"Futurity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for experiment yet to determine, and these little vessels contained every article by which we were to expect to subsist or defend ourselves. However as the state of mind in which we are, generally gives the colouring to events, when the imagination is suffered to wander into futurity, the picture which now presented itself to me was a most pleasing one. Entertaining as I do the most confident hope of succeeding in a voyage which had formed a darling project of mine for the last ten years, I could but esteem this ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... from the general control of superstition, was not in this respect superior to his time, but, on the contrary, was remarkable for the encouragement which he gave to the professors of this pretended science. Indeed, the wish to pry into futurity, so general among the human race, is peculiarly to be found amongst those who trade in state mysteries and the dangerous intrigues and cabals of courts. With heedful precaution to see that it had not been opened, or its locks tampered with, Leicester ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... "had been an assassin, he had no occasion to inform me of his plan in order to succeed. Freed from the real king, it would have been impossible in all futurity to guess the false. And if the usurper had been recognized by Anne of Austria, he would still have been—her son. The usurper, as far as Monsieur d'Herblay's conscience was concerned, was still a king of the blood of Louis XIII. Moreover, ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... thou hast seen priests who make use of religion as an instrument of oppression. Such are the men thou hast seen, and not him who groans under the heavy yoke, and comforts himself with the hope of futurity. Thou hast passed by with disdain the hut of the poor and simple man, who does not even know your artificial wants by name, who gains his bread by the sweat of his brow, shares it faithfully with his wife and children, ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... be remote when, by conciliatory advances on both sides, the question of arranging the management of Foreign affairs can be made an object of negotiations and find such a solution as can produce satisfaction in both countries and enduringly secure the futurity of the Union. ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... impoverished, sat apart in a corner of the room, and was proudly calm and silent. Yet, from time to time, the gentle and caressing glance of the young girl shone upon him and constrained him away from his sad thoughts, drawing him with her into the fields of hope and of futurity, where she loved to hold him at ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... Impostors cause themselves to be reverenced as Prophets which fore-tell Futurity. They will needs be look'd upon to have an unlimited Power. They boast of being able to make it Wet or Dry; to cause a Calm or a Storm; to render Land Fruitful or Barren; and, in a Word to make Hunters Fortunate or Unfortunate. They also pretend ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... park, and entered the smooth space, on which the trees stood alone and at rarer intervals, while the red clouds, still tinged with the hues of the departed sun, hovered on the far and upland landscape,—like Hope flushing over Futurity,—a mellowed yet rapid murmur, distinct from the more distant dashing of the sea, broke abruptly upon my ear. It was the voice of that brook whose banks had been the dearest haunt of my childhood; ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... recedes. Yet here, ev'n here, with pleasures long resign'd, Lo! MEMORY bursts the twilight of the mind: Her dear delusions sooth his sinking soul, When the rude scourge presumes its base controul; And o'er Futurity's blank page diffuse The full reflection of her vivid hues. 'Tis but to die, and then, to weep no more, Then will he wake on Congo's distant shore; Beneath his plantain's antient shade, renew The simple ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... provided, and take instead only this lonely gift of immortal life. Not that he ever really had any doubt about it; no, indeed; but it was his security, his consciousness that he held the bright sphere of all futurity in his hand, that made him dally a little, now that he could quaff immortality as ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... I could get my foot on the ladder, I would be beholden to no man, not even for a blanket. Perhaps even this very day I might commence an article on the "Crimes of Futurity," "Freedom of Will," or what not, at any rate, something worth reading, something for which I would at least get ten shillings.... And at the thought of this article I felt myself fired with a desire to set to work immediately and to draw from the contents of my overflowing ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... collect alms for hospitals," etc. Possibly the worthy Master Richard Watts objected to the levying of this blackmail; or he may in his walks have been subjected to the proctors' importunities, and consequently in his will rigorously debarred them in all futurity from any ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... were they given the New Testament and other good books to be read at night to their fellow-servants, such a course would vastly increase their knowledge of God and direct their minds to a serious thought of futurity.[3] ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... from the forces of nature, the Home Government, and his own officers, as to well entitle him to a place among the builders of Greater Britain. What was known of Australia, or rather New Holland—the name of Australia was still in futurity—in 1788, when Phillip first landed ...
— The Beginning Of The Sea Story Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... we reflect how many errors we are ourselves subject to, how many secret faults lie hid in the recesses of our hearts, which we should blush to have brought into open day (and yet those faults require the lenity and pity of a benevolent judge, or awful would be our prospect of futurity) I say, my dear Madam, when we consider this, we surely may pity ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... as shadowy and indistinct as one of Ossian's heroes," replied Angila, laughing; "something very distinguished in air and manners, with black eyes and hair, are the only points decided on. For the rest, Augusta, I refer you to Futurity," she added, gayly. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... My insight into futurity, like that of George Fox the quaker, and that of our great and philosophic poet, Lord Byron, is derived from simple presentiment. This is a far less artificial process than those which are employed by some others. Yet my predictions will, I believe, be found more correct than ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... fancy'd Supplement of Sanctius, Scioppius, Vossius, and Mariangelus, may take place."—Ib., p. 276. "Yet as to the commutableness of these two Tenses, which is deny'd likewise, they are all one."—Ib., p. 311. "Both these Tenses may represent a Futurity implyed by the dependence of the Clause."—Ib., p. 332. "Cry, cries, crying, cried, crier, decrial; Shy, shyer, shyest, shyly, shyness; Fly, flies, flying, flier, high-flier; Sly, slyer, slyest, slyly, slyness; Spy, spies, spying, spied, espial; ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Body o' me, I have gone too far; I must not provoke honest Albumazar: —an Egyptian mummy is an illustrious creature, my trusty hieroglyphic; and may have significations of futurity about him; odsbud, I would my son were an Egyptian mummy for thy sake. What, thou art not angry for a jest, my good Haly? I reverence the sun, moon and stars with all my heart. What, I'll make thee a present of a mummy: now I think on't, body o' me, I have a shoulder of an Egyptian king ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... by a benignant Providence that man, notwithstanding his eager desire to know the secrets of futurity, can never penetrate those mysteries. In some cases, could he know the changes which would take place in his condition, the misfortunes he would experience, the miseries he would undergo, in the lapse of only a few short years, or perhaps months, he would shrink like a coward from the conflict, ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... amiable shepherdess, if I were worthy to advise, I would recommend a more generous source of consolation, and teach you to prepare for futurity in a manner worthy of the simplicity of your heart; and worthy of that disinterested affection we have ever borne to each other. Think of those sacred ties that have united us. Think of the soft ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... grotto was entirely cut off from all approach, and then to look out in a sort of hermit-like security over the open ocean that stretched before him. Many an hour he had sat there and dreamed of all the possible fortunes that might be found for him when he should launch away into that blue smiling futurity. ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Maxendorf persisted, "must sometimes have looked into futurity. You must have seen the slow decay of national pride, the nations of the world growing closer and closer together. Can't you bear to strike a blow for the great things? You and I see so well the utter barbarism of warfare, the hideous ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... lies, And homesick heart looking with wistful eyes Through every twilight to a mother's door; Thou daring, darling, inconsistent boy, How dull the world would be Without thy presence, dear barbarian, And happy lord of high futurity! Be what thou art, our trouble and our joy, Our hardest problem and our brightest hope! And while thine elders lead thee up the slope Of knowledge, let them learn from teaching thee That vital joy is part of nature's plan, And he who keeps ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... throw it aside till your health is reestablished; keep easy and cheerful company about you, and never try to think but at those stated and solemn times when the thoughts are summoned to the cares of futurity, the only cares of a ...
— Life of Johnson, Volume 6 (of 6) • James Boswell
... the laws of God forbid it, is an affirmative answer to this question. For nothing is more obvious than that all other vices which that law condemns, stand in the way of our present happiness, as well as the happiness of futurity. Is this alone an exception ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... feeling and high enthusiasm. So clear a vision of what America would become was not founded on square miles, or on existing numbers, or on any common laws of statistics. It was an intuitive glance into futurity; it was a grand conception, which they have hitherto so hopelessly mismanaged, you must expect to go on from had to worse; you must expect to lose the little prestige which you retain; you must expect to find in other portions of the world the results of ...
— Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study • Compiled by Grenville Kleiser
... Haruspex, Auspex, or Augur, denoted any person who foretold futurity, or interpreted omens. There was at Rome a body of priests, or college, under this title, whose office it was to foretell future events, chiefly from the flight, chirping, or feeding of birds, and from other appearances. They were of the greatest authority in the ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... lasted nearly five hours, is a commonplace of history, but we cannot forbear repeating it. Otis was a flame of fire; with a promptitude of classical allusions, a depth of research, a rapid summary of historical events and dates, a profusion of legal authorities, a prophetic glance of his eyes into futurity, and a rapid torrent of impetuous eloquence, he hurried away all before him. American independence was then and there born. Every man of an immense crowded audience appeared to me to go away as I did, ready to take up ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... is as liable to be mistaken on questions of futurity as on questions of philosophy and religion, on which the multitude called "everybody" has been largely mistaken ever since the earliest periods known to history. "Everybody" is generally pessimistic, apt to be superstitious, and never philosophic. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... in the Air" is a story of the awful devastation following a conflict between two first-class powers with the resources of the air at their command. It is one of the most brilliant and successful of Mr. Wells's studies in futurity. ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... favorite with every one, she received many votive offerings. Her shrine was an amusing one to look at. A green china frog played a tuneless guitar; a pensive monkey gazed with clasped hands and dreadfully human eyes into futurity; there were sagacious looking elephants, placid rhinoceroses, rampant hares, two pug dogs clasped in an irrevocable embrace, an enormous lobster, a diminutive polar bear, and in the center of all a most evil-looking jackdaw about half ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... only son was to pass in order that he might die upon a scaffold before it,— was busied in removing the ancient and ruinous buildings of De Burgh, Henry VIII., and Queen Elizabeth, to make way for the superb architecture on which Inigo Jones exerted all his genius. The king, ignorant of futurity, was now engaged in pressing on his work; and, for that purpose, still maintained his royal apartments at Whitehall, amidst the rubbish of old buildings, and the various confusion attending the erection of the new pile, which formed ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... noble height thou canst not climb. All triumphs may be thine in Time's futurity, If whatso'er thy fault, thou dost not faint or halt, But lean upon the staff of ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... incompatible. This opinion, so much warranted by the boundless ambition and profound dissimulation of his character, meets with ready belief; though it is more agreeable to the narrowness of human views, and the darkness of futurity, to suppose that this daring usurper was guided by events, and did not as yet foresee, with any assurance, that unparalleled greatness which he afterwards attained. Many writers of that age have asserted,[**] [17]that he really intended to make a private bargain with the king; a measure which ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... movements of the world can be of no importance to them, if they do not, in the course of ages up to the present, revere prophecies which have been revealed, and in the immediate, as well as in the most remote futurity, predictions still veiled. Hence arises a connection that is wanting in history, which seems to give us only an accidental wavering backwards and forwards in a necessarily limited circle. Doctor Crusius was one of ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... now, and only hear Through the thick atmosphere A deep perpetual well, that sad and slow, Intones the knell of ages long ago, And ages that no man can tell or know, Whose shadows roll before them on the sky, Black with forebodings of futurity. ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... in a cave upon the heath, where they, who knew by foresight of his coming, were engaged in preparing their dreadful charms, by which they conjured up infernal spirits to reveal to them futurity. Their horrid ingredients were toads, bats, and serpents, the eye of a newt, and the tongue of a dog, the leg of a lizard, and the wing of the night-owl, the scale of a dragon, the tooth of a wolf, the maw of the ravenous salt-sea shark, the mummy ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Investigator and prevent the survey being resumed, and had my existence depended upon the expression of a wish, I do not know that it would have received utterance; but Infinite Wisdom has, in infinite mercy, reserved the knowledge of futurity ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... rebels, after paying all they had promised the soldiers, found themselves still in the midst of plenty: an instructive lesson, says Polybius, to ministers, how a people should be treated; as it teaches them to look, not only to the present occasion, but to extend their views to futurity. ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... upon a couch at ease. It was a poet's house who keeps the keys Of pleasure's temple. Round about were hung The glorious features of the bards who sung In other ages—cold and sacred busts Smiled at each other. Happy he who trusts To clear Futurity his darling fame! Then there were fauns and satyrs taking aim At swelling apples with a frisky leap And reaching fingers, 'mid a luscious heap Of vine leaves. Then there rose to view a fane Of liny marble, ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... Most true, reader—but wrath is blindness. You too surely have read more wisdom than you have practised yet; seeing that you have your Bible, and perhaps, too, Mill's "Political Economy." Have you perused therein the priceless Chapter "On the Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes"? If not, let me give you the reference—vol. ii, p. 315, of the Second Edition. Read it, thou self-satisfied Mammon, and perpend; for it is both a prophecy ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... account. My health is nearly the same as when you were here, only my sleep is a little sounder, and on the whole, I am rather better than otherwise, though I mend by very slow degrees: the weakness of my nerves had so debilitated my mind that I dare neither review past wants nor look forward into futurity, for the least anxiety or perturbation in my breast produces most unhappy effects on my whole frame. Sometimes indeed, when for an hour or two my spirits are a little lightened, I glimmer a little into futurity; but my principal and indeed my ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... wit, condemn'd the feeble war to wage With close malevolence, or public rage; Let study, worn with virtue's fruitless lore, Behold this theatre, and grieve no more. This night, distinguish'd by your smile, shall tell, That never Briton can in vain excel; The slighted arts futurity shall trust, And rising ages ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... all ages have been ready, not without reason, to recognize in signal disasters befalling their enemies the retributive hand of the Almighty himself lifting for a moment the veil of futurity, to disclose a little of the misery that awaits the evil-doer in another world. But, in the present instance, it is a candid historian of different faith who does not hesitate to ascribe to a special interposition of the Deity the ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... the prejudices of a creed, and terminates in dark conjectures merely. He hopes, or rather he "would wish to indulge the hope, founded upon the divine attribute of infinite benevolence, that there will be a period somewhere in the endless futurity, when all God's sinning creatures will be restored by him to rectitude and happiness." Vain hope! delusive wish! How can they be made holy without their own consent and cooeperation? And if they could be restored to rectitude and happiness, how can we hope that God would restore them, since ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... I am Exceeding well yett; all my faculties Retaine their wonted motion; but Ime like A new recoverd patient, whose relapse Admitts no helpe of phisick: in your love Consists my hope, futurity of health; And you have too much charity to suffer ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... by the thought that some event on its way to her down the unknown path of futurity was casting a shadow into the ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... to a life already replete with pecuniary indulgences, as those in the "sere and yellow leaf" are wont to take to religion as a solacing comfort against things that are past, and pave the way to a very desirable futurity. But now, politicians are of no peculiar class or condition of citizens; the success of a champion depends not so much upon the matter, as upon the manner, not upon the capital he may have in real ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... to dismiss the matter from my thought at once; for, even if it prognosticated anything and was intended to withdraw the veil from futurity, it ought only to convince me of one fact, or fancy, namely, that, notwithstanding that I might have a hard struggle to win my darling, I should win her in the end:—that, also, in spite of antagonistic mammas and contrary circumstances, ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... ninety-eight or ninety-nine years, however, is worth nearly as much as a perpetuity, and should therefore, one might think, be a fund for borrowing nearly as much. But those who, in order to make family settlements, and to provide for remote futurity, buy into the public stocks, would not care to purchase into one of which the value was continually diminishing; and such people make a very considerable proportion, both of the proprietors and purchasers of stock. An annuity for a long term of years, therefore, though its intrinsic ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... some information concerning present objects, the next cause of solicitude and inquiry to the mind of man, is to penetrate a little into the secrets of futurity. The same tutelary gods who bestowed their care, and exerted their powers to procure present pleasure and happiness for mankind, were supposed not averse to grant them, in this respect also, a little indulgence. Hence the ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... weapons and is imbued with his spirit. He is full of hope for science and humanity. With soaring boldness he directs his inquiries to futurity, dissatisfied with the present, and cherishing a fond hope of a better existence. He speculates on God and the soul. He is not much interested in physical phenomena. He does not, like Thales, strive to find out the beginning of all things, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... pipes, weep bitterly, and, in their sorrow, cut themselves with knives, or pierce themselves with the points of sharp instruments. I could not but reflect that theirs is a sorrow without hope: all is gross darkness with them as to futurity; and they wander through life without the consolatory and cheering influence of that gospel which has brought ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... severe, by fairy Fiction drest. In buskin'd measures move Pale Grief, and pleasing Pain, With Horror, tyrant of the throbbing breast. 130 A voice, as of the cherub-choir, Gales from blooming Eden bear; And distant warblings lessen on my ear, That lost in long futurity expire. Fond impious man, think'st thou yon sanguine cloud, 135 Rais'd by thy breath, has quench'd the orb of day? To-morrow he repairs the golden flood, And warms the nations with redoubled ray. Enough for me; with joy I see The different doom our fates assign. 140 Be ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... with careworn face, Abstracted eye, and sauntering pace, May pass one such as he, Whose mind heaves with a secret force, That shall be felt along the course Of far Futurity. ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... tamperings with the future, even where we are convinced of the fallacy of the prediction. It is singular how willingly the mind will half deceive itself, and with what a degree of awe we will listen even to these babblers about futurity. For my part, I cannot feel angry with these poor vagabonds that seek to deceive us into bright hopes and expectations. I have always been something of a castle-builder, and have found my liveliest pleasures to arise from the illusions which fancy has cast over ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... a gesture of despair. He went on repeating the word 'sealed.' I began to realise that the wine had clouded his brain. No wonder! Foodless he had gone into futurity, foodless he still was. I urged him to eat at any rate some bread. It was maddening to think that he, who had so much to tell, might tell nothing. 'How was it all,' I asked, 'yonder? Come! ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... classes: — the first comprising alchymists, or those in general who have devoted themselves to the discovering of the philosopher's stone and the water of life; the second comprising astrologers, necromancers, sorcerers, geomancers, and all those who pretended to discover futurity; and the third consisting of the dealers in charms, amulets, philters, universal-panacea mongers, touchers for the evil, seventh sons of a seventh son, sympathetic powder compounders, homeopathists, animal magnetizers, and all the motley tribe of ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... admonishing him to consecrate his remaining hours to the exercise of Christian virtues. All minds were directed to the contemplation of futurity; and children, who manifest the more elevated feelings of the soul without alloy, were frequently seen, while labouring under the plague, breathing out their spirit with prayer and ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... treated with indignity and disrespect. The companions of my former libertinism would scarcely believe their eyes, my dear doctor, was you to show them this epistle. They would laugh at me as a dreaming enthusiast, or pity me as a timorous wretch who was shocked at the appearance of futurity. But whoever laughs at me for being right, or pities me for being sensible of my errors, is more entitled to my compassion than my resentment. A future life may very well strike terror into any man who has not acted well in this life; and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various
... woefully deficient in wise statesmanship. I know also that hindsight is at all times attended with less embarrassment to him who uses it than is foresight; and I know, besides, that those historic actors who had not attained unto a position of futurity in respect to their task, but whose task sustained to them that relative place instead, were obliged to do the best they could with whatever quantum of the latter faculty they might have possessed and toward the manful achievement of their duty. ...
— Modern Industrialism and the Negroes of the United States - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 12 • Archibald H. Grimke
... property, it is inconsistent and unjust that a mere lapse of twenty-eight or any other term of years should deprive an author at once of principal and interest in his own literary fund. To be robbed by Time is a sorry encouragement to write for Futurity! ...
— International Copyright - Considered in some of its Relations to Ethics and Political Economy • George Haven Putnam
... Then appeared "Comfort," "Futurity," and "An Apprehension"; the dainty little picture of her childish days in "Hector in the Garden"; the sonnets to George Sand, on which the French biographer[3] of Mrs. Browning, in recent years, has commented, ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... in her hand a card, one of a pack. It was the death-card of superstitious lookers into futurity. Had he selected it because it bore that reputation, or was ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... all Principles of Religion, and are lost to all Sense of Morality, they are prepared to receive any Superstition, whenever the Decay of Health, or the cross Accidents of Life revive the Fears of Futurity; which may be stifled, but cannot be extinguished; such Persons not able to digest the wholesome Food of Repentance, by which their spiritual Condition might be gradually mended, greedily swallow the high ...
— A Letter from the Lord Bishop of London, to the Clergy and People of London and Westminster; On Occasion of the Late Earthquakes • Thomas Sherlock
... analytic conceptions of a Paradise in catacombs, undisturbed in its alkaline or acid virtues by the dread of Deity, or hope of futurity, I know not how far the modern reader may willingly withdraw himself for a little time, to hear of men who, in their darkest and most foolish day, sought by their labour to make the desert as the garden ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... the scene is cast, notes are added to give some account of the principal charms and spells of that night, so big with prophecy to the peasantry in the west of Scotland. The passion of prying into futurity makes a striking part of the history of human nature in its rude state, in all ages and nations; and it may be some entertainment to a philosophic mind, if any such honour the author with a perusal, to see the remains of it among the ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... Religion rendered cheerful the abrupt night of futurity; and what can philosophy do more, or rather, can ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the city, which, from his own name Romulus, he determined to call Rome. And in order to strengthen his new city, he conceived a design, singular enough, and even a little rude, yet worthy of a great man, and of a genius which discerned far away in futurity the means of strengthening his power and his people. The young Sabine females of honorable birth who had come to Rome, attracted by the public games and spectacles which Romulus then, for the first time, established as annual games in the circus, were suddenly carried off ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... that he carried his torch all round the exterior surface of the grotto. He saw nothing, unless that, by traces of smoke, others had before him attempted the same thing, and, like him, in vain. Yet he did not leave a foot of this granite wall, as impenetrable as futurity, without strict scrutiny; he did not see a fissure without introducing the blade of his hunting sword into it, or a projecting point on which he did not lean and press in the hopes it would give way. All was vain; and he lost two hours in his attempts, which were at last utterly useless. At ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... be wished you had never been sent there, as the slight they have put upon our offered friendship is very disreputable to us, and, of course, hurtful to our affairs elsewhere. I think they are short-sighted, and do not look very far into futurity, or they would seize with avidity so excellent an opportunity of securing a neighbor's friendship, which may hereafter be of great consequence ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... entering and some leaving a neat small dwelling; and on joining the throng, we learnt that a famous fortune-teller lived there, who, at stated periods, opened his house to all that were willing to pay for being instructed in the events of futurity, or for having the secrets of the present or past revealed to them. On entering the house, and descending a flight of steps, we found, at the farther end of a dark room, lighted with a chandelier suspended ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... Gibbon,[124:2] "dreaded the mysterious power of spells and incantations, of potent herbs and mysterious rites, which could extinguish or recall life, inflame the passions of the soul, blast the works of creation, and extort from reluctant demons the secrets of futurity." They held firmly to the belief that this miraculous power was possessed by certain old hags and enchantresses, who lived in poverty and obscurity. The modern popular ideas about witches having compacts with evil spirits, whereby the former ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... relaxation of principle, but an acknowledgment of a weakness common to human nature. One of the most advanced thinkers and men of science of our time has frankly admitted that his theological views are considerably modified by the state of his health; and if one's ideas on futurity are thus affected, it is no wonder that things of this world wear a different appearance when viewed from a sick bed. It is not difficult to imagine that whist, for example, played on the counterpane by three good Samaritans, to while ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... suspicion because of her uncanny words and ways, and she knew it, and the thought of it was a grief to her. She wanted the people to like her as she would have liked them had they let her. The wish to win them fired her imagination. She looked on ahead into futurity, and was a beautiful lady, driving a pair of ponies down a wooded lane, with a carriage full of good things for the cottagers, and they all loved her, and were very glad to ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... among the ancients more eminent for all the arts of divination than the Druids. Many of the superstitious practices in use to this day among the country people for discovering their future fortune seem to be remains of Druidism. Futurity is the great concern of mankind. Whilst the wise and learned look back upon experience and history, and reason from things past about events to come, it is natural for the rude and ignorant, who have the same desires without the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a matter of gravity, Donald," she stated, "and you keep treating it with levity. Sandy, do you really own Tapwater? He's the colt who won the Monmouth Futurity, ...
— Lighter Than You Think • Nelson Bond
... multitude of smaller groups will become utterly extinct, and leave no modified descendants; and consequently that, of the species living at any one period, extremely few will transmit descendants to a remote futurity. I shall have to return to this subject in the chapter on classification, but I may add that as, according to this view, extremely few of the more ancient species have transmitted descendants to the present day, and, as all the descendants of the same species form a class, we can ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... splendid thoroughfare would this highway form to New Guinea, New Britain, New Ireland, and the countless islands in their immediate vicinity! But I shall be thought to be looking rather too far into futurity. ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... measures move Pale Grief and pleasing Pain, With Horror, tyrant of the throbbing breast. A voice, as of the cherub-choir, Gales from blooming Eden bear; And distant warblings lessen on my ear, That, lost in long futurity, expire. Fond impious man, think'st thou yon sanguine cloud, Raised by thy breath, has quenched the orb of day! To-morrow he repairs the golden flood, And warms the nations with redoubled ray. Enough for me; with joy I see The different doom our ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... sometimes created by the powers of a disordered fancy, and the weakness of a distempered body. After a life of virtue and glory, Theodoric was now descending with shame and guilt into the grave; his mind was humbled by the contrast of the past, and justly alarmed by the invisible terrors of futurity. One evening, as it is related, when the head of a large fish was served on the royal table, [102] he suddenly exclaimed, that he beheld the angry countenance of Symmachus, his eyes glaring fury and revenge, and his mouth armed ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... any sense, God speaking in the Bible) "then, of all passages, it is in these, which treat so confidently of futurity, that we must recognize His voice; if we have it not in these passages, then, where are we to listen for it at all?"—Greek ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... "Yet, as to the commutableness of these two tenses, which is denied likewise, they [the foregoing examples] are all one [; i.e., exactly equivalent]"—Id. "Both these tenses may represent a futurity, implied by the dependence of the clause."—Id. "Cry, cries, crying, cried, crier, decrial; Shy, shier, shiest, shily, shiness; Fly, flies, flying, flier, high-flier; Sly, slier, sliest, slily, sliness; Spy, spies, spying, spied, espial; Dry, drier, driest, drily, driness."—Cobb, Webster, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... curtains, which hang down at the two extremities of human life, and which no living man has yet drawn aside. Many hundreds of generations have already stood before them with their torches, guessing anxiously what lies behind. On the curtain of Futurity, many see their own shadows, the forms of their passions enlarged and put in motion; they shrink in terror at this image of themselves. Poets, philosophers, and founders of states, have painted this curtain with their dreams, ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... remain passive—to feel that prudence, virtue, genius avail them not—that while rapid ideas pass in their imagination, time moves with an unaltered pace, and compels them to wait, along with the herd of vulgar mortals, for knowledge of futurity. ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... are such fools as to disbelieve a futurity, or to think, whatever be our practice, that we came hither by chance, and for no end but to do all the mischief we have it in our power to do. Nor am I ashamed to own, that in the prayers which my poor uncle ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... other points of view in which this subject might be placed, of a striking and animating kind. But they would lead us too far into the regions of futurity, and would involve topics not proper for a newspaper discussion. I shall briefly observe, that our situation invites and our interests prompt us to aim at an ascendant in the system of American affairs. The world ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... 3: Hope implies a certain defect, namely the futurity of happiness, which ceases when happiness is present: whereas fear implies a natural defect in a creature, in so far as it is infinitely distant from God, and this defect will remain even in heaven. Hence fear will not be cast ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... fleeting things; And mortals vainly trust In fabrics formed of dust! We look into life's waste, And tread its paths in haste; The past—for ever flown; The present—scarce our own; While, cold and dim, before Stretches the shadowy shore, The dark futurity, which lies Beyond the glance of mortal eyes, Wrapped in the mystic gloom Which canopies the tomb. But faith can pour a light On the spirit's earthly night, And break that sullen shroud; As a star bursts ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... pocket with the thrill of a man holding the key to fretting shackles. One week of life with the future eliminated; one week with no reckoning to be made at the end; one week with every human fetter struck off; one week in which to ignore every curbing law of futurity and abandon himself to the joy of the present! The future—even the narrow bounds of an earthly future—holds men prisoners. A few careless dogs, to be sure, live their day, blind to the years to come, but that is brute stupidity. A few brave souls swagger ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... wonders; and it is not in his mind we must look for that philosophy, which man must have to know how to observe once, what he has every day seen. His soul, which nothing disturbs, gives itself up entirely to the consciousness of its actual existence, without any thought of even the nearest futurity; and his projects, equally confined with his views, scarce extend to the end of the day. Such is, even at present, the degree of foresight in the Caribbean: he sells his cotton bed in the morning, and comes in the evening, with ...
— A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of - The Inequality Among Mankind • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... be, can get wholly free from the intellectual climate and the social ideals of his period, but occasionally a man appears who has the skill and vision to hit upon nascent aspirations and tendencies which are big with futurity, and who thereby seems to be far ahead of his age and not explicable by any lineage or pedigree. Sebastian Franck was a man of this sort. He was extraordinarily unfettered by medieval inheritance, and he would be able to adjust himself with perfect ease to the ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... of this ingredient. And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... May," whispered he, reproachfully, "is yon wreath of roses a garland to hang above our graves that you look so sad? Oh, Edith, this is our golden time. Tarnish it not by any pensive shadow of the mind, for it may be that nothing of futurity will be brighter than the mere remembrance of what is ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... there remained of it nothing but barren memories or a contemptuous incredulity. Speaking from the religious point of view, the Renaissance was but a resurrection of paganism dying out before the presence of the Christian world, which was troubled and perplexed, but full of life and futurity. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... world of strange tales, half false, half true, had grown up around her as she grew. She was believed to spend whole nights in prayer; to speak with visitors from the other world; even to have the power of seeing into futurity. The intensity of her imagination gave rise to the belief that she had only to will, and she could see whom she would, and all that they were doing, even across the seas; her exquisite sensibility, it was whispered, made her feel every bodily suffering she witnessed, as acutely as the ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... of one in Moses' position, who had so little in his own power with which to fulfil the promise; and who referred him to an unseen divinity, somewhere or other; and so drew bills upon heaven and futurity, and did not feel himself at all bound to pay them when they fell due, unless God should give him the cash to do it with. But Hobab took the plunge, he ventured all upon these two promises—Moses' word, and God's word that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... may againe Exist, and be a member of his loue, Whom I, with all the Office of my heart Intirely honour, I would not be delayd. If my offence, be of such mortall kinde, That nor my Seruice past, nor present Sorrowes, Nor purpos'd merit in futurity, Can ransome me into his loue againe, But to know so, must be my benefit: So shall I cloath me in a forc'd content, And shut my selfe vp in some other ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Vandals," said a grocer to me, with a most sand-the-sugar face, this morning, as he pocketed about ten times the value of a trifle—candles, in fact, which have risen twenty-five per cent. in the last two days—and folding his arms, scowled from under his kepi into futurity, ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... her lover, as they walked together in the sacred edifice to register those vows that bound them in an indissoluble tie, and unite their hearts in a stronger and holier love than their lover's vows had done. Then she know not what sorrow was. No gift of futurity had disclosed to her the wretchedness and penury that after years had prepared for her. No, then all was joy and happiness. As she stood by the side of her lover her maiden face suffused with blushes, and her palpitating heart filled with mingled felicity and anxiety as she looked down on the bridal ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... farther, even to annihilate the devil, and believe nothing about him, neither of one kind or other: the next step they come to, is to conclude, There is no God, and so atheism takes its rise in the same sink, with a carelessness about futurity. But there is no occasion to enter upon an argument to prove the being of the Almighty, or to illustrate his power by words, who has so many undeniable testimonies in the breasts of every rational ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... attained to an uncertain recollection of a scene of madness and violence, followed, as he at first thought, by a duel. A little further reflection, however, informed him that this event was yet among the things of futurity; but he could by no means recall the appointed time or place. As he had not the slightest intention (praiseworthy and prudent as it would unquestionably have been) to give up the chance of avenging Ellen's wrongs ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... conditions of prison?" The change is so violent, it comes so suddenly, the unknown possibilities are so terrible, the sufferings naturally implied are so inevitable, that had any one gifted with a knowledge of futurity shown me that such experience was to be mine I would have thought it utterly impossible that such horrors could ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... orr what remaynes of thee, AElla, the darlynge of futurity, Lett thys mie songe bolde as thie courage be, As ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... open-air meetings became such an established fact that, instead of parting with "good-night," we said "au revoir—till to-morrow." At these times we talked of many things; sometimes of subjects abstract and mystical—of futurity, of death, of the spiritual life—but oftenest of Art in its manifold developments. And sometimes our speculations wandered on into the late ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... who passed their days in raptures of futurity, made little more of this world, than the world that was before it, while they lay obscure in the chaos of pre-ordination, and night of their fore-beings. And if any have been so happy as truly to understand Christian annihilation, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... a true representation of human existence, and that he has, at the same time, with a generous benevolence displayed every consolation which our state affords us; not only those arising from the hopes of futurity, but such as may be attained in the immediate progress through life. He has not depressed the soul to despondency and indifference. He has every where inculcated study, labour, and exertion. Nay, he has shewn, in a very odious light, a man whose practice is ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... say? Perhaps what seem to us the impassable limits of thought are but the conditions of a yet early stage in the history of man. Those who make them a proof of a "future state" must necessarily suppose gradations in that futurity; does the savage, scarce risen above the brute, enter upon the same "new life" as the man of highest civilization? Such gropings of the mind certify our ignorance; the strange thing is that they can be held by any one to demonstrate that our ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... prophesy With a wink of his eye, Peep with security Into futurity, Sum up your history, Clear up a mystery, Humour proclivity For a nativity—for a nativity; With mirrors so magical, Tetrapods tragical, Bogies spectacular, Answers oracular, Facts astronomical, Solemn or comical, And, if ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... historian of the Augustan age,) viz. that Joseph, the youngest of Jacob's children, whom his brethren, through envy, had sold to foreign merchants, being endowed from heaven(413) with the interpretation of dreams, and a knowledge of futurity, preserved, by his uncommon prudence, Egypt from the famine with which it was menaced, and was extremely ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... possession of the perverse, shallow-pated birds. They wander backward and forward, with an air of vacancy as though they knew not what to do; they pass and repass the yawning portal of the turkey house, with heads erect and eyes fixed on futurity, not only as if they did not see the door, but actually as if there were no door there to see. And when the maddened driver, wrought to desperation, hurls into their midst a stick or stone, hoping fervently ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland |
