"Futurity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... would prove, that, at least, he meditated no cruel invasion upon the joys of others. Even Rousseau taught his child religion, as a delusion essential to happiness. The philosophic Tully also, if a belief in futurity were an error, deemed it one with which it was impossible to part. Let the author then, at all events, leave us in unmolested possession of our supposed privileges. He plainly knows no noble or "royal way" to happiness. We find in religion a bark that ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... "must sometimes have looked into futurity. You must have seen the slow decay of national pride, the nations of the world growing closer and closer together. Can't you bear to strike a blow for the great things? You and I see so well the utter barbarism of warfare, the hideous waste of ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... species—as it admitted therefore of fluctuations of generous feeling—of approbation and of complacency. We were intellectualized also in proportion; we looked backward upon the records of the human race with pride, and, instead of being afraid, we delighted to look forward into futurity. It was imagined that this new-born spirit of resistance, rising from the most sacred feelings of the human heart, would diffuse itself through many countries; and not merely for the distant future, but ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... called round for Susan Sharpe, and found that treasure of nurses ready and waiting. All through the long drive she sat by his side in his light wagon, never opening her discreet lips except to respond to his questions, and gazing straight ahead through her green glasses into the world of futurity, for all her ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... fostered by ignorance and mystery. Its maxims, in the mean time, are not always confounded with those of common life; nor does its weakness or folly always prevent the watchfulness, penetration, and courage, men are accustomed to employ in the management of common affairs. A Roman consulting futurity by the pecking of birds, or a king of Sparta inspecting the entrails of a beast, Mithridates consulting his women on the interpretation of his dreams, are examples sufficient to prove, that a childish imbecility on this subject ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... foresight and uncommon sagacity; of a foresight and sagacity stimulated, nevertheless, by excited feeling and high enthusiasm. So clear a vision of what America would become was not founded on square miles, or on existing numbers, or on any common laws of statistics. It was an intuitive glance into futurity; it was a grand conception, which they have hitherto so hopelessly mismanaged, you must expect to go on from had to worse; you must expect to lose the little prestige which you retain; you must expect to find in other portions ...
— Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study • Compiled by Grenville Kleiser
... depredations of the barbarians had checked industry and diminished wealth, this profuse luxury must have been the result of that indolent despair which enjoys the present hour and declines the thoughts of futurity. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... There's no cheaper house in the trade. Love-philtre - we've quantities of it; And for knowledge if any one burns, We keep an extremely small prophet, a prophet Who brings us unbounded returns: For he can prophesy With a wink OF his eye, Peep with security Into futurity, Sum up your history, Clear up a mystery, Humour proclivity For a nativity. With mirrors so magical, Tetrapods tragical, Bogies spectacular, Answers oracular, Facts astronomical, Solemn or comical, And, if you want it, he ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... swaying of the veil of futurity, under the straining hands of our guardian angels? Is it the faint shadow, the solemn rustle of their hovering wings, as like mother birds they spread protecting plumes between blind fledglings, and descending ruin? Will theosophy ever explain and ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Constance, thrilled by the thought that some event on its way to her down the unknown path of futurity was casting a shadow ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... animal in its motion, the tree in its growth, the cloud in its course, the mountain in its wearing away. Try always, whenever you look at a form, to see the lines in it which have had power over its past fate, and will have power over its futurity. Those are its awful lines; see that you seize on those, whatever else you miss. Thus, the leafage in Fig. 16. (p. 291.) grew round the root of a stone pine, on the brow of a crag at Sestri, near Genoa, and all the sprays of it are thrust away in ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... stated. For if it be allowed, as you propose, that my propositions are true, then you consent to the validity of the apostles' testimony respecting a future state, which granted, it makes no difference in what way the apostles come to the knowledge of futurity. When a thing is known, it is known. The means by which it is known add nothing to either side of the argument. If you allow that my argument on this subject is correct, as it seems you do, then you acknowledge that God would ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... tamperings with the future, even where we are convinced of the fallacy of the prediction. It is singular how willingly the mind will half deceive itself, and with what a degree of awe we will listen to these babblers about futurity. For my part, I cannot feel angry with these poor vagabonds, that seek to deceive us into bright hopes and expectations. I have always been something of a castle-builder, and have found my liveliest pleasures to arise from the illusions which fancy has cast over commonplace realities. ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... that Theresa passed in those few moments to a new existence—to a being wholly different from her former self. The rainbow tints had faded from her sky, and the stars in her futurity had ceased to shine. What to her were all her mental gifts, when they had failed to win the love she valued? And now the nature so impulsive and ingenuous was impelled by the instinct of woman's pride to assume the mantle of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... say which is the true foundation, but rather that they must be both baseless and, as it were, meteoric in mid air. They have seen very little ahead of a present power or need, and have been then most moral, when most inclined to pierce a little into futurity, but also when most obstinately declining to pierce too far, and busy mainly with the present. They have been so far blindfolded that they could see but for a few steps in front of them, yet so far free to see that ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... inhabitants, she has of late extended her buildings along the Bromsgrove road, near the boundaries of Edgbaston; and actually on the other side planted three of her streets in the parish of Aston. Could the sagacious Alfred have seen into futurity, he ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... no abiding-place, we all hasten toward futurity!" said the old preacher. "Strengthen yourself now with meat and drink! The body cannot suffer like the soul. We have accompanied him to His sleeping chamber; his bed was well prepared! I have prayed the evening ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... Drummond stood on the pavement and saw his dream of taking Sidney in his arms fade into an indefinite futurity. ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to iron her shroud, and perhaps, likewise, to smooth the Doctor's band. Probably, during her lifetime, she allowed him to go to some ordination or other grand clerical celebration with rumpled linen, and ever since, and throughout all earthly futurity (at least, as long as the house shall stand), she is doomed to exercise a nightly toil with a spiritual flat-iron. Poor sinner!—and doubtless Satan heats the irons for her. What nonsense is all this! but, really, it does ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... is treated with indignity and disrespect. The companions of my former libertinism would scarcely believe their eyes, my dear doctor, was you to show them this epistle. They would laugh at me as a dreaming enthusiast, or pity me as a timorous wretch who was shocked at the appearance of futurity. But whoever laughs at me for being right, or pities me for being sensible of my errors, is more entitled to my compassion than my resentment. A future life may very well strike terror into any man who has not acted well in this life; and he must have an uncommon ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various
... little idea of the part they were to play in the future. They were drawn out of him simply by the exigencies of his work. In the truest sense of the word they were letters, written to meet particular occasions, not formal writings, carefully designed and executed with a view to fame or to futurity. Letters of the right kind are, before everything else, products of the heart; and it was the eager heart of Paul, yearning for the weal of his spiritual children or alarmed by the dangers to which they were exposed, that produced all his writings. They were ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... former times, men took to politics to give zest to a life already replete with pecuniary indulgences, as those in the "sere and yellow leaf" are wont to take to religion as a solacing comfort against things that are past, and pave the way to a very desirable futurity. But now, politicians are of no peculiar class or condition of citizens; the success of a champion depends not so much upon the matter, as upon the manner, not upon the capital he may have in real estate, bank funds or public stocks, but upon the fundamental principle of "confidence," ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... and she arose in health and strength, and the full glow of animal spirits. "This is happiness, however," exclaimed Ianthe to her companions, as the young girl sprang about, carolling to herself the while. And so it was, for at that moment no forecastings into futurity disturbed the comfort of present pleasure: but an accidental glimpse of her face caught in a looking-glass as she passed, recalled Aurora to the recollection of HERSELF! and the admiration she had obtained the evening ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... tense of "go" is: "I shall or will go," "You shall or will go," "He shall or will go," etc. The fact seems to be that there is only one form for the future; the other form, often given as an alternative, expresses something more than futurity, and is ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... race and kindred blotted from existence, to see their homes and pleasant places occupied by those who may be the cause of their extinction, and to know when the last of the race shall have departed, their name will be held synonymous with treachery and cruelty to futurity! Maiden! maiden!" added he, with a wild look, distorting his dark features, "may you never experience the torture of this feeling, nor the agony that hourly ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... strangely forced itself upon me, that there was a sort of familiarity between these two companions, necessarily the result of an intimate love,—on Zenobia's part, at least,—in days gone by, but which had prolonged itself into as intimate a hatred, for all futurity. As they passed among the trees, reckless as her movement was, she took good heed that even the hem of her garment should not brush against the stranger's person. I wondered whether there had always been a chasm, guarded ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... take place soon,—the armies might meet from day to day, and then what would become of the rejoicings of our wedding-day! To undertake the performance of a ceremony of such importance, under these circumstances, would only be mocking Providence, and preparing for ourselves a futurity of misfortune. However, I was too much in love, and too impatient, not to have married under any circumstances, therefore I only endured what I could ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... and super-plenitude of soul, which is not afraid to hide itself under the RAFFINEMENTS of decadence—which, perhaps, feels itself most at ease there; a real, genuine token of the German soul, which is at the same time young and aged, too ripe and yet still too rich in futurity. This kind of music expresses best what I think of the Germans: they belong to the day before yesterday and the day after tomorrow—THEY ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... limping line, Names and words the hoary rime Of the Past has made sublime? Who shall work for us as well The antiquarian's miracle? Who to seeming life recall Teacher grave and pupil small? Who shall give to thee and me Freeholds in futurity? ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... hand in hand with her brother to the steps of the scaffold, and how, in 1803, she had aided Thomas Russell in his escape from the north after Emmet's failure, had bribed his captors after arrest, provided for his defence, and preserved for futurity a record of his dying words. Madden's History of the United Irishmen, as far as it tells of the north, is mainly the record that she kept as a sacred trust in letters, papers, long-treasured memories of the men who ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... such lasting results: for whilst they were thinking only of the other world, they had found out the great secret of success in this. Religions give men a general habit of conducting themselves with a view to futurity: in this respect they are not less useful to happiness in this life than to felicity hereafter; and this is one ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... sensitive, and his mother thinks she can't begin to guard him too early." Miss Ambient's head drooped a little to one side, and her eyes fixed themselves on futurity. Then suddenly there was a strange alteration in her face; she gave a smile that was more joyless than her gravity—a conscious, insincere smile, and added, "When one has children, it's ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... a sixth sense, and intimates that in time all men will be so equipped. Death is as natural as life, and possibly insanity is a plan of Nature for sending a searchlight flash into the darkness of futurity. Insane or not, thinking men everywhere agree that Swedenborg blessed and benefited the race—preparing the way for the thinkers and the doers who should ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... and they will join me in my exile. Yes: I will live! The future who shall spell? My wife, my son, will be enough for me.— And I will give my hours to chronicling In stately words that stir futurity The might of our unmatched accomplishments; And in the tale immortalize your names By linking them ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... store increases, the power of applying it becomes more facile; until at length it scarcely becomes an exaggeration to say, that every material relic bears in itself its own natural history, and, if artificially modified, the history of its fabricators—what the germ is to futurity the relic ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... of Goldsmith, as may easily be supposed, soon brought him to the end of his "prize money," but when his purse gave out he drew upon futurity, obtaining advances from his booksellers and loans from his friends in the confident hope of soon turning up another trump. The debts which he thus thoughtlessly incurred in consequence of a transient ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... 1843. As there is no hesitation in his thought, there is no vagueness in his language; it is terse, clear, and direct in every utterance. An enemy to spasms in every form, he abhors the Spasmodic School of Poets. If the true poet be the seer—the far seer into futurity—he should see his way clear before him. He should write because he has a thought to utter, and ought to utter it in the clearest and the fittest language, and this is the principle which manifestly governs the compositions of Charles Mackay. The "Salamandrine" ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... become aware of the nocturnal experiment about to be tried, and were also sauntering stealthily after the frisky maidens. Miss Melbury had been informed by Marty South during the day of the proposed peep into futurity, and, being only a girl like the rest, she was sufficiently interested to wish to see the issue. The moon was so bright and the night so calm that she had no difficulty in persuading Mrs. Melbury to accompany her; and thus, joined by Marty, these ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... against the spear of the hunter, not a stag to be dismayed at the sound of his bugle."—He walked through the room in silence. "Wellwood," he said at length, "we can no longer be friends. Our faith, our hope, our anchor on futurity, is no longer ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... on our way, with careworn face, Abstracted eye, and sauntering pace, May pass one such as he, Whose mind heaves with a secret force, That shall be felt along the course Of far Futurity. ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... man, delighted to see these smiles, which so harmonized with his own thoughts, fell upon the neck of the Abbe and embraced him, as if the good man had thus assured to him a futurity of pleasure, glory, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... prophetic powers. Kings are warned against "pythonesses" as well as Druids, and Dr. Joyce thinks these were Druidesses.[1084] S. Patrick also armed himself against "the spells of women" and of Druids.[1085] Women in Ireland had a knowledge of futurity, according to Solinus, and the women who took part with the Druids like furies at Mona, may have been divineresses.[1086] In Ireland it is possible that such women were called "Druidesses," since the ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... contradictions—all opposites blended into one—a mass of confused, broken parts, of disjointed fragments—such is he. The circumstances that surround him—the events that happen unto him, are no less strange. What shall be the end? Oh then, abyss of futurity, declare it! unfold thy dark depths—let a voice come up from thy cloudy infinite—let a ray penetrate thy unfathomable profound. If we could but rest till the question is decided! if we could but float softly on the current of time till we reach the haven! But no, we must act. We must ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... Croatians, and Dalmatians, a badnyak, or piece of wood answering to the northern Yule-log, is solemnly burnt on Christmas Eve. But the significance originally attached to these practices has long been forgotten. Thus the grave attempts of olden times to search the secrets of futurity have degenerated into the sportive guesses of young people, who half believe that they may learn from omens at Christmas time what manner of marriages are in store for them. Divinings of this kind ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... real to us when we are perfect—once ideal to them, as now to us. We must keep above us the model of life and of law which we have not yet attained. Let it never be dim. It is a star shining through time's night! A banner waving from the throne of God. It tells us of the goal. It points out our futurity—the altitude of our ...
— Government and Rebellion • E. E. Adams
... descending, from broken health, into the grave, but in the wildest of his dreams he did not peer into futurity far enough to see that within a single decade the "sin of the nation" would be washed out, root and branch, in blood; and that in Virginia —the State that hung John Brown—at the home of its greatest Governor, Henry A. Wise, there ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... a moment, deciding wisely not to worry about what was for the present only a possible futurity, and then he went into the back of the shop and invited Miss Masters to have supper with him at Pulpat's French Restaurant, where one could still obtain red wine at dinner, despite the Great Federal Government. ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... principle, but an acknowledgment of a weakness common to human nature. One of the most advanced thinkers and men of science of our time has frankly admitted that his theological views are considerably modified by the state of his health; and if one's ideas on futurity are thus affected, it is no wonder that things of this world wear a different appearance when viewed from a sick bed. It is not difficult to imagine that whist, for example, played on the counterpane by three good Samaritans, to while away the hours for an afflicted friend, differs from the game ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... his will, and cold and weariness were his helpers. Soon she felt nothing but a supreme immediate longing that curtained off all futurity—the longing to lie down and sleep. She had arrived at a spot where her footsteps were no longer checked by a hedgerow, and she had wandered vaguely, unable to distinguish any objects, notwithstanding the wide whiteness around her, and the growing ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... cultivated sympathy between them; and no one being now left out, but an equal measure being extended to all. It is no novelty that mankind do not distinctly foresee their own changes, and that their sentiments are adapted to past, not to coming ages. To see the futurity of the species has always been the privilege of the intellectual elite, or of those who have learnt from them; to have the feelings of that futurity has been the distinction, and usually the martyrdom, ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... love and life together fled, Have left me here to love and live in vain - Twined with my heart, and can I deem thee dead, When busy memory flashes on my brain? Well—I will dream that we may meet again, And woo the vision to my vacant breast: If aught of young Remembrance then remain, Be as it may Futurity's behest, For me 'twere bliss enough to know thy ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... other points of view in which this subject might be placed, of a striking and animating kind. But they would lead us too far into the regions of futurity, and would involve topics not proper for a newspaper discussion. I shall briefly observe, that our situation invites and our interests prompt us to aim at an ascendant in the system of American affairs. ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... Mahallalel, said, "ponder on three things, and thou wilt not be led to the commission of sin; consider from whence thou comest, and whither thou goest; and in whose presence thou must in futurity stand to account in judgment. From whence comest thou? from a foul drop. And whither goest thou? to a place of dust—worms—and reptiles; and in whose presence art thou in future to account in judgment? even before the King Who is King of kings, ...
— Hebrew Literature
... arrived when earth and all his treasures were gliding from before his eyes, and when the savage baron's heart, though hard as a nether millstone, became appalled as he gazed forward into the waste darkness of futurity. The fever of his body aided the impatience and agony of his mind, and his death-bed exhibited a mixture of the newly-awakened feelings of horror combating with the fixed and inveterate obstinacy of his disposition—a fearful state of mind, only to be ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... I have no name, has taken possession of my soul —a sensation which will admit of no analysis, to which the lessons of bygone times are inadequate, and for which I fear futurity itself will offer me no key. To a mind constituted like my own, the latter consideration is an evil. I shall never—I know that I shall never—be satisfied with regard to the nature of my conceptions. Yet it is not wonderful that these conceptions are indefinite, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... with signal mischief to her own trade, and with heavy loss of seamen; not to mention how her armies are shrunk to raise her marine, a sacrifice she will one day rue, when the disciplined hosts of Goths and Huns begin to cast an eye southward. But I seem to choose to read futurity, because I am not likely to see it: indeed I am most rational when I say to myself, What is all this to me? My thread is almost spun! almost all my business here is to bear pain with patience, and to be thankful for intervals of ease. Though Emperors and Kings may torment mankind, they will not ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present.—SHELLEY: A ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... give adventurous Fancy scope, And stretch a bold hand to the awful veil That hides futurity from anxious hope, Bidding beyond it scenes of glory hail, And painting Europe rousing at the tale Of Spain's invaders from her confines hurled, While kindling nations buckle on their mail, And Fame, with ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... himself in the fatal instrument, and a smile was upon his lips, and mirthful words were falling upon the ears of the executioners, when the slide fell, and he was silent in death. That soul must indeed be ignoble which can thus enter the dread unseen of futurity. ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... and could willingly have dropped asleep by their margin. Had I reposed in so romantic a situation, the murmurs of trees and waters would doubtless have invited "some strange mysterious dream" to hover over me, and perhaps futurity ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... the servant of the temple is in terror of the high priest, and shrinks from walking in the place of the sacrifice!' he cried. 'Fear not, bondman! The mighty one, who rules over life and death, and time and futurity, deals kindly with the servant of his choice! Onward! onward! to the place of darkness and doom, where I alone am omnipotent, and all others are creatures who tremble and obey! To thy lesson, learner! by sunset the ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... impresses me as having much more weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man, with his capacity of looking far backward and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause, having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist. This conclusion ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... went to see if thay could find th' oud weather-gazer, at hed proffesied th' flooid; an' after a good deal o' runnin' abaat, thay fan him peepin' throo summat at shap of a tunnil, sum sed he wur lookin' at mooin, others sed he wur lookin' into futurity, hawsumever thay axt him to cum daan an' look at th' railway, an' tell 'em whether th' flooid wur baan to tak it away or not, but th' saucy oud haand refused at first, for he sed at he wur flaid at sum on em wodn't be able to stand th' shock if he tell'd ...
— Th' History o' Haworth Railway - fra' th' beginnin' to th' end, wi' an ackaant o' th' oppnin' serrimony • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... reared amid the fatalistic influences of Arabia, she could not have more completely adopted and exemplified the marble motto: "Despair is a free man; Hope is a slave." For her the rosy mist that usually hovers over futurity had been swept rudely aside, the softening glow of the To-Come had been precipitated into a dull, pitiless leaden ever present, at which she never raved nor railed, but inflexibly fought on, expecting neither sunshine nor succour, unappalled and patient as some stony figure of ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... by thine appropriate receptacle, recals raptures past—bids us appreciate joys present—and enjoins us duly to reverence thee, if we hope for joys in futurity. ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... from the earth, in her innocence, purity, Gone, 'mong her bright sister angels to dwell; Gone, to explore the dark shades of Futurity, Gone to her ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... feelings and faculties wherewith living creatures are endowed? For each desire there is a counterpart object; for each faculty there is room and opportunity for exercise either in the present or the coming futurity. Now, but for the doctrine of immortality, Man would be an exception to this law,-he would stand forth as an anomaly in Nature, with aspirations in his heart for which the universe had no antitype to offer, with capacities of understanding and thought that never were ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... look out and see My bride, my bride that is to be! Reach out with mad, impatient hands, And draw aside futurity As one might draw a veil aside— And so unveil her where she stands Madonna-like and glorified— The queen of undiscovered lands Of love, to where she beckons me— My bride—my bride that is ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... lasted; and grace of dress and mien, and all else that was connected with chivalry. Then came the ages which, when they have taken their due place in the depths of the past, will be, by a wise and clear-sighted futurity, perhaps well comprehended under a common name, as the ages of Starch; periods of general stiffening and bluish-whitening, with a prevailing washerwoman's taste in everything; involving a change of steel armour into cambric; of natural hair into peruke; of natural walking into ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... at the third watch of night, What time, more sweet than honey of the bee, Sleep courses through the brain some vision bright, To lift the veil which hides futurity, Fair Cypris sent a fearful dream to mar The slumbers of a maid whose frightened eyes Pictured the direful clash of horrid war, And she, ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... the days of railroads, a "visitor" was more of an institution than he is now. He stayed longer and was more welcome; and the news he brought from distant parts was eagerly asked for. Nowadays we know all about everything, almost before it happens, for yellow journalism is so alert that it discounts futurity. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... shore, Far from Ilion's hoary wave, Agamemnon's bridal slave Speaks Futurity no more: Death is busy with ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... nights and through days; Talking together through days and through nights; Facing futurity's fathomless haze; Piercing its shadows ...
— Harry • Fanny Wheeler Hart
... is clear that something survived after death till one was reborn for the last time, and then entered Nirv[a]na. The part that animates the material complex is to the Buddhist an individuality which depends on the nature of its former complex, home, and is destined to project itself upon futurity till the house which it has built ceases to exist, a home rebuilt no more to be its tabernacle. When a man dies the component parts of his material personality fall apart, and a new complex is formed, of which the ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... dead, Seeking for some sweet flower of good Within their solemn solitude: And if he finds in fadeless bloom Around some well remember'd tomb, Some cherish'd record of the past Which has defied time's rudes blast, And down futurity's deep vale Shed fragrance on the passing gale, Love's labor, then, the task will be, My gentle Muse, for thee and me. 'Mongst those of old remember'd well, John Wade doth in my memory dwell, A wit of most undoubted ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... they are not considerable, it were to be wished you had never been sent there, as the slight they have put upon our offered friendship is very disreputable to us, and, of course, hurtful to our affairs elsewhere. I think they are short-sighted, and do not look very far into futurity, or they would seize with avidity so excellent an opportunity of securing a neighbor's friendship, which may hereafter be of great consequence ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... immovable As, with the last sigh given, Lay his own clay, oblivious, From that great spirit riven, So the world stricken and wondering Stands at the tidings dread: Mutely pondering the ultimate Hour of that fateful being, And in the vast futurity No peer of his foreseeing Among the countless myriads Her blood-stained dust ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... Thus Christ not only does not succeed in destroying the works of the devil, but even aggravates them.—Again: what sort of gospel or glad tidings had I been holding? Without this revelation no future state at all (I presumed) could be known. How much better no futurity for any, than that a few should be eternally in bliss, and the great majority[2] kept alive for eternal sin as well as eternal misery! My gospel then was bad tidings, nay, the worst of tidings! In a farther progress of thought, I asked, would it not have been better that the whole race of man ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... and in that knowledge, under its highest and truest name of Faith, she feared not the summons which would call her into the presence of the Judge of all. The infidel may hug his heartless creed, which, by ignoring alike futurity and the Divine government, makes an aimless chaos of the past, and a gloomy obscurity of the future; but, in the "hour of death and in the day of judgment," the boldest atheist in existence would thankfully exchange his failing theories for the poor ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... any time, if she had been asked, that she didn't suppose Miss Chancellor would want her to marry. But the idea, uttered as her friend had uttered it, had a new solemnity, and the effect of that quick, violent colloquy was to make her nervous and impatient, as if she had had a sudden glimpse of futurity. That was rather awful, even if it represented the fate one ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... we are gone away; Try not to read the Final Page, the ending colophonian, Trust not the gypsy's tea-leaves, nor the prophets Babylonian. Better to have what is to come enshrouded in obscurity Than to be certain of the sort and length of our futurity. Why, even as I monologue on wisdom and longevity How Time has flown! Spear some of it! ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... upon this temporary marriage and render it worthy of being made permanent. As a lowly servant of the all-powerful First Cause I pronounce you two, and you two, husband and wife. But we must remember that the dull vision of mortal man cannot pierce the veil of futurity, which is as crystal to the all-beholding eye of the First Cause. Though you love each other truly, unforeseen things may come between you to mar the perfection of your happiness. Therefore a time is granted you during which you may discover ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... life, I think that not only a private person, but even the great king himself, would find them easy to number, in comparison with other days and nights. If, therefore, death is a thing of this kind, I say it is a gain; for thus all futurity appears to be nothing more than one night. But if, on the other hand, death is a removal from hence to another place, and what is said be true, that all the dead are there, what greater blessing can there be than this, my judges? ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato
... to the farthest corner. I looked at the Cumaean Sibyl, the impersonation of age and wisdom, and wished, as I glanced at the youthful figures talking so earnestly in the distance, but not a murmur of whose voices reached my ear, that she would impart to me her far-reaching vision of futurity. I gazed on the image of the Eternal Father sweeping in majestic flight through the air, bearing the angels on His floating garment as He divides the light from the darkness. I saw Adam, glad with new life, rising from the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... far as one can look into futurity one has no idea what would be one's own feelings. I suppose he did ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... kitchen-door, and asked to see the young ladies of the house. Of course, we all ran out to look at the sybil, and hear her errand, which was nothing more nor less than to tell our fortunes. Partly out of curiosity, partly out of fun, we determined to have a peep into futurity, and see what the coming years had in store for us. We did not believe in gipsy craft. We well knew that, like our own, the woman's powers were limited; that it was all guess-work; that her cunning rested in a shrewd knowledge of character,—of certain likings ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... distance of place this globe can admit of, will so remarkably weaken our ideas, and diminish our passions. A West-Indian merchant will tell you, that he is not without concern about what passes in Jamaica; though few extend their views so far into futurity, as to dread very ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... deity, and the entire form of the vulture, as an emblem of purification, is associated with the earliest conception of Athena. In the type of the dove with the olive branch, the conception of the spirit of Athena in renewed life prevailing over ruin is embodied for the whole of futurity; while the Greeks, to whom, in a happier climate and higher life than that of Egypt, the vulture symbol of cleansing became unintelligible, took the eagle instead for their hieroglyph of supreme spiritual energy, and it thenceforward retains its hold on ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... sometimes disputed. It has been said that the meaning of 'cause' implies an 'effect,' so that until an effect occurs there can be no cause. But this is a blunder; for whilst the word 'cause' implies 'effect,' it also implies the relative futurity of the effect; and effect implies the relative priority of the cause. The connotation of the words, therefore, agrees well enough with Mill's doctrine. In fact, the danger is that any pair of contrasted words may suggest too strongly ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... "smites the Shepherd!") then I think aloud The words "despised,"—"rejected,"—every word Recoiling into darkness as I view The darling on my knee. Bright angels,—move not!—lest ye stir the cloud Betwixt my soul and His futurity! I must not die, with mother's work to do, And could not ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... Dr. Opimian. Civilised. The word requires definition. But looking into futurity, it seems to me that the ultimate tendency of the change is to substitute the worse for the better race; the Negro for the Red Indian. The Red Indian will not work for a master. No ill-usage will make him. Herein he is the noblest specimen ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... good and satisfactory to see anything which, being built for an enduring monument, has endured so faithfully, and has a prospect of such an interminable futurity before it. Once, indeed, it seemed likely to be buried; for three hundred years ago it had become covered to the depth of sixteen feet, but the soil has since been dug away from its base, which is now ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... thing to be mother-in-law to a very magnificent three-tailed bashaw, it presupposes that the wife who makes the connection between the two parties is in harmony with her mother. And so far had Mrs. Gibson's thoughts wandered into futurity. She only wished that the happy chance had fallen to Cynthia's instead of to Molly's lot. But Molly was a docile, sweet creature, very pretty, and remarkably intelligent, as my lord had said. It was a pity that Cynthia preferred making millinery to reading; but ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... affect cats. Nor can I say that I greatly enjoy their music. I heard the very best bands of tom-cats every night during my sojourn in Moscow, and consider them utterly deficient in style and execution. It belongs, I think, to the Music of Futurity, so much discussed by the critics of Europe during the past few years—a peculiar school of anti-melody that requires people yet to be born to appreciate it thoroughly. The discords may be very fine, and the passion very striking and tempestuous, but it is worse than thrown away ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... civilization. From Eastern story learn now the beauty of peace. After the titles of the two august sovereigns, the monument proceeds: "These two wise, holy, spiritual, and accomplished princes, foreseeing the changes hidden in the most distant futurity, touched with sentiments of compassion towards their people, and not knowing, in their beneficent protection, any difference between their subjects and strangers, have, after mature reflection and by mutual consent, resolved to give peace to ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... he fondly desires, to expect what he believes, and to predict what he expects. His predictions are the mirrors which photograph his own moods of mind, rather than views through a telescope directed to the distant cloud-capped mountains of futurity. ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... moral and intellectual advance towards perfection. Thus we live by hope and faith; thus we are for the most part able to realize what we will, and thus we accomplish the end of our being. The contemplation of futurity inspires humility of soul in our judgment of ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... the foundation; and since it is pure spirit it has its continual existence in that plane of being where all things subsist in the universal here and the everlasting now, and consequently can, inform the lower mind of things removed from its ken either by distance or futurity. As the absence of the conditions of time and space must logically concentrate all things into a present focus, we can assign no limit to the subjective mind's power of perception, and therefore the question arises, why does it not keep the objective mind continually informed on ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... human nature can be all and fully developed.' Nor is this all. We shall not only be able to unravel the intricate web of past affairs, but shall also find a clue for the guidance of future statesmen in the art of political prediction. Nay more, this clue 'will open a consolatory prospect into futurity, in which at a remote distance we shall observe the human species seated upon an eminence won by infinite toil, where all the germs are unfolded which nature has implanted within it, and its ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... below, inasmuch as this world with its moral life even, is not the finality. There is aught beyond, the limit of death we must surmount in the present existence still; a glimpse of futurity the mortal must have before going thither. So Homer makes the Hero transcend life as it were, during life; and extend his ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... rested in opinions of some future being, which, ignorantly or coldly believed, begat those perverted conceptions, ceremonies, sayings, which Christians pity or laugh at. Happy are they which live not in that disadvantage of time, when men could say little for futurity, but from reason: whereby the noblest minds fell often upon doubtful deaths, and melancholy dissolutions. With these hopes, Socrates warmed his doubtful spirits against that cold potion; and Cato, before he durst give ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... present situation," he said in his address before Free People of Color, "and look at it only in futurity. I imagine myself surrounded by educated men of color, the Websters, and Clays, and Hamiltons, and Dwights, and Edwardses of the day. I listen to their voice as judges and representatives, and rulers of the people—the whole people." This glowing vision ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... is done. The moment is pregnant with futurity, and if not seized at once by Congress, I know not on what shoal our bark is next to be stranded. The state legislatures should be immediately urged to relinquish the right of establishing banks of discount. Most of them will comply, on patriotic principles, under the convictions ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... from his mother's watchfulness, and in such opportunities he would always seek Lois, entreating her, as of old, to marry him—sometimes pleading his love for her, oftener speaking wildly of his visions and the voices which he heard foretelling a terrible futurity. ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... academy at Jabneh were miraculously widening out to enclose the world, while the figure of the venerable rabbi grows to the noble proportions of a divine seer, whose piercing eye rends the veil of futurity, and reads the remote verdict of history: "My disciples, my friends, the fundamental principle of ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... Zenobia, 'yields pleasure and instruction. It delights me, even when thickest beset by the cares of state, to pause and contemplate for a moment the prospects of futurity. It diffuses a divine calm throughout the soul. You have given me new food for ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... the happiness of the whole human race—my indignation and horror, as an honest man and a Christian, are excited against that abominable Company, whose black plots nipped in their bud all those great hopes, which promised so much for futurity. What remains now of all these splendid projects? Seven tombs. For my grave also is dug in that mausoleum, which Samuel has erected on the site of the house in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Francois, and of which he remains the keeper—faithful ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... a charm about it that I have never seen in any other human countenance. I marked his fine robust figure as he followed Captain Maitland into the cabin, and, boy as I was, I said to myself, "Now have I a tale for futurity." ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... spoke; and bade ere noon of night With sacred spells and many a mystic rite Invoke the Power Divine, and seek from high The dark events of dread futurity. ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... Chandravati was sitting in confidential conversation with her jay. The dialogue was not remarkable, for maidens in all ages seldom consult their confidantes or speculate upon the secrets of futurity, or ask to have dreams interpreted, except upon one subject. At last the princess said, for perhaps the hundredth time that month, "Where, O jay, is there a ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... of reversing the judgments delivered upon creative artists by their contemporaries; yet to trim deftly one's convictions in the hope that they may elastically conform to any one of a number of possible verdicts to be expected from a capricious futurity, is probably as dangerous a proceeding as to avow, without equivocation or compromise, one's precise beliefs. It will therefore be understood that the critical estimates which are offered in the following pages have been set ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... beheld three Indian devils descending in a canoe towards them, dressed in black and white dog-skins, with faces black as ink, and horns long as a man's arm. Thus arrayed, they drifted by, while the principal fiend, with fixed eyes, as of one piercing the secrets of futurity, uttered in a loud voice a long harangue. Then they paddled for the shore; and no sooner did they reach it than each fell flat like a dead man in the bottom of the canoe. Aid, however, was at hand; for Donnacona and his tribesmen, rushing pell-mell from the adjacent woods, raised the swooning masqueraders, ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... old Capricorn? Thou seem'st to be a most venerable pimp, and, I doubt not, hast abundance of discretion. Here is this young whoremaster, a true chip of the old venereal block his father, and myself, come for a comfortable cast of thy function. I don't mean that stale pretence of conjuring—d— futurity; let us live for the present, old Haly. Conjure me up a couple of hale wenches, and I warrant we shall get into the magic circle in a twinkling. What says Galileo? What says the Reverend Brahe? Here is ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... and ill beseems it me, Who came a welcomer in herald's guise, Singing of Glory, and Futurity, To wander back on such unhealthful road, Plucking the poisons of self-harm! And ill 80 Such intertwine beseems triumphal wreaths ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... these, we sometimes hear of dreams which appear to reveal the secrets of futurity; and which may be designated PROPHETIC Dreams—unvailing, as they are supposed to do, the destiny which awaits particular individuals. The prophetic dream of Cromwell, that he should live to be the greatest man in England, has often been referred to as an example of special revelation; but surely ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... things in noblest ways: which of two goods comprehends and therefore chooses the greater: which of two personal sacrifices dares and accepts the larger: which, out of the avenues of beneficence, treads always that which opens farthest into the blue fields of futurity: that character, in fine, which, in those words taken by us at first for the description of a Queen among the nations, looks less to the present power than to the distant promise; "Strength and honour are in her clothing,—and she shall ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... couple had no intention of setting up an establishment in that city; and secondly, Peggy, as Roberta well knew, was not adapted by nature to be her maid, or the maid of any one else. Peggy's true vocation in life was to throw her far-away gaze into futurity, and, as far as in her lay, to adapt present circumstances to what she supposed was going to happen. It would have delighted her soul if she could have been the adept in conjuring, which she firmly believed the Widow Keswick to be; but, as she possessed no such gift, she ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... observes Doctor Tytler, the learned translator of the hymns and epigrams of Callimachus, shewing that those persons who are guided by Pallas, or Wisdom, will improve the present time, without being too anxious to pry into futurity. The Greek poet, however, like the Chinese philosopher, ascribed to the possessor of the Lots, the ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... proved the means of thus opening to view a country capable of supporting a future nation, and which, we trust, will be the means of relieving the Hobart Town country of its over-stocked cattle, and the Mother Country of her surplus and half-starved peasantry. Futurity must develop this prophecy! Further travelling and examination only added to my pre-conceived estimate of this extremely interesting and extensive territory; consisting of plains or downs at least twenty miles long by a width ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... heart looking with wistful eyes Through every twilight to a mother's door; Thou daring, darling, inconsistent boy, How dull the world would be Without thy presence, dear barbarian, And happy lord of high futurity! Be what thou art, our trouble and our joy, Our hardest problem and our brightest hope! And while thine elders lead thee up the slope Of knowledge, let them learn from teaching thee That vital joy is part of nature's ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... my terrours with the sultan's death; Far as futurity's untravell'd waste Lies open to conjecture's dubious ken, On ev'ry side confusion, rage, and death, Perhaps, the phantoms of a woman's fear, Beset the treach'rous way with fatal ambush; Each Turkish bosom burns for thy destruction, Ambitious Cali dreads the ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... false, but a dangerous assertion, that we neither know what men really are, nor what they suffer. Besides, says he, let it be considered, that a man is a creature, who is created immortal, and a creature consequently that will find a compensation in futurity, for any seeming inequality in his destiny here; but the creatures of a poetical creator, are imaginary, and transitory; they have no longer duration than the representation of their respective fables, and consequently if they offend, they ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... toward a more or less perfect perception of that blissful state which the Illumined have sought to describe, each individual has come to his present state; and it is only by virtue of the ability to look back over the path, and to look onward a little into relative futurity, that each may record the fact of his gain in consciousness, and what this gain means to the ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... beginnings of written records, and retains imperishably the important events that have occurred; whose judgment, analyzing the treasures of memory, has discovered many of the sublime and unchanging laws of nature, and has built on them all the arts of life, and through them, piercing far into futurity, sees clearly many of the events that are to come; and whose eyes, and ears, and observing mind at this moment, in every corner of the earth, are watching and recording new phenomena, for the purpose of ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... that Captain Delmar would, virtually, acknowledge me as his son. I felt that I had to wade through blood, and stand the chance of thousands of balls and bullets in my professional career, before I could do all this; a bright vista of futurity floated before me and, in the far distance, I felt myself in the possession of my ambition, and with my eyes still fixed upon it I dropped fast asleep, revelling still in the same dreams which I had indulged ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... itself. It is as little to be doubted that an essentially similar state of nature prevailed in this region for many thousand years before the coming of Caesar; and there is no assignable reason for denying that it might continue to exist through an equally prolonged futurity except for the intervention ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... could get my foot on the ladder, I would be beholden to no man, not even for a blanket. Perhaps even this very day I might commence an article on the "Crimes of Futurity," "Freedom of Will," or what not, at any rate, something worth reading, something for which I would at least get ten shillings.... And at the thought of this article I felt myself fired with a desire to set to work immediately and to draw from ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun |
