"Navel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the members of a temple there ought to be the greatest harmony in the symmetrical relations of the different parts to the general magnitude of the whole. Then again, in the human body the central point is naturally the navel. For if a man be placed flat on his back, with his hands and feet extended, and a pair of compasses centred at his navel, the fingers and toes of his two hands and feet will touch the circumference of a circle described therefrom. And just as the human body yields a circular outline, so too ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... Olympus, perverted these terms in a manner still more strange: for finding them somewhat similar in sound to a word in their own language, their caprice immediately led them to think of [Greek: omphalos], a navel, which they substituted for the original word. This they did uniformly in all parts of the world; and always invented some story to countenance their mistake. Hence, whenever we meet with an idle account of a navel, ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... cover the whole with sand so that the serpent cannot see it. Indeed the huntsman plants several such stakes and blades on the track. On coming to the spot the beast strikes against the iron blade with such force that it enters his breast and rives him up to the navel, so that he dies on the spot [and the crows on seeing the brute dead begin to caw, and then the huntsmen know that the serpent is dead and ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... just dropped his hoe and said in a queer voice: 'Thank God for that.' It made old miss and old moss so sick till they stopped eating a week. Pa said old moss and old miss looked like their stomach and guts had a law suit and their navel was called in for a witness, they was so sorry we ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... that the biblical account of the world parents serves as a mask for incest (and naturally at the same time the symbolic accomplishment of the incest). He continues, "It is needed only that the infantile birth theory [Birth from anus, navel, etc. The taking of the rib birth process.] which ignores the sexual organs in woman and applies to both sexes, be raised in the child's thought to the next higher grade of knowledge, which ascribes to the ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... denotes the heavenly world, in agreement with the text 'that world indeed is Agni.' And the following Smrriti texts: 'He of whom the wise declare the heavenly world to be the head, the ether the navel, sun and moon the eyes, the regions the ears, the earth the feet; he whose Self is unfathomable is the leader of all beings'; and 'of whom Agni is the mouth, heaven the head, the ether the navel, the earth the feet, the sun the eye, ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... projects into the sea. But in this there is a grotto or hollow which for six hours at a time swallows up water, and then with great noise and din casts out again in whirls the water which it had swallowed. Some call it the navel of the sea, others Charybdis. It is said that this whirlpool has such power, that it draws to itself ships and other things in its neighbourhood and swallows them. Istoma said that he had never been in such danger as at that place, because the whirlpool drew the ship in which he travelled ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... care.[532] During the fierce controversy which raged around the question whether the light beheld at the Transfiguration formed part of the divine essence, and could be seen again after prolonged fasting and gazing upon one's navel, as the monks of Mount Athos and their supporters maintained, Nicephorus Gregoras, who rejected that idea, retired from public life to defend what he deemed the cause of truth more effectively. But to contend with a master of legions is ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... Ere we divine its foreordained true shape?' Then one 'It is a pedestal for deeds'— ''Tis more and should be hewn like the king's brow'— 'It has the nature of a woman's bosom'— 'The tortoise, first created, signifies it'— 'A blind and rudimentary navel shows The source of worship better than horned moons.' Then a lean giant 'Is not a calyx needful?'— 'Because round grapes on statues well expressed Become the nadir of incense, nodal lamps, Yet apes have hands that cut and carved red crystal'— 'Birds molten, touchly talc veins ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... obstacles; prompt To quit any threatened familiar domain seen doomed by the scythes; Its day's hard business done, the score to the good accompt. Creatures of forest and mead, Earth's essays in being, all kinds Bound by the navel-knot to the Mother, never astray, They in the ear upon ground will pour their intuitive minds, Cut man's tangles for Earth's first broad rectilinear way: Admonishing loftier reaches, the rich adventurous shoots, Pushes of tentative curves, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... for a case given by Dr. Handyside, in which two brothers exhibited this peculiarity; see also a paper by Dr. Bartels, in 'Reichert's and du Bois-Reymond's Archiv.,' 1872, p. 304. In one of the cases alluded to by Dr. Bartels, a man bore five mammae, one being medial and placed above the navel; Meckel von Hemsbach thinks that this latter case is illustrated by a medial mamma occurring in certain Cheiroptera. On the whole, we may well doubt if additional mammae would ever have been developed in both sexes of mankind, had not his early progenitors ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... kidnies are so obstructed with gravel, that no urine passes into the bladder; which is known by the external appearance of the lower part of the abdomen, which, when the bladder is full, seems as if contracted by a cord between the navel and the bladder; and by the tension on the region of the bladder distinguishable by the touch; or by the introduction of the catheter; the following methods of cure are frequently successful. Venesection to six or eight ounces, ten ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... strange that you can't find Napoleonder in the Book of Life, because you write in that Book only the names of those who were born of human fathers and mothers, and who have navels. Napoleonder never had a father or a mother, and, moreover, he hasn't any navel—and that's so surprising that you might ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof |
