"Prophetical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and circumstances of the time. The fourth of these ten short poems is dedicated to Pollio, and is to be noted as the one quoted by Constantine as leading to his conversion to Christianity. "It is bucolic only in name, it is allegorical," writes George Long, "mystical, half historical, and prophetical, enigmatical, anything in fact but bucolic." The best-known imitation of his idyll is Pope's "Messiah." Pleasing as all these poems are, they do not represent rural life in Italy, they are in most part but echoes ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... theology in those days must be based is wholly contained in the Hebrew Scriptures—an agglomeration of documents which certainly belong to very different ages, but of the exact dates and authorship of any one of which (except perhaps a few of the prophetical writings) there is no evidence, either internal or external, so far as I can discover, of such a nature as to justify more than a confession of ignorance, or, at most, an approximate conclusion. In this venerable ...
— The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study - Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Here is Attila with his Huns. Here is the Mussulman. Here is Rome of the dark ages. Great Britain appears last—the dulness which has blessed, which blesses, and which shall bless her. We extract the prophetical part. The visioned progress of Dulness has reached the theatres; and some sixteen verses which contain—says Warton, well and truly—"some of the most lively and forcible descriptions any where to be found, and are perfect pattern of a clear picturesque style," call up into brilliant and startling ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... had in leaving Italy! So full she was of sad presentiment! Do you know she gave a Bible as a parting gift from her child to ours, writing in it 'In memory of Angelo Eugene Ossoli'—a strange, prophetical expression? That last evening a prophecy was talked of jestingly—an old prophecy made to poor Marquis Ossoli, 'that he should shun the sea, for that it would be fatal to him.' I remember how she turned to me smiling and said, 'Our ship is called the ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... Moses, Aaron, Gideon, Daniel, Ezekiel, are not merely accessories and attendant figures, but in a manner attributes, as expressing the character of the Virgin. Thus in many instances, we find the prophetical personages altogether omitted, and we have simply the attribute figuring the prophecy itself, the burning bush, the ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... Tennyson met his friends at The Cock, which he rendered classic; among them were Thackeray, Forster, Maclise, and Dickens. The times were stirring: social agitation, and "Carol philosophy" in Dickens, with growls from Carlyle, marked the period. There was also a kind of optimism in the air, a prophetic optimism, not ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... long before the fallacy of all such theories was shattered. Indeed, the very earliest periods of independence were ominously prophetic of what Spanish South America was destined to suffer before it emerged from the chaos of blood and strife, and before its various nations were enabled to stand firmly ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... Cowley's Ode to the Royal Society, and to Dr John Wallis's remarks in Hearne's Preface to P. Langtoft's Chronicle (appendix, num. xi.). Joseph Glanvill, in his Scepsis Scientifica (dedication) says, "Solomon's house in the New Atlantis was a prophetic scheme of the Royal Society"; and Henry Oldenburg (c. 1615-1677), one of the first secretaries of the society, speaks of the new eagerness to obtain scientific data as "a work begun by the single care and conduct of the excellent Lord Verulam." Boyle, in whose works there are frequent eulogistic ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... exciting no answering comments from his brother, Charley turned to look at him. A strange prophetic chill swept across the intuitional soul, and filled it ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... to the face in the mirror, "you are getting to be old and haggard." A prophetic glimpse of the future came to her suddenly. "A few years more, and you ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... superstition; and this was prodigiously increased by the sudden recurrence of his disease,—a dreadful infliction, whose convulsions seem ever to have been proposed as the favourite exemplars for the expression of prophetic fury and the demoniacal orgasm, and were aped alike by the Pythian priestess on her tripod and the ruder impostor of an Indian wigwam. The foaming lips and convulsed limbs of the prisoner, if they did not "speak the god," to the awe-struck barbarians, declared at least the presence ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... a history should relate the environment of all the prophetic books extant; that is, the life, the conduct, and the studies of the author of each book, who he was, what was the occasion, and the epoch of his writing, whom did he write for, and in what language. (42) Further, it should inquire into the fate of each book: how it was ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza
... mind, and expressed what was to be his permanent conviction. It might then have been an echo of German pantheistic philosophies. From the point of view of science—of modern science at least—it was prophetic; although the prophecy of one for whom evolution could never mean less or more than a divine creation operating on this ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... suggestive of the patience and determination of a mule. At Cecilia's approach he raised his eyes. It was at once apparent why, in so full a room, he was standing alone. Those blue eyes looked as if he were about to utter a prophetic statement. