"Futurity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... divine Mission, when, by some visible Provision for the proper Objects of their present Cares and future Concern, they should, in a great Measure, be released from domestick Anxiety, from gloomy Apprehensions, and alarming Prospects, into the temporal Futurity of those, for whom they must be necessarily affected ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... 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 still better comprehending the magnificence and beautiful ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... 'tis weel, we dinna ken What we may live to see, 'Twas Mercy's hand that hung the veil O'er sad futurity! Oh, ye whose hearts are scathed and riven, Wha feel the warld is vain, Oh, fix your broken earthly ties Where they ne'er will ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... blaze of enthusiasm. A model hospital was erected, and each member had accepted an honorable post therein. The paternal P. was chaplain, the maternal P. was matron, and all the youthful P.s filled the pod of futurity with achievements whose brilliancy eclipsed the glories of the present and the past. Arriving at this satisfactory conclusion, the meeting adjourned, and the fact that Miss Tribulation was available as army nurse went abroad on the wings ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... convince us that all is good—sufficient to enable us to comprehend that which is revealed, without a vain endeavour to pry into the hidden; to understand the one, and lend our faith unto the other; but when the mind would soar unto the heaven not opened to it, or dive into sealed and dark futurity, how does it return from its several expeditions? confused, alarmed, unhappy; willing to rest, yet restless; willing to believe, yet doubting; willing to end its futile travels, yet setting forth anew. Yet, how is a superior understanding envied! how coveted ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Puritanism. It is a relentless tale; the characters are singularly free from self-pity, and accept their fate as righteous; they never forgave themselves, they show no sign of having forgiven one another; even God's forgiveness is left under a shadow in futurity. They have sinned against the soul, and something implacable in evil remains. The minister's dying words drop a dark ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... reported, is one of those singular coincidences which occasionally appear, differing so widely from ordinary calculation, yet without which irregularities human life would not present to mortals, looking into futurity, the abyss of impenetrable darkness which it is the pleasure of the Creator it should offer to them. Were everything to happen in the ordinary train of events, the future would be subject to the rules of arithmetic, like the chances of gaming. But extraordinary events ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 word ban-drui is met with, the women so called being also styled ban-fili, ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... dispose. Without the directing mind and sustaining arm of the source of all wisdom and power, in vain is the labor of man. Ruin and disgrace shall overwhelm all undertakings not founded on the Rock of Ages. With what great events teems the bosom of futurity? O, that my eyes could pierce the misty distance; that my dim presaging soul could behold the stately advance of the coming centuries, whose sounding feet I fancy that I can hear! Bear they in their hands weal or woe to humanity? Hath the creative energy set a limit, ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... suspicion because of her uncanny words and ways, and she knew it, and the thought of it was a grief to her. She wanted the people to like her as she would have liked them had they let her. The wish to win them fired her imagination. She looked on ahead into futurity, and was a beautiful lady, driving a pair of ponies down a wooded lane, with a carriage full of good things for the cottagers, and they all loved her, and were ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... Anne Elliot have been! how eloquent, at least, were her wishes on the side of early warm attachment, and a cheerful confidence in futurity, against that over-anxious caution which seems to insult exertion and distrust Providence! She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... obstacles and to brave dangers, it is torture to remain passive—to feel that prudence, virtue, genius avail them not—that while rapid ideas pass in their imagination, time moves with an unaltered pace, and compels them to wait, along with the herd of vulgar mortals, for knowledge of futurity. ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... circumstances, and who feel the particular pressure of the moment which they are most anxious to relieve, have very little sense of the real value of money and of the propriety of providing against the difficulties of futurity. They take the cordial to-day, draining out every drop, forgetting that the phial will be empty to-morrow. In consequence of this extreme improvidence and inconsideration, the pecuniary help they receive frequently does little good, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... by these gentlemen to relax at all the terrors of futurity. And, no doubt, if all those who have been restrained from evil by fear of eternal punishment were to lose that belief suddenly, the consequences, at first, would be sometimes bad. If you have exerted your whole force in producing fear of hell, instead of fear of ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... respecting causal sequence, depending on reasoning proper to an outgrown culture. According to this view, with adequate information it would be possible to trace the mental process in virtue of which arise such expectations of futurity, and to discover the methods of their gradual modification and eventual supersession by generalizations founded on experience more accurate and extensive. Yet it is not to be assumed that in each and every case such elucidation will be possible. In all human conduct there is an element ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... constant compromises with antagonist interests and hostile passions. But what is the upshot of all this? Why, that in the midst of the uproar and confusion, the smoke and the dust of the controversy, one may believe that one sees a glimmering of the real futurity in the case—and that is a long series of troubles and a wide scene ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... 