Weirdly Prophetic Quotes

There is a philosophy by which many people live their lives, and it is this: life is a shit sandwich, but the more bread you've got, the less shit you have to eat.

These people are often selfish brats as kids, and they don't get better with age: think of the shifty-eyed smarmy asshole from the sixth form who grow up to be a merchant banker, or an estate agent, or one of the Conservative Party funny-handshake mine's a Rolex brigade.

(This isn't to say that all estate agents, or merchant bankers, or conservatives are selfish, but that these are ways of life that provide opportunities of a certain disposition to enrich themselves at the expense of others. Bear with me.)

There is another philosophy by which people live their lives, and it goes thus: You will do as I say or I will hurt you.

. . . Let me draw you a Venn diagram with two circles on it, denoting sets of individuals. They overlap: the greedy ones and the authoritarian ones. Let's shade in the intersecting area in a different color and label it: dangerous. Greed isn't automatically dangerous on its won, and petty authoritarians aren't usually dangerous outside their immediate vicinity -- but when you combine the two, you get gangsters and dictators and hate-spewing preachers. ~ Charles Stross

Also, I kept thinking about Alex Fierro. You know, maybe just a little. Alex was a force of nature, like the snow thunder. She struck when she felt like it, depending on temperature differentials and storm patterns I couldn't possibly predict. She shook my foundations in a way that was powerful but also weirdly soft and constrained, veiled in blizzard. I couldn't assign any motives to her. She just did what she wanted. At least, that's how it felt to me. ~ Rick Riordan

The thing that's hard about it - the thing that makes it so hard when the person you love has been taken from you, not by something evil you could have seen coming but by random, pure chance - is that you find yourself suddenly living through a history other than the one you expected to live, through no fault of your own. I feel . . . it's hard to describe, but I feel weirdly outside of time. Ever since the accident I've had these moments when I felt like a visiting guest in this world, not a permanent resident. Like sometimes I look in a mirror and I feel like I can almost see through the version of me on the other side of the glass. And sometimes I feel like I can see the history I used to be in more clearly than the history I'm in now - the real history is one where Philip and Sean and I are all together, being a family and doing whatever family things people do, and this one's like . . . like a fake version of events that I've been yanked into, where everything's gone wrong. ~ Dexter Palmer

What makes the role of a Scribal Watchman distinct is the commission to transpose God's word through use of the prophetic pen in a way that unites others to pray. ~ Deborah M. Taylor

Mad cow disease is caused by a prion, a weirdly folded protein molecule that triggers weird folding in other molecules, like Kurt Vonnegut's infectious form of water, ice-nine, in his great early novel Cat's Cradle. ~ David Quammen

It seems rather prophetic. We were just joking about this the other day."
"I know. Fate has annoying timing. ~ Kate Noble

I'm a big cat person. It's one of those things that's like, everybody that knows me thinks it's so weirdly apparent and obvious. ~ Chelsea Leyland

Ignorance of God's prophetic outline, failure to know God's program for the Church, the nations, and Israel, is the cause of the overwhelming amount of error and misunderstanding of the events of the future. ~ M. R. DeHaan

This isn't the first time I've used this, and the test subject showed no signs of impaired cognitive ability."
"Who was the test subject?" asked Aurora.
"I test everything out on myself before taking it into the field."
She stared at him. "You zapped your own brain?"
"And it didn't do me any harm apart from the dizziness and the vomiting spells and the weirdly persistent ringing in my ears. Also the blackouts and the mood swings and the creeping paranoia. Apart from that, zero side effects, if you don't count the numb fingertips. Which I don't. ~ Derek Landy

Indian monks were the first to choose the garden as the proper setting for their lives, which were devoted to the
contemplation of the divine; but with a prophetic eye we may see that the garden will often be dedicated in a
like manner: at a later time Greek philosophers, and monks in early Christian days, will retire into their
gardens for united, yet silent, contemplation. ~ Marie-Luise Gothein

Don't moralize at me! I have no love
For images, old gods, prophetic words.
I want to talk to Utnapishtim!
Tell me how. ~ Herbert Mason

THE CROWN OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS IS THE DOCTRINE OF forgiveness. In it the whole genius of prophetic religion is expressed. Love as forgiveness is the most difficult and impossible of moral achievements. Yet it is a possibility if the impossibility of love is recognized and the sin in the self is acknowledged. Therefore an ethic culminating in an impossible possibility produces its choicest fruit in terms of the doctrine of forgiveness, the demand that the evil in the other shall be borne without vindictiveness because the evil in the self is known. ~ Reinhold Niebuhr

Say from whence You owe this strange intelligence, or why Upon this blasted heath you stop our way With such prophetic greeting. Speak, I charge you. ~ William Shakespeare

Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray. ~ George Gordon Byron

Oh, remember that as certain as the historical fact, He died on Calvary; so certain is the prophetic fact, He shall reign, and you and I will stand there. I durst not touch that subject. Take it into your own hearts, and think about it, a kingdom, a judgment-seat, a crown, a gathered universe; separation, decision, execution of the sentence. ~ Alexander MacLaren

Every minister worthy of the name has to walk the line between prophetic vision and spiritual sustenance, between telling people the comforting things they want to hear and challenging them with the difficult things they need to hear. In Oxford, Daddy began to feel as though all the members wanted him to do was to marry them and bury them and stay away from their souls. ~ Timothy B. Tyson

I'd noticed it because it was so weirdly out of place, a defiant crimson McIntosh in an army of dull green Granny Smiths. ~ Michael Grant

The thing about being a songwriter, once you realize you are one, is that to provide ammo, you start to become an observer. ... You're constantly on the alert. That faculty gets trained in you over the years: observing people, how they react to one another, which in a way makes you weirdly distant ... It's a little of Peeping Tom, being a song-writer. ~ Keith Richards

It's the what if? The what then? And we know that if we go for it, if we risk it, we immediately stand to lose it. But weirdly, some part of us believes the feeling is two-way, because it must be; it's too special not to be. We believe that something's been shared, even if the evidence we have is ... what? A look that lasted a breath longer then we're used to? A second glance, when the glance could easily have been to check whether there are any cabs coming, or whether the jacket we're wearing that's caught their eyes would look good on their boyfriend, or why it is we seem to be staring at them.
I saw you. You don't use overhead handles on the train. Hoped it would jolt and you would fall to me. But no.
I smiled. These small moments, never said out loud, as formed and perfect as sweet little haikus, romance and longing carved out in the dust of a grubby city. ~ Danny Wallace

Prophetic pragmatism attempts to keep alive the sense of alternative ways of life and of struggle based on the best of the past. In this sense, the praxis of prophetic pragmatism is tragic action with revolutionary intent, usually reformist consequences and always visionary outlook. ~ Cornel West

A new sort of power will be let loose upon the world, and it will be the power of self-giving love. This is the heart of the revolution that was launched on Good Friday. You cannot defeat the usual sort of power by the usual sort of means. If one force overcomes another, it is still "force" that wins. Rather, at the heart of the victory of God over all the powers of the world there lies self-giving love, which, in obedience to the ancient prophetic vocation, will give its life "as a ransom for many." Exactly ~ N. T. Wright

The irony of it, is how Freemasons have been trying to create and fulfill prophecy, and in their endeavor to hide behind secrecy they have been the catalyst for prophetic fulfillments. Moreover, I have taken the worst excrement ever defecated by mankind and have turned it into knowledge. Therefore, I have made the Thought a Thing and have aided the march of a TRUTH which I have bequeathed to mankind as a personal estate to hold in trust and I have dropped it into the world's wide treasury as an example of a human excellence of growth that shall make the spiritual glory of the human race greater because this endowment has been cultivated from Truth as raw as a diamond in the rough. For what man develops and creates will always be artificial and glorified fabrication that when dismantled, is nothing more than just a lie regardless of how sophisticated the deception. A con artist will never be more than just a thief, and a cubic zirconia will never be more perfect than a diamond. Thus I have written in the same line as Moses and he who died upon the cross, and I have achieved an intellectual sympathy with the Deity himself and since[according to Albert Pike] the best gift we can bestow on humanity, is manhood, then I shall call it:
ANTI - CHRIST ENDOWMENTS
Because I'm the Little Horn with the biggest horn on the field. They were not kidding when they said I would be more stout than my fellows. ~ Alejandro C. Estrada

I do live a weirdly divided life, because I'm not a Hollywood superstar, I don't live on Malibu Beach, I don't do massive 'OK!' spreads, I don't go to premieres and parties that much. ~ James Purefoy

It's weird, the idea of someone else playing my dad, but weirdly nice. ~ Lily James

The best part of the ceremony was after Shy kissed his bride, and when we were done, he didn't let go. So I stood in his arms, my thumb stroking his jaw, my eyes gazing up at him. the world had melted away, so I didn't hear the hoots and hollers of friends and family.
I only heard what he muttered in a voice that was weirdly raw but unbelievable beautiful: "Like I'm the only man on the planet."
In that minute, he was but then again, for me, really, when it came down to it, he always had been. ~ Kristen Ashley

Here! 'Not thread nor glue, not nails nor screws, will ever self and shadow wed.' Helpful, those poet-types. Perhaps this one: 'Seek the grimy queen of dread machines, if you your errant shadow miss.' Now that's quite good! As a Prophetic Utterance, Third Class (Vague Hints and Mysterious Signs), you couldn't ask for better. It's downright plain-spoken! ~ Catherynne M Valente

When you say that [Martin Luther] King was a prophet, you don't say that he predicted anything; you say that he bore witness. He left a committed life so that people would never forget the suffering of people that he was connected to. King was prophetic because he lived a committed life. Now he did critique society, saying you're going to go under if you don't treat your poor right. I mean, that is part of prophetic calling, but it's not predicting anything. ~ Cornel West

And that's why I've been talking only about you and the tension within you, because you are - not in a clichéd sense, but in a weirdly literal sense - the future. After you walk up here and walk back down, you're going to be the present. You will be the broken world and the act of changing it, in a way that you haven't been before. You will be so many things, and the one thing that I wish I'd known and want to say is, don't just be yourself. Be all of yourselves. Don't just live. Be that other thing connected to death. Be life. Live all of your life. Understand it, see it, appreciate it. And have fun. ~ Joss Whedon

Remember, this is the time of the cockatrice. It has hatched from its egg. So who now dares say what will be? ~ Philip Dodd

Material blessings, when they pay beyond the category of need, are weirdly fruitful of headache. ~ Philip Wylie

I think probably when I was little, after my brother turned on me, I just had to play by myself or with myself. I've always done that. I think either it's some kind of weirdly competitive streak or it takes my mind off whatever's bothering me. ~ John Malkovich

Literature is the voice of the age and the state; the character, energy, and resources of the country are reflected and imaged forth in the conceptions of its great minds; they are organs of the time; they speak not their own language, they scarce think their own thoughts; but under an impulse like the prophetic enthusiasm of old, they must feel and utter the sentiments which society inspires. ~ Edward Everett

Belloc led the charge in his critique of this misguided sense of superiority and myopic view of progress. But it was he alone among historians, social commentators, and counter-cultural voices who predicted that Islam - or as he called it, "Mohammedanism" - would rise again and, as it had in the past, harness the technology of the West as a weapon to turn back on the West and crush it by degrees. After September 11, 2001, no one is surprised to learn that Islam is turning the West's superiority back on itself; what is surprising is that a lone historian and essayist saw this coming in the 1930s. That he captivates and places the reader in the middle of the action is an added bonus to the prophetic vision of what embroils our age. ~ Hilaire Belloc

In sharp contrast, the blessings are speeches of new energy, for they promise future well-being to those who are without hope. In the deathly world of riches, fullness, and uncritical laughter, those who now live in poverty, hunger, and grief are hopeless. They are indeed nonpersons consigned to nonhistory. They have no public existence, and so the public well-being can never extend to them. But the blessings open a new possibility. So the speech of Jesus, like the speech of the entire prophetic tradition, moves from woe to blessing, from judgment to hope, from criticism to energy. The alternative community to be shaped from the poor, hungry, and grieving is called to disengage from the woe pattern of life to end its fascination with that other ordering, and to embrace the blessing pattern. ~ Walter Brueggemann

All idealization makes life poorer. To beautify it is to take away its character of complexity - it is to destroy it. Leave that to the moralists, my boy. History is made by men, but they do not make it in their heads. The ideas that are born in their consciousness play an insignificant part in the march of events. History is dominated and determined by the tool and the production - by the force of economic conditions. Capitalism has made socialism, and the laws made by the capitalist for the protection of property are responsible for anarchism. No one can tell what form the social organisation may take in the future. Then why indulge in prophetic phantasies? At best they can only interpret the mind of the prophet, and can have no objective value. Leave that pastime to the moralists, my boy. ~ Joseph Conrad

The great prophetic work of the modern world is Goethe's Faust, so little appreciated among the Anglo-Saxons. Mephistopheles offers Faust unlimited knowledge and unlimited power in exchange for his soul. Modern man has accepted that bargain ...
I believe in what the Germans term Ehrfurcht: reverence for things one cannot understand. Faust's error was an aspiration to understand, and therefore master, things which, by God or by nature, are set beyond the human compass. He could only achieve this at the cost of making the achievement pointless. Once again, it is exactly what modern man has done. ~ Robert Aickman

Weirdly enough, I don't like to pretend. I try to use things in me, and translate them into the situation and the characters, so it always needs to run through my own veins. ~ Noomi Rapace

I hope you will love your baby. I hope it will be a boy. That husband of yours, I hope, will always treat you well, because otherwise my specter shall come out of him, like black smoke, like a demented giant, and pull him apart nerve by nerve ... I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita. ~ Vladimir Nabokov