Foretelling Quotes

He does love prophesying a misfortune, does the average British ghost. Send him out to prognosticate trouble to somebody, and he is happy. Let him force his way into a peaceful home, and turn the whole house upside down by foretelling a funeral, or predicting a bankruptcy, or hinting at a coming disgrace, or some other terrible disaster, about which nobody in their senses would want to know sooner than they could possible help, and the prior knowledge of which can serve no useful purpose whatsoever, and he feels that he is combining duty with pleasure. He would never forgive himself if anybody in his family had a trouble and he had not been there for a couple of months beforehand, doing silly tricks on the lawn or balancing himself on somebody's bedrail.

("Introduction" to TOLD AFTER SUPPER) ~ Jerome K. Jerome

And then, suddenly, we broke free from the trees. The rolling plain beyond was almost overwhelming in its openness, especially lit by a brilliant, almost awful sunset, the sky never redder, every cloud seemingly blazing from within, suffused with fire and vengeance, roiling, churning, nothing but fury in every direction. Some poets spoke of red sunsets as things of sublime beauty, prefacing good fortune or romance, but they always seemed to be foretelling some bloodletting, murder, or tragedy writ large for all the world to see, and never more so than now. ~ Jeff Salyards

You can't prevent what you can't predict. ~ K.M. Mac Aulay

She looked at Word. "You asked about X-it. He's sleeping. There are no intruders in his consciousness. I've done a sweep. Several installations, their A-I and Super-Recognizers have all been rendered inoperable, but others will quickly pick up the slack. Some will malfunction. All are on high alert. They know contact has been made, that you are still alive, and a global search has begun. No A-I or human Super-Recognizer can penetrate the room that you were in and in which X-it is now sleeping. But he cannot come out of the room until we are ready to return to the second in time when Death saved you. ~ Denny Taylor

Quite the narration in your head, even for a moment, and see for yourself that life is life, and not one minute of it is a retelling or a foretelling. Some things happen; some things don't. That's what makes it all worth seeing, no matter where it goes or how it ends. There is no spinmeister steering it all to a forgone conclusion. ~ Karen Maezen Miller

Then the creatures of the high air answered to the battle, foretelling the destruction that would be done that day; and the sea chattered of the losses, and the waves gave heavy shouts keening them, and the water-beasts roared to one another, and the rough hills creaked with the danger of the battle, and the woods trembled mourning the heroes, and the grey stones cried out at their deeds, and the wind sobbed telling them, and the earth shook, foretelling the slaughter; and the cries of the grey armies put a cloak over the sun, and the clouds were dark; and the hounds and the whelps and the crows, and the witches of the valley, and the powers of the air, and the wolves of the forests, howled from every quarter and on every side of the armies, urging them against one another. ~ Lady Augusta Gregory

You're asking me to look into the future and give you guarantees. Magic isn't a recipe for baking cake. ~ Martina Boone

All Pretences of foretelling by Astrology, are Deceits; for this manifest Reason, because the Wise and Learned, who can only judge whether there be any Truth in this Science, do all unanimously agree to laugh at and despise it; and none but the poor ignorant Vulgar give it any Credit. ~ Jonathan Swift

When the waiter brought the cheese-board, there was a large carrot carved in the shape of a mermaid sitting between the Dolcelatte and the Pecorino. Teo could have sworn that the carrot-mermaid flexed her tail and plunged her little hand inside a smelly Gorgonzola. 'Tyromancy, ye know,' remarked the mermaid. 'The Ancient Art of Divination by Cheese.' Then she pulled her tiny hand out and inspected the green cheese-mold on her tiny fingers. 'Lackaday!' she moaned. 'Stinking! It goes poorly for Venice and Teodora, it do! ~ Michelle Lovric

By 1950, he had come to view the pedestrian as a threshold or indicator species capable of foretelling things to come - if the rights of the pedestrian were threatened, it would be an early indicator that broader freedoms of thought and action were also at risk. ~ Jonathan Eller

A blight had fallen on the trees and shrubs; and the wind, at length beginning to break the unnatural stillness that had prevailed all day, sighed heavily from time to time, as though foretelling in grief the ravages of the coming storm. The bat skimmed in fantastic flights through the heavy air, and the ground was alive with crawling things, whose instinct brought them forth to swell and fatten in the rain. ~ Charles Dickens

And if Sarah Palin whose Web site put and today scrubbed bull's-eyes targets on 20 Representatives, including Gabby Giffords, does not repudiate her own part - however tangential - in amplifying violence and violent imagery in American politics, she must be dismissed from politics. She must be repudiated by the members of her own party. And if they fail to do so, each one of them must be judged to have silently defended this tactic that today proved so awfully foretelling. And they must in turn be dismissed by the responsible members of their own party. ~ Keith Olbermann

Anyone,' Ayallac'h wiped his hands on a rag, 'can foretell the future. And everyone does it, for it is simple. It is no great art to foretell it. The art is in foretelling it accurately.' 'An ~ Andrzej Sapkowski

If psychics are real, it implies that the universe is far vaster and stranger than conventional perception would state. If psychics can talk to the dead, that removes the sting of mortality and loss. It also suggests there is predestination, a way to cheat the vagaries of Fate with foreknowledge. The cost for believing in them is tiny indeed compared to that. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

us - I looked at that beautiful snow-capped mountain and named it Eliza. Because it was warm, fertile, and beautiful below, while being a bit frosty and inaccessible at the top - yet possessing a volcanick profile foretelling explosions - ~ Neal Stephenson

We tend to think of prophets as those who foretold the future when in fact, the vast majority of Old Testament prophecy is forth telling, not foretelling. The prophets were covenant enforcers; they reminded the people of what God had said and done in the past, most often referencing what we know today as the book of Deuteronomy, and they were straightforward in their presentation of truth. No white washing, no meandering about the truth; most of the time, their prophecy was simple, unvarnished truth about the people's actions and hearts. ~ William C. Attaway

The words Lafayette used to describe that triumph - "I did not hesitate to be disagreeable to preserve my independence" - applied to getting his way regarding America as well. Perhaps the most emblematic anecdote foretelling Lafayette's stubborn refusal to give up his American dream was the boyhood story about how one day, one of his Parisian schoolteachers was talking up the virtues of an obedient horse. According to Lafayette, "I described the perfect horse as one which, at the sight of the whip, had the sense to throw his rider to the ground before he could be whipped. ~ Sarah Vowell

After centuries of silence, someone or something was lying outside on the stone step . . .

"Are you deaf?" Death asked arriving abruptly with screams and cries and a fetid smell of rotting matter filling the room.

"Why are you here?" the Old Crone asked, knowing the answer before she asked the question. "Go away."

"When someone knocks you're supposed to open the door!" Death said, coughing as though she had swallowed a lot of water.

"What are you doing here?" the Old Crone asked again "and why are you amorphous? Show yourself! I don't like it when you look like nothing at all."

"Open the door!" Death rasped, appearing as a drowned cat coughing up minnows and river detritus. "Our future depends upon it! ~ Denny Taylor

By not foretelling the ending to yourself, as a writer, you're able to open up the canvas and say, "I'm going to go here. I'm going to go there." It's just a little bit more freeing than a stand-alone procedural, where you work backwards from the end. ~ Veena Sud

Let no one bewail his poverty,
For the universal Kingdom has been revealed.
Let no one weep for his iniquities,
For pardon has shown forth from the grave.
Let no one fear death,
For the Saviour's death has set us free.
He that was held prisoner of it has annihilated it.

By descending into Hell, He made Hell captive.
He embittered it when it tasted of His flesh.
And Isaiah, foretelling this, did cry:
Hell, said he, was embittered
When it encountered Thee in the lower regions.

It was embittered, for it was abolished.
It was embittered, for it was mocked.
It was embittered, for it was slain.
It was embittered, for it was overthrown.
It was embittered, for it was fettered in chains.
It took a body, and met God face to face.
It took earth, and encountered Heaven.
It took that which was seen, and fell upon the unseen.

O Death, where is thy sting?
O Hell, where is thy victory? ~ John Chrysostom