Precursor Quotes

{On to contributions to evolutionary biology of 18th century French scientist, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon}

He was not an evolutionary biologist, yet he was the father of evolutionism. He was the first person to discuss a large number of evolutionary problems, problems that before Buffon had not been raised by anybody.... he brought them to the attention of the scientific world.

Except for Aristotle and Darwin, no other student of organisms [whole animals and plants] has had as far-reaching an influence.

He brought the idea of evolution into the realm of science. He developed a concept of the "unity of type", a precursor of comparative anatomy. More than anyone else, he was responsible for the acceptance of a long-time scale for the history of the earth. He was one of the first to imply that you get inheritance from your parents, in a description based on similarities between elephants and mammoths. And yet, he hindered evolution by his frequent endorsement of the immutability of species. He provided a criterion of species, fertility among members of a species, that was thought impregnable. ~ Ernst W. Mayr

Discipline isn't a dirty word. Far from it. Discipline is the one thing that separates us from chaos and anarchy. Discipline implies timing. It's the precursor to good behavior, and it never comes from bad behavior. People who associate discipline with punishment are wrong: with discipline, punishment is unnecessary. ~ Buck Brannaman

a technique called "failure mode and effect analysis" (FMEA), a precursor to the premortem that has been used for decades in the military and government. ~ Chip Heath

No poem, not even Shakespeare or Milton or Chaucer, is ever strong enough to totally exclude every crucial precursor text or poem. ~ Harold Bloom

Suretyship (Dogma) is the precursor of ruin. ~ Thales

Big oaks grow from small acorns, and activity is a precursor to accomplishment. You don't think yourself into success. ~ Mark Sanborn

Hope is not mere wishful thinking. It is the precursor of a new dawn that slowly, steadily and unerringly comes to the fore and eventually grows into reality's existence. ~ Sri Chinmoy

I don't mean to be rude'- always a precursor to rudeness of the most offensive sort ~ Julian Fellowes

Every war was the precursor for the wars that followed, a slaughter that justified the slaughters to come. And ~ Daniel Abraham

Willows produce the defensive compound salicylic acid, which works in much the same way. But not on us. Salicylic acid, is a precursor of aspirin, and tea made from willow bark can relieve headaches and bring down fevers. Such defense mechanisms, of course, take time. ~ Peter Wohlleben

I need that printer," I said. "And the precursor ~ Daryl Gregory

It having been a very cold night last night I had got some cold, and so in pain by wind, and a sure precursor of pain is sudden letting off farts, and when that stops, then my passages stop and my pain begins ~ Samuel Pepys

War is a total social phenomenon. In this respect, Clausewitz's analysis is a precursor of Durkheim's sociology. Clausewitz has things to teach us about "mass" violence and contagion. ~ Rene Girard

Crushes weren't a precursor to love, they were a precursor to having your heart chewed up like Shark Week. ~ Koren Zailckas

We also have to stop the flow of precursor chemicals that meth cooks use to boil up this poison. ~ Greg Walden

Anomalies manifest themselves on the border between chaos and order, so to speak, and have a threatening and promising aspect. The promising aspect dominates, when the contact is voluntary, when the exploring agent is up-to-date – when the individual has explored all previous anomalies, released the "information" they contained, and built a strong personality and steady "world" from that information.

The threatening aspect dominates, when the contact is involuntary, when the exploring agent is not up-to-date – when the individual has run away from evidence of his previous errors, failed to extract the information "lurking behind" his mistakes, weakened his personality, and destabilised his "world."

The phenomenon of interest – that precursor to exploratory behaviour – signals the presence of a potentially "beneficial" anomaly. Interest manifests itself where an assimilable but novel phenomenon exists: where something new "hides," in a partially comprehensible form. Devout adherence to the dictates of interest – assuming a suitably disciplined character – therefore insures stabilisation and renewal of personality and world.

Interest is a spirit beckoning from the unknown – a spirit calling from outside the "walls" of society. Pursuit of individual interest means hearkening to this spirit's call – means journeying outside the protective walls of childhood dependence and adolescent group identification; means also return to and rejuvenation of so ~ Jordan B. Peterson

The World's Fair was the precursor to theme parks like Disneyworld, and the really sort of cheap, superficial promotional architecture that you see everywhere in the U.S. I think there's a danger when you start creating a civilisation that isn't meant to last. ~ Sufjan Stevens

Two hundred years ago, our precursors in Haiti struck a blow for freedom, which was heard around the world, and across centuries. ~ Baldwin Spencer

In his very rejection of art Walt Whitman is an artist. He tried to produce a certain effect by certain means and he succeeded ... He stands apart, and the chief value of his work is in its prophecy, not in its performance. He has begun a prelude to larger themes. He is the herald to a new era. As a man he is the precursor of a fresh type. He is a factor in the heroic and spiritual evolution of the human being. If Poetry has passed him by, Philosophy will take note of him. ~ Oscar Wilde

The warmth and sun-drenched days of late summer, had been replaced by the cold, darkness of November, where the crisp chill served as a precursor to a winter that would long overstay its welcome once the holidays had past. ~ Matt Micros

What about Jesus Christ? I say that he was a precursor of idealists; a precursor of socialists. ~ Mikhail Gorbachev

There is no real reason why Disney should not buy up the human genome, which is currently being sequenced, to turn it into a genetic attraction. Why not cryogenize the whole planet, exactly as Walt Disney had himself cryogenized in liquid nitrogen, with a view to some kind of resurrection or other in the real world? But there no longer is a real world, and there won't be one – not even for Walt Disney: if he wakes up one day he'll get the shock of his life. In the meantime, from the depths of his liquid nitrogen he goes on annexing the world – both imaginary and real – subsuming it into the spectral universe of virtual reality in which we have all become extras. The difference is that, as we slip on our data suits or our sensors, or tap away at our keyboards, we are moving into living spectrality, whereas he, the brilliant precursor, has moved into the virtual reality of death. ~ Jean Baudrillard

For the normative self-understanding of modernity, Christianity has functioned as more than just a precursor or catalyst. Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of a continual critical reappropriation and reinterpretation. Up to this very day there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a post-national constellation, we must draw sustenance now, as in the past, from this substance. Everything else is idle postmodern talk. ~ Jurgen Habermas

We are taking steps to fight the production of meth on our own soil through limiting access to precursor ingredients, supporting educational efforts and providing necessary resources to law enforcement. ~ Greg Walden

It is about time that we develop a worldwide strategy to reduce illegal trade in meth and its precursor chemicals and stop the devastating impact that methamphetamine use is having on our children and our communities. ~ Dennis Cardoza

Similarly, some of the more recent research on serial killers and child abuse demonstrates an analogous attention to definition and methodological precision. This is a highly positive development given the fact that child abuse has been cited as a developmental precursor to antisocial impulses and that these same impulses have been suggested to be precursors to both animal abuse and violence directed against humans. ~ Linda Merz-Perez

History, lie of our lives, mire of our loins. Our sins, our souls. Hiss-tih-ree: the tip of the pen taking a trip of three steps (with one glide) down the chronicle to trap a slick, sibilant character. Hiss. (Ss.) Tih. Ree.
He was a pig, a plain pig, in the morning, standing five feet ten on one hoof. He was a pig in slacks. He was a pig in school. He was a pig on the dotted line. But in my eyes it's always the ones signing dotted lines that become pigs.
Did this pig have a precursor? He did, indeed he did. In point of fact, dating all the way back to the Biblical Age. Oh where? About everywhere you look there's pigs giving that fancy ol' snake a chase. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can always count on a fuckin' pretentious sarcastican for a fancy prose style. ~ Brian Celio

happiness is the precursor to success, not merely the result. And that happiness and optimism actually fuel performance and achievement - giving us the competitive edge that I call the Happiness Advantage. ~ Shawn Achor

Pride first, then the crash, but humility is precursor to honor. ~ Eugene H. Peterson

What seemed to have been taken from our lives is simply a precursor to the very thing that's about to show up. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

I started in time-sharing and networking with packet switching, which was the precursor to what became the Internet. Time-shared use on packet-switch networks, when you think about it, is the cloud. ~ Audrey MacLean

science, of a kind, is no less a precursor and a cause of civilization than it is a consequent. ~ Henry Smith Williams

Love was not something to be felt, not a particular emotion, nor yet a particular shade of feeling, it was much more like a lowering curse on the horizon, a precursor of disaster. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

The creed of evil has been, since the beginnings of highly industrialized society, not only a precursor of barbarism but a mask of good. The worth of the latter was transferred to the evil that drew to itself all the hatred and resentment of an order which drummed good into its adherents so that it could with impunity be evil. ~ Theodor Adorno

I think the act of reading imbues the reader with a sensitivity toward the outside world that people who don't read can sometimes lack. I know it seems like a contradiction in terms; after all reading is such a solitary, internalizing act that it appears to represent a disengagement from day-to-day life. But reading, and particularly the reading of fiction, encourages us to view the world in new and challenging ways ... It allows us to inhabit the consciousness of another which is a precursor to empathy, and empathy is, for me, one of the marks of a decent human being. ~ John Connolly

My parents, grandmother and brother were teachers. My mother taught Latin and French and was the school librarian. My father taught geography and a popular class called Family Living, the precursor to Sociology, which he eventually taught. My grandmother was a beloved one-room school teacher at Knob School, near Sonora in Larue County, Ky. ~ Sam Abell

Sanctions are not diplomacy. They are a precursor to war and an embarrassment to a country that pays lip service to free trade. ~ Ron Paul

In the critics' vocabulary, the work 'precursor' is indispensable, but it should be cleansed of all connotations of polemics or rivalry. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

Starbreeze doesn't rest, doesn't sleep and can hear anything carried on moving air. It'd make her the perfect spy, except that most of what she hears goes in one ear and out the other.
"I'm looking for a Precursor relic, a new one"
"What's a relic?" Starbreeze said curiously.
"A powerful magical thing. It would have been found a week or two ago"
"What's a week? ~ Benedict Jacka

Rooms, corridors, bookcases, shelves, filing cards, and computerized catalogues assume that the subjects on which our thoughts dwell are actual entities, and through this assumption a certain book may be lent a particular tone and value. Filed under Fiction, Jonathon Swift's Gulliver's Travels is a humorous novel of adventure; under Sociology, a satirical study of England in the eighteenth century; under Children's Literature, an entertaining fable about dwarfs and giants and talking horses; under Fantasy, a precursor of science fiction; under Travel, an imaginary voyage; under Classics, a part of the Western literary canon. Categories are exclusive; reading is not--or should not be. Whatever classifications have been chosen, every library tyrannizes the act of reading, and forces the reader--the curious reader, the alert reader--to rescue the book from the category to which it has been condemned. ~ Alberto Manguel

Slowing down is the precursor to Yoga practice because this simple act allows us to consider our thoughts, feelings and actions more carefully in the light of our desire to live peacefully. ~ Donna Farhi

I guess that I'm primarily thought of as a rocker, largely because of 'Frankenstein' being such a heavy song - you know, it was really hard rock, almost a precursor of heavy metal and just the image of the synthesizer. I happened to be the first guy to get the idea of putting a strap on the keyboard. ~ Edgar Winter

Much as slavery in the United States was part of a larger Atlantic Slave System, so America's War of Independence was an outgrowth of Europe's Seven Years' War - from 1756 to 1763 - and also a precursor or harbinger of the French and Haitian revolutions and of the subsequent Latin American wars for independence from Spain. ~ David Brion Davis

Being empowered includes developing the powerful qualities that lead human beings to cultivate wellness and healing. And those are the same qualities that enhance all relationships on earth and reduce stress (which seems to be the largest precursor to disease)-gentle ness, calmness, patience, humility, compassion, and gratitude. ~ Bryan Kest

An intense anticipation itself transforms possibility into reality; our desires being often but precursors of the things which we are capable of performing. ~ Samuel Smiles

A shock? You mean all that was just the precursor? ~ Marissa Meyer

Throughout high school, I peddled my eggs, had a vendor stand at the local curb market - precursor to today's farmers' markets - and competed in 4-H contests and interscholastic debate. ~ Joel Salatin

Soon after Harris's HeLa-chicken study, a pair of researchers at New York University discovered that human-mouse hybrids lost their human chromosomes over time, leaving only the mouse chromosomes. This allowed scientists to begin mapping human genes to specific chromosomes by tracking the order in which genetic traits vanished. If a chromosome disappeared and production of a certain enzyme stopped, researchers knew the gene for that enzyme must be on the most recently vanished chromosome. Scientists in laboratories throughout North America and Europe began fusing cells and using them to map genetic traits to specific chromosomes, creating a precursor to the human genome map we have today. ~ Rebecca Skloot

Life magazine ran a page featuring me and three other girls that was clearly the precursor of Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues. ~ Esther Williams

The campaign was also among the most heated in recent memory, or short -term anticipation. The soon-to-be Opposition Leader never tired of listing the promises the new Prime Minister would break; she in turn countered with statistics of the mess he'd create as Treasurer, in the mid-eighties. (The causes of that impending recession were still being debated by economists; most claimed it was an "essential precursor" of the prosperity of the nineties , and that The Market, in its infinite, time -spanning wisdom, would choose / had chosen the best of all possible futures. Personally, I suspect it simply proved that even foresight was no cure for incompetence. ~ Greg Egan

She lifted her lantern high, and he allowed her to free him from the shadows, casting his face in warm, golden light. He had aged marvelously, grown into his long limbs and angled face. Penelope had always imagined that he'd become handsome, but he was more than handsome now... he was nearly beautiful.
If not for the darkness that lingered despite the glow of the lantern- something dangerous in the set of his jaw, in the tightness of his brow, in eyes that seemed to have forgotten joy, in lips that seemed to have lost their ability to smile.
He'd had a dimple as a child, one that showed itself often and was almost always the precursor to adventure. She searched his left cheek, looking for that telltale indentation. Did not find it.
Indeed, as much as Penelope searched this new, hard face, she could not seem to find the boy she'd once known. If not for the eyes, she would not have believed it was him at all.
"How sad," she whispered to herself.
He heard it. "What?"
She shook her head, meeting his gaze, the only thing familiar about him. "He's gone."
"Who?"
"My friend."
She hadn't thought it possible, but his features hardened even more, growing more stark, more dangerous, in the shadows. For one fleeting moment, she thought perhaps she had pushed him too far. He remained still, watching her with that dark gaze that seemed to see everything. ~ Sarah MacLean

Ireland, like Ukraine, is a largely rural country which suffers from its proximity to a more powerful industrialised neighbour. Ireland's contribution to the history of tractors is the genius engineer Harry Ferguson, who was born in 1884, near Belfast.
Ferguson was a clever and mischievous man, who also had a passion for aviation. It is said that he was the first man in Great Britain to build and fly his own aircraft in 1909. But he soon came to believe that improving efficiency of food production would be his unique service to mankind. Harry Ferguson's first two-furrow plough was attached to the chassis of the Ford Model T car converted into a tractor, aptly named Eros. This plough was mounted on the rear of the tractor, and through ingenious use of balance springs it could be raised or lowered by the driver using a lever beside his seat. Ford, meanwhile, was developing its own tractors. The Ferguson design was more advanced, and made use of hydraulic linkage, but Ferguson knew that despite his engineering genius, he could not achieve his dream on his own. He needed a larger company to produce his design. So he made an informal agreement with Henry Ford, sealed only by a handshake. This Ford-Ferguson partnership gave to the world a new type of Fordson tractor far superior to any that had been known before, and the precursor of all modern-type tractors. However, this agreement by a handshake collapsed in 1947 when Henry Ford II took over the empire of his father, and st ~ Marina Lewycka

scientists began to rethink the possibility of physical black holes and not just as an unnecessary result of Einstein's gedankenexperiment equations. The tide of belief started to turn in the 1960s when scientists were able to prove that the formation of an event horizon is possible. The formation of an event horizon is a precursor of the formation of a black hole. According to ~ Josh Memolo

We were not then powerful enough to erase all evidence of the Precursors, to destroy their star roads and citadels and other artifacts. And so we left at least one Precursor behind, to live out dreams of vengeance and hatred, to lay down plans in cold and darkness at the heart of a lost asteroid - over millions of years. ~ Greg Bear

Happily Single is also the precursor to Happily Taken. You simply can't have one without the other. ~ Mandy Hale

We have built into the constitution of the human race the habit and desire of taking, as divorced from its natural precursor and concomitant of making. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Theory is continually the precursor of truth; we must pass through the twilight and its shade, to arrive at the full and perfect day. ~ James Douglas, Lord Of Douglas

Evidently, Hitler was deeply intrigued and impressed by Schertel's book. Hitler carefully read the book, and underlined and marked certain passages and sentences that caught his attention. One underlined section read: "He who does not have the demonic seed within himself will never give birth to a magical world." While a second stated: "Satan is the beginning." This was an ominous and unsettling precursor to the bloodshed that enveloped the world only a few short years later (Schertel, 2009). ~ Nick Redfern

There has never been a time on Earth like we see today. What we need are more ways to experience our interconnectedness - it is a precursor to deep love. So in this quickening light, with the dawn of each new day, let us look for love. Let us no longer struggle. Let us ever become who we most want to be. As we begin to be who we truly are, the world will be a better place. ~ John Denver

In the late 1970s, the controversial "Iroquois influence theory" posits that the Longhouse People's divinely given Great Law of Peace so inspired Franklin and others among the founding fathers that it served as the model for the Articles of Confederation, the governing document of the United States for the first decade of its existence, and the precursor of the Constitution ratified in 1787. ~ Peter Manseau

A precursor to the Social Darwinists, Hobbes argued from th premise that the primordial human condition was a war fought by each against each, so brutal and incesssant that it was impossible to develop industry or even agriculture or the arts while that condition persisted. It's this description that culmintes in his famous epithet "And the life of man, solitary, poor, brutish, and short." It was a fiction to which he brought to bear another fiction, that of the social contract by which men agree to submit to rules and a presiding authority, surrendering their right to ravage each other for the sake of their own safety. The contract was not a bond of affection or identification, bot a culture or religion binding togetehr a civilization, only a convenience. Men, in his view, as in that of many other European writers of the period, are stark, mechanical creatures, windup soldiers social only by strategy and not by nature ... ~ Rebecca Solnit

One in two recently evicted mothers reports multiple symptoms of clinical depression, double the rate of similar mothers who were not forced from their homes. Even after years pass, evicted mothers are less happy, energetic, and optimistic than their peers. When several patients committed suicide in the days leading up to their eviction, a group of psychiatrists published a letter in Psychiatric Services, identifying eviction as a "significant precursor of suicide." The letter emphasized that none of the patients were facing homelessness, leading the psychiatrists to attribute the suicides to eviction itself. "Eviction must be considered a traumatic rejection," they wrote, "a denial of one's most basic human needs, and an exquisitely shameful experience." Suicides attributed to evictions and foreclosures doubled between 2005 and 2010, years when housing costs soared. ~ Matthew Desmond

The fact is that every author creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

over the centuries Dante has been variously "constructed" - as lover, statesman, neo-Platonist, proto-Protestant, Romantic visionary, Byronic hero, Pre-Raphaelite, father of his country, theologian in verse, precursor of the modern novel, and, finally, altissimo poeta, the consummate poet. ~ Peter S. Hawkins

Such ideas made him [Constable] a precursor of the essentially twentieth-century view that art and life are inseparable and there is no such thing as ideal subject-matter. ~ Neville Weston

More important than the words or silence is my inner stance of making room for what is stirring within him, becoming alertly still enough inside that his inner world senses safety, the precursor to him opening into vulnerability. ~ Bonnie Badenoch

What is the imagination? Only an arm or weapon of the interior energy; only the precursor of the reason. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is said that in those days one could hear seventy languages in the streets of Istanbul. The vast Ottoman Empire, shrunken and weakened though it now was, had made it normal and natural for Greeks to inhabit Egypt, Persians to settle in Arabia and Albanians to live with Slavs. Christians and Muslims of all sects, Alevis, Zoroastrians, Jews, worshippers of the Peacock Angel, subsisted side by side in the most improbable places and combinations. There were Muslim Greeks, Catholic Armenians, Arab Christians and Serbian Jews. Istanbul was the hub of this broken-felloed wheel, and there could be found epitomised the fantastical bedlam and babel, which although no one realised it at the time, was destined to be the model and precursor of all the world's great metropoles a hundred years hence, by which time Istanbul itself would, paradoxically, have lost its cosmopolitan brilliance entirely. It would be destined, perhaps, one day to find it again, if only the devilish false idols of nationalism, that specious patriotism of the morally stunted, might finally be toppled in the century to come. ~ Louis De Bernieres

have a precursor as to what to expect. If we don't open the book and turn the page, we will never know what's in the next chapter. ~ M.R. Joseph

Serenity is not just an escape, but a precursor to acceptance, courage, wisdom, and change. ~ Bill Crawford

The old alchemy, or what was just called alchemy, has a history. Most people, if they've been trained in sciences, think of alchemy as the precursor to chemistry. Back in time, people were called alchemists and they worked for kings and rich people, smelting metal and trying to change base metal into gold, because the king wanted to be richer. ~ Fred Alan Wolf

Walkman was the precursor to the cell phone, in terms of your strategy for getting through the urban landscape and the modern experience. Insulate yourself from it with your own soundscape. ~ Douglas Rushkoff

I'm primarily thought of as a rocker, and certainly 'Frankenstein' had a very dramatic power rock image. It was almost a precursor of heavy metal and fusion. But I also love jazz and classical and if there's one common thread that runs through all my music, it is blues. ~ Edgar Winter

While approximately one in every 400 children and adolescents have Type I diabetes; recent Government reports indicate that one in every three children born in 2000 will suffer from obesity, which as noted is a predominant Type II precursor. ~ Tim Holden

He wrote a novel, The Moon Is Down, for a precursor to the CIA, ~ John Steinbeck

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (November 11 [O.S. October 30] 1821 – February 9 [O.S. January 28] 1881) is considered one of two greatest prose writers of Russian literature, alongside close contemporary Leo Tolstoy. Dostoevsky's works have had a profound and lasting effect on twentieth-century thought and world literature. Dostoevsky's chief ouevre, mainly novels, explore the human psychology in the disturbing political, social and spiritual context of his 19th-century Russian society. Considered by many as a founder or precursor of 20th-century existentialism, his Notes from Underground (1864), written in the anonymous, embittered voice of the Underground Man, is considered by Walter Kaufmann as the "best overture for existentialism ever written." Source: Wikipedia ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

It reminded him of the cacophony of an orchestra as it tuned its instruments: dissonance, suddenly resolving into harmony. It was the rumble, not of thunder, but its low, rolling precursor, trembling on the horizon. ~ Courtney Milan

The precursor of copyright law served to force the identification of the author so that he could be punished if he proved to be a heretic or a revolutionary ~ James Boyle

Every pause is a precursor to new thoughts, every thought is potentially a new story, every story is a new interpretation and every interpretation is a new shade of grey. ~ Mayank S. Sengar

Pain is the precursor to change. ~ Mel Gibson

Cribbage!" I declared, pulling out the board, a deck of cards, and pen and paper, "Ben and I are going to teach you. Then we can all play."
"What makes you think I don't know how to play cribbage?" Sage asked.
"You do?" Ben sounded surprised.
"I happen to be an excellent cribbage player," Sage said.
"Really…because I'm what one might call a cribbage master," Ben said.
"I bet I've been playing longer than you," Sage said, and I cast my eyes his way. Was he trying to tell u something?
"I highly doubt that," Ben said, "but I believe we'll see the proof when I double-skunk you."
"Clearly you're both forgetting it's a three-person game, and I'm ready to destroy you both," I said.
"Deal 'em," Ben said.
Being a horse person, my mother was absolutely convinced she could achieve world peace if she just got the right parties together on a long enough ride. I didn't know about that, but apparently cribbage might do the trick. I didn't know about that, but apparently cribbage might do the trick. The three of us were pretty evenly matched, and Ben was impressed enough to ask sage how he learned to play. Turned out Sage's parents were historians, he said, so they first taught him the precursor to cribbage, a game called noddy.
"Really?" Ben asked, his professional curiosity piqued. "Your parents were historians? Did they teach?"
"European history. In Europe," Sage said. "Small college. They taught me a lot."
Yep, there was the met ~ Hilary Duff

Who anyway can define the borderline between gnosis and poetic knowledge? The two modes are not identical, and yet they interpenetrate one another. Are we to call the gnosis of Novalis, Blake, and Shelley a knowledge that is not poetic? In domesticating the Sufis in our imagination, Corbin renders Ibn 1 Arabi and Suhrawardi as a Blakl· and a Shelley whose precursor is not Milton but the Koran. ~ Harold Bloom

wave. The members of the rising generation are the most flagrant offenders, and in the decay and disappearing of parental authority we have the certain precursor of the abolition of civic authority. Therefore, in view of the growing disrespect for human law and the refusal to "render honor to whom honor is due," we need not be surprised that the recognition of the majesty, the authority, the sovereignty of the almighty Law-giver should recede more and more into the background, and the masses have less and less patience with those who insist upon them. ~ Arthur W. Pink

Routine assessments of agricultural soils rarely extend beyond the top 10 to 15 centimeters and are generally limited to determining the status of a small number of elements, notably phosphorus (P) and nitrogen (N). Overemphasis on these nutrients has masked the myriad of microbial interactions that would normally take place in soil; interactions that are necessary for carbon sequestration, precursor to the formation of fertile topsoil. ~ Judith D. Schwartz

Life is a mystical and tragic thing. It is a journey often full of fear, when it ought to be full of hope. It's fascinating to look back on your life and feel as though most of it was a precursor to the rest of it; to what was always supposed to be. ~ L.K. Hill

Often in the morning they rode out along the tracks on Easter and took their lunch and once rode as far as the little cemetery halfway to Norka where there was a stand of cottonwood trees with their leaves washing and turning in the wind, and they ate lunch there in the freckled shade of the trees and came back in the late afternoon with the sun sliding down behind them, making a single shadow of them and the horse together, the shadow out in front like a thin dark antic precursor of what they were about to become. ~ Kent Haruf