Precedes Quotes

All prayer is responding to God. In all cases God is the initiator - "hearing" always precedes asking. God comes to us first or we would never reach out to him.92 Yet all prayers are not alike or equally effective in relating to God. The clearer our understanding of who God is, the better our prayers. Instinctive prayer is like an emergency flare in reaction to a general sense of God's reality. Prayer as a spiritual gift is a genuine, personal conversation in reply to God's specific, verbal revelation. ~ Timothy J. Keller

Genius is the very eye of intellect and the wing of thought; it is always in advance of its time, and is the pioneer for the generation which it precedes. ~ William Gilmore Simms

The strength of a love is always misjudged if we evaluate it by its immediate cause and not the stress that went before it, the dark and hollow space full of disappointment and loneliness that precedes all the great events in the heart's history. ~ Stefan Zweig

Fair are the flowers and the children, but their subtle suggestion is fairer;
Rarer is the roseburst of dawn, but the secret that clasps it rarer;
Sweet the exultance of song, but the strain that precedes it is sweeter
And never was poem yet writ, but the meaning outmastered the meter. ~ Richard Realf

Above the titles of wife and mother, which, although dear, are transitory and accidental, there is the title human being, which precedes and out-ranks every other. ~ Mary Livermore

The announcement that you are going to tell a good story (and the chuckle that precedes it) is always a dangerous opening. ~ Margot Asquith

Some people want everything to be perfect before they're willing to commit ... But commitment always precedes achievement. ~ John C. Maxwell

Belief sometimes precedes understanding; faith sometimes precedes scientific evidence. ~ Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

In every art the desire to practice it precedes both the full ability to do so and the possession of something worthwhile to express by its means. ~ Phyllis Bentley

Small crimes always precedes great ones. ~ Jean Racine

The aim of all life is death. Life is the apprenticeship that we serve preparing for death. Life is the fleeting spark of divinity that precedes a deathless eternity. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Remember, young men, that purity precedes power. The Lord said, 'But purify your hearts before me; and then go ye into all the world, and preach my gospel unto every creature who has not received it' (D&C 112:28). Missionaries discover this very early in their missions and make every effort to be worthy so they can serve with power. ~ M. Russell Ballard

The arts have a development which comes not only from the individual but also from a whole acquired force, the civilization which precedes us. One cannot do just anything. A talented artist cannot do whatever he pleases. If he only used his gifts, he would not exist. We are not the masters of what we produce. It is imposed on us. ~ Henri Matisse

I'm not usually this emotional," I say. He shrugs. "All women say that. It usually precedes an episode of batshit craziness. ~ Tammy Falkner

Within this process, every individual act of building is a process in which space gets differentiated. It is not a process of addition, in which preformed parts are combined to create a whole, but a process of unfolding, like the evolution of an embryo, in which the whole precedes the parts, and actually gives birth to them, by splitting. ~ Christopher W. Alexander

It was curious how that predestined horror moved in and out of one's consciousness. There it lay, fixed in future times, preceding death as surely as 99 precedes 100. One could not avoid it, but one could perhaps postpone it: and yet instead, every now and again, by a conscious, wilful act, one chose to shorten the interval before it happened. ~ George Orwell

A famous name has this peculiarity that it becomes gradually smaller especially in natural sciences where each succeeding discovery invariably overshadows what precedes. ~ Jacobus Henricus Van 't Hoff

It is concern that precedes and inspires agendas, and survives when agendas fail, and it causes us to try again, always trying our best, never certain about our own judgment. It is knowing that God's purpose exceeds whatever we can put in an agenda. ~ John C. Danforth

Things have ends (or scopes) and beginnings. To/ know what precedes and what follows will assist yr/ comprehension of process. ~ Ezra Pound

For Scotus, as for Bonaventure, the Trinity is the absolute beginning point - and ending point too. Outpouring Love is the inherent shape of the universe, and when we love, only then do we fully exist in this universe. We do not need to "understand" what is happening, or who God is, before we can live in love. The will to love precedes any need to fully understand what we are doing, the Franciscan School would say. ~ Richard Rohr

Eucharisteo - thanksgiving - always precedes the miracle. ~ Ann Voskamp

All things are created twice. All things. Vision is the first creation. For a house it's called the blueprint. For a life it's called a mission. For a day it's called a goal and a plan. For a parent it's called a belief in the unseen potential of a child. For all, it is the mental creation which always precedes the physical, or second, creation. ~ Stephen Covey

Your choices of values and determining their priority precedes your goal setting ~ Sunday Adelaja

As is well known the principle of virtual velocities transforms all statics into a mathematical assignment, and by D'Alembert's principle for dynamics, the latter is again reduced to statics. Although it is is very much in order that in gradual training of science and in the instruction of the individual the easier precedes the more difficult, the simple precedes the more complicated, the special precedes the general, yet the min, once it has arrived at the higher standpoint, demands the reverse process whereby all statics appears only as a very special case of mechanics. ~ Carl Friedrich Gauss

This passage, in fact, makes strikingly clear that both at the level of ontogenesis (the development of the child) and phylogenesis (the development of the human species) mimesis, for Nietzsche, precedes language and allows communication to take place. ~ Nidesh Lawtoo

I live, like you, in a century in which reason submits only to fact and to evidence. My name, like yours, is TRUTH-SEEKER. My mission is written in these words of the law: Speak without hatred and without fear; tell that which thou knowest! The work of our race is to build the temple of science, and this science includes man and Nature. Now, truth reveals itself to all; to-day to Newton and Pascal, tomorrow to the herdsman in the valley and the journeyman in the shop. Each one contributes his stone to the edifice; and, his task accomplished, disappears. Eternity precedes us, eternity follows us: between two infinites, of what account is one poor mortal that the century should inquire about him? ~ Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

There is a helplessness in poverty that precedes the move of God in our lives because we understand an aspect of grace that so many miss: we do nothing to earn it. When we understand this, all becomes grace. ~ Alia Joy

What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world-and defines himself afterward. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Working together precedes winning together ... collaboration is multiplication. ~ John C. Maxwell

Death is the chillness that precedes the dawn; We shudder for a moment, then awake In the broad sunshine of the other life. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

But, this dark place is not the end. Remember that the darkness of night precedes the dawn. And as long as your heart still beats, this is not the death of it. You don't have to die here. Sometimes, the ocean floor is only a stop on the journey. And it is when you are at this lowest point, that you are faced with a choice. You can stay there at the bottom, until you drown. Or you can gather pearls and rise back up - stronger from the swim, and richer from the jewels. ~ Yasmin Mogahed

Some say that to struggle in life is the point of it all. Wisdom says that it is not in the struggling that life's creative process precedes, but in the deep knowing that your victory is already won. ~ Denis John George

During the process that precedes the decision, no mention is made of what the answer might be. This is done so that people will not be forced to take sides; once they have taken sides, a decision would be a victory for one side and a defeat for the other. Thus the whole process is focused on finding out what the decision is really about, not what the decision should be. Its result is a meeting of the minds that there is (or is not) a need for a change in behavior. ~ Peter F. Drucker

Brittany Ellis," Mrs. Peterson says, pointing to the table behind Colin. I unenthusiastically sit on the stool at my assigned place.
"Alejandro Fuentes," Mrs. Peterson says, pointing to the stool next to me.
Oh my God. Alex . . . my chemistry partner? For my entire senior year! No way, no how, SO not okay. I give Colin a "help me" look as I try to avoid a panic attack. I definitely should have stayed at home. In bed. Under the covers. Forget not being intimidated.
"Call me Alex."
Mrs. Peterson looks up from her class list and regards Alex above the glasses on her nose. ' Alex Fuentes," she says, before changing his name on her list. "Mr. Fuentes, take off that bandanna. I have a zero tolerance policy in my class. No gang-related accessories are allowed to enter this room. Unfortunately, Alex, your reputation precedes you. Dr. Aguirre backs my zero tolerance policy one hundred percent ... do I make myself clear?"
Alex stares her down before sliding the bandanna off his head, exposing raven hair that matches his eyes.
"It's to cover up the lice," Colin mutters to Darlene, but I hear him and Alex does, too.
"Vete a la verga," Alex says to Colin, his hard eyes blazing. "Collate el hocico."
"Whatever, dude," Colin says, then turns around. "He can't even speak English."
"That's enough, Colin. Alex, sit down." Mrs. Peterson eyes the rest of the class. "That goes for the rest of you, as well. I can't control what you do outside of ~ Simone Elkeles

What, on the eternal list of priorities, precedes health? What more obvious role could government have than the defense of the life, of each citizen? We cannot stop every germ that seeks to harm us any more than we can stop every person who seeks to harm us. But we can try dammit and government's essential role in that effort facilitate it, reduce its cost, broaden its availability, improve my health and yours, seems, ultimately, self-explanatory. ~ Keith Olbermann

Unlike Virgil, Homer is no part of the classical age, has no truck with judicious distinction or the calm management of life and society. He precedes that order, is a preclassic, immoderate, uncompromising, never sacrificing truth for grace. ~ Adam Nicolson

The vision always precedes the realization ~ Lilian Whiting

Thought precedes actions. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Being precedes Truth, and ... Truth precedes the Good. ~ Josef Pieper

The wish precedes the event, the will accompanies it. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

Niren had not seen her properly before. She had very lovely eyes. He had not before seen such a beautiful expression in any one's eyes, except perhaps those of her brother Opu. They were big and sleepy. They had the same drowsy quality which was hidden in the deep fresh greenness of the mango and bokul trees that lined the paths in the village. The dawn that would quicken them had not yet come; and the heavy sleep that precedes waking still brooded over them. Yes, it was dawn they made him think of; dawn, when sleeping eyes first open, dawn when maidens walk down to the river's edge, and every window gives forth the odour of incense; dawn, that cool ambrosial hour when the waters of awakening flow cool and fresh through house after house. ~ Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay

It is our expression that the flux between that which isn't and that which won't be, or the state that is commonly and absurdly called "existence," is a rhythm of heavens and hells: that the damned won't stay damned; that salvation only precedes perdition. The inference is that some day our accursed tatterdemalions will be sleek angels. Then the sub-inference is that some later day, back they'll go whence they came. ~ Charles Fort

Consider a world in which cause and effect are erratic. Sometimes the first precedes the second, and sometimes the second the first. Or perhaps cause lies forever in the past effect in the future, but future and past are intertwined. ~ Alan Lightman

Feeling in the young precedes philosophy, and often acts with a more certain aim. ~ William Carleton

Thought precedes action, action does not always precede thought. ~ Douglas Horton

For the earliest period of the history of Israel, all that precedes the building of the temple, not a trace can be found of any sanctuary of exclusive legitimacy. ~ Julius Wellhausen

When an object or purpose is clearly held in thought, its precipitation, in tangible and visible form, is merely a question of time. The vision always precedes, and itself determines the realization. ~ Lilian Whiting

They live with the belief that anything is acceptable if you can get away with it, that self-gratification is the most important aspect of existence, and that power comes only to she or he who is strong enough and cunning enough to snatch it from the failing hands of those who no longer deserve it. Compassion has no place in Menzoberranzan, and yet it is compassion, not fear, that brings harmony to most races. It is harmony, working toward shared goals, that precedes greatness. ~ R.A. Salvatore

One can take eternity and time to be predicates of God since, being the Ancient of Days, He is the cause of all time and eternity. Yet He is before time and beyond time and is the source of the variety of time and of the seasons. Or again, He precedes the eternal ages, for He is there before eternity and above eternity, and 'His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom' (Ps. 145:13). Amen. ~ Pope Dionysius

God's care precedes his commands. ~ Bryan Chapell

The step of obedience always precedes revelation. That pattern is evident all through the Scripture. ~ Chuck Missler

The chief lesson to be learnt from it is the futility of all argumentation that precedes understanding. We cannot profitably attack any opinion until we have discovered what it expresses as well as what it states. ~ Ivor A. Richards

Revival precedes evangelism. The church must first repent. This is the blind spot in our eye today. ~ Vance Havner

Memory cannot be understood, either, without a mathematical approach. The fundamental given is the ratio between the amount of time in the lived life and the amount of time from that life that is stored in memory. No one has ever tried to calculate this ratio, and in fact there exists no technique for doing so; yet without much risk of error I could assume that the memory retains no more than a millionth, a hundred-millionth, in short an utterly infinitesimal bit of the lived life. That fact too is part of the essence of man. If someone could retain in his memory everything he had experienced, if he could at any time call up any fragment of his past, he would be nothing like human beings: neither his loves nor his friendships nor his angers nor his capacity to forgive or avenge would resemble ours.

We will never cease our critique of those persons who distort the past, rewrite it, falsify it, who exaggerate the importance of one event and fail to mention some other; such a critique is proper (it cannot fail to be), but it doesn't count for much unless a more basic critique precedes it: a critique of human memory as such. For after all, what can memory actually do, the poor thing? It is only capable of retaining a paltry little scrap of the past, and no one knows why just this scrap and not some other one, since in each of us the choice occurs mysteriously, outside our will or our interests. We won't understand a thing about human life if we persist in avoiding the ~ Milan Kundera

The culture precedes positive results. It doesn't get tacked on as an afterthought on your way to the victory stand. Champions behave like champions before they're champions: they have a winning standard of performance before they are winners. ~ Bill Walsh

Read the Declaration of Independence to your children as a tradition every Fourth of July. Make sure they understand why the word "pursuit" precedes the word "happiness." ~ Jeff Bezos

Mind precedes all phenomena, mind matters most, everything is mind-made. If with an impure mind, you speak or act, then suffering follows you as the cartwheel follows the foot of the draft animal. If with a pure mind, you speak or act, then happiness follows you as a shadow that never departs ~ Gautama Buddha

Labor is superior to capital and precedes capital. Without labor, there is no capital. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Every thought precedes an action. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The drowsiness which often accompanies or precedes a severe common migraine is occasionally abstracted as a symptom in its own right, and may then constitute the sole expression of the migrainous tendency. The ~ Oliver Sacks

Light precedes every transition. Whether at the end of a tunnel, through a crack in the door or the flash of an idea, it is always there, heralding a new beginning. ~ Teresa Tsalaky

When a heavy weight presses the soul to the lowest level at which endurance is possible, there is an instant and desperate effort of every physical and moral nerve to throw off the weight; and hence the heaviest anguish often precedes a return tide of joy and courage. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

But what I really am interested in is not the end of the world but everything which precedes it. ~ Terence McKenna

Adversity precedes spiritual rebirth. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

It is impossible to believe anything into existence. The Gospel did not come into being because men believed it ... The fact always precedes the faith. ~ Billy Graham

For thirty minutes I sat back and felt the glimmer of pride that historically precedes the most catastrophic falls. ~ Antony John

If failure has the strength to turn your life into bitterness itself, then patience has the strength to turn your life into the sweetest joy. Do not surrender to fate after a single failure. Failure, at most, precedes success. ~ Sri Chinmoy

So what, simply put, is the Third Covenant? It is the recalibration, the reawakening of that which is truly human, truly holy. It is truly catholic, kata-holos (Greek "according to the whole"), truly universal, sacred, and unitive. It is made manifest by a unitive noosphere, one that embraces the Monosacred present in all Abrahamic, Indigenous, Chinese, Indian, and any and all other cultures. It embraces the whole biosphere, the whole planet, solar system, galaxy, and universe. It both precedes and succeeds space and time. ~ Albert J. LaChance

Plume"

Transfixed to the, by the, on the congruities, who is herself a vanishing point coming to closure - dusky flutter - trilling away like a watchdog on drugged sop, channeling her mother and grandmother who've engraved on her locket phrases in script: "glide on a blade" and "rustling precedes the shuck." This is not my teeming fate, my rind, my roiling ellipsis or valedictory spray of myrrh. Always it's morning, afternoon or evening - the loot of hours - a magic sack grasping vacuum but heavy in the hand, and from which, together, we pull a swarm of telepathic bees, melons beached in a green bin, a lithograph of the city from its crumbling ramparts, crackled pitchers and the mouth of a cave. Perhaps this is my open weave, my phantom rialto or plume of light. We bow to each other in the mash of flickering things. We are completely surrounded. ~ Aaron Shurin

Behavior precedes belief - that is, most people must engage in a behavior before they accept that it is beneficial; then they see the results, and then they believe that it is the right thing to do ... implementation precedes buy-in; it does not follow it. ~ Douglas B. Reeves

Action often precedes the feeling. ~ Zig Ziglar

Nothing drives progress like the imagination. The idea precedes the deed. The only exceptions are accidents and natural selection. ~ Theodore Levitt

Shortcut.' The word filled me with dread. When has a shortcut ever worked out as planned? The word – in a horror film at least – usually precedes disembowelment and death. A 'shortcut' almost never leads to good times. ~ Anthony Bourdain

There is no harm in patience, and no profit in lamentation. Death is easier to bear (than) that which precedes it, and more severe than that which comes after it. Remember the death of the Apostle of God, and your sorrow will be lessened. ~ Abu Bakr

It is as if I have entered what the Tibetans call the Bardo-literally, between-two-existences- a dreamlike hallucination that precedes reincarnation, not necessarily in human form ... In case I should need them, instructions for passage through the Bardo are contained in the Tibetan book of the dead- a guide for the living since it teaches that a man's last thoughts will determine the quality of his reincarnation. ~ Peter Matthiessen

The world of finance is a mysterious world in which, incredible as the fact may appear, evaporation precedes liquidation. First the capital evaporates, and then the company goes into liquidation. These are very unnatural physics ... ~ Joseph Conrad

Is there not a sort of remorse that precedes sin? Was it remorse at the very fact that I existed? ~ Yukio Mishima

Tonight, I went to look for cypripediums at the florist, and with them I decorated my friend Jerome, whose flesh already complements the subtleties of their orchid-green, brown, and violet sulphurs. Both have the same plump brilliance - as if sticky - both achieve that triumphant state of a substance at its peak - at the extreme accomplishment of itself - that precedes effervescence and purification.

Stretched out on his side, Jerome seemed to be sleeping, his sex introduced into the calyx of a cypripedium, whose liquor inundated him, while a cascade of lively flowery odours escaped from the swarthy bruises that marbleised his rose-coloured secret. ~ Gabrielle Wittkop

Sacrifice precedes success. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of Creation and it turns to radiance - for a moment or a year or the span of a life. And then it sinks back into itself again, and to look at it no one would know it had anything to do with fire, or light ... Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don't have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it? ... Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave - that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm. ~ Marilynne Robinson

The gospel is good news for losers, not winners. It's for those who long to be freed from the slavery of believing that all of their significance, meaning, purpose, and security depend on their ability to "become a better you." The gospel tells us that weakness precedes usefulness - that, in fact, the smaller you get, the freer you will be. ~ Tullian Tchividjian

I'm one of those introverts with well-honed social skills, and I have even danced on the occasional table, but I have felt sheer panic when my exhaustion precedes my exit. It's like the Cinderella story with a twist: I want to get out of there and into my duds before midnight - or ten, or eight. ~ Laurie A. Helgoe

We will never cease our critique of those persons who distort the past, rewrite it, falsify it, who exaggerate the importance of one event and fail to mention some other; such a critique is proper (it cannot fail to be), but it doesn't count for much unless a more basic critique precedes it: a critique of human memory as such. For after all, what can memory actually do, the poor thing? It is only capable of retaining a paltry little scrap of the past, and no one knows why just this scrap and not some other one, since in each of us the choice occurs mysteriously, outside our will or our interests. We won't understand a thing about human life if we persist in avoiding the most obvious fact: that a reality no longer is what it was when it was; it cannot be reconstructed. Even the most voluminous archives cannot help. ~ Milan Kundera

He smiled again. "Your reputation undoubtedly precedes you."
I bristled. "I am not that curious!"
"You are curious as any cat, my love ... ~ Deanna Raybourn

In the early days of marriage, joy precedes the act. Tragically, as the years go by joy can be severed from the act until finally, the act itself is no more. This ought not to be. Over time it is the companionship that brings joy, and service is the natural outworking of the joy of commitment. Failure to act kills it. ~ Ravi Zacharias

For the greater good":
the phrase that always precedes
the greatest evil. ~ Jakub Bozydar Wisniewski

The score will take care of itself when you take care of the effort that precedes the score. ~ John Wooden

Oh, but to reach silence, what a huge effort of voice. My voice is the way I go seek reality; reality prior to my language exists as an unthinkable thought, but I was and am fatefully impelled to have to know what thought thinks. Reality precedes the voice that seeks it, but like the earth precedes the tree, but like the world precedes the man, but like the sea precedes the view of the sea, life precedes love, bodily matter precedes the body, and one day in its turn language shall have preceded possession of silence. - Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H. ~ Clarice Lispector

Cannot put a finger on what precedes the other, bachelor/spinsterhood or self-obsession. ~ Sandeep Sahajpal

Destruction was effected after visitation, for visitation always precedes. ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

The mind precedes all things, the mind dominates all things, the mind creates all things. ~ Gautama Buddha

A brand precedes, parallels, and leaves a path behind. What your brand will say, is saying, and has said matters more the deeper we go into the globalized, digitized, connection economy. ~ Ryan Lilly

Birth leads to death, death precedes birth. So if you want to see life as it really is, it is rounded on both the sides by death. Death is the beginning and death is again the end, and life is just the illusion in between. You feel alive between two deaths; the passage joining one death to another you call life. Buddha says this is not life. This life is dukkha - misery. This life is death. ~ Rajneesh

Sacrifice precedes any success. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

High towers, and metaphysically-great men resembling them, round both of which there is commonly much wind, are not for me. My place is the fruitful bathos, the bottom-land, of experience; and the word transcendental, does not signify something passing beyond all experience, but something that indeed precedes it a priori, but that is intended simply to make cognition of experience possible. ~ Immanuel Kant

This starchy formality is not in vogue today. We carry ourselves in ways that are more natural and relaxed. We worry about appearing artificial. But those in Marshall's military world are more likely to believe that great individuals are made, not born, and that they are made through training. Change happens form the outside in. It is through the exercise of a drill that a person becomes self-regulating. It is through the expression of courtesy that a person becomes polite. It is through the resistance to fear that a person develops courage. It is through the control of facial expressions that one becomes sober. The act precedes the virtue. ~ David Brooks

Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god. ~ Aristotle.

Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave - that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm. And therefore, this courage allows us, as the old men said, to make ourselves useful. It allows us to be generous, which is another way of saying exactly the same thing. ~ Marilynne Robinson

The vision always precedes reality. ~ Leon Tom

There are big questions science doesn't answer, such as why is there something rather than nothing? There can't be a scientific answer to that because it's the answer that precedes science. There are all sorts of questions like that that which at the periphery of scientic inquiry but which wiggle in the mind like worms: the question "what am I, what is this word 'I'"? Does it refer to anything? If you try to capture the "I", you don't capture it, you capture the object, in which case it's a nothing, but it's a nothing on which everything depends. But this nothing on which everything depends thinks of itself as free. This is a philosophical question that worries everyone, but you can't formulate it. ~ Roger Scruton