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... said, with a sudden, almost incontinent assumption of his Prophetic manner, "we must be ever careful to distinguish the Wine from the Vessel that contains it. I endeavor, with all the Power I am possessed of, to impress upon my People that I have come, not to be the Way, but to show the Way! To teach you all that what you seek in me, is in each ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... Nation arrived at its critical point, and doomed to higgle and puddle there till it drown in the gutters: considerably tragical to Pitt; who is lively, ingenious, and, though not quitting the Parliamentary tone for the Hebrew-Prophetic, far more serious than the modern ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... will mingle their voices with yours, as the morning or evening sacrifice ascends to God. Yes, the spirit of prayer and of supplication has been poured out upon many, many hearts; there are wrestling Jacobs who will not let go of the prophetic promises of deliverance for the captive, and the opening of prison doors to them that are bound. There are Pauls who are saying, in reference to this subject, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" There are Marys sitting in the house now, who are ready to arise and go forth is this work as ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Iowa, are the regions to which the prophet has hitherto chiefly directed his schemes of aggrandizement, and which are to form the nucleus of the Mormon empire. The remaining states are to be licked up like salt, and fall before the sweeping falchion of glorious prophetic dominion, like the defenceless lamb before the ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... was welcomed by the great tribe of the Kitama, and rapidly acquired an extraordinary influence over the Berbers—a race prone to superstition, and easily impressed by the mysterious rites of initiation and the emotional doctrines of the propagandist, the wrongs of the prophetic house, and the approaching triumph of the Mahdi. Barbary had never been much attached to the caliphate, and for a century it had been practically independent under the Aglabite dynasty, the barbarous excesses of whose later sovereigns had alienated their subjects. Alides, moreover, had established ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... should be explained, consisted of a bedroom, anteroom, sitting-room, and bathroom, which had been so sumptuously decorated that the workmen called them the 'royal suite;' and Mr Clay, overhearing them, had said the royal suite they should be called. Perhaps it would be prophetic, for stranger things had to come to pass than royalty coming to stay with the Mayor of Ousebank, as he had been, and probably would ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... term when the light portion of the moon is defined in a strait line: in other words when it is really a half-moon at the first and third quarters of each lunation. Others understand, The moon shall be split on the Last Day, the preterite for the future in prophetic style. "Koran Moslems" of course ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... had often heard it said that Malays possess a prophetic knowledge of the hour and place of their death, and she could well credit Rachel ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... enthusiasts; but since "the language of prophecy" has ceased, such pretensions are not less impious than they are unphilosophical. Knox the reformer possessed an extraordinary portion of this awful prophetic confidence: he appears to have predicted several remarkable events, and the fates of some persons. We are told that, condemned to a galley at Rochelle, he predicted that "within two or three years he should preach the gospel at Saint Giles's in Edinburgh;" an improbable event, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... and a hush fell over the class. One or two glanced quickly up, as though they hoped to read their fate in the head master's face. Others waited, too anxious to stir or look up. Others groaned inwardly with a sort of prophetic foresight of ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... through the head, whilst advancing with the others toward the barricade. He was lamented by the whole army,—by many superstitiously, even,—who said he had gone through all Walker's hard stresses so far untouched, and his end was prophetic of downfall. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... five hours, is a commonplace of history, but we cannot forbear repeating it. Otis was a flame of fire; with a promptitude of classical allusions, a depth of research, a rapid summary of historical events and dates, a profusion of legal authorities, a prophetic glance of his eyes into futurity, and a rapid torrent of impetuous eloquence, he hurried away all before him. American independence was then and there born. Every man of an immense crowded audience appeared to me to go away as I did, ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... to see a great city," said Inez, comforted. "He will help to make it." Her eyes were prophetic. The child stirred and hastily they withdrew, lowering the light so that his slumber might be undisturbed. A light tap sounded at the door ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... words could be more prophetic. Here were two blue eyes and golden hair; and by some strange chance, that appeared like the working of a divine finger, she had become the possessor of the prophecy, she that was to fulfil it! The youth was too charged with emotion to speak. Doubtless the damsel had less to think ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... exclusively to the former. When Dr. Brown then said, as he was accustomed in his strong way to do, that 'if prophecy was capable of two senses, it was impossible it could have any sense at all,' it is plain, we think, that he forgot the specific character of prophetic literature, viz., its being in the highest degree poetic. Now every one knows that poetry of a very elevated cast almost invariably possesses great breadth, variety, we may say multiplicity of meaning. Its very excellence consists in its being capable of two, three, or many meanings ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... agree with you, mademoiselle. I am one of those who think that in the very framing of this Constitution of ours the dragon's teeth were sown, whose harvest is not yet produced. Mr. Calhoun, with his prophetic eye, foresees that this crop of armed men is inevitable from such germs, as does Mr. Clay, were he only frank, which he is not, because he deludes himself—the most incurable and inexcusable of ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... sir," the other corrected—with what proved to be prophetic understanding. For George was destined to see him again—even though he had made up his ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... his prophetic vision gravely. It was what he meant to happen, and it did not seem to him ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... candidly admits that "it is impossible altogether to acquit Claverhouse of the charges laid to his account." We are inclined to ask, with some surprise, Why should he wish to acquit him? But Claverhouse himself, as if in prophetic cynicism, writes his own condemnation as to character thus: "In any service I have been in, I never inquired further in the laws than the orders of my superior officer." An appropriate motto for a "soldier of fortune," which might be abbreviated ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... that eagle which wheels up towards Ararat, displaying his breast glittering with stars and stripes of scarlet and silver,—radiant heraldry, traced by the hand of God. Now he purifies his eye in the sun, and now he spreads his broad wings in symbolic flight to the West, until lost to the prophetic eye of Japheth, under the bow of splendors set that day in the cloud. God's covenant with man,—oh, may the bow of covenant between us be here to-day, that the waters of this flood shall never again threaten our ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... singular correspondence which had taken place between herself and the heroic captive in the Temple. Phelipeaux, who was acquainted with the fame of sir Sidney, and chagrined at the failure of his former favourite scheme, embraced the present project with a sort of prophetic enthusiasm, by which he hoped to restore, to the british nation, one of her greatest heroes, who, by his skill and valour, might once more impress the common enemy with dismay, augment the glory of his country, and cover himself ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... realm of realism. Hindoo poets, like others, know how to rise above sordid reality into a more ideal sphere, and for this reason, even if we had found in the dramas of India a portrayal of true love, it would not prove that it existed outside of a poet's glowing and prophetic fancy. There is a Hindoo saying, "Do not strike a woman, even with a flower;" but we have seen that these Hindoos often do physically abuse their wives most cruelly, besides subjecting them to indescribable ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... original cause of man's separation from deity, this desire of subdivision, how it has gone on operating, more and more! We call it differentiation, but the mystic would describe it as dividing ourselves more and more from God, the primeval unity in which alone is blessedness. Blake in one of his prophetic books sings man's 'fall into Division and his resurrection into Unity.' And when we look about us and consider but the common use of words, how do we find the mystic's apparently wild fancy illustrated in every ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... produced by iniquitous taxation, and of every kind of diabolical tyranny, Ferdinand contrived to hold his own, in the teeth of a rebellious baronage or a maddened population. His political sagacity amounted almost to a prophetic instinct in the last years of his life, when he became aware that the old order was breaking up in Italy, and had cause to dread that Charles VIII. of France would prove his title to the kingdom of Naples ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... in the bygone day Peleus' fate foretelling Chaunted from breasts divine prophetic verse the Parcae. For that the pure chaste homes of heroes to visit in person Oft-tide the Gods, and themselves to display where mortals were gathered, 385 Wont were the Heavenlies while none human piety ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... if he wanted anything. 'Nothing,' he replied, but drew a sigh that seemed to rend his heart, as he added, 'Poor Kate of Nacogdoches.' His eyes were filled with tears, as he continued, 'Her words were prophetic, Colonel," and then he sang in a low voice, that resembled the sweet notes of his own ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... than the results of experience. It is none the less imaginative because its discoveries always accord subsequently with fact, since man was not aware of them beforehand. Nor are its inevitable conclusions inevitable to any save those possessed of the mathematician's prophetic sight. Once discovered, it requires much less imagination to understand them. With the light coming from in front, it is an easy matter to see what lies ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... time upon earth was not to be much longer, as he was assassinated just one month and ten days after his second inauguration. Indeed, the words, "a little longer," printed below the cartoon, were strangely prophetic, although not intended ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... printed; half were paid for; but what they paid for they did not print, and what they printed they did not pay for." At that time Mr. Ellis caught the fever of decorative art, classic and romantic, which culminated in the "interpreted" edition of Blake's "Prophetic Books," in collaboration with Mr. Yeats; and Punch lost a ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... names. Tom Smith, as it happens, is killed; but had you known with absolute certainty that Tom Smith would be killed, you could not have sent him. You must have withdrawn him, and substituted some other fellow concerning whom your prophetic vision was less uncomfortably definite. You can kill Tom Smith if he has happened to kill Bob Jones: you are safe enough then, being able to excuse yourself—how? By Divine law again (as you understand it). Divine law says that whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed—that ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was remarked by the Abbe Raynal, at a period when agriculture and industry were in their infancy, and scarcely threw into commerce the value of 2,000,000 piastres in sugar and tobacco, that the island of Cuba alone might be worth a kingdom to Spain. There seems to have been something prophetic in those memorable words; and since the parent state has lost Mexico, Peru and so many other colonies declared independent, they demand the serious consideration of statesmen who are called upon to discuss the political interests ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... for me to refer you to the many prophetic warnings relative to the sins, the denunciations, the promises, the dispersion and redemption of the Jewish people, which we find throughout the Bible. With that good book you all are or should be familiar—it is a delightful book, view it in any manner you please. Let the unbeliever sneer and the ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Navy, and that he thinks they do begin to flag: but then beginning to talk in general of the excellency of old constitutions, he did bring out of his cabinet, and made me read it, an extract out of a book of my late Lord of Northumberland's, so prophetic of the business of Chatham as is almost miraculous. I did desire, and he did give it me to copy ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... the world to the creation of man, and the dawn of history was now to succeed the philosophy of nature. The Critias is also connected with the Republic. Plato, as he has already told us (Tim.), intended to represent the ideal state engaged in a patriotic conflict. This mythical conflict is prophetic or symbolical of the struggle of Athens and Persia, perhaps in some degree also of the wars of the Greeks and Carthaginians, in the same way that the Persian is prefigured by the Trojan war to the mind ...
— Critias • Plato
... establishing a form of government on principles quite opposite to those of the defunct Spanish regime: whether it will be for better or for worse cannot be determined at this tentative stage. Without venturing on the prophetic, one may not only draw conclusions from accomplished facts, but also reasonably assume, in the light of past events, what might have happened under other circumstances. There is scarcely a Power which has not, in the zenith of its prosperity, consciously or unconsciously felt the ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... preacher of the Gospel profaning the beautiful and prophetic ejaculation, commonly called "Nunc dimittis," made on the first presentation of our Saviour in the temple, and applying it, with an inhuman and unnatural rapture, to the most horrid, atrocious, and afflicting spectacle that perhaps ever was exhibited to the pity and indignation ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... products of the Archipelago generally. Jaya-Sinhavarman II., king of Champa. Jazirah. Jehangir (Jehan, Shah). Jenkinson, Anthony. Jerun (Zarun), island, site of the later Hormuz. Jerusalem. Jesuit maps. Jesujabus, Nestorian Patriarch. Jews, their test of Mahomed's prophetic character, shut up by Alexander; their connection with the Tartars; in China, their inscription at Kaifungfu; in Coilum; in Abyssinia. Jibal. —— Nakus, or "Hill of the Bell," Sinai desert. Jibal-ul-Thabul, "Hill ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... rill And sing thy summer song upon the hill— Who that could know thee as thou wast inwrought The all in all of nature's primal thought, And see thee given by Omniscient mind, A native boon to lord, and brute, and wind, Could e'er have dreamed with fate's prophetic sleep, The darker lines thy horoscope would keep, Or trembling read, thro' tones with horror thrilled, The damned deeds ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... constructed out of the materials already present to the mind. But the fittest material for such construction was that furnished by the eye, since it is the eye that brings us into widest relations with our actual environment, and gives us the quickest warning of approaching impressions. Sight has a prophetic function. We are less interested in it for itself than for the suggestion it brings of what may follow after. Sight is a method of presenting psychically what is practically absent; and as the essence of the thing is its existence in our absence, the thing is spontaneously ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... library. In many dark old tomes she met with chapters full of romance and poetry. They were the works of the philosophers of the Middle Ages, such as Albertus Magnus[8], Cornelius Agrippa[9], Paracelsus[10], and the famous friar who created the prophetic Brazen Head. All these antique naturalists stood in advance of their centuries, yet were imbued with some of their credulity, and therefore were believed, and perhaps imagined themselves to have acquired from the investigation of nature a power above nature, and from physics ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... almost unspeakable." Calling together his monks, he bade them pray for a north wind, which came accordingly, and blew Cormac safe back to Iona, to tempt the waves no more. "Let the reader therefore perpend how great and what manner of man this same blessed personage was, who, having so great prophetic knowledge, could command, by invoking the name of ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... snarled an end both to his advices and his prophetic disgust of the miserable tools furnished unto masterly minds upon this earth. He paced forward and back, murmuring in French, 'Mon Dieu! was there ever such a folly as in the head of this girl? It is her occasion:—Shall I be a Star? Shall I be a Cinder? It is tomorrow ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that cottage curtain, at any rate, a new and prophetic life had begun. I cannot foretell that child's future, but I know something of its past. The boy may grow up into a criminal, the woman into an outcast, yet the baby was beloved. It came "not in utter nakedness." It found itself heir of the two prime essentials of ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... upon that scene afterwards, it almost seemed miraculous to Elizabeth, that the first words of his message she heard were from that prophetic poem that had always moved her to tears in her childhood days when her father ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... night in July; and that he might travel with the more ease on the succeeding day, he lay down at the foot of a pine tree, reposing himself till an hour before dawn, when, upon awaking, he heard the soft, prophetic sighing of the pine, stirred by the first breath of the morning. Like the leaflets of that evergreen, all the fibres of his heart trembled within him; tears fell from his eyes. But he thought of the tyranny ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... to their advice; their prophetic voice did not reach His ears. In that spirit of serene contradiction, which ever irresistibly inclined Him to the reprobate and unlovable, He deliberately accepted Judas, and included him in the circle of the chosen. The disciples were ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... have glanced with prophetic vision into the future, their paths, by mutual consent, would have widely diverged, and their intimacy have ceased forever ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... is the fact that they are themselves persuaded. Even the normal man, we must admit, is guided less by reason than by sentiment, and the persons we have just described exert a powerful action on sentiment, and this more by their piercing glance, their prophetic and dominating tone, their manner and appearance, than by the extremely confused text of their discourses ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... Ned's words were prophetic. In less than half-an-hour after they were uttered a long-visaged Yankee, in a straw hat, nankeen trousers, and fisherman's boots, came to the spot where they were at work, and seated himself on the trunk of a tree hard by to watch ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... point Macrinus, the son of a poor cobbler, who had had difficulty in rearing his children at all, had received these prophetic utterances with cool deliberation, and had ventured no step nearer to the exalted aim which had been offered to his ambition. In all good faith he had done his best to perform the duties of his office as an obedient ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... seal-ring of Mary, Queen of Scots, is in one of the cases; it must have been a thumb-ring, judging from its size, and it has a dark stone, engraved with armorial bearings. In another case is the magic glass formerly used by Dr. Doe, and in which, if I rightly remember, used to be seen prophetic visions or figures of persons and scenes at a distance. It is a round ball of glass or crystal, slightly tinged with a pinkish hue, and about as big as a small apple, or a little bigger than an ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... second of them followed up that salute by giving him the title of thane of Cawdor, to which honour he had no pretensions; and again the third bid him 'All hail! king that shalt be hereafter!' Such a prophetic greeting might well amaze him, who knew that while the king's sons lived he could not hope to succeed to the throne. Then turning to Banquo, they pronounced him, in a sort of riddling terms, to be lesser than Macbeth and greater! ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... introduce divination as a godlike enthusiasm, the soul itself being of a divine constitution, and this prophetic faculty being inspiration, or an illapse of the divine knowledge into man; and so likewise they account for interpretation by dreams. And these same allow many divisions of the art of divination. Xenophanes and Epicurus utterly refuse any such art of foretelling future contingencies. ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... Government-team to a right-about-face were annoying, preposterous. Dacier had admitted to Diana that Tonans merited the thanks of the country during 'the discreditable Railway mania, when his articles had a fine exhortative and prophetic twang, and had done marked good. Otherwise, as regarded the Ministry, the veering gusts of Tonans were objectionable: he 'raised the breeze' wantonly as well as disagreeably. Any one can whip up the populace if he has ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... is, perhaps not unnaturally, death—sometimes the death of the seer himself, sometimes that of one dear to him. This type of prevision is so common in the literature of the subject, and its object is so obvious, that we need hardly cite examples of it; but one or two instances in which the prophetic sight, though clearly useful, was yet of a less sombre character, will prove not uninteresting to the reader. The following is culled from that storehouse of the student of the uncanny, Mrs. Crowe's Night Side of ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... noble fellow is that old man—prophetic, powerful, good,' he mused. 'I believe in him. What he says is true. I am altered. A light steals through me—a river of peace winds kindly through my soul! May his blessing rest on me, and ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... W. Childs had a really firm friendship for young Abbey, there is no doubt. He followed his career with fatherly interest, and was the first man, so far as I know, who had the prophetic vision to see that he would become a great artist. George W. Childs was a many-sided man. He had a clear head for business, was a judge of human nature, a patron of the arts, a collector of rare and curious things, and wrote with clearness, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... of that high hall Sate Brunswick's fated chieftain; he did hear That sound the first amidst the festival, And caught its tone with Death's prophetic ear; And when they smiled because he deemed it near, His heart more truly knew that peal too well Which stretch'd his father on a bloody bier, And roused the vengeance blood alone could quell; He rush'd into the field, and, foremost ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... head on his shoulder. His lips swept her cheek. Before either of them knew what had happened their lips met—a frightened, hasty, timorous kiss that was not even prophetic of the joys that were to grow ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... higher wish in life, than to spend and be spent in the service of Christ, for the salvation of the North American Indians. Not my will, however, but His be done, who alone can direct and control all Missions successfully, to the fulfilment of His prophetic word, when "The wilderness shall become a fruitful field," and "the desert shall rejoice and blossom ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... vision that called to Roger Williams,—that "prophetic soul ravished of truth disembodied," "unable to enter into treaty with its environment," and forced to seek the wilderness. "Oh, how sweet," wrote William Penn, from his forest refuge, "is the quiet of these parts, ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... when the first conception of some future effort strikes the mind; how it pictures undefined delights of fame and popular applause; how it anticipates the bright moments of invention, and dwells with prophetic ecstasy on the felicitous execution of particular parts, that already start into existence by the magic touch of a heated imagination. Let it depict the tender feelings of solitude, the breathings ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... her aunt's words spoken in the vehemence of her prophetic passion. It was the one thing, she had warned her, that ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... were in those days an unknown quantity in French education, and especially in New France until after the conquest. But Wolfe opened the great world of English poetry to Canada as he recited Gray's Elegy with its prophetic line,— ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... these prophetic visions, the Roman hero was fast declining from the meridian of fame and power; and the people, who had gazed with astonishment on the ascending meteor, began to mark the irregularity of its course, and the vicissitudes of light and obscurity. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... picture I drew for Punch's essence of Parliament was a portrait of Lord Randolph Churchill, "Caught on the Hip," to illustrate the following truly prophetic words of Toby, M.P.: "The new delight you have given us is the spectacle of an undisciplined Tory—a man who will not march at the word of command and snaps his fingers at his captain. You won't last long, Randolph; you are rather funny than witty—more impudent ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... the patriarch is accused of declaring, that the faithful might obtain the redemption of all their sins by the extirpation of the schismatics. [12] An enthusiast, named Dorotheus, alarmed the fears, and restored the confidence, of the emperor, by a prophetic assurance, that the German heretic, after assaulting the gate of Blachernes, would be made a signal example of the divine vengeance. The passage of these mighty armies were rare and perilous events; but the crusades introduced a frequent and familiar ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... of Peter.) It is related that one of the Popes thus replied to the ominous address: Non est de fide. (That is no article of faith.) Pius IX., however, was the first who showed that the words were not strictly prophetic. His Pontificate was prolonged beyond the years of Peter at Rome. Already, on the 10th of June, 1871, when he was enabled to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of his election to the Pontifical chair, he had enjoyed more than the years of Peter. The great apostle, it will ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... book-lover's love. Speaking of this incident—and he liked to refer to it as his "first literary recollection," he said: "Long before I was old enough to read I remember buying a book at an old auctioneer's shop in Greenfield. I can not imagine what prophetic impulse took possession of me and made me forego the ginger cakes and the candy that usually took every cent of my youthful income. The slender little volume must have cost all of twenty-five cents! It was Francis Quarles' Divine Emblems,—a neat little affair about the size of a pocket Testament. ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... country was in the utmost terror. Everyone seized their most valuable possessions, and would have fled; but Genevieve placed herself on the only bridge across the Seine, and argued with them, assuring them in a strain that was afterwards thought of as prophetic, that, if they would pray, repent, and defend instead of abandoning their homes, God would protect them. They were at first almost ready to stone her for thus withstanding their panic, but just then a priest arrived from Auxerre, with a present ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the bard's prophetic words, Pregnant with celestial fire, Bending as he swept the chords Of ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... them. Yet I have thought that it might be helpful towards this end to go back to the origins of preaching, and to study those in whom its primitive spirit was embodied. Perhaps that which we are desiderating could not be better expressed than by saying that we need a ministry prophetic and apostolic. And I am going to invite you to study the prophets and ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... towards the Grove of Venus. He went to lay the cornerstone of the proud edifice of his ambitions. To him it was a night of nights—a night of gems, he pronounced it, looking up into the jewelled vault of heaven. And in that phrase he was singularly prophetic. ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... Richardson was particularly apt—I may say, grandly prophetic. Thus: "Never at the beginning of great periods in history was insurrection so successful as that. It has made it apparent that slavery can and must be abolished; it has set every press and every tongue in the land ...
— John Brown: A Retrospect - Read before The Worcester Society of Antiquity, Dec. 2, 1884. • Alfred Roe
... they recognised the divinity of our Lord, in their making words which, in the original, are addressed by Jehovah to Himself, to be addressed by the Father to the Son. There is a difference in the representation of the office of the forerunner in the two prophetic passages. In the former 'he' prepares the way of the coming Lord; in the latter he calls upon his hearers to prepare it. In fact, John prepared the way, as we shall see presently, just by calling on ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... picture of this red-haired Jewess, from whom Daniel had fled in terror, not have vanished? There was a Muse such as poets dream of! "Jewess, wonderful Jewess," thought Daniel, and this word—Jewess—took on for him a meaning, a power, and a prophetic ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... was apparently consistent with his habits and education: but the truth was that as he exerted himself to recall the recognisances of military chieftains, their war-cries, emblems, and other types by which they distinguished themselves in battle, and might undoubtedly be indicated in prophetic rhymes, he began to experience the pleasure which most men entertain when they find themselves unexpectedly possessed of a faculty which the moment calls upon them to employ, and renders them important in the possession of. The ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... belief in his prediction; I think it flowed rather from a wish to make the story as good and the scandal as great as possible; not from any ill-will to Archie - from the mere pleasure of beholding interested faces. But for all that his words were prophetic. Archie did not forget the Spec.; he put in an appearance there at the due time, and, before the evening was over, had dealt a memorable shock to his companions. It chanced he was the president of the night. He sat in the same room where the Society still meets - ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... prophetic warning on the part of the Queen's officer, and cool reply on that of the dealer in contraband, the two sailors separated. The latter took a book, and threw himself into a chair, with a well-maintained indifference; ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... the company streets, the victim of an immense popularity. Corporal Tanner, scarcely beyond his teens, was a good, brave, and true young man, popular with his comrades and faithful in all his duties. Was this little race, so short and gloriously won, prophetic of his life's brief course? He came home to survive but a few years, and then die of injuries received in the service. He was as much a sacrifice upon the altar of his country as if he had been killed in battle. He was long ago laid to rest in a soldier's grave. But he still ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... of the world was to come about the year 1000 was, for a century before that date, well-nigh universal and dominant. As that year approached the condition apparently confirmed the prophetic warnings of the New Testament. Western Christendom seemed to be hopelessly disordered. It was at this time that a worse invasion than that of the Turks threatened Europe. The Magyars, or Huns, were barbarous, irresponsible, ...
— Peter the Hermit - A Tale of Enthusiasm • Daniel A. Goodsell
... cherishes this high ambition. He must not only be at once a genius and an artist, but his art and his genius must be proportioned, with chemical exactness, to each other. He must not only be a poet, but have a distinct mission and message, savoring of the prophetic—he must say as well as sing. He must use his poetic powers as wonders attesting the purpose for which he speaks—not as mere bravados of ostentatious power. He must, while feeling the beauty, the charm, and the meaning of mysticism, stand ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... he read. He did not care much for Van Gogh's compositions, no doubt agreeing with Cezanne, who, viewing them for the first time, calmly remarked to the youth, "Sincerely, you paint like a crazy man." A prophetic note! Van Gogh frequented a tavern kept by an old model, an Italian woman. It bore the romantic title of The Tambourine. When he couldn't pay his bills he would cover the walls with furious frescoes, flowers of tropical exuberance, landscapes ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... their design. They looked forward for a term of years sufficient for the accomplishment of a definite portion of their purpose, and they left to their successors to fill up the canvas of which they had traced the large and prophetic outline. The ships of the line and frigates which they had in contemplation will be shortly completed. The time which they had allotted for the accomplishment of the work has more than elapsed. It remains for your consideration how their successors may ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Quincy Adams • John Quincy Adams
... for a while, and no doubt a pause is preferable to some kinds of activity. It may enable us, when the time comes to set forward again, to do so with better equipment and more intelligent purpose. It will not do to be always at a prophetic heat of enthusiasm, sympathy, denunciation: the coolly critical mood is also useful to prune extravagance and promote a sense of responsibility. The novels of Mr. James and of Mr. Howells have taught us that men and women are ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... given to the Christian nor the wine of Christ's Passion; (c) Death on a pale horse; and (d) his companion Hell. When the fifth scene is opened, the martyrs who are under the altar which is before the throne cry in expectancy. With the sixth seal there is a warning of prophetic horrors. The day of God's wrath all but comes. But judgment is restrained for a season (vi.). Chastisement is suspended until 144,000 of Israelites are sealed, then a multitude of all nations, chorus of salvation (vii.). The seventh seal, which ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... their friends in Buchberg over the news that Mrs. Stanhope had adopted the two children, and that Fani was to become an art-student. Oscar and Fred, and still more the triumphant Emma, could already see with prophetic eyes the announcement of the great exhibition to be held in the neighboring city, of the wonderful landscapes of that "celebrated painter, ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri
... way to have been prophetic!" she remarked. "I must run now or the doctor will scold me, or I shall be scolding you! I must say one thing before we part. I've had time today to do a good deal of thinking, and my opinion of myself isn't very high. ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... The prophetic words were scarcely spoken when what we most feared came to pass. One of the islanders, by accident or design, bumped into Blodgett,— always erratic, never to be relied on in a crisis,—who, turning without a thought of the ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... in Simon's life when he uttered this wonderful confession. Jesus replied with a beatitude for Simon, and then spoke another prophetic word: "Thou art Peter," using now the new name which was beginning to be fitting, as the new man that was to be was growing out of the old man that was being left behind. "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church." It was a further unveiling of Simon's future. It ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... alarming. The miraculous experiment on the pond here occurred to me with full force, and came before my imagination in a new point of view. The drenching I got had a deep and fearful meaning. It was ominous—it was prophetic,—and sent by a merciful Providence to deter me from attending the pilgrimage at this peculiar time—perhaps on this particular day: to-morrow the spell might be broken, the danger past, and the difference ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... drunken woman had none the less uttered a prophetic word; it was the grain of sand on which, later, he ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... encouraging the men, urging them to stand steadfast, assuring them that there was to be neither an advance nor retreat, that we were but to hold our ground, and one of the greatest victories of the war would be gained. How prophetic his words! All during the day and night the deep rumbling sound of the long wagon trains, artillery, and cavalry could be heard crossing the ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... practice, which was done by Miller of Dalswinton in 1788. Sages and poets have frequently foreshadowed inventions of great social moment. Thus Dr. Darwin's anticipation of the locomotive, in his Botanic Garden, published in 1791, before any locomotive had been invented, might almost be regarded as prophetic: ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... clairvoyance, in which the occultist sees astrally the happenings and doings at some distant point, at the moment of observation; it is also true of what is known as past clairvoyance, or astral seeing of past events; and in the seeing of future events, as in prophetic vision, etc. These are all simply different forms of one and the ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... author of his physical being. She is to the savage a miracle to be alternately adored and dreaded. He dreads her more delicate nervous organisation, which often takes shapes to him demoniacal and miraculous; her quicker instincts, her readier wit, which seem to him to have in them somewhat prophetic and superhuman, which entangled him as in an invisible net, and rule him against his will. He dreads her very tongue, more crushing than his heaviest club, more keen than his poisoned arrows. He dreads those habits of secrecy ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... found himself conscious, his heart beating wildly, with a conviction of Kinraid's living presence somewhere near him in the darkness. Occasionally Sylvia was disturbed by his agitation, and would question him about his dreams, having, like most of her class at that time, great faith in their prophetic interpretation; but Philip never gave her any truth in ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... will almost equal anything that has been done at any time by the particular excellence of any one kind of arms, and will perhaps fall but little short of the wonderful effects which histories relate to have been formerly produced by the first inventors of fire-arms." Words, we now see, how prophetic!] ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... friend. All I know is that she's Irish, name O'Donnel; that she's got a harmless, necessary father, and a brother in whom my prophetic soul tells me Angele is interested; that Papa and Daughter are visiting Brother, who's in the Spanish army for some weird unexplained reason, and stationed in Burgos. I promised to take a package with a present from Angele to Miss O'Donnel if we stopped long enough at Burgos, or, if we didn't ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... consisting of one from each State on the permanent organization of the Convention. Pending the announcement of the committee, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, of Boston, delivered an address to the Convention, replete with the noblest wisdom and the soundest morality. Her utterance was both prophetic and hortatory. She cautioned women not to do injustice to others, while seeking justice for themselves; advised them that they must prepare for the new responsibilities they coveted; and that they would better learn ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... He thought that no man has the right to speak until what he has to say is so ripe with meaning, and the season for his saying it is so compelling, that what he says will result in a deed—a thing accomplished now or afterwhile. In the prophetic old Scotchman's iron philosophy there was no room for ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... no man, one Trevor, a pleasant bachelor whose sister kept house for him. His purse, or rather his cheque book, gaped with desire to be at Logan's service, but had gaped in vain. Finding Logan grinning one day over the advertisement columns of a paper at the club, his prophetic soul discerned a good thing, and he wormed it out 'in dern privacy.' He slapped his manly thigh and insisted on being in it—as a capitalist. The other stoutly resisted, ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... prophetic she had been. Nothing had endured, neither love, nor faith, nor the great ship ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... said Hinpoha with a prophetic feeling. "Where are we, anyway? Is this the Point of Pines? I believe we've come to the wrong place! We should have stuck to the shore after all and not gone off into that path through the woods that turned and twisted so many times. ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... infuse a new spirit into his exhausted crew, and to encourage them in the approaching struggle, which he well knew would he 'life or death.' On hearing the above words, poor Steel, the doctor, exclaimed, 'Rooke! Rooke! there are other things to think of now.' The words were prophetic, for before many minutes had elapsed, he had ceased to exist. As they approached the shore, the sail was shifted from the port side to the starboard, and the sheet which had been held by Hills, the captain's steward, for ten hours, was fastened to ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... dear lord, upon this only day Depends the series of your following fate: Think your good genius has assumed my shape, In this prophetic doom. ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... the family, one Guido Antonio, became locally famous as an expounder of the law and a diplomat. Respecting him an epitaph was composed, the last two lines of which might, if applied to Amerigo, have seemed almost prophetic: ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... accessories of the work point to this imitation; there is a long account of his arms, his Squire, and horse. But beyond this, he aimed at several well-known rogues of his day, especially those pretending to necromancy and prophetic powers, who seem to have been numerous.[59] This gave the poem an interest at that day which it cannot have now, and it was increased by the amusing hits he makes at the Puritans, who had lately convulsed the State, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... fairly staggered. What could be the meaning of so extraordinary a freak of nature? Surely it must be prophetic. Fate was kind enough to warn him in advance, no doubt; otherwise it was a trick. And why should she stoop to play so paltry a trick as that upon him? Surely fate would not be so petty. No. It was a warning. The mirror had been so affected by some supernatural agency that ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... "That spar'd from travel, and from war's fatigue, "In rest he might his cruel pains assuage: "He lik'd my words, and lives. My counsel here "Not merely faithful (though our faith the whole "Our promise can insure) but happy prov'd. "His presence since the seers prophetic ask "T' atchieve the fall of Troy, dispatch not me; "Ajax will better go, will better soothe "With eloquence of tongue, a man who burns "With raging choler, and with smarting pains: "Or with some stratagem him thence allure. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... as she had thought of doing. Everything was turning out so entirely for the best that she was beginning to experience some revival of an ancestral faith in Providence in a heart individually agnostic, and she was piously happy when Maxwell said at sight of the lunch, "Isn't this rather prophetic? If it isn't that, it's telepathic. I sha'n't regret now that I didn't go with Grayson to lunch at the ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... be faced by individuals and by nations. It is the challenge which confronts men in this war. Seventy years ago a crushed Europe faced the issue in the prophetic words of Mazzini, written in the hour ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... tribes behind, internal dissensions, or the economic necessities of a population growing too fast for the produce of primitive farming—the restlessness was general; but while the Goths and the Franks poured south over the Roman frontiers on land, the Angles and Saxons obeyed a prophetic call to the sea ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... i.e. Heinan, may either be that of the Island so called, or, as I rather incline to suppose, 'An-nan, i.e. Tong-king. But even by Camoens, writing at Macao in 1559-1560, the Gulf of Hainan is styled an unknown sea (though this perhaps is only appropriate to the prophetic speaker):— ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... fell at Waterloo, we lost one of the wildest youths that ever belonged to the service. He seemed to have a prophetic notion of his approaching end, for he repeatedly told us, in the early part of the morning, that he knew the devil would have him before night. I shall relate one anecdote of him, which occurred while we were in Spain. ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid |
