"Prophetic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pungency as a preservative of his work. That of all the political pamphlets which the new era of reform occasioned, his, which were the least in sympathy with it and are the furthest off the main stream of our political thinking now, alone continue to be read, must be laid down not only to the prophetic fervour and fire of their inspiration but to the dark and violent magic of ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... admiration on her sad but noble countenance. "Your majesty," he said, "I believe you have told me many things which no one hitherto has ventured to tell me—many things which might have provoked my anger—some bitter words, and prophetic threats have fallen from your lips. This proves that you at least respect my character, and that you believe I will not abuse the position to which the fortune of war has elevated me. I will not disappoint you, madame. I will do all I can to mitigate ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... down to the meal the gulch was full of sunset colors. And, strangely, they were all some shade of gold. Beautiful golden veils, misty, ethereal, shone in rays across the gulch from the broken ramparts; and they seemed so brilliant, so rich, prophetic of the treasures of the hills. But that golden sunset changed. The sun went down red, leaving a sinister shadow over the gulch, growing darker and darker. Joan saw Cleve thoughtfully watching this transformation, ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... encouragement) of looking a long way into the future. She was looking into the future now. The Captain's social position was all that could be desired; he was evidently in easy pecuniary circumstances; he admired Catherine and Catherine's child. If he only proved to be a single man, Mrs. Presty's prophetic soul, without waiting an instant to reflect, perceived a dazzling future. Captain Bennydeck approached to take leave. "Not just yet," pleaded the most agreeable of women; "my luggage was ready two hours ago. Sit down again for a ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... power of England: Frobisher and Davis, the gentle and heroic Gilbert, and Raleigh, poet and statesman, the very perfect knight-errant of his age, whose faith in America survived many failures and is registered in words as prophetic as they are pathetic—"I shall yet live to see it an English nation." The adventurous and pioneering spirit of the time is forever preserved in that true epic of the Elizabethan age, the incomparable Voyages of Richard ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... gesticulated an acquiesced withdrawal. "I'm sure you would not, still more certain you cannot, do harm. And be mindful of my prophetic words: Whatever's done, old Blaize will have to be bought off. There's the affair settled at once. I suppose I must go to the chief to-night and settle it myself. We can't see this poor devil condemned, though it's nonsense to talk of a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... I think by order of that munificent encourager of the arts, Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel. The parliament ordered it to be sold, and broken to pieces; but John River, the brazier who purchased it, having more taste than his employers, seeing, with the prophetic eye of good sense, that the powers which were would not remain rulers very long, dug a hole in his garden in Holborn, and buried it unmutilated. To prove his obedience to their order, he produced to his masters several pieces of brass, which he told them were parts of the statue. M. de Archenholtz ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... symbolise, the pyramidalists base their belief that 'a Mighty Intelligence did both think out the plans for it, and compel unwilling and ignorant idolators, in a primal age of the world, to work mightily both for the future glory of the one true God of Revelation, and to establish lasting prophetic testimony touching a further development, still to take place, of ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... that shield the Constitution of the United States was sculptured (by forms unseen, and in characters then invisible to mortal eye), the predestined and prophetic history of the one confederated people of the ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... transported to his residence and expired after several days passed in extreme agony. Thus perished in the thirty-eighth year of his age this distinguished poet, in a manner and amid surroundings which make the duel scene in the sixth canto of this poem seem almost prophetic. His reflections on the premature death of Lenski appear indeed strangely applicable to his own fate, as generally to the premature ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... the beloved ideas made flesh. Here undoubtedly lies the chief poetic energy:—in the force of imagination that pierces or exalts the solid fact, instead of floating among cloud-pictures. To glory in a prophetic vision of knowledge covering the earth, is an easier exercise of believing imagination than to see its beginning in newspaper placards, staring at you from the bridge beyond the corn-fields; and it might well happen to most of us dainty people ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... repeated. Though she disclaimed the prophetic vision she was at this instant the nearest approach he had ever met to the priestess of the oracle. The light was in her eyes. "You ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... Her words were prophetic, for at that moment Mrs. Ames hurried into the room, a wiry, spare old woman with a small hooked nose and a jaw like a nut-cracker. The skin of her face was yellow and deeply wrinkled, her eyes were those of a fierce, untamed bird, and she was gowned—swathed is the more suitable word—in rusty ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... have almost prophetic vision;" and she told him all that Mr. Walton had said, though nothing of the contemplated marriage. She dwelt with special emphasis on the facts that he had told Annie to be a sister to Gregory and had gone to heaven with the assurance to his old friend that ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... mistake, this worst blunder I have made. In spite of myself it will haunt me. And the curse! that awful curse! Gods! will it never cease ringing in my ears! night and day, sleeping and waking it never leaves me! I see her now! How weird-like her prophetic looks! How like the sentence of doom are her words, as, with flashing eye and quivering lip, she says: 'As you have wilfully, voluntarily, and wickedly called it down upon your own head, may the curse of God rest upon you in this world and the world to come.' Gods and demons! if their should be ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... half of the book of Daniel(208) is historic, half prophetic. Each of these parts is distinguished from similar portions of the Old Testament by some peculiarities. Porphyry is not recorded as noticing any of those which belong to the historic part, unless we may conjecture, from his theory of the book being originally written in Greek, ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, Stand like druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic, Stand ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... he said was profound, prophetic, and unintelligible. The gist of it, so far as it could be understood when the bran was bolted from it, consisted in an assurance that the country had now reached that period of its life in which rapid decay was inevitable, and that, as ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... you say about the book, I remember a celebrated dinner at the Temple, to which I invited Lyndhurst, Brougham, Campbell, and Charlie Wetherell, when the latter warned Lyndhurst and Brougham of Campbell's design, in terms almost prophetic of what has occurred. 'My biographical friend will excel in exhibiting every little foible; Hunc tu Romane caveto.' I cannot describe the whole scene to you, but ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... with the prophetic imagination usually vouchsafed only to the poet and the seer. He had in him all the lift toward greatness of the visionary, without any of the visionary's fanaticism or egotism, without any of the visionary's ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... an instant by his anachronism, recovered superbly. "My vision, sir, was prophetic. The stain was upon him. The cloven foot ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... one or two other chosen counsellors. As long as she lived and remained unmarried she controlled it, the husband trusting to her affection for her children to make suitable provision for them. He had seen with prophetic anxiety the mother's fond indulgence of their only son, and the practical man dreaded the consequences. He therefore communicated to her verbally, and also embodied in his will, his wish that his son should have no control over the principal of such portion of the estate ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... a pair of great, serious eyes on her haughty school-mate's fair, placid countenance, she said with an air of prophetic solemnity,— ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... the territory of Iowa, are the regions to which the prophet has hitherto chiefly directed his schemes of aggrandizement, and which are to form the nucleus of the Mormon empire. The remaining states are to be licked up like salt, and fall before the sweeping falchion of glorious prophetic dominion, like the defenceless lamb before the mighty king of ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... glad to avail themselves of the secluded hospitality of Grenoble for that which they would have been pleased to designate as "a lively time." Honora shuddered at the thought: And, as though the shudder had been prophetic, one morning the mail contained a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... that moment, Hecuba, her white hair dishevelled, her robe tattered, came out of the tent in which she was kept captive. A long sigh went up from the audience, when her woeful figure appeared. Hecuba had been warned by a prophetic dream, and lamented her daughter's fate and her own. Ulysses approached her, and asked her to give up Polyxena. The old mother tore her hair, dug her nails into her cheeks, and kissed the hands of the cruel chieftain, who, with unpitying calmness, ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... already; lo, there is The law and aspect of the sky to be By reason grasped; there are the tempest times And the bright lightnings to be hymned now— Even what they do and from what cause soe'er They're borne along—that thou mayst tremble not, Marking off regions of prophetic skies For auguries, O foolishly distraught Even as to whence the flying flame hath come, Or to which half of heaven it turns, or how Through walled places it hath wound its way, Or, after proving its dominion there, How it hath speeded forth from thence ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... passage secure through the Lowlands, in which he had been kindly assisted by his kinsman of Menteith. By what means Allan M'Aulay had come to know him, he could not pretend to explain. Those who knew Allan's prophetic pretensions, smiled mysteriously; but he himself only replied, that "the Earl of Montrose need not be surprised if he was known to thousands, of whom he ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... though Tam's words were prophetic, for the next day Smyth and Curzon were attacked whilst "spotting" for the "heavies" and fell in flames in No-Man's Land. They got Smyth in during the night and rushed him back to a base hospital; but Curzon was dead before the ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... and stratagem, and murder to a foe, would not, to gain his ends, betray the pledge of the kiss of peace. When Henry II. consented to meet Becket after his return from Rome, and promised to remedy all of which his prelate complained, he struck prophetic dismay into Becket's heart by evading the kiss ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hostess, Maria Diaz, and her son Joan Jose Lopez, were present when the outcast uttered these prophetic words. ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... grasp, an incisive analysis, instant generalization, a very tenacious and ready memory, and unusual talent for every effort of study, she took and held the first place as a matter of course until she graduated, when she gave the valedictory address. This valedictory was a prophetic note in the line of her future expression; for it gave a graphic illustration of the art of teaching geography, to the consideration of which she had been led by Miss Crocker's logical, suggestive, and masterly presentation of the subject in the school course. Her ability and steadiness ...
— The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball - That Floats in the Air • Jane Andrews
... I had been the man who, at the very outset of his career, wellnigh half a century ago, had with an almost prophetic foresight fastened upon two great groups of questions, those great historic questions relating to the removal of civil disabilities for religious opinions and to Parliamentary Reform; if I had been the man who, having thus in his early youth, ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... found in my essays, "Phantasie und Mythos," "Ueber die Symbolbildung," and "Zur Symbolbildung" (Jb. ps. F., II, III, IV).] This symbol form is the form of knowledge adapted to the spirit's capacity as it then existed. Not that any mysterious presentiment or prophetic gift of vision must be assumed. The circumstance that man can get ever deeper meaning from his symbols gives them the appearance of being celestial harbingers sent forth by the latest ideas that they express. In a certain ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... that placed him incalculably ahead of his generation. A man of marvellous insight and research, he grasped, and as far as possible carried out, ideas which dawned on other men only after centuries. Thus, many of his utterances have been prophetic. It is probable that among his chemical discoveries he re-invented gunpowder. It is certain that he divined the properties of a lens, and diving deep into experimental and mechanical sciences, actually foresaw the time when, in his own words, "men would construct engines ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... is proved by the history of other countries which have undergone the same regulation. This, after all, is the strongest argument with which to answer the skeptic who, on premises and judgment of his own, doubts the above conclusions. We need not claim greater prophetic ability, but have only to make the undeniable assertion that hindsight is better than foresight. Nothing demonstrates economic ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen
... inaccessible to them and the spirits incompatible with the unity of the Godhead. Words betokening future happenings or involving judgment tend to take a special cast from the fears and anxieties men feel when their fortune is affected or their destiny controlled by external forces. Thus omen (a prophetic utterance or sign) and portent (a stretching forward, a foreseeing, a foretelling) might originally be either benign or baleful; but nowadays, especially in the adjectival forms ominous and portentous, they wear a menacing hue. Similarly criticism, censure, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... provincial town of Pumpiter, which had its own newspaper press, with the usual divisions of political partisanship and the usual varieties of literary criticism—the florid and allusive, the staccato and peremptory, the clairvoyant and prophetic, the safe and pattern-phrased, or what one ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... my prophetic soul, I forgot the youthful Malachi. I say, Herrick, I was just thinking, as you were writing just now, how odd it seems that I have known you just two years, and you have never been ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... and found myself, not in the White House, but on the steps thereof, cold and shiverin. In my pocket wuz the papers wich didn't get me the post orifis I wuz seekin, and in my mind wuz chaotic confusion. Wuz the dream prophetic, or wuz it merely a vagary uv the mind, wich, wen loosed from its clay, sores off onto its own hook, without any restraint. Is the giant Republican actually dead, or is he in a trance? Will it arise, and scatter them ez hez appinted themselves ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... Americans to-day. It is not every truth that recommends itself to the common sense. Nature has a place for the wild clematis as well as for the cabbage. Some expressions of truth are reminiscent,—others merely sensible, as the phrase is,—others prophetic. Some forms of disease, even, may prophesy forms of health. The geologist has discovered that the figures of serpents, griffins, flying dragons, and other fanciful embellishments of heraldry, have their prototypes in the forms of fossil species which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... day," said the disaffected old woman, assuming a port of prophetic wisdom, "Tobe will find a differ. Thar ain't no man so headin' ez don't git treated with perslimness by somebody some time. I knowed a man wunst ez owned fower horses an' cattle-critters quarryspondin', an' he couldn't prove ez he war too old ter be summonsed ter work on the road, ...
— 'way Down In Lonesome Cove - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... within the hour we emigrants from the steerage had become first-class passengers. The translation brought such obvious and real relief to my father that my own spirits rose instantly; I began to take great interest in our surroundings, and, from that moment, entirely forgot those prophetic internal twinges, those stomachic forebodings which, in the 'other place,' as politicians say, had begun to turn my thoughts toward the harrowing tales I had ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... age of King Diniz, before the fourteenth century, there is little enough in the national story to suggest the first state-profession of discovery and exploration in Christian history. But we must bring together a few of the suggestive and prophetic incidents of the earlier time, if we are to be fully prepared for ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... season in which greenness sails very close to Christmas, although generally veering away in time to prevent its verdant hues from tingeing that happy day with the gloomy influence of the prophetic proverb about churchyards. Long after the time when the people of the regions watered by the Hudson and the Merrimac are beginning to button up their overcoats, and to think of weather strips for their window-sashes, the dwellers in the land ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... the haunts of men who would court and flatter him while his name was new, and who, when they had contributed to distract his attention and impair his health, would cast him off unceremoniously to seek some other novelty.' These words of true advice proved almost prophetic in the life of ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... principles of physiology, which cannot be disturbed by any theories descending from antiquity, before the dawn of positive science. That the will resides in the blood and the heart, is about as near the truth as Plato's doctrine that the prophetic power belonged to the liver. If the region of Firmness in the brain be large, it will be strongly manifested, even though the heart be feeble, and as easily arrested as Col. Townsend's. But if the upper surface of the brain be diseased, or sensibly ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... grew more than troublesome. Ever on the outlook, when sober, after the foibles of others, he laid himself open to endless ridicule when in drink, which, to tell the truth, was a rare occurrence. He was in the midst of a prophetic denunciation of the vices of the nobility, and especially of Lord Rothie, when Meg, entering the room, went quietly behind his ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... gently placed his own therein. Then, in a tone at first of deep and passionate anxiety and eagerness, passing into one of regretful admiration, and varying with the purport of each utterance, she broke into another chant, in which were repeated over and again phrases familiar in the traditions and prophetic or ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... "Almansor," written during the years 1820 and 1821,[226] his deep-rooted antipathy to Christianity finds strong expression through Almansor, although the countervailing arguments are eloquently stated by the heroine. Prophetic of the poet's own later experience is the representation of the hero, who is beguiled by his love for Zuleima into vowing allegiance to the Christian faith, only to find that the sacrifice has failed to win for him the object for which it was made. ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... races so barbarous, and the frequent motive of their migrations, is the cause why in ancient times they were so little formidable to their southern neighbours; and it suggests a remark to the philosophical historian, Thucydides, which, viewed in the light of subsequent history, is almost prophetic. "As to the Scythians," he says, "not only no European nation, but not even any Asiatic, would be able to measure itself with them, nation with nation, were they but of one mind." Such was the safeguard of civilization in ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... mournful college song, and embraced, kissing one another on both cheeks, doubtless, after the German fashion,—"poor Albert being pale as a sheet, and his eyes full of tears." Ah, what would he have said could his "prophetic soul" have beheld his son, Albert Edward, skipping from London to Paris in eight hours—dashing about the Continent, from Copenhagen to Cannes, from Brussels to Berlin—from Homburg to St. Petersburg—taking it all as lightly and ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... faltered at length, "thou comest at a time when my prophetic skill hath failed me. Ere I tell thee thy fate I must offer sacrifice to Herthe. If thou wilt come to-morrow at this hour I will tell thee what the stars say concerning ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... moon rose over the edge of the world and poured its level light through the boughs of the cedars clothed in their ghostly robe of moss. It struck upon Montezuma's tall shape, on his distraught countenance and thin hands as he waved them to and fro in his prophetic agony, on my glittering garments, and the terror-stricken band of courtiers, and the musicians who had ceased from their music. A little wind sprang up also, moaning sadly in the mighty trees above and against the rocks of Chapoltepec. ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... Then springs to meet the gale, while o'er it rush Shadows with splendours mixed. Upon her breast Came down the fire divine. With lifted hands She stood: she sang a death-song centuries old, The dirge prophetic both ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... silence, perfectly conscious that nothing he could utter contained an argument like this. The seamen no longer hesitated to mutter their disapprobation aloud, and many a prophetic opinion was ventured concerning the consequences of such reckless risks. To all this Wilder turned a deaf or an insensible ear. Firm in his own secret purpose, he would have braved a greater hazard to accomplish his object. But a distinct though smothered shriek, from the stern of the vessel, reminded ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... of the book is not uniform, but on the whole it is best described as prudential rather than prophetic. It embodies what we are in the habit of calling "good common sense." There is an occasional maxim whose application to our own time may be doubted, and now and then one whose morality has been superseded by the higher standards of the New Testament; but, ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... all in a dream—at Castle Gaverick. Three times I dreamed the same dream; and I felt, inside me, that it was a prophetic warning. We're like that, you know, we Irish Celts. And you—though you're a Scotchman—you used to laugh at such things! But they're true; they're true—I've had glints of second sight before. Joan Gildea understood. When I told her, she believed it was a warning God had sent ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... the close to her, 'his dearest Friend,' 'his dear, dear Friend,' and speaks of his delight to have her by his side, and of the former pleasures which he read in 'the shooting lights of her wild eyes,' and then the almost prophetic words with which he forebodes, too surely, that time when 'solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief should be ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... thing about this sentiment is that he never quoted it correctly. It was a life-long failing. His version—and it was strangely prophetic of ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... Galeotto to Stephen Birkenholt. It affected him all the more because he was not distracted by the dialogue, but was only powerfully touched by the music, and, in the gestures of the lovers, felt all the force of sympathy. It was to him like a kind of prophetic mirror, revealing to him the true meaning of all he had ever felt for Dennet Headley, and of his vexation and impatience at seeing her bestowed upon a dull and indifferent lout like her kinsman, who not only was not good enough for her, but did ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... before the dreaded invasion of the sacred places, foreboded by Thomas Jefferson's prophetic soul, became one of the things to be looked back on; and the interval had sufficed for another change of heart, or, more correctly, for a descent to the valley of things as they are from the top of that ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... shown in anything except the accumulation of wealth,—and when all the finer sentiments and nobler instincts of men are made subject to Mammon worship, is any one so mad and blind as to think that good can come of it? Nothing but evil upon evil can accrue from such a system,—and those who have prophetic eyes to see through the veil of events can perceive, even now, the not far distant end—namely, the ruin of the country that has permitted itself to degenerate into a mere nation of shopkeepers, —and something worse ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... him, isn't it, really?" she said, "with the world all before him, the great untried future lying vast and prophetic waiting for his baby feet to enter. Well has Dr. Parker said; 'A little child is a ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... stormy interview with Brian, and it was only on his return that he learnt that Madge was engaged to his rival. He saw Mr. Frettlby, and having learnt from his own lips that such was the case, he left the house at once, and swore that he would never enter it again. He little knew how prophetic were his words, for on that same night he met his death in the hansom cab. He had passed out of the life of both the lovers, and they, glad that he troubled them no more, never suspected for a moment that the body of the unknown man found ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... no unkind earthquake of the state, Nor hurricano from the crown, Disturb the present mitre, as that fearful storm of late, Which, in its dusky march along the plain, Swept up whole churches as it list, Wrapp'd in a whirlwind and a mist; Like that prophetic tempest in the virgin reign, And swallow'd them at last, or flung them down. Such were the storms good Sancroft long has borne; The mitre, which his sacred head has worn, Was, like his Master's Crown, inwreath'd with thorn. Death's ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... softness and indolence of his character. Did he subdue his prejudices, and those of his subjects? His mind was tinged with the most puerile superstition; the influence of the clergy, and the errors of the people, were consecrated by his laws; and the oracles of Leo, which reveal, in prophetic style, the fates of the empire, are founded on the arts of astrology and divination. If we still inquire the reason of his sage appellation, it can only be replied, that the son of Basil was less ignorant than ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... disregarded; even Gunhilda, sister to Sweyn, King of Denmark, though a Christian, was not spared, and with her last breath she declared that her death would bring the greatest evils upon England. The words of Gunhilda proved prophetic. Sweyn, burning for revenge and glad of a pretext for war, soon made his appearance on the south coast, and during four years he spread devastation through all parts of the country, until the King Ethelred agreed to give him L30,000 and provisions ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... vultures took. Th' admiring throng loud acclamations make, And omens of his future empire take. The sire then shook the honours of his head, And, from his brows, damps of oblivion shed, Full on the filial Dulness: long he stood, Repelling from his breast the raging god; At length burst out in the prophetic mood. 'Heav'ns bless my son, from Ireland let him reign To fair Barbadoes on the western main; Of his dominion may no end be known, And greater than his father's be his throne; Beyond Love's kingdom let him stretch his pen!' He paus'd, and all the people cry'd, 'Amen.' Then thus continu'd he: ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... the side of that other English democracy whose institutions, ideals, and destiny are almost identical with our own, as he has demonstrated in the writings of half a lifetime. Let us hope there was prophetic virtue in a passage of his Constitutional Government, where, speaking of the relation between our several States and the Union that binds them together, he says they "may yet afford the world itself the model of federation and liberty it may in ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... million of your population can feel no sympathy with the society in the prosperity of which they are forbidden to participate, and no attachment to a government at whose hands they receive nothing but injustice.' In the language of the wise, prophetic Jefferson, 'you must approach this subject, YOU MUST ADOPT SOME PLAN OF EMANCIPATION, OR ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... the barber's apprentice replied, in a prophetic tone. "I am not through with this ...
— Under the Liberty Tree - A Story of The 'Boston Massacre' • James Otis
... to his very lips, and several of the council exchanged significant glances, recalling the strange prophetic jingle which I had been the means of bringing to the camp. The silence was broken, however, by an old Cromwellian Major named Hollis, who had been drawing upon paper the position of the villages in which the enemy ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... It appears to me an Eastern love poem, and nothing further, but an over-heated religious fancy is strong enough to fancy anything. I think the Bible is not illustrated by that supposition: though it is a very beautiful poem it seems nothing like a prophetic one, as it is represented ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... dreams as haunt us near the glimmering morn Shadow forth truth; these through the Gates of Horn Find passage to the sleeper. Prophetic? Nay! But sense therein may read The heart's desire, in pangs of love or greed; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... girls in their brown uniforms on the green square, "I'll be one of them some day. They don't have to be too particular about girls they are supposed to help. I'll give them a good chance to help little old Tessie," and with that prophetic statement, more important to her than the unhappy girl had any way of guessing, Tessie tried for one more "place" to earn a little more money, that she might eventually make her way toward a ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... terrible presentiment of evil that had haunted his imagination in regard to Claudia was now realized! The dark storm cloud that his prophetic eye had seen lowering over her had now burst in ruin on her head! How strange! how unexplainable by human reason were these mysteries of the spirit! But Ishmael lost no time in fruitless speculations. He arose ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... prophetic words, paused, and, with his eyes fixed upwards, he stood some time silent, and then, clasping his hands together, exclaimed with fear and trembling upon him, "Lord, Lord, thy will ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... could deem the command you coveted for strong and wise men to be somewhat which should lift the weak and unwise above the range of their own force and intelligence, I held your prophesying in high esteem, and readily pardoned any excesses of expression into which your prophetic afflatus (being ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... eyes were so vivid, and her expression so swift and varying; it was to be found in the whole presence—something mountain- like and daring, something Eastern and reserved and secret, something remote—brooding like a Sphinx, and prophetic like a Sibyl. But suppose that in days to come the thing that did not belong, which was of the East, of the tan, of the River Starzke; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... same authority as to the possible practical development of the balloon as an aerial machine should likewise be quoted, and will appear almost prophetic. "In England the subject of aero-station has made but little progress, and no valuable invention has arisen to facilitate travelling in the air. In all my ascents I used the balloon as I found it. The desire which influenced me was to ascend to the ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... of a kind that custom associates only with children's pantomimes and idle spectacles. A bear is brought in to frighten a dwarf; a dragon sings, vomits forth steam from its cavernous jaws, fights and dies with a kindly and prophetic warning to its slayer; a bird becomes endowed with the gift of human speech through a miraculous process which takes place in one of the people of the play. Surely these are grounds on which "Siegfried" might be stoutly criticized from the conventional as well ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Kitama, and rapidly acquired an extraordinary influence over the Berbers—a race prone to superstition, and easily impressed by the mysterious rites of initiation and the emotional doctrines of the propagandist, the wrongs of the prophetic house, and the approaching triumph of the Mahdi. Barbary had never been much attached to the caliphate, and for a century it had been practically independent under the Aglabite dynasty, the barbarous excesses of whose later sovereigns had alienated ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... eyes were; they were gazing into the utmost depths of each other's soul, reading and understanding all that was mutually expressed, charmed and fascinated by the beauteous panoramic scenes which flittered in love-phantoms past our prophetic vision. ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... prophetic power to realize his own possibilities. We can hardly imagine an exercise independent of the conscious sense of the highest and best attainments, of thereby making ourselves stronger and ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... belief that Whatever is best, the cads of omnibuses, who, from their little back pulpits, not once in three or four hours, as those proclaimers of 'God and His prophet' in Mussulman countries, but every minute, at the entry or exit of a brief passenger, are heard, in an almost prophetic tone, to exclaim, (Wisdom crying out, as it were, in the streets,) ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... against the Church itself, but against the clergy. It is to be remarked, in studying history through the medium of literature, that the works of a certain period, themselves the result of history, often illustrate the coming age, by being prophetic, or rather, as antecedents by suggesting consequents. Thus, this Vision of Piers Plowman indicates the existence of a popular spirit which had been slowly but steadily increasing—which sympathized with Henry II. and the priest-trammelling "Constitutions of Clarendon," even while it ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... look down upon earth and behold any natural object with especial delight, it must be Girlhood. And yet if they are not gifted with prophetic vision, they must tremble with fearful solicitude while they gaze delighted. There is a fearfulness in the beauty of Girlhood which mingles anxiety in the cup of admiration. No good being can look upon it without ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... his Premier. Caution was foreign to M. Venizelos's ambitious and adventurous temperament. Military considerations had little meaning for his civilian mind. Taking the speedy victory of the Entente as a foregone conclusion, and imbued with a sort of mystical faith in his own prophetic insight and star, he looked upon the European War as an occasion for Imperialist aggrandizement which he felt that Greece ought to grasp ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... an invalid, with the prophetic handkerchief bundling his throat, and his face "festooned"—as I heard Hillard say once, speaking of one of our College professors—in folds and wrinkles. Ill health gives a certain common character to all faces, as Nature ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the first in a series of domestic incidents at the cottage, which no prophetic ingenuity could have foreseen. Mr. Vimpany and Fanny Mere actually left Passy together, on their way ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... Mrs. Shelley had had the baby, she now hesitated about keeping it; the boy had unconsciously struck a wrong chord, and his mother, with a prophetic instinct, coupled with a quick imagination, for a moment saw that it was possible this little stranger who, as Jack had already grasped, was not his real sister, might, in future years, destroy the harmony and peace of the home circle. But it was only a momentary ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various
... words, which have been proven prophetic, were written last March, when Admiral Rojestvensky's fleet was still a very formidable fact to be ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... comes, I should say, every bit as much from the south, as from the north. Although I have spoken only of the latter, yet I deliberately include all. Grand, common stock! to me the accomplish'd and convincing growth, prophetic of the future; proof undeniable to sharpest sense, of perfect beauty, tenderness and pluck, that never feudal lord, nor Greek, nor Roman breed, yet rival'd. Let no tongue ever speak in disparagement of the American races, north or south, to one who has been through ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... for which the Bolsheviks are calling would not have seemed an extravagant demand. He was almost the only English poet up to his own time who believed that the world had a future. One can think of no other poet to whom to turn for the prophetic music of a real League of Nations. Tennyson may have spoken of the federation of the world, but his passion was not for that but for the British Empire. He had the craven fear of being great on any but the old Imperialist lines. His work did nothing ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... especially attractive. Turn into whatever corner you might, there were clusters of deeply interested gazers, intent on making the most of their day and their shilling, while in the quieter nooks from 1 to 3 o'clock might be seen families or parties eating the lunch which, with a prophetic foresight of the miserable quality and exorbitant price of the viands served to you in the spacious Refreshment Saloons, they had wisely brought from home. But these saloons were also crowded from an early to a late hour, as they are ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... Richardson was particularly apt—I may say, grandly prophetic. Thus: "Never at the beginning of great periods in history was insurrection so successful as that. It has made it apparent that slavery can and must be abolished; it has set every press and every tongue in the land to agitating the subject of ...
— John Brown: A Retrospect - Read before The Worcester Society of Antiquity, Dec. 2, 1884. • Alfred Roe
... enlist the sympathy of the one successful artist Clayton knew, and through his influence she succeeded in selling a number of pictures and placed others upon sale. She was so happy, so sure that the prophetic instinct in her soul was justified, that she told Clayton of her previous fraud. He listened carefully; his face twitched, as if his mind were adjusting itself to new ideas. First he took twenty-five dollars from the money she had just brought him and handed it to ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's aching breast Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west, And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime Of a century bursts full-blossomed on ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... thou whom reason, friendship, Whom scorn—e'en scorn—to move are all unable, Know that prophetic were thy words! Fate hastens! The Valkyrie prepares the spear already, Its deadly point already does she sharpen. Ah, see! the prince of battle holds it brandish'd; He strikes! he strikes! ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... romance; but it is difficult, on the other hand, to believe that the incident has been related by Sterne exactly as it happened. That the recorded prediction may have been made in jest—or even in earnest (for penetrating teachers have these prophetic moments sometimes)—is, of course, possible; but that Sterne's master was "very much hurt" at the boy's having been justly punished for an act of wanton mischief, or that he recognized it as the natural privilege of nascent genius to deface newly-whitewashed ceilings, must have been a delusion ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... closer to her, wan-eyed, hunted-looking. It was the ghost of that exam that wouldn't be laid—the prophetic vision of the row that waited for ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... have been prophetic, for the very next day something happened—something so unprecedented and overwhelming that she could never have anticipated it, even if she had been ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... that the gruff and grim Captain was indeed his friend. Captain Fitz-Roy had trouble with everybody on board in turn, thus proving his impartiality; but when parting was nigh, tears came to his eyes as he embraced Darwin, and said, with prophetic yet broken words, "The 'Beagle's' voyage may be remembered more through you than me—I hope it will be so!" And Darwin, too moved for speech, said nothing except through the pressure ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... Father] and the Son, Who came forth from Him and taught these things to us and the host of heaven, the other good angels who follow and are made like to Him, and the Prophetic Spirit, we worship and adore, knowing them ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... Jesus must die because the prophets had said that Messiah should, but that the prophets had said that Messiah should because Jesus must. There was a far deeper necessity than the fulfilment of any prophetic utterance, even the necessity which shaped that utterance. The work of Jesus Christ could not be done unless He died. He could not be the Saviour of the world unless He was the sacrifice for the sins of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... ages we, Of perils dared and crosses borne, Of heroes bound by no decree Of laws defiled or faiths outworn, Of poets who have held in scorn All mean and tyrannous things that be; We prophesy with lips that sped The songs of the prophetic dead. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... But their progress was slow, and as days passed, and the comets gradually faded out of sight, and then the dome of the sky showed a tendency to resume its natural blueness, the enthusiasm of Cosmo's imitators weakened, together with their confidence in his prophetic powers. ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... to inquire the divine purpose in placing us among the nations of the earth, and what is our great mission. There are certain facts which prophesy—for facts are as eloquent in prophetic announcement as are the lips of prophet or seer. We should remember that our location is everything to us as a national power, of intelligence and wealth, and that this location is in the wake of national prosperity and greatness. It may have escaped your notice ...
— 'America for Americans!' - The Typical American, Thanksgiving Sermon • John Philip Newman
... among their friends in Buchberg over the news that Mrs. Stanhope had adopted the two children, and that Fani was to become an art-student. Oscar and Fred, and still more the triumphant Emma, could already see with prophetic eyes the announcement of the great exhibition to be held in the neighboring city, of the wonderful landscapes of that "celebrated painter, Fani ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri
... owl was afterwards seen on Capt. Duncan's tent. His brother-officers quizzed him on the subject, by telling him that he was the next on the list; a joke which Capt. D. did not much relish, and it was prophetic, as he soon ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... to St. Paul's, prayed before the high altar, and wept a few minutes over the tomb of his father. The King was sent to Westminster, and thence on the following day to the Tower, and, as he went along, was greeted with curses and the appellation of "the bastard," a word of ominous import, and prophetic of his approaching degradation. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... she fled? Ah, shadow-like she slipped Away, when I had freed her from the grave. And those mysterious, prophetic words,— And more, her eyes, gleaming at once and dimmed—! What if it were but madness? Has the grave With ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... power, was approached by a hurrying courier, who put into his hands despatches announcing the overthrow of the Sultan Selim. "It is a decree of Providence, announcing the end of Ottoman empire!" he cried. Thenceforth he talked incessantly of the Orient. As if inspired by prophetic fire, he sketched a missionary enterprise for the liberation and regeneration of Greece, and for the emancipation and reorganization of the lands and peoples on the Danube and in the Levant by distributing them ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... virtue. But these great and varied excellences, which secured him the veneration of the finest minds in Europe, were not fully appreciated by his own nation, which was astonished rather than governed by his prophetic wisdom. But Burke was remarkable, not merely for his knowledge, eloquence, and genius but also for an unblemished private life, for the habitual exercise of all those virtues, and the free expression of all those noble sentiments which only have marked exalted Christian ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... is a prophet: he sees in advance how his idea, perfected and in universal use, will change things, establish new manners and customs, new laws and new methods. Alexander Graham Bell was one of these prophetic inventors—the telephone was his invention, not his discovery. He first got the idea and then sought a way to make it practical. If you put yourself in his place, forget what has been accomplished, and put out of mind how the voice is transmitted from place to ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... tired of it. I make no doubt he would have finished his design, but, as he was proceeding with it, the thought struck him of writing an heroic poem to be called 'Olaus the Great, or the Conquest of Mona,' in which, after the manner of Virgil, he might introduce in prophetic song the future fortunes of the family;—among others, those of the hero who aided in the fall of the tyrant of Mysore, after having long suffered from his tyranny; [General Macaulay had been one of Tippoo Sahib's ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... time that I prevaricate from thee. Call me the son of beer, and then confine Me to the tap, the toast, the turf; let wine Ne'er shine upon me; may my numbers all Run to a sudden death and funeral. And last, when thee, dear spouse, I disavow, Ne'er may prophetic ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... joyousness. Finding the billiard-room deserted he repaired to the drawing-room, where he found Mary playing scraps of melody to her lover at the shadowy end of the room, while Fraeulein sat by the fire weaving her web as steadily as one of the Fatal Sisters, and with a brow prophetic of evil. ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... occurrence of the last dream, his faith in the heavenly source of the invitation which, whether waking or sleeping, he had received, to go over and help his Christian brethren on the Continent, was confirmed by a prophetic message from John Kirkham, who, in the course of his religious travels, ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... "Your 'prophetic soul' told you, if I remember rightly, that we were going to conduct ourselves like a model ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... minds she read her own; but knowing that such imaginings were unnatural and distressing, she fought against them; yet they came in spite of herself. And the picture of Bertha standing there beside Ben filled her with a prophetic vision of what the girl-wife was to become: "She will grow in grace and in dignity, in understanding. She's of good stock. She's like a man in her power to raise herself above lowly conditions. Why are there not female Lincolns? There are, and she is one of them. Nearly all our ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... beauty, in poetry, and in true originality. She was a great social personage, but her influence on literature was not destined to be lasting, because, in spite of foreseeing too much, she had not the true prophetic sense of proportion, and confused the things of the present with those of the future—the accidental ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... lyrical, not merely through the chorus, which expresses common emotions of devout joy and fear, indignation, praise, and rapture. The chorus is less developed here, and its chants are less impressive than in Esther. There is, however, a lyrism, personal and modern, in the prophetic inspiration of the High Priest, and Racine anticipated that his boldness in presenting this might be censured by his contemporaries. The unity of place, which had been disregarded in Esther, is here preserved; the scene is the temple at Jerusalem; and by its impressive grandeur, ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... Advanced Lady sweetly. "Yes, it is a novel—upon the Modern Woman. For this seems to me the woman's hour. It is mysterious and almost prophetic, it is the symbol of the true advanced woman: not one of those violent creatures who deny their sex and smother their ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... the glad daybreak, The prophetic jubilee; Sin will then all hearts forsake, Then will ...
— The Mountain Spring And Other Poems • Nannie R. Glass
... out of the realm of realism. Hindoo poets, like others, know how to rise above sordid reality into a more ideal sphere, and for this reason, even if we had found in the dramas of India a portrayal of true love, it would not prove that it existed outside of a poet's glowing and prophetic fancy. There is a Hindoo saying, "Do not strike a woman, even with a flower;" but we have seen that these Hindoos often do physically abuse their wives most cruelly, besides subjecting them to indescribable ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... of the composition of Job cannot be fixed with any approach to accuracy, there are at least certain broad limits within which it is agreed on all hands that it should be placed. This period is comprised between the prophetic activity of Jeremiah and the second half of the Babylonian Exile. The considerations upon which this opinion is grounded are drawn mainly, if not exclusively, from authentic passages of Job which the ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... 5. Its Prophetic Accuracy. At least sixteen prophets prophesied concerning future events. They told of the coming destruction of cities and empires, calling them by name. They told of new kingdoms. They told of the coming of Christ, his nativity, the place of his ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... of Mania—Firstly, the musical; secondly, the telestic or mystic; thirdly, the prophetic; and fourthly, that which belongs ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram |
