will only laugh At this immeasurable stupidity. Picture the leaders of our college here. A thousand times I have offered them the proof Of their own eyes. They sleep here, like gorged snakes, Refusing even to look at ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... DEMOCRITUS, a Greek philosopher, born in Abdera, Thrace, of wealthy parents; spent his patrimony in travel, gathered knowledge from far and near, and gave the fruits of it in a series of writings to his contemporary compatriots, only fragments of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... in no small degree, the labours of Democritus of Abdera tended. He had had the advantages derived from wealth in the procurement of knowledge, for it is said that his father was rich enough to be able to entertain the Persian King Xerxes, who was so gratified thereby that he ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... must also keep our sons from filthy language. For, as Democritus says, Language is the shadow of action. They must also be taught to be affable and courteous. For as want of affability is justly hateful, so boys will not be disagreeable to those they associate with, if they yield occasionally in disputes. For ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... Back fly the scenes, and enter foot and horse; Pageants on pageants, in long order drawn, Peers, Heralds, Bishops, ermine, gold, and lawn; The champion too! and, to complete the jest, Old Edward's armour beams on Cibber's breast, With laughter sure Democritus had died, Had he beheld an audience gape so wide. Let bear or elephant be e'er so white, The people, sure, the people are the sight! Ah luckless poet! stretch thy lungs and roar, That bear or elephant shall heed thee more; While all its throats ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... estimates the number of treatises on this subject, before his time, at between five and six hundred. As that was two hundred and eight years ago, the number has probably increased to two thousand or more. We have some knowledge of the character of these early works, as far back as Democritus, four hundred and sixty years before the Christian era. The great men of antiquity gave particular attention to study and writing on the honey-bee.—Among them we notice Aristotle, Plato, Columella, ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... astronomy, philology, and natural history with success. They were polished men of society; not profound nor religious, but very brilliant as talkers, and very ready in wit and sophistry. And some of them were men of great learning and talent, like Democritus, Leucippus, and Gorgias. They were not pretenders and quacks; they were sceptics who denied subjective truths, and labored for outward advantage. They taught the art of disputation, and sought systematic methods of proof. They thus prepared the way ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... eternal, never born and never dying, but round in his shape! Parmenides thought that it was fire that moved the earth. Leucippus believed it to be "plenum et inane." What "full and empty" may mean I cannot tell; but Democritus could, for he believed in it—though in other matters he went a little farther! Empedocles sticks to the old four elements. Heraclitus is all for fire. Melissus imagines that whatever exists is infinite and immutable, and ever has been and ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... Infinites of science, that of greatness is the most palpable, and hence a few persons have pretended to know all things. "I will speak of the whole,"[31] said Democritus. ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... mention the great atomic system taught by old Moschus before the siege of Troy; revived by Democritus of laughing memory; improved by Epicurus, that king of good fellows; and modernized by the fanciful Descartes. But I decline inquiring, whether the atoms, of which the earth is said to be composed, are eternal ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... author goeth furthest, and time leeseth and corrupteth. So we see artillery, sailing, printing, and the like, were grossly managed at the first, and by time accommodated and refined; but contrariwise, the philosophies and sciences of Aristotle, Plato, Democritus, Hippocrates, Euclides, Archimedes, of most vigour at the first, and by time degenerate and imbased: whereof the reason is no other, but that in the former many wits and industries have contributed in one; and in the latter many wits and industries have been spent about ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... sprightly weekly chronicle of happenings in fashionable society, would have appeared anomalous in any but a man gifted in the Greek sophistries and their modern innumerable and arid offshoots. Haynerd was a laughing Democritus, an easy-going, even-tempered fellow, doomed to be loved, and by the same graces thoroughly cheated by the world in general. He had in his rapid career of some thirty-five years dipped deeply into things mundane, and had come to the surface, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... unaccountable changes. In the good old times, when virtue was her own reward, the fine arts flourished, and there was the keenest rivalry among men for fear that anything which could be of benefit to future generations should remain long undiscovered. Then it was that Democritus expressed the juices of all plants and spent his whole life in experiments, in order that no curative property should lurk unknown in stone or shrub. That he might understand the movements of heaven and the stars, ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... of a whip, when one has nothing to flagellate but the calves of his own legs, I could never understand. Yet a small riding-whip is the most popular article with the miscellaneous New-Englander at all great gatherings,—cattle-shows and Fourth-of-July celebrations. If Democritus and Heraclitus could walk arm in arm through one of these crowds, the first would be in a broad laugh to see the multitude of young persons who were rejoicing in the possession of one of these useless and worthless little commodities; happy himself ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... be virtuous for the sake of affectional, intellectual, and sensual pleasure; if he means the pleasure of all mankind, he is a Public Eudaimonist; but if he means the pleasure of the individual, he is a Private Eudaimonist. Democritus is reckoned the first among Euthumists; and in England this school has been represented, among others, by Henry More and Cumberland, by Sharrock, [Footnote: Sharrock is a name unfamiliar to most readers. His [Greek: Hypothesis aethikae] published in 1660, contains the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... of ancient worthies[1]—Plato, Pythagoras, Socrates, Seneca, and Cicero, whom, from a prejudice acquired at school, I shortly banished again with a quousque tandem! Besides those I have mentioned, there were Democritus and Heraclitus, which last, in those days less the slave of tradition, I called Heraclitus—an error which my excellent schoolmaster (I thank him for it) would have expelled from my head by the judicious application of a counter-irritant; ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... and which can neither be stopped nor broken in pieces, nor in any way destroyed or deprived of the least of their properties, was known by the name of the Atomic theory. It was associated with the names of Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius, and was commonly supposed to admit the existence only of atoms and void, to the exclusion of any other basis of things ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... "Democritus, of Abdera," says Aristotle, "and some others, that have spoken concerning respiration, have determined nothing concerning other animals, but seem to have supposed that all animals respire. But Anaxagoras and Diogenes (Apolloniates), who say that all animals ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... appositeness, is coined by the incorrigible poetaster Eumolpus. It is he too who composes and recites the two rather brilliant epic poems incorporated into the Satirae, one of which is received with a shower of stones by the bystanders. The impassioned eulogy of the careers of Democritus, Chrysippus, Lysippus, and Myron, who had endured hunger, pain, and weariness of body and mind for the sake of science, art, and the good of their fellow-men, and the diatribe against the pursuit of comfort and pleasure which characterized the people ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... studied medicine under his father, he had afterwards for his teachers Gorgias and Democritus, both of classic fame, and Herodicus, who is known as the first person who applied gymnastic exercises to the cure ...
— Fathers of Biology • Charles McRae
... that identify God and the world range from the crude materialism of Democritus to the lofty spiritualism of Plotinus. Stoic cosmology occupies an intermediate position. The Stoic was nominally a pantheist, but he seems to have oscillated between a spiritual and a materialist explanation of the universal being. The monist system that prepared the soil for ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce
... thief. Yet still one gen'ral cry the skies assails, And pain and grandeur load the tainted gales; Few know the toiling statesman's fear or care, Th' insidious rival and the gaping heir. Once more, Democritus, arise on earth, With cheerful wisdom and instructive mirth, See motley life in modern trappings dress'd, And feed with varied fools th' eternal jest: Thou who could'st laugh where want enchain'd caprice, Toil crush'd conceit, and man was of a piece; Where wealth, ...
