"Prescient" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... longing to admit him of their crew. Byron, indeed, said that he was insane; but Shelley, in "Adonais," classes him with Keats among "the inheritors of unfulfilled renown." Lord Houghton testifies that Keats had a prescient sympathy with Chatterton in his early death. He dedicated "Endymion" to his memory. In his epistle "To George Felton Mathew," he asks him to help ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... who is unable to understand how anything can possibly go right unless he sees to it himself. Nature works departmentally and by way of leaving details to subordinates. But though those who see nature thus do indeed deny design of the prescient-from-all-eternity order, they in no way impugn a method which is far more in accord with all that we commonly think of as design. A design which is as incredible as that a ewe should give birth to a lion becomes of a piece with all that we observe most frequently if it be regarded ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... invoke perpetual doom? Though the whole Sacred College o'er and o'er Pronounce him sainted, prophet was he none Who to Cathaia's legendary shore Deemed that his bark a path had won. In sooth, our Western pioneer Was all as prescient as he Who cried, "The desert shall exult, The wild shall blossom as the rose," And to a passing rich result Through summer heats and winter snows Toiling to prove himself a seer, Accomplished his own prophecy. Lo, here a greater far than he, A prophet nation hath its dwelling, ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... several hundred people, and around the walls were cane seats, deftly constructed and artificially whitened, making, according to an old writer, "very genteel settees or couches." Tired with the stress of mental depression and anxiety as physical effort could not tame him, and vaguely prescient of evil, Otasite had flung himself down on one of these, which was spread with dressed panther-skins, his hands clasped under his head, his scalp-lock of two auburn ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... as he had a story to tell. He dictated to his mother, too, when a boy of six, an essay on Moses. As a housebound child, he had to amuse himself. Skelt's dramas were then his delight; but the life of every child is a prophecy for those who know how to interpret it. His mother was prescient, and fore-told her white-faced Louis had the light of genius in those windows of the soul—the eyes. "Talent," she knew, "was the result of human labor and culture." He dreamed, when but four, he "heard the noise of pens writing." She took it and his childish "Songstries" he ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • E. Blantyre Simpson
... astonished at the vast mass of fresh water that was pouring into the Gulf of Paria. He correctly divined the cause, and made the deduction that a river with such a volume of water must come from a great distance. His prescient mind showed him the mighty river Orinoco, the wide savannas, and the lofty range of the Andes; but the trammels of the erroneous measurements of astronomers bound them to Asia, and prevented him from picturing them to himself in the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... that this beneficent and wonderful visitation had not indeed wholly ceased. All was useless. A mournful silence filled the apartment which had but a few minutes before been tenanted with angels, sounding out their messages of undying affection, tender counsel, wise instruction, and prescient warning. The spirits indeed were gone; and as one by one the depressed party separated and passed out into the silent moonlit streets of Rochester, all and each of them felt as if some great light had suddenly gone out, and life was changed to them. There was a mighty blank ...
— Hydesville - The Story of the Rochester Knockings, Which Proclaimed the Advent of Modern Spiritualism • Thomas Olman Todd
... statesman's pen. Nor were these exceptional passages; there is much more of the same sort at least equally forcible. Mr. Adams notes an interesting remark made to him by Calhoun at this time. The great Southern chief, less prescient than Mr. Adams, declared that he did not think that the slavery question "would produce a dissolution of the Union; but if it should, the South would be from necessity compelled to form an alliance offensive and ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... in their nature, which are two in ours; And reason raise o'er instinct as you can, In this 'tis God directs, in that 'tis man. Who taught the nations of the field and wood To shun their poison, and to choose their food? Prescient, the tides or tempests to withstand, Build on the wave, or arch beneath the sand? Who made the spider parallels design, Sure as Demoivre, without rule or line? Who did the stork, Columbus-like, explore Heavens not his own, and worlds ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... plan of action, a plan vividly enough thrown off as she said: "You must stay on a few days, and you must immediately, both of you, meet him at dinner." In addition to which Maud claimed the merit of having by an instinct of pity, of prescient wisdom, done much, two nights before, to prepare that ground. "The poor child, when I was with her there while you were getting your shawl, quite gave herself ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... that human nature, when its original habits are cultivated and attended to, possesses, on similar occasions, something of that prescient foreboding, which announces the approaching tempest to the inferior ranks of creation. The cultivation of our intellectual powers goes perhaps too far, when it teaches us entirely to suppress and disregard ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... could not be expressed in a term more profound and complete than this same morphe doulou, Form of Bondservant, leaves us yet perfectly sure that He who chose to be Bondservant is to us only all the more, even in His Manhood, LORD. Was it not His own prescient choice to be true Man? And was it not His choice with a prescient and infallible regard to "the things of others," to "us men and our salvation"? Then we may be sure that, whatever is meant by the "made Himself void," heauton ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... farce-writer whose Wild Oats made a sensation at Covent Garden at the end of the eighteenth century. To her many brothers and sisters, Eileen was just the baby, and always remained so, even in the eyes of the eminent civil engineer who was only her senior by a year. Among the peasantry—subtly prescient of her freakish destinies—she was dubbed "a fairy child": which was by no means a compliment. A bad uncanny creature for all the colleen's winsome looks. The later London whispers of a royal origin had a travestied germ of truth in her father's legendary descent from Brian Boru. He himself ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... scarcely jarred with the thoughts of his mind. They had been altogether of war and rumors of war. Every hour that subtile consciousness of coming events, which makes whole communities at times prescient, was becoming stronger. "If the powers of the air have anything to do with the destinies of men," he muttered, "there must be unseen battalions around me. The air I am breathing is charged ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... of white-blackness. A hundred generations of divines have never been able to ree the riddle; a million will fail. The difficulty is insurmountable to the Theist whose Almighty is perforce Omniscient, and as Omniscient, Prescient. But it disappears when we convert the Person into Law, or a settled order of events; subject, moreover, to certain exceptions fixed and immutable, but at present unknown to man. The difference is essential as that between the penal code with its narrow forbiddal, and the broad ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... full second, while Fernack got darker and darker on the screen. When he judged that the color was right, he said quietly: "I'm prescient. And thanks a lot, John Henry; just send the reports to me personally, at Sixty-ninth Street. By messenger. ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... in practice nor in speculative questions were the English thinkers of the time prescient of any coming revolution. They denounced abuses, but they had regarded abuses as removable excrescences on a satisfactory system. They were content to appeal to common sense, and to leave philosophers to wrangle over ultimate results. They might be, and in fact were, stirring questions which would ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... quintessence of dust?" How now, your lordship? We have you on the hip! "Quintessence of dust" comes perilously near to evolution. Does not your lordship remember, too, Hamlet's pursuing the dust of Caesar to the ignominious bunghole? And have you never reflected how the prescient mind of Shakespeare created an entirely new and wonderful figure in literature, the half-human, half-bestial Caliban, with his god Setebos—a truly marvellous resuscitation of primitive man, that in our day has inspired Mr. Browning's "Caliban on Setebos," which ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... indignation of Victoria. "The House of Commons," she wrote, "is becoming very unmanageable and troublesome." The Prince, perceiving that Palmerston was more firmly fixed in the saddle than ever, decided that something drastic must be done. Five months before, the prescient Baron had drawn up, in case of emergency, a memorandum, which had been carefully docketed, and placed in a pigeon-hole ready to hand. The emergency had now arisen, and the memorandum must be used. ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... these sometimes exuberant expressions of a noble and far-seeing faith by your own predecessors and by a prescient foreigner have been revived in derision or even in doubt. Those were the days when, if some were for a party, at any rate all were for the State. These were great men, far-seeing, courageous, patriotic, the men of Forty-nine, who in such lofty spirit and with such high hope ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... breast debates This way and that, still doubtful to remain In fields Sicilian, mindless of the Fates, Or strive the shores of Italy to gain, Then aged Nautes, wisest of his train, Taught by Tritonian Pallas to unfold What wrathful gods or destinies ordain, In prescient utterance his response unrolled, And thus with cheerful words ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... commentators. Such a work as the "Athenae Oxonienses" involved in its pursuits some of the higher qualities of the intellect; a voluntary devotion of life, a sacrifice of personal enjoyments, a noble design combining many views, some present and some prescient, a clear vigorous spirit equally diffused over a vast surface. But it is the hard fate of authors of this class to be ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... dales dwells The prescient Dis, From Yggdrasil's Ash sunk down, Of alfen race, Idun by name, The youngest of Ivaldi's Elder children. She ill brooked Her descent Under the hoar tree's Trunk confined. She would not happy be With Norvi's daughter, Accustomed to ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... grace of the nervous shoulder, the great, intelligent, expectant eyes? Suddenly the roar of waves at the farther shore! Look at that head! strong and quiet no more; terror erects the quivering ears; the nostril sinks and contracts with fear; the eye glares and glances from side to side, mad with prescient instinct; the corded veins that twist forkedly from the lip upward swell to the utmost tension of the fine skin; that sweeping mane rises in rough undulations, the forelock is tossed back, the shoulder grows rigid with ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... the water; and in this way accompanied the boat with their bites. It is a thing not uncommonly happening to the whale-boats in those swarming seas; the sharks at times apparently following them in the same prescient way that vultures hover over the banners of marching regiments in the east. But these were the first sharks that had been observed by the Pequod since the White Whale had been first descried; and whether it was that Ahab's crew were all such tiger-yellow barbarians, and therefore their flesh more ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... for common companionship, too deep and tenacious in her moods, of a delicacy preternaturally lofty and far- reaching in its sensitiveness, was solitary, sad, thoughtful, yearning, prescient of an early death; yet, by the whole impression of her being, she gave birth, in those who lovingly looked on her, to the surmise that she was mysteriously self-sufficing and happy. Bettine writes to her, "I begin to believe thy feelings are enthroned ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... door he turned and glanced back, and the sight his eyes beheld was a goodly one for him to carry away with him into the world—a sight as old as the ages, as new as the hour, as prescient as the hours and ages to come. Just a man and a maid, sunshine and happiness, youth and love!—that, and the light of undying gratitude in the eyes they ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... from me is unnecessary; his book will speak for itself. {57} His peculiar style will justify a little more quotation than is just necessary to prove the point. Looking at the "battle of opinion" now in progress, we see that Mr. Smith was a prescient: ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... gloomy view of Gibbon and the exaggerated horrors, to take a conspicuous but not now important example, of Charles Kingsley's Roman and Teuton. He would represent it as a period of wealth and order, full of menace, warning and change, but no more prescient of utter disaster than our ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... and distant landscape of colossal pictures, in whose foreground stood figures soaring beyond the limits of their place, instinct with the spirit of the time in which the poet lived, yet lifted out of it and above it by the impulse of potent genius prescient of momentous truths that lay slumbering in the bosom ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... have been, she WAS no more Than what a prescient hope could make,— A dear presentiment of thee I loved but for ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... passed between the unchinked logs in a convulsive grasp upon them. Her figure was tall and slender, and expressive in its rigid constraint; it was an attitude of despair, of repulsion, of fear. It might have implied grief, or remorse, or anxiety. Often the eyes of the prescient victims of circumstantial evidence rested dubiously upon her. To the great majority of men, the presence of women in affairs of business is an intrusive evil of times out of joint. Now, since matters of life and liberty were in the balance, the primitive ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... the Bight of Tyee until sunset, when, a vague curiosity possessing him, he looked down to the Sawdust Pile and observed that the flag still flew from the cupola. The night shadows gathered, but still the flag did not come down; and presently round The Laird's grim mouth a little prescient smile appeared, with something ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... President Hadley on Friday; Saturday I went to New York; Sunday and Monday I spent at the Yale Club, writing; Tuesday, this telltale letter fell under the prescient eye of my brother. On that day he at once got in touch with me by telephone. We briefly discussed the situation. He did not intimate that he believed me to be in elation. He simply urged me not to attempt to interest anyone in my ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... and prescient Unknown, before whom the greatest of the Atlanteans prostrate themselves. That was in the Beginning, that is now and always will be. I conjure thee by the magic symbols of the club-foot, the hand with the fingers clenched, and the bat, in this ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... refrain from falling into a reverie upon his fortunes. It was wonderful, all wonderful, very, very wonderful. There seemed indeed, as Glastonbury affirmed, a providential dispensation in the whole transaction. The fall of his family, the heroic, and, as it now appeared, prescient firmness with which his father had clung, in all their deprivations, to his unproductive patrimony, his own education, the extinction of his mother's house, his very follies, once to him a cause of so much unhappiness, but which it now seemed were all ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... the royal crown. Prince Eugene said that the emperor's ministers, who had advised the grant, deserved to be hanged. But in fact they were not less prescient than he, for they warned Leopold that Prussia would deprive his family of the empire. The King of Prussia became the head of the Protestant interest in Germany. That prerogative had been forfeited by the Elector ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... shall find, piercing through every moment of the transient to the Eternal. What are the spaces and the labyrinthian dance of the worlds to the soul which is ever more profoundly absorbed, remembering, knowing, or in vision made prescient of its identity with the soul of the universe? And as the ages recede, the immanence of the Divine becomes more consciously, more pervadingly present. Earth deepens in mystery; premonitions of its destiny ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... trade with the Indians, all Spanish, French, Dutch, British, and American complications—everything, in fact, which helped to shape Canadian destinies—were inevitably connected with the sea; and, more often than not, were considered and settled mainly as a part of what those prescient pioneers of oversea dominion, the great Elizabethan statesmen, always used to ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... Ramayana, for instance, in the description of king Dasaratha, which likewise contains the above-mentioned traits of character—"In this city Ayodhya was a king named Dusharutha, descended from Ikshwaku, perfectly skilled in the Veda and Vedangas, prescient, of great ability, beloved by all his people, a great charioteer, constant in sacrifice, eminent in sacred duties, a royal sage, nearly equalling a Muhurshi, famed throughout the three worlds, mighty, triumphant over his enemies, observant of justice, having a perfect command of his ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... forehead, Hardly healed yet, you received here By your ardour in my service. He who ventures as a suitor For my daughter first must show me That he comes of noble lineage. Nature has set up strict barriers Round us all with prescient wisdom, To us all our sphere assigning, Wherein we the best may prosper. In the Holy Roman Empire Is each rank defined most clearly— Nobles, commoners, and peasants. If they keep within their circle, From themselves their race renewing, They'll remain ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... him with an inquiry which held a sort of prescient reserve. He could see that if not actually on guard, she held herself in ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... factories, no more chimneys belching forth smoke. This was the Earth, the real broad-bosomed Mother Earth. What he had left was the Hell upon Earth. What he was going to might be Paradise, but Paul's imagination rightly boggled at the conception of a Paradise more perfect. And, as Paul's prescient wit had conjectured, he was learning many things; the names of trees and wild flowers, the cries of birds, the habits of wayside beasts; what was good for a horse to eat and what was bad; which was the Waggon, and Orion's Belt and the Bunch of Keys in the heavens; how to fry bacon and sew up rents ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... afterwards a beautiful colt that had won the Derby was persistently backed for the City and Suburban Handicap. On paper it seemed as if the race might be regarded as over, for only the last year's Derby winner appeared to have a chance; but our prescient penciller cared nothing about paper. Once more he did not trouble himself about betting to figures; he must have laid his book five times over before the flag fell. Then the nincompoops who refused to attend to danger-signals saw that the beautiful colt which ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... of the individual, unaccommodated man: he knows all the value of the accumulations of ages; he is the very philosopher who has put forth all his wisdom to guard the state from the shock of those convulsions, that to his prescient eye, were threatening then to lay ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... poems, or any character or work, remains. The prescient poet projects himself centuries ahead, and judges performer or performance after the changes of time. Does it live through them? Does it still hold on untired? Will the same style, and the direction of genius to similar points, be satisfactory now? Have the marches of tens and hundreds and thousands ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... but feeling in a contentious mood, prolonged the discussion by leisurely loading and capping a revolver; but, prescient of my argument, Mr. Masthead avoided refutation by hastily adjourning the debate. I sent him a note that evening, filling-in a few of the details of the policy that I had before sketched in outline. Amongst other things I submitted that it would be better for us to exalt Mr. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... this worrying feeling. Did you go straight back from the theatre or take a drive?" He was amazed at her searching prescient questions; but ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... welcomed him without consulting the world. He was witness of Mr. Hepburn's presentation of a costly China vase, to repair the breach in her array of ornaments, and excuse a visit. Judging by the absence of any blow within, he saw not a sign of coquettry. Some such visit had been anticipated by the prescient woman, so there was no reddening. She brought about an exchange of sentences between him and her furious admirer, sparing either of them a glimpse of which was the sacrifice to the other, amusing them both. Dacier could allow Mr. Hepburn ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Wanderobo Dog, by some prescient instinct hardly to be expected in one brought up in a swamp, decided that little Ali and the monkey were to be his "companions of the march." So, when the tents were struck and Abdi, the head-man, shouted "Funga nizigo ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... identify the tiny yellow fragment adhering to the cock of the pistol. He picked up the wick and observed that one end was cut clean, but the other end was blackened and burnt. At that discovery there entered his mind the first prescient warning of the possibility of some deep plan in which the pistol and the wick played important parts. With his brain seeking for a solution of that possibility, he proceeded to examine the pieces ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... been. But, where thy native mountains bare Their foreheads to diviner air, Fit emblem of enduring fame, One lofty summit keeps thy name. For thee the cosmic forces did The rearing of that pyramid, The prescient ages shaping with Fire, flood, and frost thy monolith. Sunrise and sunset lay thereon With hands of light their benison, The stars of midnight pause to set Their jewels in its coronet. And evermore that mountain ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... To the house of the king The prescient two, Fenja and Menja. There must the mighty Maidens toil ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... any name which could remind him or myself of the faithless husband who knew not even of your existence; and by his desire I christened you Thaddeus Constantine, after himself, and his best beloved friend General Kosciusko. You have not yet seen that illustrious Polander; his prescient watchfulness for his country keeps him so constantly employed on the frontiers. He is now with the army at Winnica, whither you must soon go; and in him you may study one of the brightest models of patriotic and martial virtue ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... lay upon his couch at rest Among his officers, he seemed to be Prescient of his fate; for he addressed His friends in verses from an Elegy, And to this line a special accent gave: "The paths of glory ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... always knowing when falling weather was at hand and speaking his prophecy by stamping in his stall. He could hear Basil noisily making his way to the barn. As he walked through the garden toward the old family graveyard, he could still hear the boy, and a prescient tithe of the pain, that he felt would strike him in full some day, smote him so sharply now that he stopped a moment to listen, with one hand quickly raised to his forehead. Basil was whistling—whistling ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... with the sheen of the moon on her faultless features, he thought she looked the incarnation of some prescient Norn, fit for the well ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... up this piece of casual information, as careful housewives store seemingly worthless shreds and fragments for which their prescient minds anticipate a possible use some day. Before I left my old friend, she gave me the address of a respectable old-fashioned inn in the City, which, she said, my uncles used ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... of the son of Eylimi, the brother of Hiordis. He ruled over lands, and was of all men wisest and prescient of the future. Sigurd rode alone, and came to Gripir's dwelling. Sigurd was of a distinguished figure. He found a man to address outside the hall, whose name was Geitir. Sigurd ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... which the plantation forces were now practically confined, there arose occasional sounds of half-hysterical laughter, snatches of excited talk, now and then the quavering of a hymn. In the kennel yards a hound, prescient, raised his voice, and was joined by another, until the whole pack, stirred by some tense feeling in the air, lifted up in tremulous unison ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... what makes Milton's versification as unique as it is admirable, is the instinctive and yet prescient skill with which the pause is continuously varied so as to keep the whole metrical structure in movement. There are no dead lines. There are no jerks or stoppages. His movement may best be described by quoting ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... ancient monuments in cathedral churches. He hurried on his itinerant labours of taking draughts and transcribing inscriptions, as he says, "to preserve them for future and better times." Posterity owes to the prescient spirit of Dugdale the ancient Monuments of England, which bear the marks of the haste, as well as the zeal, which have ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... dreams. The first thought no regard should be given unto them; that their communication from the invisible to the visible world was a mere chimera, without any solid foundation. For, first, said he, if dreams were from the agency of any prescient being, the motives would be more direct, and the discoveries more plain, and not by allegories and emblematic fancies, expressing things imperfect and obscure. 2. Since, with the notice of evil, there was not a power given to avoid it, it is not likely to proceed from a ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... stand as the great Magna Charta, which, by the prescient wisdom of our fathers, dedicated in advance of the coming civilization the fertile and beautiful Northwest, with all its possibilities, for all time, to freedom, education, and ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... they cannot consciously have; the only natural intermediate link, therefore, between their conscious knowledge and their action is supplied by unconscious idea, which, however, is always accurately prescient, inasmuch as it contains something which is neither given directly to the animal through sensual perception, nor can be deduced inferentially through ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... king's-fisher, (not prescient of the storm, as by his instinct he ought to be,) appearing at that uncertain season before the rigs of old Michaelmas were yet well composed, and when the inclement storms of winter were approaching, began to flicker over the seas, and was busy in building ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... intelligence, and if they are limited to the exercise and experience of feeling only," and it must be remembered that Buffon has denied all these powers to the inferior animals, "whence comes that remarkable prescient instinct which so many of them exhibit? Is the mere power of feeling sensations sufficient to make them garner up food during the summer, on which food they may subsist in winter? Does not this involve the ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... if recoverable, should be given to the plaintiff. The governor, or as he put it, Caesar, for his share was to retain the property in Jerusalem and the other half of the rents. In this arrangement Caleb proved himself, as usual, prescient. Houses, as he explained afterwards, could be burned or pulled down, but beyond the crops on it, land no man could injure. Then, after the agreement had been duly signed and witnessed, he gave the names, bringing forward good testimony to prove ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... shut out from his rightful heritage, and the victim, if not of a conspiracy, of a cabal. His school playmates and close friends, Taine, Edmond About and Th. Gautier, might be on his side; perhaps, with reservations, Rossini and a few other eminent associates also. But the prescient, unerring verdict of the collective ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... madness, save him, restore his darkened mind to sanity. And thou, O sleep, subduer of ill, the spirit's repose, thou better part of human life, swift-winged child of Astraca, drowsy brother of cruel death, mixing false with true, prescient of what shall be, yet oftener prescient of sorrow, peace mid our wanderings, haven of man's life, day's respite, night's companion, that comest impartially to king and slave, thou that makest trembling mankind to gain a foretaste of the long night of death; do thou bring gentle ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... interested him. With all the impulse of her sanguine temperament, she had already accustomed herself to look upon the long-dreaded yacht as a toy, and rather an amusing one, and was daily more convinced of the prescient shrewdness of her cousin, ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... bent knees; his right hand he leant upon a great sapling; upon his head was a very wide hat, the stuff of which I could not see in the darkness. Now and again he would turn and beckon me, and he always went on a little way before. As for me, partly because he beckoned, but more because I felt prescient of ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... good genius, or by what prescient timidity, it may be difficult to discover, he was true to the British interest, and remained obstinately deaf to the seductive animosity of the Sikh council, which was prone to take advantage of the disasters in Caubul, and to attack the avenging army of Sir ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... foreknow, forejudge, forecast; presurmise^; have an eye to the future, have an eye to the main chance; respicere finem [Lat.]; keep a sharp lookout &c (vigilance) 459; forewarn &c 668. Adj. foreseeing &c v.; prescient; farseeing, farsighted; sagacious &c (intelligent) 498; weatherwise^; provident &c (prepared) 673; prospective &c 507. Adv. against the time when. Phr. cernit omnia Deus vindex [Lat.]; mihi cura futuri [Lat.]; run it up the flagpole and ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... assailed our Spanish comrades' ships; Several ran foul of neighbours; whose new hurts, Being added to their innate clumsiness, Gave hap the upper hand; and in quick course Demoralized the whole; until Villeneuve, Judging that Calder now with Nelson rode, And prescient of unparalleled disaster If he pushed on in so disjoint a trim, Bowed to the inevitable; and thus, perforce, Leaving to other opportunity Brest and the Channel scheme, with vast ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... waking were voluntary, I should probably say that it was for the pleasure of listening to the crowing of the cocks at that silent hour when the night, so near its end, is darkest, and the mysterious tide of life, prescient of coming dawn, has already turned, and is sending the red current more and more swiftly through the sleeper's veins. I have spent many a night in the desert, and when waking on the wide silent grassy plain, the first ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... fortune in our city. The children from these three homes naturally became playmates. Mr. Motley's house was a very hospitable one, and Lothrop and two of his young companions were allowed to carry out their schemes of amusement in the garden and the garret. If one with a prescient glance could have looked into that garret on some Saturday afternoon while our century was not far advanced in its second score of years, he might have found three boys in cloaks and doublets and plumed hats, heroes and bandits, enacting more or less impromptu melodramas. In one of the boys ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... coming mirth lit up each glance, And, prescient of the ball, her eyes Already had begun to dance: For brighter sun than that which now Sparkled o'er London's spires and towers, Had never bent from heaven his brow To kiss Firenze's City ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... food from heaven; and while Wordsworth's relatives were getting impatient at what they considered his waste of time, while one thought he had gifts enough to make a good parson, and another lamented the rare attorney that was lost in him, the prescient muse guided the hand of Raisley Calvert while he wrote the poet's name in his will for a legacy of L900. By the death of Calvert, in 1795, this timely help came to Wordsworth at the turning-point of his life, and made it honest ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... yet Locke spoke of "atheism being a crime, which, for its madness as well as guilt, ought to shut a man out of all sober and civil society." Here again, what a stride does the Liberty make? It is, once more, the difference of the times, rather than of the men. The same noble and prescient insight into the springs of national greatness and social progress characterizes the work of both men, but in what different measures? Again, we must say, the disciple is greater than the master. Closely bearing on this topic ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... into another's soul we may enter Paradise. There is an indescribable grace in the air this first day of prescient autumn. The summer has taught me the secret of loneliness and the infinite way of satisfying its desire. To be alone with God we must be intimate with the beauty in the eyes of every face, and yet absolutely ...
— The Forgotten Threshold • Arthur Middleton
... Shine on our upturned faces like the light Of the soft summer moon. And then she stooped; And when she kissed us, I could see the tears Brimming her eyes. O sweet experiment! To try if love of Jesus and of me Could make our kisses equal to her lips! Then straight my prescient heart set up a song, And fluttered in my ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... quiet work bore fruit. He invented a safety-lamp which alone should have entitled him to the gratitude of posterity. He then set himself to improve the locomotive, and fit it for the future which his prescient mind discerned, and on a fair field he vanquished all competitors. He then sought to adapt the roadway to the engine and make it fit for its new work. And then, hardest task of all, he had to convince the public that railway travelling was ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... the end we were satisfied that it was a well-built town with regular blocks in the modern quarter, and not without the charm of picturesqueness which comes of narrow and crooked lanes in the older parts. Prescient of the incalculable riches before us, we did not ask much of it, and we got all we asked. I should be grateful to San Sebastian, if for nothing else than the two very Spanish experiences I had there. One concerned a letter ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... To lie in darkness on the dewy height, Embracing heaven and earth in rapture high, The soul dilating to a deity; With prescient yearnings pierce the core of earth, Feel in your labouring breast the six-days' birth, Enjoy, in proud delight what no one knows, While your love-rapture o'er creation flows,— The earthly lost in beatific vision, And then the lofty intuition—. ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... after Saturday night the future would be in his hands. His! . . . Her secret? Not that she had had lovers, for he had accepted that fact already, and for him the past had ceased to exist. Her husband was dead. Nothing else mattered. Nevertheless, the vague prescient chill he had experienced the night he first met her eyes, and once or twice since, accompanied as it was by a curious sense that just below his consciousness lay the key to the mystery, rattling now and again, but sinking deeper every time he made a dart at it, had defied ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... perhaps, be often rewarded for some little deed by the pleased surprise with which she will say, "How did you know I wanted it done?" You need not tell her how you knew, but you may be sure she will appreciate you all the more for your prescient thoughtfulness. Her pillows may be flat and hot, her hair uncomfortable, her under sheet wrinkled or untucked from the bottom; all these and a dozen more little things can be arranged so easily, and they conduce so much to the sick one's comfort when done, ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... prescient and prudent, threw in his lot with the Medici, and was chosen by Piero, not only as his own chief counsellor and intimate friend, but as the principal adviser of his two young sons—Lorenzo and Giuliano. He had, moreover, allied himself to the Medici by his marriage ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... pastor now can lend His whole attention to his latter end, Remarking with a martyr's prescient thrill The Hemp maturing on the cheerless Hill. The holy brethren, lifting pious palms, Pour out their gratitude in prayer and psalms, Chant De Profundis, meaning "out of debt," And dance like mad—or ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... since the war had begun. Lee's hours of triumph had yet to come. The South was aware that he was sage in council; he had yet to prove his mettle in the field. But there was at least one Virginia soldier who knew his worth. With the prescient sympathy of a kindred spirit Jackson had divined his daring and his genius, and although he held always to his own opinions, he had no will but that of his great commander. With how absolute a trust his devotion was repaid ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... very touching in most that we know of the poor young King of Rome, from his childish but strangely prescient resistance to his removal from Paris to Blois on the approach of the Allies in 1814, to the message of remembrance sent in after years to the column of the Place Vendome, "his ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... have taken possession of the palace. Hands black, white and brown—more than we could count, are busy there and of all the hundreds of workmen which are astir there, not one got in the way of another, for one little man orders and manages them all, just as the prescient wisdom of the gods guides the stars through the 'gracious and merciful night' so that they may never push or run ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... first president of the company authorized by the legislation which he had suggested previously to Governor Harrison. It is well known that the same views entertained by Washington and Jefferson were held and advocated by Mr. Madison, long before the most prescient statesman could descry the faintest image of that colossal empire of population, wealth and rapid development now ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... Bytown's history, and 'tis said, Though hard to drive, thou may'st be led, That is, if one could just agree In view and argument with thee; When standing in the days of yore At "Pooley's Bridge," thine eye ran o'er The picture with a prescient glance; Experience taught thee that thy chance Was then—thy foresight came To aid thee in life's winning game. Although no silver spoon was in Thy mouth, when to this world of sin Thou camest, thou hast forged from fate A path in life most fortunate; To praise thee I shall take no pains, Thy ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... only need be said that he used the latter without offence, yet so as to increase the ascendency over those with whom he held intercourse; for, though gentle, he was ambitious, valiant, and conscious of his fitness for great exploits. And he, like Freer, was prescient of and predicted his own fall, but with no abatement of courage, for when he received the mortal wound, a most painful one, he would not suffer himself to be moved, and remained to watch the battle, making observations upon its changes until death came. It was thus, at the age ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... cares oppress'd, And chilling horrors freeze in every breast, Till big with knowledge of approaching woes, The prince of augurs, Halitherses, rose: Prescient he view'd the aerial tracks, and drew A sure presage from ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... dingy-looking building," on the north side of the churchyard, was performed the unjust ceremony of degrading Samuel Johnson, the chaplain to William Lord Russell, the martyr of the party of liberty. The divines present, in compassion, and with a prescient eye for the future, purposely omitted to strip off his cassock, which rendered the ceremony imperfect, and afterwards saved the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Father-of-your-Country look, I pay you my respects; you are a light Of leading, as I see you now. Your soul Was never shaken by convulsive doubts Of life or man or liberty; you built Unsceptical of bricks, but such as lay To hand you took, nor did your purpose shake At prescient thought of how your edifice Might be turned pest-house some day. Undismayed By doubt, you rose, and in heroic mould Led—dauntless, patient, incorruptible— A riot over taxes. Not a star In all the vaults of heaven could trouble you With whisperings of more transcendent ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... Promise of the Great All-wise Was present to their prescient eyes, A Vision beckoning from afar, The Christ Child ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... the prescient conjecture of the philosopher. Such is the licentiousness of our press, that some, not perhaps the most hostile to the cause of freedom, would not be averse to manacle authors once more with an IMPRIMATUR. It will not be denied that Erasmus was a friend ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... could think, save only God on high Prescient of all which is to be below, That, from land, beneath such distant sky, Such mighty host would come, to work us woe? 'Twixt shifting sands, which restless whirlwinds blow: Yet they their camp have round Biserta placed, And laid the ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto |