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 lower than that of the road which passes through the neighboring gate of San Paolo. ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... other Government investigations fully supported the charges.] Gould also knew that every year immigration was pouring into the West; that in time its population, agriculture and industries would form a rich field for exploitation. By the well-understood canons of capitalism, this futurity could be capitalized in advance. Moreover, he had in mind other plans by which tens of millions could be ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... "had been an assassin, he had no occasion to inform me of his plan in order to succeed. Freed from the real king, it would have been impossible in all futurity to guess the false. And if the usurper had been recognized by Anne of Austria, he would still have been—her son. The usurper, as far as Monsieur d'Herblay's conscience was concerned, was still ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... 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 earth, because the outstretched finger of his Creator gave ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... at his patriotism, his benevolence, his noble acts. Recall his energy, his calmness, his constant devotion to the interests of his country. Look, above all, at his patience, his humility, as the great scenes of life were receding from his view, and futurity was opening before him. Hear of the childlike submission with which he bowed to the Will that ordained for him a death-bed, protracted and painful. "Lead me," he said to a friend, "where I want to go, to the ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... not desire a better example of English wisdom on this subject—one which Lord Rosebery has consigned to a distant date in futurity, foreseeing that if the Opposition are to be handicapped with Home Rule they will not stand a forty to one chance at the ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... you; but at present it would be treating heroes and conquerors with great superciliousness, if I made use of your indulgence and said nothing of them. We have taken more places and ships in a week than would have set up such pedant nations as Greece and Rome to all futurity. If we did but call Sir William Johnson "Gulielmus Johnsonus Niagaricus," and Amherst "Galfridus Amhersta Ticonderogicus," we should be quoted a thousand years hence as the patterns of valour, virtue, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... shore, Far from Ilion's hoary wave, Agamemnon's bridal slave Speaks Futurity no more: Death is busy ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... which 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, since they have their origin ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... is the lively imagination of such minds, which in the very midst of joy can so vividly portray and realize pain, or it may be, indeed, the mysterious voice which links gifted man with a higher class of beings to whom futurity is revealed. Be this as it may, even while the youthful patriot beheld with, a visioned eye the liberty of his country, and rejoiced in thus beholding, there ever came a dim and silent shadowing, a whispering voice, that he should indeed behold it, but not from earth. When ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... liable to be mistaken on questions of futurity as on questions of philosophy and religion, on which the multitude called "everybody" has been largely mistaken ever since the earliest periods known to history. "Everybody" is generally pessimistic, apt to be superstitious, and never philosophic. A single good psychometric perception is worth ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... lion to turn 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
... and impressive worship of a particular goddess. Warburton, on the other hand, would insist upon it that some great affirmative doctrines, interesting to man, such as the immortality of the soul, a futurity of retribution, &c., might be here commemorated. And now, nearly a hundred years after Warburton, what is the opinion of scholars upon this point? Two of the latest and profoundest I will cite:—1. Lobeck, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... the prophet Zeuramaund, and said, "I perceive, O mighty Sultan, the dark clouds of evil are gathering to disturb the hours of futurity; the spirits of the wicked are preparing the storm and the tempest ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... whether it is not our duty to do that which shall conduce most to the benefit of posterity. The injury, admitting it to be so, can only be inflicted on the present generation, the benefit would be felt to all futurity. I have not, I hope, a disposition for the character of an inhuman man, and certainly have not written thus much without due consideration of the subject, but my own experience tells me we are often obliged to adopt a line of conduct we would willingly ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... did not dream of the Truro Railroad and of an era in the haze of futurity, it did not occur to Jethro Bass that his ambitions tended to the making of another era that was at hand. Makers of eras are too busy thinking about themselves and like immediate matters to worry about history. Jethro never heard the expression about "cracks in the Constitution," ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... expected every thing. Instead of sacrificing every thing to obtain victory, it was by that he looked to obtain every thing; he made use of it as a means, when it ought to have been his end. In this manner he made it too necessary; it was already rather too much so. But he confided so much of futurity to it, he overloaded it with so much responsibility, that it became urgent and indispensable to him. Hence his precipitation to get within reach of it, in order to extricate himself from ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... Tuscan order of priests, who attempted to predict futurity by observing the beasts offered in sacrifice. They formed their opinions most commonly from inspecting the entrails, but there was no circumstance too trivial to escape their notice, and which they did not believe in some degree ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... a voice of such power, that its tones might have reached almost to the Briton's camp, and struck upon the ear of Howe as the prophetic inspiration of one whose keen eye had read from the dark tablets of futurity. ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... exhausted nature failing he fell into a lethargic sleep. His situation latterly was peculiarly pitiable. Worldly affairs and a future state were so painfully mingled, that it was impossible to determine whether or not resignation predominated. He evidently recoiled from the awful contemplation of futurity, and sought refuge in the things of this life. Even whilst in the pangs of death he could not conceive why he should be so cold, and why his feet could not be kept up to a heat which nature, in obedience to the dictates of infinite ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... and very 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 of a sudden came a strange alteration; her face lighted to an effect more joyless than any gloom, to that indeed of a conscious insincere grimace, and she added "When one has children what one writes ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... the age of seventeen she 'was one of the Great Maker's masterpieces . . . a living likeness of the Dresden Madonna.' One rather shudders to think of what she may become at forty, but this is an impertinent prying into futurity. She hails from 'Maryland, my Maryland!' and has 'received a careful, if not a superior, education.' Need we add that she marries the heir to an earldom who, as aforesaid, has had himself perforated by a pistol-bullet ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... reasoning power to discover that if it is a very fine 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 perhaps that could be rectified. ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... hesitate to break that official seal which glares up at him so broadly. Were the gift of futurity his, and could he see mirrored before him the dread panorama of events that are inevitably linked with that innocent-looking missive, he would fling it with horror-stricken hands into the coal-fire that burns on ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... of judicial astrology, and Leicester, though exempt from the general control of superstition, was not in this respect superior to his time, but, on the contrary, was remarkable for the encouragement which he gave to the professors of this pretended science. Indeed, the wish to pry into futurity, so general among the human race, is peculiarly to be found amongst those who trade in state mysteries and the dangerous intrigues and cabals of courts. With heedful precaution to see that it had not been opened, or its locks tampered with, Leicester applied a key ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... live in perfect Conformity with the most vain and luxurious of the fashionable People; only with this Difference, that their Hearts must not be attach'd to these Things, and their grand Hope be in Futurity. This notable Proviso being once made, tho' in Words only, all is safe; and no Luxury or Epicurism are so barefac'd, no Ease is so effeminate, no Elegancy so vainly curious, and no Invention so operose or expensive, as to interfere with Religion or any Promises made of Renouncing the ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... different descending gradations by which it has sunk to its present abyss of misery, and is of itself sufficiently demonstrative of the radical defect that there is in its polity, and of the necessity for an alteration in it: nevertheless, it may not be altogether inexpedient to dive a little into futurity, and to view through the mirror of the imagination the further results which the experience of the past may convince us that a perseverance in the same course of restriction and disability will ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... all-penetrating spirit, and they are themselves perhaps the most sincerely astonished at its manifestations; for it is less their spirit than the spirit of the age. Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... an ignominious bondage hath the new ruler of the immortals devised against me. Alas! alas! I sigh over the present suffering, and that which is coming on. How, where must a termination of these toils arise? And yet what is it I am saying? I know beforehand all futurity exactly, and no suffering will come upon me unlooked-for. But I needs must bear my doom as easily as may be, knowing as I do, that the might of Necessity can not ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... and only hear Through the thick atmosphere A deep perpetual well, that sad and slow, Intones the knell of ages long ago, And ages that no man can tell or know, Whose shadows roll before them on the sky, Black with forebodings of futurity. ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... has triumphs as well as war. Mr. Forrest and his party well deserve the triumphs they have secured in their successful journey from this colony to Adelaide. The benefits conferred on the colony can best be appreciated by those who have the greatest capacity of looking into futurity, and as long as Australia has a history, the names of Mr. Forrest and his companions will be borne down with honour. To himself it will be a source of pleasure to know that the first year of his administration will be rendered memorable by the exertion, zeal, and enterprise of Mr. Forrest. ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... passed better and more pleasantly than this night throughout his 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? For if, ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato
... repeat, on my account. My present situation is happier than the rest of the world can afford. I tell you I have done repining. I have done sending forth my views into an earthly futurity. Anxiety, I hope, is now ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... the beautiful veil of mist covering childhood's futurity, by too hastily drawing away; but permit that joy to be of early commencement and of long duration, which lights up life so beautifully. The longer the morning dew remains hanging in the blossoms of flowers, the ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... led calmly down the stream of time to the ocean of futurity, which has no boundaries; while, in the contemplation of the present harmony of nature, I raise my soul towards its supreme Author, and hope for a more happy destiny ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... her the North Pole, or the meaning of a melodrama:—any or all of these I might have accomplished. But to request me to define my dinner—to inquire into its latitude—to compel me to fathom that sea of appetite which I now felt rushing through my frame—to ask me to dive into futurity, and become the prophet of pies and preserves!—My heart died within me at the impossibility of ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... said, "that prophetic gloom which dives into futurity, to extract sorrow from days and years to come, and which considers its own unhappy visions as the decrees of Providence. We know nothing of to-morrow: our business is to be good ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... northern shores. The inhabitants of both are fixed in crystal caves or coral palaces beneath the waters of the ocean; they are alike distinguished for their partialities to the human race, and their prophetic powers in disclosing the events of futurity. The Naiads differ only in name from the Nixen of Germany and Scandinavia (Nisser), or the water-elves of our countrymen. AElfric and the Nornae, who wove the web of life, and sang the fortunes of the illustrious Helga, are but the same companions who attended Ilithyia at the births of Iamos and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... the same moment. The choice may be foreseen, must indeed in every case be foreseen by God, otherwise the government of the universe could not be conducted. But to foresee and foreordain are essentially different things" (p. 121). He says again, "What God appoints; He, to whom the whole of futurity lies open at a glance, necessarily appoints beforehand. Hence arises the axiomatic distinction which I find the key to the subject. All that God is himself to do He not merely foresees but foreordains. All ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... seated. This coin had become quite current among us, since the French troops had penetrated into our colony; and it was even said they purchased supplies with it, from certain of our own people. As we had paid the highest price ever given, for these glimpses into futurity, we thought ourselves entitled to have the pages of the sealed ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... part of the march to Borizoff that the news of the fall of Minsk[174] became generally known in the army. The leaders themselves now began to look around them with consternation; and, after witnessing such a succession of frightful spectacles their imagination depicted a still more fatal futurity. In their private conversation they did not hesitate to say that, "like Charles XII. in Russia, Napoleon had carried his army to Moscow ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... height thou canst not climb. All triumphs may be thine in Time's futurity, If whatso'er thy fault, thou dost not faint or halt, But lean upon the ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... — N. posteriority; succession, sequence; following &c 281; subsequence, supervention; futurity &c 121; successor; sequel &c 65; remainder, reversion. V. follow after &c 281, come after, go after; succeed, supervene; ensue, occur; step into the shoes of. Adj. subsequent, posterior, following, after, later, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... relations of the country. Its existence at all and its size are, or should be, the reflection of the national consciousness that in this, that, or the other direction lie clear national interests—for which each generation is responsible to futurity—or national duties, equally clear from the mere fact that the matter lies at the door, like Lazarus at the rich man's gate. The question of when or how action shall be taken which may result in hostilities, is indeed a momentous one, having regard ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... that, if he attempted to seize the sceptre again, he should involve France and himself in new troubles; and, without abandoning his expectation of re-ascending the throne, he resolved to allow his resolutions to be guided by futurity. ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... nature, the Home Government, and his own officers, as to well entitle him to a place among the builders of Greater Britain. What was known of Australia, or rather New Holland—the name of Australia was still in futurity—in 1788, when Phillip first landed on ...
— The Beginning Of The Sea Story Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... demon was working 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 ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... the vial in his pocket with the thrill of a man holding the key to fretting shackles. One week of life with the future eliminated; one week with no reckoning to be made at the end; one week with every human fetter struck off; one week in which to ignore every curbing law of futurity and abandon himself to the joy of the present! The future—even the narrow bounds of an earthly future—holds men prisoners. A few careless dogs, to be sure, live their day, blind to the years to come, ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... the 'Globe,' that's another breed altogether. Just set to work and talk new doctrines to people you fancy are fools enough to believe such lies,—why, they think you want to burn their houses down! It is vain for me to tell them that I speak for futurity, for posterity, for self-interest properly understood; for enterprise where nothing can be lost; that man has preyed upon man long enough; that woman is a slave; that the great providential thought should be made to triumph; that a way must be found ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... solution in this world. "I hope," he said, "but my hopes are not unmixed with fear for what will befall this inestimable spirit when we appear to die." On another occasion he told Trelawny, "I am content to see no farther into futurity than Plato and Bacon. My mind is tranquil; I have no fears and some hopes. In our present gross material state our faculties are clouded; when Death removes our clay coverings, the mystery will be solved." How constantly ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... historians talk of thrones, And those that sate upon them, let it be As we now gaze upon the mammoth's bones, 'And wonder what old world such things could see, Or hieroglyphics on Egyptian stones, The pleasant riddles of futurity— Guessing at what shall happily be hid, As the ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... or, more correctly speaking, these "cunning" men and women, who pretend to see into futurity, and to hold an intercourse with the Great Spirit, are here (in one way, at least) turned to a good and useful account. As they themselves are held sacred, everything they wish to have taken particular care of, they can render sacred also. All the chiefs find these people of the greatest ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... 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
... of futurity did Mr. Bounderby see as he sat alone? Had he any prescience of the day, five years to come, when Josiah Bounderby, of Coketown, was to die in a fit in the Coketown street? Could he foresee Mr. Gradgrind, a white-haired ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... ringing Richly your melody swells, Sweet reminiscences bringing, Joyous-toned memory-bells!— Youth's beautiful bowers, Her dew-spangled flowers, The pictures which Hope of futurity drew,— Love's rapturous vision Of regions Elysian, In glowing ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... spirit, he said, had cost England thousands of subjects and millions of money; but now that which had long disturbed the happiness of the human race was completely destroyed. Could Sheridan have seen into futurity, he would not thus exult-ingly have triumphed over the downfall of the despotic government of France; for the revolution was to cost England much more blood and treasures than the monarchs of France had cost her at any period of history. Sheridan's speech had the very reverse effect of that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... no more! 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 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... 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 for the ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Luther hatched." Oh, you never read his Naufragium, or "Shipwreck," did you? Of course not; for, if you had, I don't think you would have given me credit—or discredit—for entire originality in that speech of mine. That men are cowards in the contemplation of futurity he illustrates by the extraordinary antics of many on board the sinking vessel; that they are fools, by their praying to the sea, and making promises to bits of wood from the true cross, and all manner of similar nonsense; that they are fools, cowards, and liars all at once, by this story: ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... great statesman looked into futurity, little did he think, when he visited the Queen in all her splendour at Trianon, and spoke so warmly of the cordial reception he had met with at Versailles from the Duc and Duchesse de Polignac, that he should have so soon to deplore their ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 6 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... 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
... uncertain twilight of the chamber that produced before me, in the stygian darkness of the recess, the vacillating and indistinct outline of something luminous, and horrid? I would gladly have risked futurity to have looked elsewhere—I could not. My eyes were fixed—I was compelled to gaze steadily in front ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... here 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 prayer; he sleeps in God, and will awaken to ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... Scioppius, Vossius, and Mariangelus, may take place."—Ib., p. 276. "Yet as to the commutableness of these two Tenses, which is deny'd likewise, they are all one."—Ib., p. 311. "Both these Tenses may represent a Futurity implyed by the dependence of the Clause."—Ib., p. 332. "Cry, cries, crying, cried, crier, decrial; Shy, shyer, shyest, shyly, shyness; Fly, flies, flying, flier, high-flier; Sly, slyer, slyest, slyly, slyness; Spy, spies, spying, spied, espial; Dry, drier, driest, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Wednesday we took a pretty long walk together, and sat down in a hollow among the sand-hills, sheltering ourselves from the high cool wind. Melville, as he always does, began to reason of Providence and futurity, and of everything else that lies beyond human ken. . . . . He has a very high and noble nature, and is better worth immortality than the most of us. . . . . On Saturday we went to Chester together. I love to take every opportunity of going to Chester; it ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... paused the while, To catch one gleam of hope—one favour'd smile; But the dim mists of ignorance still threw, Their blighting influence o'er the famish'd few, Who deigned to look upon that lustrous eye, Which pierced the ages of futurity. ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... the winter's hearth, all involuntarily drew their seats into a closer space. Impelled by adventurous curiosity, many individuals were said to have visited him, for the purpose of obtaining some insight into futurity; for his knowledge of the future, and the "things that none may name," was reputed to be great. It was also rumoured that some of his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... a flame of fire! With a promptitude of classical allusion, a depth of research, a rapid summary of historical events and dates, a profusion of legal authorities, a prophetic glance of his eyes into futurity, a rapid torrent of impetuous eloquence, he hurried away all before him. AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE was then and there born. Every man of an unusually crowded audience, appeared to me to go away ready to take up arms ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... very remote period, so remote that we cannot even surmise its date, the scarabaeus symbol was considered as embodying not only the idea of the creator but also, the idea of the life beyond the grave in eternal futurity. Some scholars assert that the Egyptians rejected every abstraction and did not have any philosophy. This I do not and cannot believe from my investigations of their learning, but I do think, that we have not yet grasped nor understood that philosophy in its fullness, ...
— Scarabs • Isaac Myer
... stable, natural, well-regulated physical or material foundation, we must fall short of all ideals. Proper physical adjustments enable the realization of realizable ideals. Unrealizable ideals are chimeras pursued into futurity, while a world that should be human and happy waits in vice and misery. I gather that Dr. Long believes that reducing this vice and misery, and increasing human happiness and improving health are suitable works with which to companion a faith in ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long
... 'tis the vine's prolific juice Can youth and beauty re-produce, Banish the sad regret of former years, And of futurity ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... his nerveless frame indignantly recedes. Yet here, ev'n here, with pleasures long resign'd, Lo! MEMORY bursts the twilight of the mind: Her dear delusions sooth his sinking soul, When the rude scourge presumes its base controul; And o'er Futurity's blank page diffuse The full reflection of her vivid hues. 'Tis but to die, and then, to weep no more, Then will he wake on Congo's distant shore; Beneath his plantain's antient shade, renew The simple transports that with freedom flew; Catch the cool breeze ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... 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, ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... to religious law, and what is incumbent on them in respect of satisfactory speech and manners. Know then, O King, that all men's works tend either to religious or to laical life, for none attaineth to religion save through this world, because it is the best road to futurity. Now the works of this world are not ordered save by the doings of its people, and men's doings are divided into four divisions, government, commerce, husbandry and craftsmanship. Now government requireth perfect ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... Otis was a flame of fire; with a promptitude of classical allusions, a depth of research, a rapid summary of historical events and dates, a profusion of legal authorities, a prophetic glance of his eyes into futurity, and a rapid torrent of impetuous eloquence, he hurried away all before him. American independence was then and there born. Every man of an immense crowded audience appeared to me to go away as I did, ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... alms for hospitals," etc. Possibly the worthy Master Richard Watts objected to the levying of this blackmail; or he may in his walks have been subjected to the proctors' importunities, and consequently in his will rigorously debarred them in all futurity from any share ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... Mr. Cardross followed up stairs toward the magnificent nursery, which had been prepared months before, with a loving eagerness of anticipation, and a merciful blindness to futurity, for the expected heir of the Earls of Cairnforth. For, as before said, the only hope of the lineal continuance of the race was in this one child. It lay in a cradle resplendent with white satin hangings ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... your mind at rest on that subject, Mamma," said Constance, still using her chopsticks with great complacency; "it's my opinion that the farmer is not in existence who is blessed with such a conjugal futurity. I think Fleda's strong pastoral tastes are likely to develop ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... 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
... have won a clearer answer from them had they seen it. A momentary shadow flitted over his face; then came the smile of serenity, as if, in that brief eclipse, he had acknowledged the existence of some hard futurity, and, asking nothing, yet hoping all things, left the issue in God's hand, with that submission which ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... within the bosom of the young and the aspiring. Marrying early, in fact, is taking time by the forelock, and leading your future destinies after you, instead of suffering yourself to be led and tossed about by them,—it is tearing away the black veil from the brow of futurity, and perusing all her lineaments in her own despite. It is [he continued with an oratorical attitude] building your fate ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various
... memories or a contemptuous incredulity. Speaking from the religious point of view, the Renaissance was but a resurrection of paganism dying out before the presence of the Christian world, which was troubled and perplexed, but full of life and futurity. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... bound me as it were by a spell, to feel for those round me, and to belong to them, my cheerfulness was over. The mother turned her eyes from me with a shuddering sigh, and gazed on the dear circle of little ones as if she sought to penetrate futurity and guess which of the young things, now rosy in health, was to follow her long lost and still lamented one. The doting father pressed the arm of his pale consumptive girl nearer to his heart, as he passed me: friends who were yet sorrowing for their bereavement, gave up the attempt ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... Untrodden paths where hidden danger lies, And homesick 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
... 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 ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... difficult to take any sort of constant limit for the amount of possible variation. How heartily I do wish that all your works were out and complete; so that I could quietly think over them. I fear the Pacific Islands must be far distant in futurity. I fear, indeed, that Forbes is going rather too quickly ahead; but we shall soon see all his grounds, as I hear he is now correcting the press on this subject; he has plenty of people who attack him; I see Falconer ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Restores drunken and unfaithful husbands; has a secret to make you beloved by your heart's idol; and brings together those long separated." No. 11.—"Madame Widger, clairvoyant and gifted Spanish lady; unveils the mysteries of futurity, love, marriage, absent friends, sickness; prescribes medicines for all diseases; tells lucky numbers, property ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... from these forms I turned to contemplate The World's opinions and her usages, I seemed a Being who had passed alone Into a region of futurity, Whose ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... over the open ocean that stretched before him. Many an hour he had sat there and dreamed of all the possible fortunes that might be found for him when he should launch away into that blue smiling futurity. ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... escaped 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
... bestow no more thought on principles than on dress, it must be so.' The General said, that 'a great part of the fashionable infidelity was owing to a desire of shewing courage. Men who have no opportunities of shewing it as to things in this life, take death and futurity as objects on which to display it.' JOHNSON. 'That is mighty foolish affectation. Fear is one of the passions of human nature, of which it is impossible to divest it. You remember that the Emperour Charles V, when he read upon the tomb-stone of a Spanish nobleman, ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... project was one of futurity. There never were such people as the Shimerdas for wanting to give away everything they had. Even the mother was always offering me things, though I knew she expected substantial presents in return. We stood there in friendly silence, while the feeble minstrel sheltered in Antonia's hair ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... in which the curtains of heaven were raised and held aside from futurity to allow me to look into the things which were to come. A feeling of heavenly rapture filled my being, so much so that, like the apostle who was caught up into the third heaven, I did not know whether I was in the body or out of it during my vision. ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... Love, And Truth severe by fairy fiction drest. In buskined measure move Pale Grief and pleasing Pain, With Horror, tyrant of the throbbing breast. A voice, as of the cherub-choir, Gales from blooming Eden bear; And distant warblings lessen on my ear, That lost in long futurity expire. Fond impious man, think'st thou yon sanguine cloud, Raised by thy breath, has quenched the orb of day? To-morrow he repairs the golden flood, And warms the nations with redoubled ray. Enough for me; with joy I see The different doom our fates ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... 