— English Satires • Various
... the school of Valentinus, 'Those who are of Italy, of whom is Heracleon and Ptolemaeus, say' &c. But there is no reason why there should not be a kind of historic present, just as we might say, 'The Atomists, of whom are Leucippus and Democritus, hold' &c., or 'St. Peter says this, St. Paul says that.' The account of such presents would seem to be that the writer speaks as if quoting from a book that he has actually before him. It is not impossible that Heracleon and Ptolemaeus may have been still living at the time when ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... matters of the mind, our academic horror of clean thinking. How Plato hated a fact! He could find no place for it in his twilight world of abstractions. Was it not he who wished to burn the works of Democritus of Abdera, most exact and reasonable ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... those who do not.[A] "Life," says the emperor, "is a warfare and a stranger's sojourn, and after fame is oblivion" (ii. 17). After speaking of those men who have disturbed the world and then died, and of the death of philosophers such as Heraclitus and Democritus, who was destroyed by lice, and of Socrates whom other lice (his enemies) destroyed, he says: "What means all this? Thou hast embarked, thou hast made the voyage, thou art come to shore; get out. If indeed to another ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... hand, ever since the conquests of Cyrus and Darius, the active attention of the Greeks had been drawn toward the doctrines and religious practices of the new masters of the Orient.[8] A number of legends representing Pythagoras, Democritus and other philosophers as disciples of the magi prove the prestige of that powerful sacerdotal class. The Macedonian conquest, which placed the Greeks in direct relations with numerous votaries of Mazdaism, gave a new impetus to works treating ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... "breadth of mind"? It is time that it was made clear that the alternative at present for all noble souls is between the reign of "crass Casuality" and the reign of Him "who maketh the clouds His chariot and walketh upon the wings of the wind." Those who, "with Democritus, set the world upon Chance" have a right to worship their Jesus of Nazareth, and, in him, the Eternal Protest against the Cruelty of Life. But if Life is to be deified, if Life is to be "accepted," if Life is to be worshipped; if Courage, not Love, be the secret of the ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... to risibility whenever the frailties of human nature are put to severest test. I think we possess a better reason than Democritus himself for our Abderian tendency; for laughter with us oftenest veils an effort to regain balance of temper, when disturbed by any untoward circumstance. It is a counterpoise of ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... that the sun, as the common fire which served to warm the whole, was fixed in the centre of the universe. It was from the Egyptians that the Greeks derived their first, as well as their soundest notions of philosophy. It is not to be denied that Anaxagoras, Democritus and others would have it that the earth possessed the centre of the world, but it was agreed on both sides that the motions of the celestial bodies were performed in spaces altogether free and void of ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... fine day a rich Pactolian rill Should flood your house, you'd munch your pot-herbs still, From habit or conviction, which o'er-ride The power of gold, and league on virtue's side. No need to marvel at the stories told Of simple-sage Democritus of old, How, while his soul was soaring in the sky, The sheep got in and nibbled down his rye, When, spite of lucre's strong contagion, yet On lofty problems all your thoughts are set,— What checks the sea, what heats and cools the year, If law or impulse guides ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... observing the hasty and untoward gestures of Julian, should foretel he would one day become an apostate;—or that St. Ambrose should turn his Amanuensis out of doors, because of an indecent motion of his head, which went backwards and forwards like a flail;—or that Democritus should conceive Protagoras to be a scholar, from seeing him bind up a faggot, and thrusting, as he did it, the small twigs inwards.—There are a thousand unnoticed openings, continued my father, which let a ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... of the works within. Between the presses, on pedestals of dark green serpentine, ranged busts of the Greek philosophers: Zeno with his brows knitted, Epicurus bland, Aratus gazing upward, Heraclitus in tears, Democritus laughing. These were attributed to ancient artists, and by all who still cared for such things were much admired. In the middle stood a dancing faun in blood red marble, also esteemed a precious work of art. Light entered by an arched ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... the above remark of Hutten, Mosellanus, who opened with a speech the disputation at Leipzig, wrote to Erasmus during the preparations for that event. There will be a rare battle, he said, and a bloody one, coming off between two Scholastics; ten such men as Democritus would find enough to laugh over till they were tired. Moreover, Luther's fundamental conception of religion, with his doctrine of man's sinfulness and need of salvation, so far from corresponding, was in direct antagonism with that Humanistic view of life which seemed ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... now in full swing on the thoroughfares; Democritus, the rollicker, had commanded his subjects to drive dull care away and they obeyed the jovial lord of laughter. Animal spirits ran high; mischief beguiled the time; mummery romped and rioted. Marshaled by disorder, ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... entertainment, I shall here subjoin it:—'But first (says the learned preacher) it may be demanded, what the thing we speak of is? Or what this facetiousness (or wit as he calls it before) doth import? To which questions I might reply, as Democritus did to him that asked the definition of a man, "'Tis that which we all see and know." Any one better apprehends what it is by acquaintance, than I can inform him by description. It is, indeed, a thing so versatile and multiform, appearing in so many shapes, so many postures, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... in anye kinde of learning, or durste take vppon them, to prescribe lawe, and rule of life vnto to other, as Orpheus, Homeire, Museus, Melampode, Dedalus, Licurgus, Solon, Plato, Pithagoras, Samolxis, Eudoxus, Democritus, Inopides, and Moses the Hebrue, with manye other, whose names the Egiptians glorie to be cronicled with theim: trauelled first to the Egiptians, to learne emongest them bothe wisedome, and politique ordre (wherein at those daies they passed all other) me thinketh ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt |
