solstices

Updated: May 28, 2025

A well-developed solar system of festivals existed in Peru, where the sun was the central object of worship; equinoxes and solstices were observed with great ceremonies, and especially at the summer solstice the rising of the sun was hailed with popular rejoicing as a sign that the favor of the deity would be extended to the nation.

Crawford Howell Toy - Introduction to the History of Religions: Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV

Hence we may conjecture that everywhere throughout Europe the celestial division of the year according to the solstices was preceded by what we may call a terrestrial division of the year according to the beginning of summer and the beginning of winter.

Sir James George Frazer - Balder the Beautiful, Volume I.: A Study in Magic and Religion: the Golden Bough, Part VII., The: Fire-Festivals of Europe and the Doctrine of the External Soul

Even then it is conceivable that a long period must have elapsed before a direct causal relation was felt to exist between the shifting of the sun and the shifting of the seasons; because, as every one knows, the periods of greatest heat in summer and greatest cold in winter usually come some weeks after the time of the solstices.

Edward Huntington Williams - A History of Science — Volume 1

Nor again about things which are in motion but which always happen in the same way either necessarily, or naturally, or from some other cause, as the solstices or the sunrise. Nor about those which are variable, as drought and rains; nor fortuitous matters, as finding of treasure.

Aristotle - Ethics

"Try the test I told thee of, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "and don't mind any other, for thou knowest nothing about colures, lines, parallels, zodiacs, ecliptics, poles, solstices, equinoxes, planets, signs, bearings, the measures of which the celestial and terrestrial spheres are composed; if thou wert acquainted with all these things, or any portion of them, thou wouldst see clearly how many parallels we have cut, what signs we have seen, and what constellations we have left behind and are now leaving behind.

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra - The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, Complete

For, as the year doth renew itself at each change of seasons, so do these carribals in their gentilisme believe and hold that the gods of the seasons to wit, the King of the Rain, the Queen of the Clouds, the Lord of Green Leaves, the King of Fruits, and others must needs be sleain and renewed at the diverse solstices.

Grant Allen - The Great Taboo

The four principal had reference to the Sun, and commemorated the great periods of his annual progress, the solstices and equinoxes.

William Hickling Prescott - History of the Conquest of Peru

How small this first step was, may be seen in the fact that the only things ascertained at the outset were the periods of the summer and winter solstices, which corresponded with the least and greatest lengths of the mid-shadow; and to fix which, it was needful merely to mark the point to which each day's shadow reached.

Herbert Spencer - Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects: Everyman's Library

Yet many truths concerning the creature retained I from these men, and saw the reason thereof from calculations, the succession of times, and the visible testimonies of the stars; and compared them with the saying of Manichaeus, which in his frenzy he had written most largely on these subjects; but discovered not any account of the solstices, or equinoxes, or the eclipses of the greater lights, nor whatever of this sort I had learned in the books of secular philosophy.

Bishop of Hippo Saint Augustine - The Confessions of St. Augustine

It was beautiful to hear the lad lay out the science of war, and wallow in details of battle and siege, of supply, transportation, mining and countermining, grand tactics, big strategy and little strategy, signal service, infantry, cavalry, artillery, and all about siege guns, field guns, gatling guns, rifled guns, smooth bores, musket practice, revolver practice and not a solitary word of it all could these catfish make head or tail of, you understand and it was handsome to see him chalk off mathematical nightmares on the blackboard that would stump the angels themselves, and do it like nothing, too all about eclipses, and comets, and solstices, and constellations, and mean time, and sidereal time, and dinner time, and bedtime, and every other imaginable thing above the clouds or under them that you could harry or bullyrag an enemy with and make him wish he hadn't come and when the boy made his military salute and stood aside at last, I was proud enough to hug him, and all those other people were so dazed they looked partly petrified, partly drunk, and wholly caught out and snowed under.

Mark Twain - A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Part 5.