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 those steps were ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... 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 ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... strained and artificial conditions of prison?" The change is so violent, it comes so suddenly, the unknown possibilities are so terrible, the sufferings naturally implied are so inevitable, that had any one gifted with a knowledge of futurity shown me that such experience was to be mine I would have thought it utterly impossible that such horrors could ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... conquest and rule, was reared aloft: up above were the powerful and the wealthy, those whose duty it was to share with the poor, but who did not do so; while down below were the poor, the toilers, who were taught resignation and obedience, and promised the kingdom of futurity, the divine and eternal reward—an admirable monument which has lasted for ages, and which is entirely based on the promise of life beyond life, on the inextinguishable thirst for immortality and justice that ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... for the timely aid of my country, and for the part she, with a beloved king, acted in the cause of mankind, I enjoy an alliance so well riveted by mutual affection, by interest and even local situation. Recollection ensures it. Futurity does but enlarge the prospect: and the private intercourse will every day increase, which independent and advantageous trade cherishes, in proportion as ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... every one, she received many votive offerings. Her shrine was an amusing one to look at. A green china frog played a tuneless guitar; a pensive monkey gazed with clasped hands and dreadfully human eyes into futurity; there were sagacious looking elephants, placid rhinoceroses, rampant hares, two pug dogs clasped in an irrevocable embrace, an enormous lobster, a diminutive polar bear, and in the center of all a most evil-looking jackdaw about half ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... 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
... Patch! Sam Patch, who jumps no more, This or the world to come. Sam Patch is dead! The vulgar pathway to the unknown shore Of dark futurity, he would not tread. No friends stood sorrowing round his dying bed; Nor with decorous woe, sedately stepp'd Behind his corpse, and tears by retail shed— The mighty river, as it onward swept, In one great wholesale sob, his ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... now. They merged at last into a kind of hysterical exhilaration. I remarked indeed a clumsy swaying of the machine, for which I was unable to account. But my mind was too confused to attend to it, so with a kind of madness growing upon me, I flung myself into futurity. At first I scarce thought of stopping, scarce thought of anything but these new sensations. But presently a fresh series of impressions grew up in my mind—a certain curiosity and therewith a certain dread—until at last they took complete possession ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... false, and this worship mistaken; yet the principle of it was laudable, and founded in nature; the stream was corrupted, but the fountain was pure. Man, assisted only by his own light, sees nothing beyond the present moment. Futurity is to him an abyss invisible to the most keen, the most piercing sagacity, and exhibits nothing on which he may with certainty fix his views, or form his resolutions. He is equally feeble and impotent with regard to the execution of his designs. He is sensible, that he is dependent ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... Now, if we consider the word be['o]n like the word weordhan (see s. 343) to mean not so much to be as to become, we get an element of the idea of futurity. Things which are becoming anything have yet something further to either do or suffer. Again, from the idea of futurity we get the idea of contingency, and this explains the subjunctive power of be. In English we often ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... 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 ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... The 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 ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... equally contemptible in their eyes, when they regard the thrones of sovereigns. But your Majesty has shown, through the whole course of your reign, too great a value for liberal arts to be insensible, that true fame lies only in the hands of learned men, by whom it is to be transmitted to futurity, with marks of honour or reproach to the end of time. The date of human life is too short to recompense the cares which attend the most private condition: therefore it is, that our souls are made as it were too big for it, and extend ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... whose eyes could see objects at a distance, and who could very well look forward a few years into futurity, had perceived a strong likelihood of Captain Blifil's being hereafter her master; and as she plainly discerned that the captain bore no great goodwill to the little foundling, she fancied it would be rendering him an agreeable service, if she could make any discoveries ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding |
