"Precursor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the Royal Institution on May 15, 1815. Here he made rapid progress in chemistry, and after a time was entrusted with easy analyses by Davy. In those days the Royal Institution published 'The Quarterly Journal of Science,' the precursor of our own 'Proceedings.' Faraday's first contribution to science appeared in that journal in 1816. It was an analysis of some caustic lime from Tuscany, which had been sent to Davy by the Duchess of Montrose. Between this period and 1818 various notes and short ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... The precursor of Saint-Simon, the model of Lord Chesterfield, this ornament of his age, belonged, as well as Saint-Simon, to that state of society in France which was characterised—as Lord John Russell, in his 'Memoirs of the Duchess of Orleans,' tells us—by ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... away from the Town Hall. Herr Ernst Ortlieb, her father, however, had been inflexible. The chin of the little man with beardless face and hollow cheeks had even begun to tremble, and this was usually the precursor of an outburst of sudden wrath which sometimes overpowered him to such a degree that he committed acts ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... one of those rushes or swirls of water, which are common among rocks in such a position, swept him again forward, right into the eddy which he had struggled in vain to reach, and thrust him violently against the rock. This back current was the precursor of a tremendous billow, which came towering on like a black moving wall. Ruby saw it, and, twining his arm amongst the seaweed, held ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... inconnue', London. Murray; Bruxelles, De Mat, 20 Avril 1817. This work merits a note. Metternich (vol, i. pp. 312-13) says, "At the time when it appeared the manuscript of St. Helena made a great impression upon Europe. This pamphlet was generally regarded as a precursor of the memoirs which Napoleon was thought to be writing in his place of exile. The report soon spread that the work was conceived and executed by Madame de Stael. Madame de Stael, for her part, attributed it to Benjamin Constant, from whom she was at this time separated ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... and that on a beaten track. And of all heartbreaking labors, that of breaking trail is the worst. At every step the great webbed shoe sinks till the snow is level with the knee. Then up, straight up, the deviation of a fraction of an inch being a certain precursor of disaster, the snowshoe must be lifted till the surface is cleared; then forward, down, and the other foot is raised perpendicularly for the matter of half a yard. He who tries this for the first time, if haply ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... of your fancy the closing-in of a fine, blue-skied, sunny American Saturday evening, whose tranquillity and repose rendered it the fit precursor of the Sabbath. Imagine the tea-table placed in your sitting-parlor, all the windows open, and round it, first, the housekeeper pouring out tea; next her, Miss C. Borland; next her, your mother, whose looks spoke love as often as you were mentioned, and that was not ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... in 1892. When we remember all the strange literary effort gathered round about that year in the West—Symbolism, the Yellow Book, Art for Art's sake—and the limbo into which it has been thrust by now, we may realise how great a precursor and, in his own despite, a leader, Anton Tchehov was. When Western literature was plunging with enthusiasm into one cul de sac after another, incapable of diagnosing its own disease, Tchehov in Russia, unknown to the West, had achieved a clear ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... up on the first morning was a faithful precursor of the indomitable vitality of the Patriarch. He was always first up and first off, and, amongst many charming peculiarities, was his indifference as to which way the road lay. We generally had a guide with us, and nothing was more common in toiling up a mountain ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... take long to think about it, Watson. Again I saw that grim face look over the cliff, and I knew that it was the precursor of another stone. I scrambled down on to the path. I don't think I could have done it in cold blood. It was a hundred times more difficult than getting up. But I had no time to think of the danger, for another ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Precursor of our woes, historic spade, What dismal records burn upon thy blade! On thee I see the maculating stains Of passengers' commingled blood and brains. In this red rust a widow's curse appears, And here an orphan tarnished thee with tears. Upon thy handle sanguinary bands Reveal ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... the character of Robespierre, show sufficiently that Lamartine, though he may not as yet have taken a positive direction in politics, has at least, from his vague poetical conceptions, returned to a sound state of political criticism, the inevitable precursor of sound theories. His views on the execution of the royal family ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... Greek art inspired Michelangelo and Raphael. A great wave of enthusiasm for the new learning swept over Europe. The printing-press multiplied copies of the old literature and put them in the hands of the poor. It was the precursor of a new civilization, and because it was a new birth of thought, ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... Federal batteries began to open and mow down and gather into the garner of death, as brave, and good, and pure spirits as the world ever saw. The twilight of evening had begun to gather as a precursor of the coming blackness of midnight darkness that was to envelop a scene so sickening and horrible that it is impossible for me to describe it. "Forward, men," is repeated all along the line. A sheet of fire was ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... obtain the clearest insight into Bunyan's remarkable life, and to a man with historical or antiquarian tastes it is still excellent reading. In 1682 appeared The Life and Death of Mr. Badman, a realistic character study which is a precursor of the modern novel; and in 1684 the second part of Pilgrim's Progress, showing the journey of Christiana and her children to the city of All Delight. Besides these Bunyan published a multitude of treatises and sermons, all in the same style,—direct, simple, convincing, expressing every ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... good deal since he left it. The retirement of St. Barbe was the first brick out of the wall; now, which Endymion had not yet heard, the brother of Trenchard had most unexpectedly died, and that gentleman come into a good estate. "Jawett remains, and is also the editor of the 'Precursor,' but his new labours so absorb his spare time that he is always at the office of the paper. So it is pretty well all over with the table at Joe's. I confess I could not stand it any longer, particularly after you left. I have got into the junior Pan-Ionian; ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... was formerly the Northwest Territory the French and Indian intermarried, and syphilis did not begin to tell on the Indian until the Americans settled the country. From these observations it is very evident that in the Polynesian Archipelago syphilis must have been the precursor of the phthisis and scrofula, as we know it to have been that which induced those diseases among the Indians of the Mississippi or Missouri Valleys, or of the Colorado and Mojave Deserts, or in the mountains ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... decadence of Jewish literature, the most prominent figure is Immanuel ben Solomon, or Manoello, as the Italians call him. Critics think him the precursor of Boccaccio, and history knows him as the friend of Dante, whose Divina Commedia he travestied in Hebrew. The author of the first Hebrew sonnet and of the first Hebrew novel, he was a talented writer, but ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... the instigator of the stroke, when called to explain. To the use of fine phrases was now added a facility in employing violence at a pinch which likewise remained characteristic of Buonaparte's career down to the end. Nasica, who alone records the tale, sees in this event the precursor of the long series of state-strokes which culminated on the eighteenth Brumaire. There is a story that in one of the scuffles incident to this brawl a member of Pozzo di Borgo's family was thrown down and trampled ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... emaciated, gnarled hand gropingly across his mouth, his usual precursor of speech. But Galen Albret abruptly interposed, speaking directly, with authority, as ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... of a long-drawn breath, the precursor of an unspoken farewell to the land of dreams? Scarcely! Nothing but a fancy, this time, bred of watching too closely in the silence! Wait for the clear signs of awakening, sure ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... fine our mother thought the speech with which he opened that precursor of the Prussian Chambers, and the address showed him in fact to be an ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... seen. The French kept perfect silence. Not a loud word was spoken. Not a musket was fired. It was very important that every bullet should accomplish its mission and lay a warrior dead in his blood. The Indians were to be taught that every flash and peal was the sure precursor of the death or the serious wound of one ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... traveler, Paul, heard a voice, he looked across to the shores of Europe, and there in the night stood a great colossal form, not of a naked savage, but a form clad perhaps, in the panoply of the Macedonian phalanx, the representative of the Europe that then was and was yet to be, the precursor, it may be, to the classically informed mind of the missionary to the Gentiles, of that long procession of great world conquerors. It was the Man of Macedon who stood there in the might of his strength and cried, like the crying ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... those of any yet mentioned have discussed the matter. Herodotus tells of one such which was the precursor to the fall of an empire and a change of dynasty—that which Amasis discharges while on horseback, and bids the envoy of Apries, King of Egypt, catch and deliver to his royal master. Even the exact manner and posture of Amasis, author of this ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sharp tussle they had been through with the Home Rule party, with Parnell at their head. In 1886 Gladstone had brought in the measure which was to give Ireland a "statutory parliament." This was practically the signal for a disastrous rent which tore his party in two, and was the precursor of their defeat at ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... in 67 B.C. against the pirates was but the precursor of that systematic defence which the nations of the world eventually adopted. The Hanseatic League of the cities of Northern Germany and neighboring states, no doubt, had its origin in the necessitous combination of merchants ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann
... they were in no mood to imperil their own cause by revolutionary claims. They could not always succeed, however, in checking the fury of the populace, which had been taught to clamour for reform as the precursor of a good time coming for the suffering and toiling masses of mankind. The streets of London were illuminated, and the windows of those who omitted to illuminate or were otherwise obnoxious were tumultuously demolished ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... Severe as were the losses in flocks and herds from these imported diseases, they were eclipsed by the ravages of the mysterious potato blight, which, first appearing in 1845, pervaded the whole of Europe, and in Ireland especially proved the precursor of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... estimate with entire correctness the relative value of the different forces that advance or retard civilization, but we believe the weight of historic evidence goes to prove that religious skepticism was the actual cause, as it has always been the inevitable precursor, of national decay. Coleridge in The Friend quotes the historian Polybius as attributing the strength of the Roman republic to the general reverence of the invisible powers, and the consequent horror in which the breaking of an oath was held. This he thought the causa ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... Oration" at their annual festival; an unusual compliment to pay to so young a man, and one who had so recently taken his degree. It was the first opportunity he had ever had for a pleasure-trip, and taking his young wife with him (proud indeed, we may be sure, at this earliest honour of his life, the precursor of so many more) he went to Massachusetts by a somewhat roundabout but very picturesque route, down the Great Lakes, through the Thousand Islands, over the St. Lawrence rapids, and on to Quebec, the only town in America which from its old- ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... not followed within two years at the utmost by a calamity such as superstition might assign to a comet. And so closely have such calamities usually followed, that scarce a comet could appear which might not be regarded as the precursor of very quickly approaching calamity. Even if a comet had come which seemed to bring no trouble, nay, if many such comets had come, men would still have overlooked the absence of any apparent fulfilment of the predicted troubles. Henry IV. well ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... had few tranquil moments. It was as if, like the timid in the hurricane season, she sat constantly with ears strained for that first loud roar in the east. She realized then that the sort of upheaval which shatters one's economic life is but the precursor of other upheavals, and she thought on the unknown future until her ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... Alencon was the precursor of a comprehensive conspiracy. Before the Raid of Ruthven (August 1582), the Guise faction in France had contemplated a descent on Scotland in conjunction with Lennox's friends there, with a view of course to raising England in ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... intoxication. It has a flute which sets the atoms of our frame in a dance, like planets, and, once so liberated, the whole man reeling drunk to the music, they never quite subside to their old stony state. But what is the Imagination? Only an arm or weapon of the interior energy; only the precursor of the Reason. And books that treat the old pedantries of the world, our times, places, professions, customs, opinions, histories, with a certain freedom, and distribute things, not after the usages of America and Europe, but after the laws of right reason, and with as daring a freedom as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Republic, and trade with those countries is improving. A provision for regular and more frequent mail communication, in our own ships, between the ports of this country and the nations of South America seems to me to deserve the attention of Congress as an essential precursor of an enlargement of our commerce with them and an extension of our ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... this twofold trap, the theorists will reply that the Scoliae are descended from a precursor, an indeterminate creature, of changeable habits and changing form, modifying itself in accordance with its environment and with the regional and climatic conditions and branching out into races each of which has become ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... the problem of marriage, and that we can only reform away prostitution by reforming marriage, regarded as a compulsory institution resting on an antiquated economic basis. Gross-Hoffinger was a pioneering precursor ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... he had neglected to fulfill his highest duty, but also the day and hour, in which he daparted, were most suitable for the celebration of the mystery of Zach. Taylor's death, and the tremendous fire in Philadelphia at 4 o'clock P.M. or 6 hours before Taylor's death, was a prophetical precursor of his death. In that fire a number of persons were killed by a terrible powder explosion commemorating the fact that the privileged murderer had been nominated President in that city. All that happened by the dreadful influence of infernal demons under the control ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... at daybreak next morning I had the glow of satisfaction with my own doings which is a safe precursor of misfortunes. I had settled my business with the Free Companions, and need look for no more trouble on that score. But what tickled my vanity was my talk with Ringan and Lawrence at the Monacan lodge and the momentous trust they had ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... the insufferable militarism of Germany may very probably be the precursor of a much wider alliance against any aggression whatever in the future. Only through some such arrangement is there any reasonable hope of a control and cessation of that constant international bickering and pressure, that rivalry in finance, that competition for influence ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... I argued that this good cheer was out of proportion; that Emerson should keep back a smile so striking and circumstantial for rare occasions, such as enormous surprise; or, he should make it the precursor to a tremendous roar of laughter. I have yet to learn that any one heard him laugh aloud,—which pastime he has called, with certainly a familiar precision that indicates personal experience, a "pleasant spasm," ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... poet writing in the dialect to-day, summons to his work the lilt, the spontaneity and charm of which Dunbar was the supreme master whenever he employed that medium. It is well to say a word here about the dialect poems of James Edwin Campbell. In dialect, Campbell was a precursor of Dunbar. A comparison of his idioms and phonetics with those of Dunbar reveals great differences. Dunbar is a shade or two more sophisticated and his phonetics approach nearer to a mean standard of the dialects spoken in the different sections. ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... more; one last awakening of love in her, and hope of happiness, hope of life. It was quite ridiculous, so utterly unlike her tranquil nature! It could never have been but for her abnormal condition, the state of fear and over-excitement which was the precursor of illness. ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... whose opinion in this matter was soon brought to bear,[1] had announced with much energy a precursor of the Messiah, who was to prepare men for the final renovation, a messenger who should come to make straight the paths before the elected one of God. This messenger was no other than the prophet Elias, who, according to a widely spread belief, was soon to descend from heaven, ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... minute points of light in a galaxy, some standing apart in glorious constellations; I recognize Arcturus and Orion and Perseus and the glittering jewels of the Southern Crown, and the Pleiades shedding sweet influences; but the Evening Star, the soft and serene light that glowed in their van, the precursor of them all, has sunk below the horizon. The spheres, meanwhile, perform their appointed courses; the same motion which lifted them up to the mid-sky bears them onward to their setting; and they, too, like ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... with her accustomed grace and address, determined him to make common cause with his youngest against their eldest brother. Divers incidents retarded for a whole year the outburst of this family plot, and of the war of which it was the precursor. The position of the young king Charles appeared for some time a very bad one; but "certain chieftains," says the historian Nithard, "faithful to his mother and to him, and having nothing more to lose than life or limb, chose rather to die gloriously than to betray their King." The arrival of Louis ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... particularly be the case if the mouth and lips swell, and ulcers begin to appear on them, and the gums ulcerate, and a sanious and highly offensive discharge proceeds from the mouth. A singular, half-fetid smell arising from the dog, is the almost invariable precursor of death. ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... they spake, living tranquilly, invoking the return of the light; waiting the rising of the sun; watching the star of the morning, precursor of the sun. But no sun came, and the four men and their descendants grew uneasy. 'We have no person to watch over us,' they said; 'nothing to guard our symbols!' Then they adopted gods of their own, and waited. They kindled fires, for the climate was colder; then ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... leader-writers tell him. He is sensitive to beauty of style and to idiosyncrasy of character, but he lacks philosophy and that tragic sense that gives the deepest sympathy. That, we fancy, is why we would rather read him on Catherine Trotter, the precursor of the bluestockings, than on any subject ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... all whom he met, "Peace and weal,—Peace and weal!" was not seen in Assisi after Francis began to preach; as if he wished it to be understood that his mission had ended by the presence of him whose precursor he was. In fact, this new preacher was in truth an angel of peace sent from heaven to reconcile a great number of sinners with Jesus Christ, and to draw down on ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... grown animals which have red or black hair; it is scarcely found at all in the lamb, sucking pig, chicken, and the white meat of the largest fowls. For this reason true connoisseurs always prefer the second joint; instinct with them was the precursor of science. ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... of government, and the surest evidence of good government, is the encouragement of education. A general diffusion of knowledge is the precursor and protector of republican institutions; and in it we must confide, as the conservative power that will watch our liberties, and guard against fraud, intrigue, corruption, and violence.—DE WITT CLINTON's Message to the New ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... cuckoo, as the Welsh Ambassador, I would suggest that it was in allusion to the annual arrival of Welshmen in search of summer and other employment. As those wanderers may have entered England about the time of the cuckoo's appearance, the idea that the bird was the precursor of the Welsh might thus become prevalent. Also, on the quotation given by "PETIT ANDRE" (No. 18. p. 283.) of Welsh parsley, or hempen halters, it may have derived its origin from the severity practised on the Welsh, in the time of their independence, when captured ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 26. Saturday, April 27, 1850 • Various
... a foggy, misty, drizzly day the precursor of a long spell of dark and gloomy weather, that Claudia at length grew to fear would never come to ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... demonstrations and laudations of the Church, instead of some unnoisy, unconscious, but practical, total, heart-and-soul demonstration of a Church: this, in the circle of revolving ages, this also was a thing we were to see. A kind of penultimate thing, precursor of very strange consummations; last thing but one? If there is no atmosphere, what will it serve a man to demonstrate the excellence of lungs? How much profitabler, when you can, like Abbot Samson, breathe; ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... Zachary recalls the Precursor's mission of proclaiming the Messiah and the new alliance. It is altogether appropriate to the Office of daybreak, as ushering in the dawn of a new era. The closing verse speaks of the light which the announcement of the Messiah shed upon the nations 'sitting in darkness and in ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... clouds themselves, which glowed with the colour of iron heated to a low red-heat. I had never before beheld such a weird, awe-inspiring spectacle, but as I gazed upon it the memory came to me that I had somewhere read of something similar, and I also remembered that it had been described as the precursor of a hurricane, ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... pressed service which was not heeded. The little wheels of life go on, even when the great wheel is paralysed or broken. Maltravers was, if I may so express it, in a kind of mental trance. His emotions had left him thoroughly exhausted. He felt that torpor which succeeds and is again the precursor of great woe. At length he was alone, and the solitude half unconsciously restored him to the sense of his heavy misery. For it may be observed, that when misfortune has stricken us home, the presence of any one seems to interfere between ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... desperation; though for what purpose, was still a mystery to the million. I heard many a whisper among the diplomatic circle, that this whirl of life, this hot and fierce dissipation, was, in all Russian reigns, the sure precursor of a catastrophe; though none could yet venture to predict its nature. It was like the furious and frenzied indulgence of a crew in a condemned ship, breaking up the chests and drinking the liquors, in the conviction that none would survive the voyage. Even I, with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... weaknesses—the aristocratic pride, the spiritual vanity—which we fancy that we discover. We may lament—and in that we shall not be wrong—the influence which such men as Jerome obtained over them— the example and precursor of so much which has since then been ruinous to family and social life: but we must confess that the fault lay not with the themselves, but with their fathers, husbands, and brothers; we must confess that in these women ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... him as a precursor who cleared away his doubts. What was strange about his marrying a Chueta, a woman like others in her customs, beliefs, and education, since the most famous of the Febrers in an epoch of intolerance had lived beyond ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... plain the pretended consideration on which the patent is to issue bears no just proportion to that of the ordinary preemptor, and that this bill is but the precursor of a system of land distribution to a privileged class, unequal, unjust, and which ought not to receive the sanction of the General Government. Many thousand pioneers have turned their steps to the Western Territories, seeking, with their wives and children, homesteads to be acquired by sturdy industry ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... Indian war-whoop, the precursor of blood and flame and torture, which even the boldest heart could seldom hear without terror, burst as it were simultaneously from a hundred warrior lips. The wary savages had provided themselves ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... combustibles had already come to be looked on by some as a public nuisance. It will, therefore, interest Londoners in general, and will delight the hearts of Sir William Richmond R.A. and the County Council in particular, to know that their great precursor in this matter of reform nearly 250 years ago considered the question even then one of urgency, admitting of no delay. How graphic, and how refreshing, is the pithy point ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... arrangements for two pianofortes. Except for some foolish behaviour on his part I had not noticed anything particular about him. I was surprised, however, that he should have selected my address as his lodging in Venice. He told me that he was merely the precursor of a certain Princess Galitzin, for whom he had to arrange winter quarters in Venice; that he knew nobody there, but having heard in Vienna that I was staying here, it was very natural he should apply first ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... by numbers and bloodshed, regard the second more extensive battle near the falls of Niagara, on the 25th of the same month, between the same parties with British reinforcements, known as the battle of Bridgewater, as more important than its precursor.... The victory of Chippewa was the resurrection or birth of American arms, after their prostration by so long disuse, and when at length taken up again, by such continual and deplorable failures, that the martial and moral influence of the first decided victory opened and characterized ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... while I lay down my pen, skip to some little eminence at the distance of two or three hundred years ahead; and, casting back a bird's-eye glance over the waste of years that is to roll between, discover myself—little I—at this moment the progenitor, prototype, and precursor of them all, posted at the head of this host of literary worthies, with my book under my arm, and New York on my back, pressing forward, like a gallant commander, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... doing, or to have rules laid down for them by those who have understood the theory. In the progress of science from its easiest to its more difficult problems, each great step in advance has usually had either as its precursor, or as its accompaniment and necessary condition, a corresponding improvement in the notions and principles of logic received among the most advanced thinkers. And if several of the more difficult ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... rudely pushed into the hands of these ferocious agents of superstition, the apparent magnitude of the discovery induced a general and breathless pause. Like the treacherous calm that had so long reigned upon the lake, it was a precursor of a fearful and violent explosion. Little was said, for the occasion was too ominous for a display of vulgar feeling, but Conrad, Pippo, and one or two more, silently raised the fancied offender in their arms, and bore him desperately towards the ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... already discerned the only emphatic answer to this question. The Church is undoubtedly passing quietly through a revolution in its conception and attitude toward the Bible, more fundamental and far-reaching than that represented by its precursor the Protestant Reformation; but its real significance is daily becoming more apparent. Not a grain of truth which the Bible contains has been destroyed or permanently obscured. Instead, the debris of time-honored ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... loneliness of the Nile country to the noise of the Talmud-School, who dressed in white on Sabbath, and wore a fourfold garment to signify the four letters of the Ineffable Name, and who by permutating these, could draw down spirits from Heaven, passed as the Messiah of the Race of Joseph, precursor of the true Messiah of the Race of David. The times were ripe. "The kingdom of heaven is at hand," cried the Cabalists with one voice. The Jews had suffered so much and so long. Decimated for not dying of ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... exertion of editorial self-denial to have abstained from marring the pages with puns of which Punch would be ashamed, and with the vulgar affectation of patronage with which the sea captain of the nineteenth century condescends to criticize and approve of his half-barbarous precursor; but it must have been a defect in his heart, rather than in his understanding, which betrayed him into such an offence as this which follows. The war of freedom of the Araucan Indians is the most gallant episode in the history of the New World. The Spaniards themselves ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... regions had become well civilized and after those of America were also sufficiently civilized to assimilate new ideas, a stray ship or two was blown by the trade-winds across the Atlantic. That hypothetical voyage was the precursor of the great journey of Columbus. Without the tradewinds this historic discoverer never could have found the West Indies. Suppose that a strong west wind had blown him backward on his course when his men were mutinous. Suppose that he had been forced to beat against head winds week after ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... chemicals, basic metals, textiles, glass, petroleum, coal Agriculture: accounts for 2.3% of GDP; emphasis on livestock production - beef, veal, pork, milk; major crops are sugar beets, fresh vegetables, fruits, grain, tobacco; net importer of farm products Illicit drugs: source of precursor chemicals for South American cocaine processors; increasingly important gateway country for cocaine entering the ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... of the ordinary aforesaid. The prospectus of the Institution bore this notice: "There is a public ordinary every day at four o'clock, price three shillings. Each person to drink port, claret, or whatever liquor he shall choose." A disastrous precursor of the free lunch this would seem. And so it proved. But not immediately. Attracted by the novelty of having a famous actor for host, the ordinary went swimmingly for a time. Macklin presided in ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... Dyck," as he is fondly called, was a portrait-painter. He was followed by a few others, such as the Scougall family, Aikman Marshall, Wait, and the two Alexanders, who, although neither so accomplished nor so much appreciated as their precursor, form a never quite broken succession of portraitists between him and Allan Ramsay (1713-84) in whose work art in Scotland took a great step forward.[1] A few of Ramsay's predecessors had succeeded in supplementing the meagre instruction—if any thing that existed ...
— Raeburn • James L. Caw
... forgotten; she had just become a sorrow. So perhaps my downfall as a lover was a precursor of better results ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... was an infernal dragon who persecuted the Church, that Arius, Pelagius, and Nestorius were not more dangerous, as Abelard united all these monsters in his own person, and that he was a persecutor of the faith and the precursor of Antichrist. These words of the celebrated Abbot of Clairvaux are more creditable to his zeal than to his charity. Abelard's disciple Arnold of Brescia attended him at the Council, and shared in the condemnations which St. Bernard so freely bestowed. ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... pursued, and from the growing impatience of this country under it."[134] When Pinkney arrived, the matter of the colonial trade had already been settled indirectly by the Order of May 16, and it was soon to disappear from prominence, merged in the extreme measures of which that blockade was the precursor; but impressment remained an ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... the return of Captain M—-, whose value as a commanding officer was more appreciated for the change which had taken place. Seymour was cordially greeted by his former shipmates, not only for his own sake, but from the idea that his having rejoined the frigate was but a precursor of the reappearance of Captain ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... any human institutions; sink into thyself, and thou wilt find Him. The heavenly and earthly hierarchies of Dionysius, with the reverence for the priesthood which was built upon them, have no significance for Eckhart. In this as in other ways, he is a precursor of ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... what then may we not look forward, when a spirit of scientific inquiry shall have spread through those vast regions in which the progress of civilization, its sure precursor, is actually commenced and in active progress? And what may we not expect from the exertions of powerful minds called into action under circumstances totally different from any which have yet existed in ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... Precursor to what black despairs Was that child's face which once was theirs! And O to what a world of guile Was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... trace the guilt of the present up to the commencement, but he exemplifies the principle (like Micah, chapter vi.) chiefly from the early history of Jacob and Moses: as for the really historical period he belongs to it too much himself to survey it from so high a point of view. In this also he is a precursor of later writers, that he regards the human monarchy as one of the great evils of Israel: he certainly had very great occasion for this in the circumstances of the time ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... wonderful old church of Bremen was built in the ninth century, Saint Marc of Venice was finished in 1071, and the beautiful dome of Pisa in 1063. In fact, the intellectual movement which has been described as the Twelfth Century Renaissance(23) and the Twelfth Century Rationalism—the precursor of the Reform(24) date from that period, when most cities were still simple agglomerations of small village communities enclosed ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... was an even more important step forward for Japan in the ranks of the nations of the world than her victory against China had been, and it was the precursor of still more important developments. This, however, takes ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... the college. The following letter from a prominent Trustee of Dartmouth to the president, written just at this period, shows that the animated contest in Connecticut was only the natural and logical precursor of one more animated and much more important, in ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... brought the woman back to life. At the moment when her doubts and fears at last left her, when she could look forward to the bright evening of her stormy life, a hidden catastrophe, buried in the heart of the family, and of which we shall presently make mention, came as the precursor of ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... publication of a memorable book, "Adam Bede," for which even its precursor, "Scenes from Clerical Life," had not prepared the world of letters. The novel was much admired in the royal circle. In one of the rooms at Osborne, as a pendant to a picture from the "Faery Queen," there ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... that men with long beards have short wits; nevertheless, had he but a beard himself, he should then be free from such a wretched "argument"—such an implied accusation of his lack of wit, as that he is beardless. The young Roman watched the first appearance of the downy precursor of his beard with no little solicitude, and applied the household oil to his face—there were no patent specifics in those days for "infallibly producing luxuriant whiskers and moustaches in a few weeks"—to promote its tardy growth, ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... memory uncertain, testimony valueless," were the dissatisfied reflections of the disappointed detective as he replaced Mr. Adams's hat and umbrella on the hall rack. "Has he been brought to this state by the tragedy which has just taken place here, or is his present insane condition its precursor and cause?" Mr. Gryce might have found some answer to this question in his own mind if, at that moment, the fitful clanging of the front door bell, which had hitherto testified to the impatience of the curious crowd outside, had not been broken ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... had the run of Mr. Drummond's library, and consulted there some 300 volumes for my novel: so it was not an idle work though a rapid one; 4thly, I wanted to show that though in a Popish age England's heart, and especially Langton's, was Protestant, quite a precursor of Luther. As this book is extant, at Lasham's, Guildford, I refer my readers to it. One curious matter is that my ideal scenes have taken such hold upon my neighbourhood that streams of tourists come constantly through Albury to visit "The Silent Pool" and other sites of ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... haughty, and disobedient to parents. We cannot escape these scandals; and God has said that He has sent us like sheep in the midst of wolves. It is necessary for us then to combine the innocence of the dove with the prudence of the serpent. Now, when the precursor of Antichrist erects himself against the Church, he must find us innocent and prudent; these dispositions constitute wisdom. We must hate no one, but bear with the madmen who would violate the law of God. ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... Emilie particularly dreaded, as the precursor of ill-humour for some succeeding hours. Mrs. Somers at length became so conscious of her own inability to conceal her contempt or to command her temper, that she was almost as desirous as Emilie could be to avoid these arguments; and, the moment the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... no merchant-ships for foreign commerce. It was evident to me, therefore, that, if we should be involved in war, the odds against us would be far greater than what was due merely to our inferiority in population. Believing that secession would be the precursor of war between the States, I was consequently slower and more reluctant than others, who entertained a different opinion, to resort ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... This precursor of man made use of fire for splitting silex and manufacturing from it instruments whose cutting edge he perfected by means of a series of retouchings produced by slight percussions upon one of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... act of Charles III. as being but revenge for the tumult of Aranjuez under the ministry of Esquilace,*1* arguing that the Jesuits were in fact the authors of it, and that it was but the precursor of a plot to dethrone the King and place his brother Don Luis upon the throne, as being not so liberal in his ideas. Others, again, have stated*2* that the Jesuits set about a calumny that Charles III. was not the Queen's son by ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... felt disposed to give up; and, exhausted through pain and excitement, a film gathered over my eyes, which I thought was the precursor of dissolution. From this hopeless state I was aroused by a wounded Mexican, calling out to me, 'Bueno Americano,' and turning my eyes toward the spot, I saw that he was holding a certificate and calling to me. The tide of action now rolled away from me and ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... there were not. He stopped in time, or at least thought he did, not to betray his covertly seeking relief from minding his having been jilted in a flight to latitudes unfavourable to human life. His august patron gave him a sharp look which for a moment seemed the precursor of a sharper question; but the moment elapsed and the question failed to come. This considerate omission, characteristic of a true man of the world and representing quick guesses and still quicker indifferences, made our gentleman from that moment his lordship's ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... in readiness," he added, more soberly. "The Precursor still unceasingly prophesies the Advent. Come with me into the Place. The Gathering is all but assembled." Laying his large hand upon her arm, he led her forward unresistingly through the groups of men and women, ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... course of a few days she returned.—"We must be at Clyde Farm to- morrow," said she, "to receive the goods and chattels of which I am only the precursor. Your husband enters warmly into the furnishing of your country residence, and therefore we must let him have a voice in it. His taste is not so simple as ours, so we must admit some of the finery of the town ...
— Rich Enough - a tale of the times • Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee
... maintained that man was descended from the ape, and many writers have sought to deny it. But the lines I have quoted verbatim from the conclusion of the sixth chapter of the Descent of Man (1871) leave no doubt that he was as firmly convinced of it as was his great precursor Jean Lamarck in 1809. Moreover, Darwin adds, with particular explicitness, in the "general summary and conclusion" (chap. ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... Renaissance than the emergence not only from the same society, but also from the bosom of the same Church, of two men so diverse as the Pope Alexander VI. and the Prophet Girolamo Savonarola. Savonarola has been claimed as a precursor of the Lutheran Reformers, and as an inspired exponent of the spirit of the fifteenth century. In reality he neither shared the revolutionary genius of Luther, which gave a new vitality to the faiths of Christendom, nor did he sympathize with that free movement ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... of synthetic drugs; transit point for US-bound ecstasy; source of precursor chemicals for South American cocaine processors; transshipment point for cocaine, heroin, hashish, ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... now beats with north-east winds upon the Foreland beyond. In fact, the Wantsum was an early Spithead: it stood to Rutupiae as the Solent stands to Portsmouth and Southampton. But Thanet Isle hardly shared at all in this increased civilisation; on the contrary, Rutupiae (the precursor of Sandwich Haven) seems to have diverted all its early commerce. For Rutupiae became clearly the naval capital of our island, the seat of that vir spectabilis, the Count of Saxon Shore, and the rendezvous of the fleets of those British ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... were the eager, undoubting hopes of the physical students in Italy and England in his own time, Giordano Bruno, Telesio, Campanella, Gilbert, Galileo, or the founders of the Italian prototype of "Solomon's House" in the New Atlantis, the precursor of our Royal Societies, the Academy of the Lincei at Rome. Among these meditations was his inner life. But however he may have originally planned his course, and though at times under the influence of disappointment he threatened ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... States—either in their separation from the North, or after their subjection and consequent reunion with the North. As regards the States while in secession, the North cannot operate upon their slaves any more than England can operate on the slaves of Cuba. But if a reunion is to be a precursor of emancipation, surely that reunion should be first effected. A decision in the Northern and Western mind on such a subject cannot assist in obtaining that reunion, but must militate against the practicability of such an object. This is so well understood that Mr. Lincoln and his government ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... when we once more were steering southward. We were sailing on with a light breeze through a perfectly smooth sea, when a dull roaring sound was heard, like a heavy surf astern. The roar rapidly increased, and we saw a white line of foam rolling on. Thinking that it might be the precursor of a hurricane, we clewed up the topsails, but as the wave passed we rode easily over it with the same sort of movement which is felt when entering a river across a bar. It was followed with a short interval by another of similar character, succeeded with ...
— The Mate of the Lily - Notes from Harry Musgrave's Log Book • W. H. G. Kingston
... bright and beautiful crowd they are! As a garden is beautified by flowers, so is heaven made more beautiful by the radiant crimson-clad army of martyrs. Here is St. John the Baptist, the fearless precursor of Jesus. Here is the glorious St. Stephen, the first who laid down his life after the ascension of Jesus. Here are the holy Apostles, those intrepid soldiers of Christ, who went forth from the council, rejoicing that they had been found worthy to suffer ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... earth, and brook no rivals but the forces of nature! Whatever they do—simply because it is they—is impressive and important, and every movement, every gesture, is world-changing. Compared with his figures, those in the same chapel by his precursor, Masolino, are childish, and those by his follower, Filippino, unconvincing and without significance, because without tactile values. Even Michelangelo, where he comes in rivalry, has, for both reality and significance, ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... night to Lady Nottingham's room to talk to her. She herself was feeling very tired, not with the sound and wholesome tiredness that is the precursor of long sleep and refreshed awakening, but with the restless fatigue of frayed nerves and disquiet mind that leads to intolerable tossings and turnings, and long vigils through the varying greys of dawn and the first ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... This great gorge is tenanted at the present time by Pickering Beck, an exceedingly small stream, which now carries off all the surface drainage and must therefore be only remotely related to its great precursor that carved this enormous trench out of the limestone tableland. Compared to the torrential rushes of water carrying along huge quantities of gravel and boulders that must have flowed from the lake at the upper end, Newton Dale can ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... very cold night last night I had got some cold, and so in pain by wind, and a sure precursor of pain is sudden letting off farts, and when that stops, then my passages stop and my pain begins. Up and did several businesses, and so with my wife by water to White Hall, she to her father's, I to the Duke, where we did our usual business. And among other discourse of the ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... good one, to be sure, when we found it,—large and lofty apartments with many windows, commanding a fine view. But to one unused to many stairs, and weakened by continuous illness in a long sea-voyage, the exhaustion of that first ascent was something to be remembered. It was, however, but the precursor of hundreds of similar feats, which our residence involved, as nearly all families live up several flights of stairs. Only once did we see an elevator in Germany. In the elegant hotel known as the Kaiserhof, the sojourning-place of ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... Middle Ages, quotes the same text as authority for sending heretics to the stake.[2] According to this peculiar exegesis, the law and custom of the day merely sanctioned the law of Christ. To regard our Saviour as the precursor or rather the author of the criminal code of the Inquisition evidences, one must admit, a very peculiar ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... seven years of Hamilton's life must be reviewed very rapidly. Interesting as they might be made, space diminishes, and after all they were but the precursor of the last great ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... we are to commit our way to Him, we are bound to the careful exercise of the best power of our own brains, that we may discover what the will of God is. He does not reveal that will to people who do not care to know it. I suppose the precursor of all visions of Him, which have calmed His servants' souls with the peace of a clearly recognised duty, has been their cry, 'Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?' God counsels men who use their own wits to find out His counsel. He speaks to us through ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... become a full partner in his brother's cigar stand, had moved out to Fifty-fourth Street, so that there was nobody who could have contradicted her. But lying awake planning how he might piece out life for his mother with comforts, and hearing in every knock the precursor of what might have happened to her, his heart was exercised as it is good for the heart to be even with pain and anxiety. And beyond the heart stretching there was always the House. He could seldom get away to it in his waking hours, but he knew it was there for him, ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... precursor of railway travelling then coming into vogue, for Lord George foresaw that the railways would revolutionize racing and enormously increase the votaries of ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... across the Nek as had never before been experienced by the Battalion. An hour later all was normal again, and the indications seemed to point to the subterranean eruption having been accidental and attributed by the Turk to our side as the precursor of an attack. ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... would be fools, or at best innocuous angels if there were not evil in the world for us to be ground upon and master. We are held and refined between the two attractions—one of the earth and the other a spiritual uplift. We believe that the sense of Unity is the first deep breath of the soul, the precursor of illumination; that the great Brotherhood conception must come from this sense. Next to this realisation, we believe that man's idea of time is an illusion, that immortality is here and now; that nothing can happen to us that is not the right good thing; that the farther ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... a form of monasticism—it is a getting away from the world. Monasticism does not necessarily imply celibacy, but as unrequited or misplaced love is usually the precursor of the monastic impulse, celibacy or some strange idea on the sex problem usually is ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... is one of the most powerful lawyers in heaven. In his Novena (Manila, 1913), he is called the precursor of Christ, altho in reality he came to the world twelve centuries after Christ (p. 5). "In the chastity, color, and figure of his body, and in the eloquence of his spirit, he was the one most like Christ" (p. 7). He was very celebrated in all manners ...
— The Legacy of Ignorantism • T.H. Pardo de Tavera
... Old World worth a voyage across the Atlantic. Portraits of Erasmus are not uncommon; every scholar would know him if he met him in the other world with the look he wore on earth. All the etchings and their copies give a characteristic presentation of the spiritual precursor of Luther, who pricked the false image with his rapier which the sturdy monk slashed with his broadsword. What a face it is which Hans Holbein has handed down to us in this wonderful portrait at Longford Castle! How dry it is ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes |
