"Prophetic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I say?—first and last he must have made a dozen of them. If anything could have kept the House of Lords firm, in the face of the wretched Radical outcry, it would have been those speeches. He pointed out all the evils that would follow the change. You might have called it prophetic—the way he foresaw what would happen to Balder—or not Balder in particular, of course, but that whole ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... "an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces,"[81] he was expressing only what Garrisonian abolitionists, like Susan, always had recognized. In the West, a tall awkward country lawyer, Abraham Lincoln, debating with the suave Stephen A. Douglas, declared with prophetic wisdom, "'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.... It will become all one thing or ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... administration of Mr. Buchanan and denounced the repeal of the Missouri Compromise under the lead of Senator Douglas. In that speech he made the declaration, which I remember as clearly as though an event of yesterday, then characterized as extravagant but long since accepted as prophetic: "I believe this Government cannot endure permanently, half ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... car. It was the furnace, a "run" was on and she could see the streams of white molten metal racing down the narrow channels of sand to their narrow beds on either side. The whistle shrieked ahead for the Gap and she nerved herself with a prophetic sense ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... prophetic wisdom; I know no royal road to social salvation, nor of any specific to cure ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... dreams are not created by the wish of the individual soul for this reason also, that according to Scripture dreams are prophetic of future good or ill fortune. 'When a man engaged in some work undertaken for some special wish sees a woman in his dream, he may infer success from his dream vision.' Those also who understand the science of dreams teach ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... Snob, sir,' pursued Mr Chuckster with a prophetic look, 'you'll find he'll turn out bad. In our profession we know something of human nature, and take my word for it, that the feller that came back to work out that shilling, will show himself one ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... Hinpoha with a prophetic feeling. "Where are we, anyway? Is this the Point of Pines? I believe we've come to the wrong place! We should have stuck to the shore after all and not gone off into that path through the woods that turned and twisted so many ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... some days I never let Dick out of my sight for a moment; but early one fine morning a knock came to our bed-room door, and a voice said, "Please, sir, come and see what's the matter with the sheep? there's a large mob of them at the back of the house being driven, like." Oh, my prophetic soul! I felt it was Dick. Whilst F—— was huddling on some clothes I implored him to temper justice with mercy, but never a word did he say, and sternly took his gun in his hand and went out. I buried my head in the pillows, but for all my precautions I heard the report of a shot in the ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... moment of this saying—it was between ten and eleven o'clock at night—David Kent's wrath-fire was far from needing an additional stoking. Once more Miss Van Brock had given proof of her prophetic gift, and Kent had been moodily filling in the details of the picture drawn by her woman's intuition. He had gone late to the house in Alameda Square, knowing that Portia had dinner guests. And it was imperative that he ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... Apocalypse, Revelations. Talmud; Mishna, Masorah. prophet &c. (seer) 513; evangelist, apostle, disciple, saint; the Fathers, the Apostolical Fathers[obs3]; Holy Men of old, inspired penmen. Adj. scriptural, biblical, sacred, prophetic; evangelical, evangelistic; apostolic, apostolical[obs3]; inspired, theopneustic[obs3], theophneusted[obs3], apocalyptic, ecclesiastical, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... reluctantly summoned away to look at a passage in some prophetic periodical upon that interesting subject—"ma'am, it is very hard that you should make one remember the end of the world, since, in conversing with you, one's natural temptation is to forget ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... arrived at, Mr. Craven's face was a study. Full well he knew on whom would fall the costs of one side. He saw in prophetic vision the fifty pounds passing out of his hands into those of Miss Blake, but no revelation was vouchsafed on the subject of loans unpaid, of costs out of pocket, or costs at all. After we left court he employed himself, I fancy, for the remainder ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... looking toward the rosy east. There was the dawn, and there was she, its priestess, while all around her slept. I should not have been surprised had her lips, parted already in a mysterious smile, opened still further in a prophetic chanting to the sun. But Mary saw me, and the alert, answering look of one who is a messenger flashed swiftly over her face. She advanced like the leader ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... they lie snugly in the soft ooze and damp earth that line the bottom. If I have only succeeded, therefore, in relieving the mind of one sensitive and retiring fish from the absurd obloquy cast upon its appearance when it ventures away for awhile from its proper element, then, in the pathetic and prophetic words borrowed from a thousand uncut prefaces, this work will not, I trust, have been ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... critical school consent that Moses, was connected with the event, but did not record it. Indeed! And what proof that he failed to make the record? It was personal to himself. It was symbolically prophetic of the crucifixion of Christ, as our Savior used it, an event toward which all prophecy moved. And we have already learned that nine times it has been stated in the book of Numbers that the acts, precepts, and statutes of this book were done and given ...
— The Testimony of the Bible Concerning the Assumptions of Destructive Criticism • S. E. Wishard
... of phenomena, he cannot raise the statement of them into an act of conception. The statement that two right lines can never inclose a space merely appears to him another form of verbal definition, or, at the grandest, a definition in prophetic extent, saying in other words that a line which incloses, or ever may inclose, a space, is not, and never will be, a right one. He would admit that what he now conceives as two things, doubled, would ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... that he thinks they do begin to flag; but then, beginning to talk in general of the excellency of old constitutions, he did bring out of his cabinet, and made me read it, an extract out of a book of my late Lord of Northumberland's, so prophetic of the business of Chatham, as is almost miraculous. I did desire, and he did give it me to copy out, which pleased me mightily, and so, it being late, I away and to my wife, and by hackney; home, and there, my eyes being ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... upon the bed as if the announcement was too much for her, but was up again in an instant to declare with prophetic solemnity,— ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... the love that I bear to the cause of God, and the glory of his Church, by the yearnings which I have for the welfare of the human kind, by all the prophetic expectations which I have of the destiny of this land, God's Almoner of Liberty to the World, I desire to see Old Representative New-England, and the affiliated North, rouse up ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher
... fractures on the wall Assuming features solemn and terrific, Hinted some tragedy of that old hall Locked up in hieroglyphic! Prophetic hints that filled the soul with dread; But to one gloomy window pointing mostly, The while some secret inspiration said, That ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... a dream of what is coming," she said in conclusion, and her voice had a prophetic ring. "I see a time when the farmer will not need to live in a cabin on a lonely farm. I see the farmers coming together in groups. I see them with time to read, and time to visit with their fellows. ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... studied the good looks of the young caballeros and the plain intellectual face and slight little figure of the Bostonian, noted the utter indifference with which they were treated by the Favorita of Presidio and Mission, he felt a sudden rush of arrogance, a youthful tingling of nerves, the same prophetic sense of imminent happiness and power that his first contact with the light electrical air and the beauty of the country had induced. After all, he was but forty-two. Life on the whole had been very kind to him. And, although he did not realize it as yet, ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... his comrades and the shadowed glen floated away, and the look of seer came upon him. Again he saw great towns and a nation. The others regarded him with a little awe. The spiritual, or rather prophetic, quality in Paul ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Aryan. Some priestly families keep perhaps a strain of Aryan blood. But Hindu literature is not afraid to state how many of its authors are of low caste, how many of its priests were begotten of mixed marriages, how many formed low connections; while both legendary and prophetic (ex post facto) history speak too often of slave-kings and the evil times when low castes will reign, for any unprejudiced person to doubt that the Hindu population, excluding many pure priests but including ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... the campaign (2 Kings iii. 8-27) belongs to the prophetic cycle of Elisha, and seems to give merely a popular version of the event. A king of Edom is mentioned (9-10, 12-13), while elsewhere, under Jehoshaphat, it is stated "there was no king in Edom" (1 Kings xxii. 47); the geography ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... on, men begun to look for the return of the Warrior, but that vessel did not make her appearance. Then they began to shake their heads and to grow prophetic, while those who were most deeply interested in the human beings who manned ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... religionist, always has the one unanswerable reply ready for any one who attempts to reason away the idea of occult knowledge: "Ah, but the Witch of Endor: what will you do with her? If the Bible is true—and you would not like to doubt that—she was a wicked woman, not susceptible to prophetic influences, and yet she did foretell the future and bring up the spirits of the dead. If this was possible then, why ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... him. Instead, he set his easy-chair tenderly by the side of the blazing fire, and, drawing another chair opposite, gazed with secret smiles at the visionary Nettie, who once had taken up her position there. Was it by prophetic instinct that the little colonial girl, whose first appearance so discomposed the doctor, had assumed that place? Dr Rider contemplated the empty chair with smiles that would have compromised his character for sanity with any uninstructed observer. ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... Court; they remained immovable in their pious ecstasy; the assemblies multiplied; the troops which had so long occupied Languedoc had been summoned away by the war of succession in Spain; the militia could no longer restrain the Reformers growing every day more enthusiastic through the prophetic hopes which were born of their long sufferings. The arch-priest of the Cevennes, Abbe du Chayla, a tyrannical and cruel man, had undertaken a mission at the head of the Capuchins. His house was crammed with condemned Protestants; the breath of revolt ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... here—this wound will count for two. They are twins."(41) And he emitted a little dry, bitter laugh. Father d'Aigrigny, the cardinal, and Dr. Baleinier, alone understood the sense of these mysterious and fatal words, which Rodin soon completed by a terrible allusion, as he exclaimed, with prophetic voice, and almost inspired air: "Yes, I say it. The impious race will be reduced to ashes, like the fragments of this poor flesh. I say it, and it will be so. I said I would live—and I ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... correct. He thought that no man has the right to speak until what he has to say is so ripe with meaning, and the season for his saying it is so compelling, that what he says will result in a deed—a thing accomplished now or afterwhile. In the prophetic old Scotchman's iron philosophy there was no ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... as we could and succeeding very poorly; but Crafts's belief in himself and his star soared above any trivialities of present discouragement. I see him now rising on his elbow and transfixing the two of us with long, prophetic forefinger:— ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... pitiable; it was magnificent. Hungry we fought, unsheltered we slept; our dead were lying with the enemy, while we who yet lived for the duty of another day fronted the bayonets with hearts of courage and sadly prophetic souls. Everywhere to front and rear, to left and right, stretched that same blue wall tipped with cruel steel; in constant hail of iron the shells fell upon us, darkening the day-sky, and turning night into a hell of flame. There was no retreat, no loophole ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... sat 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
... years ago last autumn, we walked on the sea beach together, and with a strange and prophetic kind of poetry, he likened the scene to his own failing health, the falling leaves, the withered sea-weed, the dying grass upon the shore, and the ebbing tide that was fast receding from us. He told me that he felt ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... length decisively overcome by the English idea. For such a fact it is impossible to assign a date, because it is not an event but a stage in the endless procession of events. But we can point to landmarks on the way. Of movements significant and prophetic there have been many. The whole course of the Protestant reformation, from the thirteenth century to the nineteenth, is coincident with the transfer of the world's political centre of gravity from the Tiber and the Rhine to the Thames and the Mississippi. The whole career of the men who speak ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... In Abt Vogler the prophetic strain is even more daring and assured; only it springs not from "old experience," but from the lonely ecstasy of artistic creation. Browning has put into the mouth of his old Catholic musician the most impassioned and undoubting assertion to be found in his work of his faith that ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... would be compromised and his life endangered? 'I am not a dead dog,' he said, 'to be despised and forgotten. I am worthy that all men should turn their eyes on me while I am among enemies, and do nothing that may involve me in danger.' Soon there came dire tidings. The prophetic heart of the old chief had not deceived him. The Senecas and Mohawks, disregarding negotiations in which they had no part, and resolved to bring them to an end, were invading the country in force. It might be thought that the ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... forced to revert to the past for that nourishment which his crude environment did not offer,—yet he was by nature a retrospective man. His face was set towards the past, not towards the future. He never caught the restlessness of this century, nor the prophetic light that shone in the faces of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats; if he apprehended the stir of the new spirit he still, by mental affiliation, belonged rather to the age of Addison than to that of Macaulay. And ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... No voice or hideous humm Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. Apollo from his shrine Can no more divine, With hollow shreik the steep of Delphos leaving. No nightly trance, or breathed spell, Inspire's the pale-ey'd Priest from the prophetic cell. 180 ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... in them during that hour of bodeful reverie; but however free the flights of fancy of some of them may have been, it is improbable that any one who lay there had so wild and whirling an imagination as to foresee in prophetic vision this morning of a future May, when we, the people of a richer and more splendid Boston, with mayor and governor, and troops from other States, and every circumstance of ceremony, should meet together to celebrate their ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... My prophetic soul foretold a visit that afternoon from Miss Pole, who usually came to call on Miss Matilda after any event—or indeed in sight of any event—to talk it over ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... American Revolution before the real problem of slavery was felt, except in the minds of a few prophetic spirits such as Jefferson, we can still detect two clearly marked tendencies. At the South economic forces were combining with the social and racial conditions to fix the status of slave as the normal condition of the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... world. I have mentioned that the Cuthite priests were very learned: and as they were Ophites, whoever had the advantage of their information, was said to have been instructed by serpents. Hence there was a tradition, that Melampus was rendered prophetic from a communication with these [515]animals. Something similar ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... that a succession of human races, as of animals, have followed one another upon the earth. It may be the inestimable privilege of our young naturalists to solve this great problem, but the older men of our generation must be content to renounce this hope; we may have some prophetic vision of its fulfilment, we may look from afar into the land of promise, but we shall not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... affairs of Ireland. He had deep information, an extensive capacity, and a solid judgment." In his own magnificent "Ode to Fame," he has pictured his ideal of the Patriot-orator, who finds some consolation amid the unequal struggle with the enemies of his country, foreign and domestic, in a prophetic vision of his own renown. Unhappily, the works of this great man come down to us in as fragmentary a state as those of Chatham; but enough remains to enable us to class him amongst the greatest masters of our speech, and, as far as the drawbacks allowed, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... were prophetic. To be trampled under horses' hoofs into the dust was the final fate of the queen, though for many years yet she was to retain her power and to keep up her strife with the foes who surrounded her. Far nobler of soul than Fredegonde, she was as strong in all those qualities which go to ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... infant prodigies, she was the most prodigious. She was the first of the children to go down into the vault under Haworth Church; you see her looking back on her sad way, a small, reluctant ghost, lovely, infantile, and yet maternal. Under her name on the flat tombstone a verse stands, premonitory, prophetic, calling to her kindred: "Be ye ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... The prophetic eye of Samuel Davies has now pointed him out as "that heroic youth, Colonel Washington, whom I can but hope Providence has hitherto preserved in so signal a manner for some important service to his country;" and soon the prophecy is fulfilled. The same year he is ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... child's heart gave one prophetic throb and then stood still. She was like a harp that vibrated with every wind of emotion, whether from another's grief or ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of the well, Josephus was taken to Vespasian and, in the presence only of the general, his son Titus, and two other officers, announced that he was endowed with prophetic powers, and that he was commissioned by God to tell Vespasian that he would become emperor, and that he would be succeeded by his son Titus. The prophecy was one that required no more penetration than for any person, in the present day, ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... of 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
... 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... people would have done the same; but most would also have been struck, as I was, by these prophetic words. But, conscript though I was, I felt that I could trust my thoughts to no one, and that it was my duty to seem always calm ...
— How The Redoubt Was Taken - 1896 • Prosper Merimee
... recollecting the words uttered by the prophetic bard in the morning, assembled round him his bravest knights, and, throwing up his visor, exhibited his countenance, whereon sat a beaming smile, expressive ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... left the sacred volume, and seemed to gaze upon some coming struggle in which the sins of the people would meet a bloody retribution. Then, referring to the page, he pronounced with bitterness of holy indignation the prophetic curse which was that day fulfilled ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... devices 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 ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... engravers; as Marc Antonio, Audlan, Edelinck, Vander Meulen, and several other Italian and French, as well as Dutch and German masters. In the off-skip, Europe, Asia, and Africa appear standing in surprise at the sound of the trumpet." There is nothing like example! Who sees in this prophetic enigma, in his "chair of ebony," other than "Ebony" himself, the "most accomplished Christopher," beaming with "sincerity," and placid in his "assiduity," with "Judgment" waiting upon him at command, wielding neither crutch nor pen, but, in affable condescension, the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... sisters tried to make him take the baby. Little by little his compassion adjusted itself to the new conditions; it accepted the child as an element of her misery in the future, when she must realize the hideous deformity of her marriage. His prophetic feeling of this, and of her inaccessibility to human help here and hereafter, made him sometimes afraid of her; but all the more severely he exacted of his ideal of her that she should not fall beneath the tragic dignity of her fate through any levity of her own. Now, at her ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... Too late by a few minutes; but somehow she could not turn back. She walked as fast as she could after the gay cavalcade, a prey to one of those female anxieties we have all laughed at as extravagant, proved unreasonable, and sometimes found prophetic. ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... that old man—prophetic, powerful, good,' he mused. 'I believe in him. What he says is true. I am altered. A light steals through me—a river of peace winds kindly through my soul! May his blessing rest on me, and ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... flourishes between the lines. I am not sure that this is not a portent of Revolution. In eighteenth century France the end was at hand when men bought the Encyclopedia and found Diderot there. When I buy the Times and find you there, my prophetic ear catches a rattle ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... all made by order of the then Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis, who aroused a storm of protest in the East against his "misguided attention to the desolate West." But few statesmen and fewer of the outside public in that day possessed the prophetic vision to perceive the future greatness of what were termed the "arid wastes" of Arizona and California. This was shown by the perfect hail of protest that swept to the White House when the terms of the Gadsden Treaty, drawn up by a man who as minister ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady
... as one on the brink of the grave," said the boy, "and so my words may be prophetic. Before many weeks are over, you shall kneel and sue for mercy to my father, and it will be denied you. You will grovel in the dirt, and crawl and cringe in abject misery; but it will be hopeless, and in the bitterness of your despair you will think of this moment, and ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... so big and nigh that her prophetic ear could, in fancy, catch the noise of it, hear the murmur of the villagers as she came out of church, imagine the jangle of the three thin-toned Hintock bells. The dialogues seemed to grow louder, and the ding-ding-dong of those three crazed bells more ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... In the facetious poem entitled May Fair, in speaking of Captain Parry's undertaking, and predicting its probable want of success, the following prophetic couplet appears:— ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 278, Supplementary Number (1828) • Various
... unspeakable." Calling together his monks, he bade them pray for a north wind, which came accordingly, and blew Cormac safe back to Iona, to tempt the waves no more. "Let the reader therefore perpend how great and what manner of man this same blessed personage was, who, having so great prophetic knowledge, could command, by invoking the name of Christ, ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... me astounded, he laughed in my face, and told me I was not worth gulling, and offered me his protection. 'My face was prophetic,' he said. 'Of what?' said I. 'Marry,' said he, 'that its owner will starve in this thievish land.' Travel teaches e'en the young wisdom. Time was I had turned and fled this impostor as a pestilence; but now I listened patiently to ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... The field of combat is the sphere for men; Where heroes war, the foremost place I claim, The first in danger, as the first in fame." Thus having said, the glorious chief resumes His towery helmet black with shading plumes. His princess parts, with a prophetic sigh, Unwilling parts, and oft reverts her eye, That stream'd at every look; then, moving slow, Sought her own palace, and indulged her woe. There, while her tears deplored the god-like man, Through all her train the soft infection ran. The pious maids their mingled sorrows shed, And ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... husband's white tie, took him by the ears, kissed him warmly on each side of his large pink face, glowing with blushes evoked by her unwonted display of affection, and led him away to dinner, her mental vision seeing prophetic broadsheets papering the kerbs of Piccadilly, the ears of her imagination making celestial melody of those ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... descend on them. Yet I have thought that it might be helpful towards this end to go back to the origins of preaching, and to study those in whom its primitive spirit was embodied. Perhaps that which we are desiderating could not be better expressed than by saying that we need a ministry prophetic and apostolic. And I am going to invite you to study the prophets and ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... shook their heads with prophetic solemnity as they read these circulars. Struggling householders, who find it a hard task to keep the two ends which never have met and never will meet from growing farther and farther asunder every year, are apt to derive a dreary kind of satisfaction from the contemplation ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... braided back from a face of which age had not destroyed the majestic beauty. Sternly sad stood the Hebrew matron by the grave of the martyred dead; no tear in her eyes, which were bright with something of prophetic fire. So might a Deborah have stood, had Sisera won the victory, and she had had to raise the death-wall over Israel's slain, instead of the song of triumph to ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... a sound of moving. He looked up. Antoine was standing before him, on the outer edge of the light which was thrown by the lamp, appearing huge and prophetic against the background of dwarfed shadows which crawled over wall and ceiling, crowding behind him. His awe for the office of the man returned to him, blotting out the equality which the past few hours of confession had brought about. Once more he recalled how it was said that le Pere had ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... forbidding slavery north of the line and permitting it south of the line. This territory had been paid for equally by the treasure and blood of all the states. Blood for land! Then slavery on the land to raise cotton! And was not Jefferson prophetic when he wrote that the extension of this divisional line in 1820 alarmed him like a fire bell at midnight? It betokened sectional strife: the North against the South. And about trade! For as the Southern States grew richer they would have more political power, ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... blast, and with a comet's glare Glow'd her red eye-balls 'midst the sunken gloom Of their wild orbs, like death-fires in a tomb. Slow, like the rising storm, in fitful moans, Broke from her breast the deep prophetic tones. Anon, with whirlwind rash, the Spirit came; Then in dire splendour, like imprison'd flame Flashing through rifted domes or towns amazed, Her voice in thunder burst; her arm she raised; Outstretch'd ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... training and philosophic principles of the Huns. It was a glorious illustration of the axiom "right is greater than might," which the German had in his pride reversed to read "might is right." It was prophetic of what the final issue of a contest based on such divergent principles was to be. So in those days Canadian men and women held their heads higher and carried on their war work with increased determination, stimulated by the ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... "O generous Bradamant," the matron cried, "Know thine arrival in this hallowed hold Was not unauthorized of heavenly guide: And the prophetic ghost of Merlin told, Thou to this cave shouldst come by path untried, Which covers the renowned magician's mould. And here have I long time awaited thee, To tell what is ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... The Jewish people were chosen by God that Christ might be born of them. Consequently the entire state of that people had to be prophetic and figurative, as Augustine states (Contra Faust. xxii, 24). For this reason even the judicial precepts that were given to this people were more figurative that those which were given to other nations. Thus, too, the wars and deeds of this people are expounded ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... entered the room. Ever since he had entered the house that day he had never ceased to sigh and weep—a portent, according to those who believed in his prophetic powers, that misfortune was impending for the household. He had now come to take leave of us, for to-morrow (so he said) he must be moving on. I nudged Woloda, and we ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... and forces of the abyss pressed in upon the charmed circle of Hellas. For Apollo, who in one of his aspects is a figure so typically Hellenic, the ever-young and beautiful god of music and the arts, was also the Power of prophetic inspiration, of ecstasy or passing out of oneself. The priestess who delivered his oracle at Delphi was possessed and mastered by the god. Maddened by mephitic vapours streaming from a cleft in the rock, convulsed in every feature and every limb, she delivered ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... Smith was compelled to go into the details of a transaction which showed of how little practical use to him were his divining and prophetic powers. A man named Remick had come to him the previous summer and succeeded in getting from him a loan of $200 by misrepresentation. Afterward Remick offered to give him a quit-claim deed for all the land bought ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... this were Love, if all this bitter pain Were but the birth-pang of Love born again, If through the doubts and dreams resolved, smiled The prophetic promise of the holy child, What should I gain? The Love whose dream-lips smiled Could never be my own and only child, But to Love's birth would come, with the last pain, Renunciation, ...
— The Rainbow and the Rose • E. Nesbit
... the deck. He turned quickly. No one could be seen; but his eyes rested upon the shadow cast by the hilt of his sword upon the boards of the deck. The shadow was in the form of the cross. The sign was prophetic, and in an ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... the Human Race of this!" I heard my voice; saw my prophetic gestures, as I expounded the ultimate meaning of existence to the white, rapt faces of Humanity. Only to find the words—that troubled me; were there then no words to describe ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... Not at all discomposed by the discovery, John Grueby fixed his hat on, wrongside foremost that he might be unconscious of the shadow of the obnoxious cockade, and withdrew to bed; shaking his head in a very gloomy and prophetic manner until he reached ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... contrary tendency. In the eighteenth century even Immanuel Kant's ideal ethics had—so far as can be seen—a similar origin. Shortly before the foundation of his definitive ethics, Kant wrote his "Idee zu einer allgemeinen Weltgeschichte" (1784), where—in a way which reminds us of Hobbes, and is prophetic of Darwin—he describes the forward-driving power of struggle in the human world. It is here as with the struggle of the trees for light and air, through which they compete with one another in height. Anxiety about war can only be allayed by an ordinance ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... his quiet entry was singular and prophetic: it was just as though the energy lying behind all this stillness had pressed forward to the edge of action. This, no doubt, was merely the quickening of my own mind, and had no other justification; for the presence of John Silence always suggested the near possibility of vigorous ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... wandered over the world—chiefly Italy—without an experience which might be called an adventure. When the Literary Man from London crossed her mind she laughed him to scorn for a prophetic popinjay. She had broken no man's heart, and her own was whole. The tribes of Crim Tartary had exhibited no signs of worry and had left her unmolested. She had furthermore taken rapturous delight in cathedrals, expensive restaurants, and the set pieces of fashionable scenery. Rattenden ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... sinless motion of his hand could have ordained it, he would have dismissed himself from life and ceased to be a living partaker in the scenes about him. Even then—for happy as he was, he dreaded in prophetic fear, the chances which beset our mortal path. The weight of mortality was heavy ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... Victor, Pietro Mangiadore, And he of Spain in his twelve volumes shining, Nathan the prophet, Metropolitan Chrysostom, and Anselmo, and, who deign'd To put his hand to the first art, Donatus. Raban is here: and at my side there shines Calabria's abbot, Joachim , endow'd With soul prophetic. The bright courtesy Of friar Thomas, and his goodly lore, Have mov'd me to the blazon of a peer So worthy, and with me have ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... foreign trade, and the vast and then partially explored domains of Kentucky and Ohio inviting the already swelling tide of immigration, and their prolific valleys destined to be the granary of the two hemispheres—all that surrounded Virginia seemed prophetic of growth and security within, the economist and the lover of nature found the most varied materials; with three hundred and fifty-five miles of extent, a breadth of one hundred and eighty-five, and a horizontal ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... The prophetic spirit does not follow members of a family who go to a foreign land, but should death overtake them abroad, she gives notice of the misfortune to those at home. When the Duke of Wellington died, the Banshee was heard wailing round the house of his ancestors, ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... I say anything of this prophetic vision in any spirit of detraction of what we possess here at present. I know well that without Federal help, such as is given at Washington, and with the limited area from which assessments can be drawn, ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... vague excitation of the senses, its mystical picturesqueness—Des Esseintes has a curious collection of the later Catholic literature, where Lacordaire and the Comte de Falloux, Veuillot and Ozanam, find their place side by side with the half-prophetic, half-ingenious Hello, the amalgam of a monstrous mysticism and a casuistical sensuality, Barbey d'Aurevilly. His collection of 'profane' writers is small, but it is selected for the qualities of exotic charm that have come to be his ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... the reader cannot take the hero seriously—a fact of which there can be no better proof than the element of the ridiculous which inevitably mingles itself in the scene in which he entertains his lady-love with a prophetic sketch of his occupations during the successive centuries of his earthly immortality. I suppose the answer to my criticism is that this is allegorical, symbolic, ideal; but we feel that it symbolises nothing substantial, and that the truth—whatever it may be—that ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... with his tranquil eyes. I did not realize that his speech was a veiled prophetic guidance. It is only now, as I write these words, that I understand the full meaning in the casual intimations he often gave me that someday I would carry India's teachings ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... in glad boyhood, the hills where rested his ancestors' dust. It was no dream. He felt his warm blood quicken. He felt the round-bowed skiff spring over the waves, as with unwearied hands he tugged at the oar. There are moments when the dullest mind grows prophetic, and the mind of the Athenian was not dull. The moonlight had vanished. In its place through the magic darkness seemed gathering all the heroes of his people beckoning him and his compeers onward. Perseus was there, ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... saucy sketches, Terry Lute was at one period involved in gravest trouble; the schoolmaster, good doctor of the wayward, thrashed him for a rogue; and from a prophetic pulpit the parson, anxious shepherd, came as near to promising him a part in perdition as honest conviction could bring him to speak. Terry Lute was startled. In the weakness of contrition he was moved to promise that he would draw their faces no more, and thereafter he confined his shafts of humor ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... comfortable winter-evening entertainment: nevertheless, for inferior Intelligences, like men, such Philosophies have always seemed to me uninstructive enough. Nay, what is your Montesquieu himself but a clever infant spelling Letters from a hieroglyphical prophetic Book, the lexicon of which lies in Eternity, in Heaven?—Let any Cause-and-Effect Philosopher explain, not why I wear such and such a Garment, obey such and such a Law; but even why I am here, to wear and obey ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... empurpled sod. No voice had dar'd to tell the tale; But she had many a boding thrill, For dumb observance watch'd her still; For laughter ceas'd whene'er she came, And none pronounc'd her lover's name! When wilfully she sought this spot, Shudderings prophetic mark'd his lot; She look'd! her maiden's cheek was pale! And from the hour did ne'er depart That deadly tremor from her heart. Pleasure and blandishment were vain; Deaf to persuasion's dulcet strain, It never ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... had looked at the hounds, not without a prophetic shudder, we rode round the walls of the town, which were laid out as a kind of boulevard, where the inhabitants walked and took their pleasure in the evenings. On these, however, there was not much to see except the river beneath and ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... the glad daybreak, The prophetic jubilee; Sin will then all hearts forsake, Then will all ...
— The Mountain Spring And Other Poems • Nannie R. Glass
... me of a raid up the river, conducted by one of our senior captains, an enthusiast whose gray beard and prophetic manner always took me back to the Fifth-Monarchy men. He was most successful that day, bringing back horses, cattle, provisions, and prisoners; and one of the latter complained bitterly to me of being held, stating ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... It grew and spread to a mighty roar and then such a shout went up to Heaven, as I had never heard, and as I know full well I shall never hear again. It was like the riving of thunderbolts above the roar of floods—elemental, prophetic, threatening, ungovernable. It did seem to me that the holy wrath of God Almighty was in that cry of the people. It was a signal. It declared that they were ready to give all that a man may give for that he loves—his life and things far dearer to him than his life. After that, ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... had gone, and in her place stood this lovely, silent stranger, with all the mystery of woman-hood in her eyes—that sweet light, exquisitely prophetic, divinely sad. ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers |
