"Precursor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... proves the precursor of many kind services and pleasant hours. Our new friends assist us to a deal of sight-seeing, and introduce us to cathedral, college, and garden. We walk out with them at sunrise and at sunset, and sit under the stately trees, and think it almost strange ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... above shows us the Redeemer of the world, seated with extended arms, having on the right the Virgin in her usual place, and on the left, also in his accustomed place, St. John the Baptist; both seated, and nearly on a level with Christ. The Baptist is here in his character of the Precursor "sent to bear witness to the light, that through him all men might believe." (John i. 7.) The Virgin is exhibited, not merely as the Mother, the Sposa, the Church, but as HEAVENLY WISDOM, for in this character the Catholic Church has applied ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... However, he did express clearly enough the opening phase of American disillusionment with the wild go-as-you-please that had been the conception of life in America through a vehement, wasteful, expanding century. And he was the precursor of what is now a bulky and extremely influential literature of national criticism. A number of writers, literary investigators one may call them, or sociological men of letters, or magazine publicists—they are a little difficult to place—has taken up the inquiry into the condition of civic ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... thou keen delight! Unprompted moral! sudden sense of right! Perception exquisite! fair virtue's seed! Thou quick precursor of the liberal deed! Thou hasty conscience! reason's blushing morn! Instinctive kindness, ere reflection's born! Prompt sense of equity! to thee belongs The swift redress of unexamined wrongs! Eager to serve, the cause perhaps untried, But always ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... one. When, at sunset, we returned to the ship, not having seen anything like a spout, I felt like one who had been in a dream, the day's cruise having surpassed all my previous experience. Yet it was but the precursor of many such. Oftentimes I think of those halcyon days, with a sigh of regret that they can never more be renewed to me; but I rejoice to think that nothing can rob me of ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... that lonely traveler, Paul, heard a voice, he looked across to the shores of Europe, and there in the night stood a great colossal form, not of a naked savage, but a form clad perhaps, in the panoply of the Macedonian phalanx, the representative of the Europe that then was and was yet to be, the precursor, it may be, to the classically informed mind of the missionary to the Gentiles, of that long procession of great world conquerors. It was the Man of Macedon who stood there in the might of his strength and cried, like the crying of an infant in the night, the crying of an infant ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... gave a sudden bound, hope took her by the hand, and she dreamed dreams. There might come a reaction and improvement. At times the intuition of an invalid was the voice of nature, crying out for that which she needed. Warner's longing for this change might be the precursor of his cure. Who could ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... the North, or after their subjection and consequent reunion with the North. As regards the States while in secession, the North cannot operate upon their slaves any more than England can operate on the slaves of Cuba. But if a reunion is to be a precursor of emancipation, surely that reunion should be first effected. A decision in the Northern and Western mind on such a subject cannot assist in obtaining that reunion, but must militate against the practicability ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... the position of the lovers was uncomfortable, Jaspar's was painful. They had the consolation of loving and being loved; but he was now writhing under the weight of an additional torture. The appearance of Hatchie was the knell of all his hopes, the precursor of ruin. To him it was a mystery, and all his endeavors to ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... haze which had for some hours been gradually stealing over it; while around the horizon lay piled long, motionless banks of leaden clouds, thick and heavy enough evidently to be dark, but yet of that light, dead, glazed, uncertain hue, which the close observer may have often noted as the precursor of winter-storms. After a long and attentive survey of every visible part of the heavens, the hunter, with an ominous shake of the head, dropped his eyes to the ground, ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... hive. This is done by dipping the end of a piece of comb in melted beeswax, and sticking it to the top. Bees should never be allowed to send off more than two colonies in one season. To restrict them to one is still better. Excessive swarming is a precursor of destruction, rather than an evidence (as usually regarded) of prosperity. A given number of bees will make far less honey in two hives than in one, unless they are so numerous as greatly to crowd the hive. When a late swarm comes out, take away the queen, and they will ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... voice issued order upon order to furl every rag of sail and bring the ship to the wind. He thought it was a tempest. "Oh hush! hush!" cried Alfred in vain.. A beam fell from the roof to the floor, precursor of the rest. On this David thought the ship was ashore, and shouted a fresh set of orders proper to the occasion, so terribly alike are the angry voices of the sister-elements. But Alfred implored ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... become suddenly dark. Came almost without the warning of preliminary rumble—almost without the precursor of sullen flashing—a great peal of heavy thunder. Schuyler turned. ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... precursor of Dickens' "American Notes." Mrs. Trollope's voyages on the Ohio were in 1828 ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... was given by the middle classes, and they were in no mood to imperil their own cause by revolutionary claims. They could not always succeed, however, in checking the fury of the populace, which had been taught to clamour for reform as the precursor of a good time coming for the suffering and toiling masses of mankind. The streets of London were illuminated, and the windows of those who omitted to illuminate or were otherwise obnoxious were tumultuously demolished by the mob, which did not even spare Apsley House, the town residence ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... daring—both in the opinions it upheld, and the practical theatrical innovations it introduced into the theatre, like the double stage for the little Madison Square playhouse, in New York, which was the precursor of such modern paraphernalia as came later with the foreign revolving stages. He always stood on the threshold of modernism, advocating those principles which were to fructify in the decades to follow him. Such pioneer spirit ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Paul Kauvar; or, Anarchy • Steele Mackaye
... mansion were a sick woman, an old negress, and a child, apparently, from its puny size, about a twelvemonth old. The woman could not be aroused from the coma in which she seemed to have fallen, either as a crisis of her disease or a precursor of death (medical opinion was divided), until suddenly, about noon, she waked, perfectly clear in mind and comfortable in body, and ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... world over, new competitions arose, and the weaker stocks began to show the effects of the strenuous life. One momentous event seems to have occurred in the Pliocene, and that was the transformation of the precursor of humanity into man—the culmination of the ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... a very cold night last night I had got some cold, and so in pain by wind, and a sure precursor of pain is sudden letting off farts, and when that stops, then my passages stop and my pain begins. Up and did several businesses, and so with my wife by water to White Hall, she to her father's, I to the Duke, where we did our usual business. And among other discourse of the Dutch, he was ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... often the precursor of disaster, and mine was to have a sudden downfall. It was getting on for noon and we were well into England—I guessed from the rivers we had passed that we were somewhere in the north of Yorkshire—when the machine ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... when we found it,—large and lofty apartments with many windows, commanding a fine view. But to one unused to many stairs, and weakened by continuous illness in a long sea-voyage, the exhaustion of that first ascent was something to be remembered. It was, however, but the precursor of hundreds of similar feats, which our residence involved, as nearly all families live up several flights of stairs. Only once did we see an elevator in Germany. In the elegant hotel known as the Kaiserhof, the sojourning-place of princes, diplomatists, ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... what an adept I was in the art of baby tossing, I shot him upward with self-confident impetus. To be sure, my hands never really left him; they followed him as he ascended and as he came down. Still, pride, the traditional precursor of falls, stood me in bad stead, as it has stood others before me. Just as my precious grandson was descending for the third time, one of my wrists seemed to turn or give way, destroying thereby the admirable balance maintained by my hands, and, ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... enshrouded in mystery, and when one of those erratic wanderers made its appearance in the sky it was beheld by the majority of mankind with feelings of awe and superstitious dread, and regarded as a harbinger of evil and disaster, the precursor of war, of famine, or ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... Federals, and employ his reserves elsewhere. A vigorous attack is, almost invariably, the only means of keeping him to his ground. But an attack which is certain to be repulsed, and to be repulsed in quick time, is even less effective than a demonstration. It may be the precursor of a ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... disappeared behind the horizon, though the days no longer extended themselves into the long, murmurous twilight of summer; instead, the evening fell with a certain definiteness, precursor of the ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... Holy See, though the one which most attracted its alarmed attention. The considerable numbers in which this assemblage was suddenly occurring; the fact that the son of the Liberator had already taken its command, and only as the precursor of his formidable sire; the accredited rumor that Ghirelli at the head of a purely Roman legion was daily expected to join the frontier force; that Nicotera was stirring in the old Neapolitan kingdom, while the Liberator ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... therefore, this action was celebrated throughout the United States as a victory, and considered as the precursor of the total ruin of the invading army. The utmost exultation was displayed, and the militia were stimulated to fly to arms, and complete ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... to whom, we fear, Americans have never tendered the grateful acknowledgments he deserved for his disinterested efforts to teach them to eat eggs properly, and to give due time to the mastication of their food. This benevolently instructive work was the precursor of a host of others on the same topics, and others of a kindred character. America has been the standard subject for the trial essays of European tyros in philosophy, political economy, and book-making in general. Society in America ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... conducted upon exclusive principles, and is accessible only with tickets of admission. Two 'policias,' armed with revolvers and short Roman Swords, are stationed at the entrance-door, and this looks very much like the precursor of a row. Mulatto balls generally do end in some unlooked-for 'compromisa,' and it would not surprise me if this particular ball were to terminate in ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... first general orgie, which was the precursor of many much more luxuriously and salaciously libidinous, and which I shall more minutely describe as ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... a hideous invention of modern times. They date from the seventeenth century. Before that time there were only guard-houses where the soldiers played cards and told tales. Louis XIV was a precursor of Bonaparte. But the evil has attained its plenitude since the monstrous institution of the obligatory enlistment. The shame of emperors and of republics is to have made it an obligation for men to kill. In the ages called barbarous, ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... and Esther, below stairs, raised her finger warningly for the cook to listen as her mistress trilled a few notes of a song. It was the first time since her return from Silverton that a sound like that had been heard within the house, and it seemed the precursor of better days. At lunch, too, Katy's face was very bright, and Esther was surprised when, later in the day, she was sent for to arrange her mistress' hair, as she had not arranged it since baby died. Greatly annoyed, Wilford had been by the smooth bands ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... representing the radiant energy of the body is constructed, the obscure radiation towers upwards like a mountain, the luminous radiation resembling a mere 'spur' at its base. From the very brightness of the light of some of the fixed stars we may infer the intensity of that dark radiation, which is the precursor and inseparable associate ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... willingly or unwillingly, sworn to give him his support. Edward, who was devout in his ways, though a negligent ruler, was buried in the monastery called Westminster, which he had built, and which was the precursor of the magnificent church bearing the same name that was built afterwards by King Henry III. Harold was now crowned. Duke William, full of wrath, appealed to the sword; and, under the influence of the archdeacon Hildebrand, Pope Alexander II. took his side, and ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... mischievous to the combined workmen themselves, and always to those of other trades. Your toleration of them appears to me one of the worst symptoms of your political state of health. It shows among your public men an ignorance or a cowardice, or a desire of ill-earned popularity, which is generally a precursor of ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... distinctly how fine our mother thought the speech with which he opened that precursor of the Prussian Chambers, and the address showed him in fact to be an ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... any human institutions; sink into thyself, and thou wilt find Him. The heavenly and earthly hierarchies of Dionysius, with the reverence for the priesthood which was built upon them, have no significance for Eckhart. In this as in other ways, he is a precursor ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... all opposition, and yoke nations to their car. Of fear he evidently had no comprehension whatever. The rustling of the autumn breeze in his gown alarmed him as much, as did the clang of those horses' hoofs upon the pavements, though he so well knew it was the precursor of ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... our Lord," and are called to follow "the example of their steadfastness in the faith and obedience to God's holy commandments." There are days dedicated to the memory of the Blessed Virgin; the Apostles; the Baptist as the precursor, and St. Stephen as the {118} protomartyr; to St. Mark and St. Luke as Evangelists; to St. Paul and St. Barnabas on account of their extraordinary call; to the Holy Innocents as the earliest who suffered for Christ's sake; ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... hear the defiant words. Prayer tells God what it knows that He knows already, for it relieves the burdened heart to tell Him. It asks Him to see and hear what it knows that He does see and hear. But the prayer is not for mere observance followed by no divine act, but for taking knowledge as the precursor of the appropriate help. Of such seeing and hearing by God, believing prayer is the appointed condition. 'Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask Him'; but that is not a reason ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... another economic movement gained momentum under the leadership of George Henry Evans, who was a land reformer and may be called a precursor of Henry George. Evans inaugurated a campaign for free farms to entice to the land the unprosperous toilers of the city. In spite of the vast areas of the public domain still unoccupied, the cities were growing ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... hotel in time for an admirable dinner—the precursor of many admirable meals, whose only fault was that they were built too much on one pattern. We were served, as I recall too well, with tomato soup, red mullet, quail, tomato farcie, and cutlet. Next morning at breakfast came red mullet, quail, and tomato farcie. At luncheon came ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... are to commit our way to Him, we are bound to the careful exercise of the best power of our own brains, that we may discover what the will of God is. He does not reveal that will to people who do not care to know it. I suppose the precursor of all visions of Him, which have calmed His servants' souls with the peace of a clearly recognised duty, has been their cry, 'Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?' God counsels men who use their own wits to find out His counsel. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Isle of Man to study the situation and the documents there preserved; various of the "Plain Sermons"; some controversial pamphlets defending the cause of the Church; and above all, the treatise on "Eucharistic Adoration." He assisted Dr. J. M. Neale in drawing up the Salisbury Hymnal, a precursor of Hymns Ancient and Modern, and contributed several hymns, especially those for Rogation days, for the service for Holy Matrimony, and a very grand one for the Feast of St. John the Evangelist, which has not found place in Hymns ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... Southern people in their unprovoked assault upon Fort Sumpter. The thunder of rebel cannon shook the air not only around Charleston, but sent its thrilling vibrations to the remotest sections of the country, and was the precursor of a storm whose wrath no one anticipated. This shock of arms was like a fire-alarm in our great cities, and the North arose in its might with a grand unanimity which the South did not expect. The spirit and principle of rebellion ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... of your fancy the closing-in of a fine, blue-skied, sunny American Saturday evening, whose tranquillity and repose rendered it the fit precursor of the Sabbath. Imagine the tea-table placed in your sitting-parlor, all the windows open, and round it, first, the housekeeper pouring out tea; next her, Miss C. Borland; next her, your mother, whose ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... Malachi, whose opinion in this matter was soon brought to bear,[1] had announced with much energy a precursor of the Messiah, who was to prepare men for the final renovation, a messenger who should come to make straight the paths before the elected one of God. This messenger was no other than the prophet Elias, who, according to a widely spread ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... appear, the character it would bear, and the work it is to do. He has also connected this with the great event of all-overshadowing importance to this world, of which it is a startling sign and sure precursor; namely, the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. We ask the special attention of the reader to ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... still look forward with steadfast will and humble heart, so that our Hope for the Future may be fed, not dulled or diverted by our Love for the Past, we shall not long be left without a Guide:—the way will be opened, the Precursor appointed—the Hour will ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... and syphilis did not begin to tell on the Indian until the Americans settled the country. From these observations it is very evident that in the Polynesian Archipelago syphilis must have been the precursor of the phthisis and scrofula, as we know it to have been that which induced those diseases among the Indians of the Mississippi or Missouri Valleys, or of the Colorado and Mojave Deserts, or in the mountains ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... Abydos once—and for thousands of years—exercised an extraordinary fascination over this people—the precursor of peoples—who dwelt in the valley of the Nile. According to one of the most ancient of human traditions, the head of Osiris, the lord of the other world, reposed in the depths of one of the temples which to-day ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... are the first sign of awakening life in the woods; they are well out by the end of January or early in February, and as they ripen, clouds of pollen are disseminated by the wind. Tennyson speaks of "Native hazels tassel-hung." The female bloom, which is the immediate precursor of the nut itself, is a pretty little pink star, which can be found on the same branch as the catkin but is much less conspicuous; and both are a very welcome sight, as almost the earliest hint of spring. The hazel bloom is shortly followed ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... endorsed the sentiment just then. Perhaps Andy's low spirits were intensified by the uncomfortable motion of the ship, which was beginning to strike landsmen with that rolling headache, the sure precursor of a worse visitation. Suffice it to say, that the mass of groaning misery in the steerage and cabins, on the subsequent night, would melt the heart of any but the most hardened 'old salt.' Did not Robert and Arthur regret their ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... duties. We may sneer, if we will, at the weaknesses—the aristocratic pride, the spiritual vanity—which we fancy that we discover. We may lament—and in that we shall not be wrong—the influence which such men as Jerome obtained over them— the example and precursor of so much which has since then been ruinous to family and social life: but we must confess that the fault lay not with the themselves, but with their fathers, husbands, and brothers; we must confess that in these ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... This will particularly be the case if the mouth and lips swell, and ulcers begin to appear on them, and the gums ulcerate, and a sanious and highly offensive discharge proceeds from the mouth. A singular, half-fetid smell arising from the dog, is the almost invariable precursor of death. ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... the precursor of a series of national disasters. In 1667 the city was laid waste by an earthquake which killed over twenty thousand people, and this was followed by a terrible visitation of the plague, which further decimated the population. Ragusa, however, was never ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... wrong, for the proclamation permitted the use of electric and acetylene lights at all hours. It was purely an economic question with the Colonel. Cynics opined that we should later on be offered the tallow to eat; and that the prohibition of the use of starch in our linen would be the precursor of some stiff emergency rations. The public, I say, disregarded the candle law, and the night patrol was kept busy dotting down in the light of the moon the numbers of a thousand houses. Unfortunately for the ends of Justice (!) the transgressors were so outrageously numerous ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... to the skin, in pools and watercourses, under saturated blankets, without fuel, or the chance of lighting a bivouac fire. It was the same for all; the generals of division, high staff-officers, colonels, captains, and private men. The first night on Crimean soil was no bad precursor of the dreadful winter still ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... sleeping hours to five. He was thus able to devote four to study, beside two for conversation. He loved research; and his name is in a list of members of the Society of Antiquaries formed by Archbishop Parker, which, though subsequently dissolved, was the precursor of the present learned body bearing the name. In the Tower he could read without stint. He possessed a fair library. From the company of his books, writes Sir John Harington, he drew more true comfort than ever from his courtly companions ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... be a panegyric of Braithwaite, treating him as the Precursor of a movement that even now ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... he is perhaps the only man on record who received with perfect equanimity the verses of an aspiring young poet, wrote him the cheerfullest of letters, and actually invited him to breakfast. The letter is still extant; but the verses were so little the precursor of fame that the youth's subsequent history is to this day unknown. It was with truth that Byron said of himself: "I am really a civil and polite person, and do hate pain ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... was as if, like the timid in the hurricane season, she sat constantly with ears strained for that first loud roar in the east. She realized then that the sort of upheaval which shatters one's economic life is but the precursor of other upheavals, and she thought on the unknown future until her strong soul ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... stand, had moved out to Fifty-fourth Street, so that there was nobody who could have contradicted her. But lying awake planning how he might piece out life for his mother with comforts, and hearing in every knock the precursor of what might have happened to her, his heart was exercised as it is good for the heart to be even with pain and anxiety. And beyond the heart stretching there was always the House. He could seldom get away to it in his waking hours, ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... Such was this precursor of revolutions, this agitator, this hypocrite, this egotist, this lying prophet,—a man admired and despised, brilliant but indefinite, original but not true, acute but not wise; logical, but reasoning on false premises; advancing some great truths, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... to the rescue, strongly supported my proposal and commended the thoroughness with which I had tackled the subject. The day was won, the carriages secure, and the order for their construction was placed with a firm in Birmingham. This expenditure was the precursor of further large outlays, for it was soon seen that the prospects of the company warranted a ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... studied the wise maxims of Pythagoras, and being a disciple of the Brahma school, abominators of flesh and strong liquors, he hoped to be excused, by drinking the ladies in aqua pura.—" Water is a monstrous drink for Christians!" said the alderman, "the sure precursor of coughs, colds, consumptions, agues, dropsies, pleurisies, and spleen. I never knew a water-drinker in my life that was ever a fellow of any spirit, mere morbid anatomies, starvelings and hypochondriacs: your water-drinkers ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... successfully accomplished in Newgate was the precursor of similar work undertaken in other prisons, not in London only, but all over the country. With prisons now so much better managed, and with multitudes of workers, single or associated, striving for the ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... mistake in affiance, always have a veil to hide imperfections and alleviations of conduct to mention. We must admit that there are rare cases where a wife cannot live longer with her husband, and his cruelties and outrages are the precursor of divorcement or separation. But until that day comes, keep the awful secret to yourself—keep it from every being in the universe except the God to whom you do well to tell your trouble. Trouble only a few years at most, and then you can go up on the other side of the grave, and say: ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... swiftly and cruelly swept away by it. Voltaire and Diderot, Rousseau and Helvetius, had vanished, but Condorcet both assisted at the Encyclopaedia and sat in the Convention; the one eminent man of those who had tended the tree, who also came in due season to partake of its fruit; at once a precursor, and a sharer in the fulfilment. In neither character has he attracted the goodwill of any of those considerable sections and schools into which criticism of the Revolution has been mainly divided. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... again, in the sense of producing artistic work, there are just two subjects on which and through which I desire to express myself: one is 'Christ as the precursor of the romantic movement in life': the other is 'The artistic life considered in its relation to conduct.' The first is, of course, intensely fascinating, for I see in Christ not merely the essentials of the supreme romantic type, but all the accidents, the wilfulnesses even, ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde
... wind, and plenty of it; but on the second day after the occurrence of the above events the wind began to fail us, and by sunset that night it had dwindled away until the brig had barely steerage-way, while the surface of the ocean presented that streaky, oily appearance that is usually the precursor of a flat calm. Meanwhile, during the afternoon, a sail had hove in sight in the north-western board, steering south-east; and when the sun went down in a clear haze of ruddy gold, the sails of the stranger, reddened by the last beams of the luminary, glowed ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... in Szchuen, which may be considered from some of its features the precursor of the Taeping Rebellion, and the first outbreak of the Tungan Mohammedans in the northwest, whom Keen Lung wished to massacre, marked the close of this long reign, which was rendered remarkable by so many military triumphs. The reputation of the Chinese empire was raised to the highest ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... Neuschloss, westward thirty miles. July 1st, Daun had crossed the Elbe (Daun let us say for brevity, though it is Daun and Karl, or even Karl and Daun, Karl being chief, and capable of saying so at times, though Daun is very splendent since Kolin),—crossed the Elbe above Brandeis; Nadasti, with precursor Pandours, now within an hour's march of Jung-Bunzlau;—and it ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... mentioned that, as the result of observations and researches carried out at the South Orkneys—a group of sub-Antarctic islands at the entrance to the Weddell Sea—it has been found that a cold winter in that sea is a sure precursor of a drought over the maize and cereal bearing area of Argentina three and a half years later. To the farmers, the value of this knowledge so far in advance is enormous, and since England has some three hundred million pounds sterling invested in Argentine interests, Antarctic ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... consternation; indignation soon became the prevailing sentiment; crowds assembled, and the tumult increased. Those who had not prevented the flight were accused of favouring it. Neither Bailly nor Lafayette escaped the general mistrust. This event was considered the precursor of the invasion of France, the triumph of the emigrants; the return of the ancient regime, and a long civil war. But the conduct of the assembly soon restored the public mind to calmness and security. It took every measure which so difficult ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... spokesman, has now become an absolute necessity of thought. Unless the great Dumb Ox is given a hearing, our mysticism will fill, not the churches, but the asylums and the little self-authorized Bethels where every man is his own precursor and messiah. ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... life; but in a little time they will find that agriculture is a trade much more laborious, and much less lucrative, than that which they had left. After making its panegyric, they will turn their backs on it like their great precursor and prototype. They may, like him, begin by singing "Beatus ille"—but what will be ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... movement of a long-drawn breath, the precursor of an unspoken farewell to the land of dreams? Scarcely! Nothing but a fancy, this time, bred of watching too closely in the silence! Wait for the clear signs of awakening, sure to ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... brilliant as the dawn), I argued that this good cheer was out of proportion; that Emerson should keep back a smile so striking and circumstantial for rare occasions, such as enormous surprise; or, he should make it the precursor to a tremendous roar of laughter. I have yet to learn that any one heard him laugh aloud,—which pastime he has called, with certainly a familiar precision that indicates personal experience, a "pleasant ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... a foggy, misty, drizzly day the precursor of a long spell of dark and gloomy weather, that Claudia at length grew to fear would never come to ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... dried up English literature, and the social excess which then corrupted English morals . . . appeared a mighty and superb mind (Milton), prepared by logic and enthusiasm for eloquence and the epic style; the heir of a poetical age, the precursor of an austere age, holding his place between the epoch of unselfish dreaming and the epoch ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... Rodrigo de Cota. His dramatic Dialogo entre el amor y un viejo has real charm, and has saved his name from the oblivion to which most of his fellows have justly been consigned. The bishop Ambrosio Montesino (Cancionero, 1508) was a fervent religious poet and the precursor of the mystics of fifty ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... that he had some trouble with a judge in Concord, New Hampshire. He said fiercely, "I will buy two guns, go to Concord, kill Judge Stanton with one, and shoot myself with the other, or else wait quietly till spring and see what will come of it." A possible precursor of President Wilson's ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... serious determination came into Jane's face, a look that her friends would have recognised as the precursor of a resolute and determined attempt to achieve the thing in hand. She seized the horn of the saddle, put her foot into the ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... versification accompanied a new spirit even more remarkable, which is of profound import as the precursor of a whole school of modern European poetry. The Cynthia is the first appearance in literature of the neurotic young man, who reappeared last century in Rousseau's Confessions and Goethe's Werther, and who has dominated French ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... convalescent sheriff, Jim Dunn, who had publicly commemorated his recovery by making his first call upon the father of his inamorata. The Reverend Mr. Wynn had been expatiating upon the unremitting heat as a possible precursor of forest fires, and exhibiting some catholic knowledge of the designs of a Deity in that regard, and what should be the policy of the Legislature, when Mr. Brace concluded to enter. Mr. Wynn and the wounded man, who occupied an arm-chair by the window, ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... inevitably appear to all the world to be, and probably would be in reality, such a sign either of declining strength or of declining spirit as would in a short time provoke the aggression of rivals and enemies. Abdication of royal or imperial authority is with States no less than with individuals the precursor of death. Loss of territory, indeed, in consequence of defeat, is in itself only in so far damaging as defeat may imply a want of capacity to resist attack, or as the diminution of territory may involve loss of resources. Thus the surrender of Lombardy by Austria, of Alsace by France, of Schleswig-Holstein ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... from Roman edifices that we derive, and can trace by a gradual transition, the progress of that peculiar kind of architecture called GOTHIC, which presents in its later stages the most striking contrast that can be imagined to its original precursor. ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... structure are inexpressibly unimportant and powerless." Change continues through life; everything mental and physical is in flux; why suppose that only in the propensities of the new-born infant is there something permanent and inflexible? Helvetius had been Godwin's chief precursor in this opinion. He had gone so far as to declare that men are at birth equal, some raw human stuff which "education," in the broad sense of the word, proceeds to modify in the long schooling from the cradle to the grave. Men differ ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... present very persuasive influences to secure the support of any journalist who might be wavering. The result was, that nearly all the periodicals of the kingdom opened their broadsides against a Republic. They denounced that form of government as the sure precursor of anarchy, pillage, and a reign of terror, and as certain to embroil France in ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... in the pursuit of knowledge. It is ever seeking new fields of conquest. It must advance: with it, standing still is the precursor of defeat. If necessary it invents new methods of attack, and rests not until it gains its objective point, or demonstrates the hopelessness of its quest. The world needs but be informed that on a ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... and subject to earthquakes: the seismic movement of 1858 extended to the Gold Coast, and was a precursor of the ruins of 1862. [Footnote: For the older earthquakes see Winterbottom, i, 34-5.] Its appearance, however, is rather that of a sandstone region, the effect of the laterite or volcanic mud which, ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... and possessed of imaginations which answered readily to the summons of their poets, the Welsh chiefs and leaders united in acclamations of applause; and the song of the bard went farther to render popular the intended alliance of the Prince, than had all the graver arguments of his priestly precursor in the ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... vigorous constitution had thus far resisted the infection, but after returning from the sad duty of laying little Bertha's remains by those of her father, he felt the peculiar languor which is so often the precursor of the chill and subsequent fever. Although he had scarcely hoped to escape an attack, he had never before realized how disastrous it would be to the very ones he had come to serve. Who was there to take care of him? Mrs. Poland was almost helpless from ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... as one of the most profound and clearest thinkers of his time, but as the very first among its experimental philosophers, and as a prophet of truths which, then neglected and despised, have since been adopted as axioms in the progress of science. "The precursor of Galileo," says M. Haureau, in his work on Scholastic Philosophy, "he learned before him how rash it is to offend the prejudices of the multitude, and to desire to give lessons ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... take long to think about it, Watson. Again I saw that grim face look over the cliff, and I knew that it was the precursor of another stone. I scrambled down on to the path. I don't think I could have done it in cold blood. It was a hundred times more difficult than getting up. But I had no time to think of the danger, ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with their political condition; or can it be believed they will be fit for, much less achieve political emancipation, while priests, and priests alone, are their instructors? We may rely upon it, that intellectual freedom is the natural and necessary precursor of political freedom. Education, said Lord Brougham, makes men easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave. The Irish peasantry clamour for 'Repeal,' never considering ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... evident to me, therefore, that, if we should be involved in war, the odds against us would be far greater than what was due merely to our inferiority in population. Believing that secession would be the precursor of war between the States, I was consequently slower and more reluctant than others, who entertained a different opinion, to resort to ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... Atlantic. Portraits of Erasmus are not uncommon; every scholar would know him if he met him in the other world with the look he wore on earth. All the etchings and their copies give a characteristic presentation of the spiritual precursor of Luther, who pricked the false image with his rapier which the sturdy monk slashed with his broadsword. What a face it is which Hans Holbein has handed down to us in this wonderful portrait at Longford Castle! How ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... splendid lunar rainbow, and I suspect it forebodes a good deal more wind than we have lately had. It was perfect in shape, and the brilliant prismatic colours were most distinctly marked. I never saw such a rainbow, except as the precursor of a circular storm. I only hope that, should we encounter such a gale now, we may get into the right corner of it, and that it will be travelling in the right direction. I wish it would come in time to run up our weekly average to ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... be up on the first morning was a faithful precursor of the indomitable vitality of the Patriarch. He was always first up and first off, and, amongst many charming peculiarities, was his indifference as to which way the road lay. We generally had a guide with us, and nothing was more common in toiling ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... question of a Spanish original for the story is settled—there was none; but from Spanish fiction and from Spanish history Lesage borrowed what suited his purpose, without in any way compromising his originality. To the picaresque tales (and among these may be noted a distant precursor of Gil Blas in the Francion of Charles Sorel) he added his own humanity, and in place of a series of vulgar adventures we are given a broad picture of social life; the comedy of manners and intrigue grows, as the author proceeds, into a comedy of character, and to this ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... towards the social and political drift of events, his teaching was no less harmoniously related to the new and most memorable drift of science which set in by his side. It is a misconception to pretend that he was a precursor of the Darwinian theory. Evolution, as a possible explanation of the ordering of the universe, is a great deal older than either Emerson or Darwin. What Darwin did was to work out in detail and with masses of minute evidence a definite hypothesis ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... Bergamo, the Madonna with Ten Saints. In none of these masterpieces of the full Renaissance, even if they had all been seen by Titian, which was far from being the case, was there any help to be derived in the elaboration of a work which cannot be said to have had any precursor in the art of Venice. There was in existence one altar-piece dealing with the same subject from which Titian might possibly have obtained a hint. This was the Assumption of the Virgin painted by Duerer in 1509 for Jacob ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... the act of Charles III. as being but revenge for the tumult of Aranjuez under the ministry of Esquilace,*1* arguing that the Jesuits were in fact the authors of it, and that it was but the precursor of a plot to dethrone the King and place his brother Don Luis upon the throne, as being not so liberal in his ideas. Others, again, have stated*2* that the Jesuits set about a calumny that Charles III. was not the Queen's son by her ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... had been blowing harder than ever, suddenly subsided, the air grew close, almost to suffocation, and an immense black cloud settled down upon the summit of Mount Sampson, where it rested broodingly, the sure precursor of a thunderstorm, if I was any judge ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... pages of text are followed by two hundred and thirty-four pages of tabular statistics. This large and well-arranged body of invaluable information, though styled an appendix, was, in fact, the precursor of the argument, and constitutes the solid base on which it rests. These tables are "not mere copies or abstracts, but the result of labored and careful selection, comparison, and combination." In this treasury of facts, derived for the most part from official records, the commercial ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... basis of the modern school of individualism. [Footnote: Lavergne, Les Economistes, 105. Quesnay, Oeuvres, 233, 306, 331 (Maximes du gouvernement economique d'un royaume agricole Maxime, iii. v. xiii. xxv.). Turgot, iv. 305. Bois-Guillebert appears to have been the principal precursor of the Physiocrats. Horn, L'Economie politique avant les Physiocrates, passim;[Greek physis] ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... a precursor who cleared away his doubts. What was strange about his marrying a Chueta, a woman like others in her customs, beliefs, and education, since the most famous of the Febrers in an epoch of intolerance had lived ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... pleasant, and the atmosphere clear; but the higher hills again exhibited their ominous belts of vapor, and there had been a slight frost during the night,—at this autumnal season the almost certain precursor of rain. ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller |
