"Futurity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Into how much of futurity did Mr. Bounderby see as he sat alone? Had he any prescience of the day, five years to come, when Josiah Bounderby, of Coketown, was to die in a fit in the Coketown street? Could he foresee Mr. Gradgrind, a white-haired ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... allegorical form. The misty expanse of Futurity is radiated with divergent lines of rigid steel; and along one of these lines, with diminishing carbon and sighing exhaust, you travel at schedule speed. At each junction, you switch right or left, and on you go still, up or down ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... judgments supposed to overtake those who insulted the Gods by summoning them to witness a false contract. But this would have been only part of the evil. So long as men acknowledged higher natures, they were doubtful about futurity. This doubt had little strength on the side of hope, but much on the side of fear. The blessings of any future state were cheerless and insipid mockeries; so Achilles—how he bemoans his state! But the torments were real. By far more, however, they, through this coarse ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... that you might regret our connection and believe yourself bound in honour to fulfil the wishes of your parents, although they opposed themselves to your inclinations. But this is false reasoning. I confess to you, my friend, that I love you and that in my airy dreams of futurity you have been my constant friend and companion. But it is your happiness I desire as well as my own when I declare to you that our marriage would render me eternally miserable unless it were the dictate of your own free choice. Even now I weep to think that, borne down as you are ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... the origin of the phrase "To kick the bucket," the tradition among the slang fraternity is, that "One Bolsover having hung himself to a beam while standing on the bottom of a pail, or bucket, kicked the vessel away in order to pry into futurity, and it was all UP with him from that moment—Finis!" Our Querist will find a very humorous illustration of its use (too long to quote) in an article on "Anglo-German Dictionaries," contributed by De Quincy to the London Magazine for ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... 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 commonplace realities. As ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... Let 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
... ere noon of night With sacred spells and many a mystic rite Invoke the Power Divine, and seek from high The dark events of dread futurity. ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... severe, by fairy Fiction dressed. In buskined 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
... not be better for him to die at once, and go to wait for her in the blessed regions of semibarbaric futurity? ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... love and live in vain— Twined with my heart, and can I deem thee dead When busy Memory flashes on my brain? Well—I will dream that we may meet again, And woo the vision to my vacant breast: If aught of young Remembrance then remain, Be as it may Futurity's behest,[dw] For me 'twere bliss enough to know ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... forbids a catastrophe parallel to the return of Xerxes and the desolation of the Persians. I have, therefore, contented myself with exhibiting a series of lyric pictures, and with having wrought upon the curtain of futurity, which falls upon the unfinished scene, such figures of indistinct and visionary delineation as suggest the final triumph of the Greek cause as a portion of the cause ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... man of seventy seemed to grow yet loftier as he spoke, free from all dread of final annihilation, and making the gesture of a hero who defies futurity. Faith had given him serenity of peace; he believed, he knew, he had neither doubt nor fear of the morrow of death. Still his voice was tinged with haughty sadness as he resumed, "God can do all, even destroy His own work ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... and djinns and mankind to Solomon, and as Thou didst subject the moon and Al-Burah to Mohammed, on whom be Allah's mercy and His blessing! And subject unto us all the seas in earth and heaven, in Thy visible and in Thine invisible worlds, the sea of this life and the sea of futurity. O Thou Who reignest over everything and unto Whom all things return.' ... You must know that prayer, and say that prayer, ya Zan. What do you do ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... forms of the other tenses of this mood, he improperly put as many indicatives in their places. With him, and his numerous followers, the ending determines the mood in one tense, while the conjunction controls it in the other five! In his syntax, he argues, "that in cases wherein contingency and futurity do not occur, it is not proper to turn the verb from its signification of present time, nor to vary [he means, or to forbear to change] its form or termination. [Fist] The verb would then be in the indicative mood, whatever conjunctions might attend it."—L. Murray's Gram., 8vo, p. 208: ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... of a superintending design, the blind evolution of what turn out to be great powers or truths; the progress of things, as if from unreasoning elements, not towards final causes; the greatness and littleness of man, his far-reaching aims, his short duration, the curtain hung over his futurity; the disappointments of life, the defeat of good, the success of evil, the pervading idolatries, the corruptions, the dreary, hopeless irreligion, that condition of the whole race so fearfully yet exactly described in the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... of judicial astrology, and Leicester, though exempt 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 ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 coloring 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 moment ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... are not always confounded with those of common life; nor does its weakness or folly always prevent the watchfulness, penetration, and courage, men are accustomed to employ in the management of common affairs. A Roman consulting futurity by the pecking of birds, or a king of Sparta inspecting the entrails of a beast, Mithridates consulting his women on the interpretation of his dreams, are examples sufficient to prove, that a childish imbecility on ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... learn the fate of missing friends, or recover the possession of lost goods; while the young of both sexes, impatient of the tardy pace of time, and burning with curiosity to discern the secrets of futurity, availed themselves of every opportunity to visit her lowly dwelling, and hear from her prophetic lips the revelation of the most tender incidents and important events of their coming lives. She read the future, and traced what to mere mortal eyes were ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... armies might meet from day to day, and then what would become of the rejoicings of our wedding-day! To undertake the performance of a ceremony of such importance, under these circumstances, would only be mocking Providence, and preparing for ourselves a futurity of misfortune. However, I was too much in love, and too impatient, not to have married under any circumstances, therefore I only endured what I could ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... superintending design, the blind evolution of what turn out to be great powers or truths, the progress of things, as if from unreasoning elements, not toward final causes, the greatness and littleness of man, his far-reaching aims, his short duration, the curtain hung over his futurity, the disappointments of life, the defeat of good, the success of evil, physical pain, mental anguish, the prevalence and intensity of sin, the pervading idolatries, the corruptions, the dreary hopeless irreligion, that condition of ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... and this worship mistaken; yet the principle of it was laudable, and founded in nature; the stream was corrupted, but the fountain was pure. Man, assisted only by his own light, sees nothing beyond the present moment. Futurity is to him an abyss invisible to the most keen, the most piercing sagacity, and exhibits nothing on which he may with certainty fix his views, or form his resolutions. He is equally feeble and impotent with regard to the execution of his designs. ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... may one day be completed; and that the dream of Engelbert de Berg, which was realized under Conrad de Hochsteden, may, in an age or two, be the greatest cathedral in the world. This incomplete Iliad sees Homers in futurity. The church was shut. I surveyed the steeples, and was startled at their dimensions. What I had taken for towers are the projections of the buttresses. Tho only the first story is completed, the building is already nearly as high as the towers ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... atmosphere—or the uncertain twilight of the chamber that produced before me, in the stygian darkness of the recess, the vacillating and indistinct outline of something luminous, and horrid? I would gladly have risked futurity to have looked elsewhere—I could not. My eyes were fixed—I was compelled to gaze steadily in ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... you hear historians talk of thrones, And those that sate upon them, let it be As we now gaze upon the mammoth's bones, And wonder what old world such things could see, Or hieroglyphics on Egyptian stones, The pleasant riddles of futurity— Guessing at what shall happily be hid, As the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... 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 ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... that this project was one of futurity. There never were such people as the Shimerdas for wanting to give away everything they had. Even the mother was always offering me things, though I knew she expected substantial presents in return. We stood there in friendly silence, while the feeble ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... fluctuations of generous feeling—of approbation and of complacency. We were intellectualized also in proportion; we looked backward upon the records of the human race with pride, and, instead of being afraid, we delighted to look forward into futurity. It was imagined that this new-born spirit of resistance, rising from the most sacred feelings of the human heart, would diffuse itself through many countries; and not merely for the distant future, but for the present, hopes were entertained as bold as they ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... of prophets in those days called by a name which has been translated soothsayers. These soothsayers were able, as was supposed, to look somewhat into futurity—dimly and doubtfully, it is true, but really, by means of certain appearances exhibited by the bodies of the animals offered in sacrifices These soothsayers were consulted on all important occasions; and if the auspices proved unfavorable ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... Cardross followed up stairs toward the magnificent nursery, which had been prepared months before, with a loving eagerness of anticipation, and a merciful blindness to futurity, for the expected heir of the Earls of Cairnforth. For, as before said, the only hope of the lineal continuance of the race was in this one child. It lay in a cradle resplendent with white satin hangings and lace curtains, ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... I was agreeably undeceived. An old man was seated upon the monument of the slaughtered presbyterians, and busily employed in deepening, with his chisel, the letters of the inscription, which, announcing, in scriptural language, the promised blessings of futurity to be the lot of the slain, anathematized the murderers with corresponding violence. A blue bonnet of unusual dimensions covered the grey hairs of the pious workman. His dress was a large old-fashioned coat of the coarse cloth called hoddingrey, usually worn by the elder ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... often wish that I could know The life in store for me, The measure of the joy and woe Of my futurity. I do not fear to meet the worst The gathering years can give; My life has been a life accurst From youth, and yet I live; The Future may be overcast, But never ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... which is the true foundation, but rather that they must be both baseless and, as it were, meteoric in mid air. They have seen very little ahead of a present power or need, and have been then most moral, when most inclined to pierce a little into futurity, but also when most obstinately declining to pierce too far, and busy mainly with the present. They have been so far blindfolded that they could see but for a few steps in front of them, yet so far free to see that those ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... day after the day after to-morrow, seemed, in his present eagerness, to belong to the dim distances of futurity. ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... Thirsis, 'tis the vine's prolific juice Can youth and beauty re-produce, Banish the sad regret of former years, And of futurity the fears. ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... acts—the empires of the old world, and of former ages—the Assyrian, the Persian, the Grecian, the Roman empires—were empires of conquest, dominions of man over man. The empire which his great mind, piercing into the darkness of futurity, foretold in America, was the empire of learning and the arts,—the dominion of man over himself, and over physical nature—acquired by the inspirations of genius, and the toils of industry; not watered with the tears of the widow ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... who had the reputation of knowing more of futurity than she had any right to know. The story was that she had foretold the assassination of Count Rossi and ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the essence of our mind; in which I find an incomprehensible mixture of greatness and weakness. Its greatness is real: for it brings together the past and the present, without confusion; and by its reasoning penetrates into futurity. It has the idea both of bodies and spirits. Nay, it has the idea of the infinite: for it supposes and affirms all that belongs to it, and rejects and denies all that is not proper to it. If you say that the infinite is triangular, the ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... self. Peace, then, has triumphs as well as war. Mr. Forrest and his party well deserve the triumphs they have secured in their successful journey from this colony to Adelaide. The benefits conferred on the colony can best be appreciated by those who have the greatest capacity of looking into futurity, and as long as Australia has a history, the names of Mr. Forrest and his companions will be borne down with honour. To himself it will be a source of pleasure to know that the first year of his administration will ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... they will join me in my exile. Yes: I will live! The future who shall spell? My wife, my son, will be enough for me.— And I will give my hours to chronicling In stately words that stir futurity The might of our unmatched accomplishments; And in the tale immortalize your names By ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... watchfulness, and the soft voices of sisters contending for their place by her bedside. The contrast with her present stately solitude bursts resistless through every effort to repel it; and life and youth, with their long futurity, present her with nothing but a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... their prayers with a certain gesture by which they all expressed the same thought,—a caustic, jeering thought, a silent slander. Two old women shook their heads, and gave each other a glance that seemed to dive into futurity. ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... which was to "teach them all things," not only explaining the nature of Christianity, and causing them to understand it, but also to unveil futurity before them, taught them, that after the Jews had rejected the gospel, the Gentiles would receive it, and the church grow and become great; that a falling away would afterwards follow, which would spread wide, and continue for a longtime, till it became nearly total; that when such was ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... 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, homoeopathists, animal magnetisers, and ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... now moody, now wild, but bringing out results of absolute good sense: restless and wayward in action, but with deep peace at his heart; exulting that he has caught the true aspect of things past, and the depth of futurity which lies before him, wherein to create something so magnificent as the world has scarcely begun to dream of. There is the strongest hope of a nation that is capable of being ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... sketched by Mr. Burke, in the course of his speech on conciliation with America, in a passage whose picturesque beauty has made it one of the commonplaces of literature, in which he represents the angel of Lord Bathurst drawing up the curtain of futurity, unfolding the rising glories of England, and pointing out to him America, a little speck scarce visible in the mass of the national interest, yet which was destined before he tasted of death to show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which then ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... moonlight, musing on all that had happened since she first came there, now nearly five years ago, and wondering how long it might be, and what might happen, ere she would again be there—or if, indeed, she would be there again. Ah! seek not to look into futurity, Isabel. It is well for you that you know not all that shall be ere you again sit there. Enjoy your happiness while you may, and leave the future to unfold itself. She remained there a long time ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... spirit burning to explore Untrodden paths where hidden danger 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 spirit of the ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... thy paternal care Has my guardian been, my guide! Every hallowed wish and prayer Has thy hand of love supplied; Thine is every thought of bliss, Left by hours and days gone by; Every hope thy offspring is, Beaming from futurity. ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... forehead of th' Idmonian maid She struck. No more Arachne, hapless bore, But twisted round her neck with desperate pride A cord. The deed Minerva pitying saw And check'd her rash suspension.—"Impious wretch! "Still live," she cry'd, "but still suspended hang; "Curs'd to futurity, for all thy race, "Thy sons and grandsons, to the latest day "Alike shall feel the sentence." Speaking thus, The juice of Hecat's baleful plant she throws: Instant besprinkled by the noxious drops, Her tresses fall; her nose and ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... of the old chief was rapt and mystic. The black eyes in the bronzed face looked into futurity and infinity. Robert was more than impressed, he had a feeling of awe. A great Indian chief was a great Indian chief to him, as great as any man, and he did not doubt that the words of Hendrik would come true. ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... increase of the inhabitants, she has of late extended her buildings along the Bromsgrove road, near the boundaries of Edgbaston; and actually on the other side planted three of her streets in the parish of Aston. Could the sagacious Alfred have seen into futurity, he would ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... warmth of their feelings, clapped my shoulder, and exclaimed, 'Count, thou wilt immortalise the ancient race of Rosalvo!' Ha, in those blessed moments of sweet delirium, how bright and beauteous stood futurity before me! When, happy in the performance of some good deed, I returned home, and saw Valeria hasten to receive me with open arms, and when, while she clasped me to her bosom I heard her whisper 'Oh, who could forbear to love the great Rosalvo?' God! oh, God! Away, away, glorious visions of the ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... 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, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... nothing waste and nothing meaningless in the feelings and faculties wherewith living creatures are endowed? For each desire there is a counterpart object; for each faculty there is room and opportunity for exercise either in the present or the coming futurity. Now, but for the doctrine of immortality, Man would be an exception to this law,-he would stand forth as an anomaly in Nature, with aspirations in his heart for which the universe had no antitype to offer, with capacities of understanding and thought that ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wanderers, invaders, coming from the East, and that with the land they appropriated also the ideas, the inventions, of an earlier negroid race. But whatever they took they added to, they improved on. The idea of futurity, of man's existence beyond the grave, became prominent among them; and in the absence of clearer knowledge we may well take this idea as the groundwork, the starting-point, of all man's later and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... their king; that they had been contriving these things from the very day that they came out of Egypt; that however in no long time they would sorely repent of what they did, which repentance yet could not undo what was thus done for futurity; that they would be sufficiently rebuked for their contempt, and the ungrateful conduct they have used towards me, and towards thy prophetic office. "So I command thee to ordain them such a one as I shall name beforehand to be their king, when thou hast first described ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... 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 ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... number and fortifications. The grand councils of the nations were held frequently, and with more deliberation than usual. They evidently saw the approaching hour when the Long Knife would dispossess them of their desirable habitations; and, anxiously concerned for futurity, determined utterly to extirpate the whites out of Kentucky. We were not intimidated by their movements, but frequently gave them proofs ...
— The Adventures of Daniel Boone: the Kentucky rifleman • Uncle Philip
... night from this indulgent parent, when he went home with the merchant, and had the next day tradesmen of all kinds sent for, who had orders to provide, in their several ways, every thing necessary for a young gentleman born to the estate he was.—As youth is little regardless of futurity, he forgot, for a time, what consequences might possibly attend his contract with Harriot, and was as perfectly at ease, as if no such thing had ever happened. When fully equipped, he went down into that country where his sister lived, and if the least thought ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... 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
... changed in the Hanoverian half-century, though not as much as they were to change in the fifty years that were still in futurity. Extravagance of attire still persisted, though the extravagance had changed its expression. The gigantic hoops in which ladies had delighted had diminished, had dwindled, and gowns were of a slender seemliness. But ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... sagacity stimulated, nevertheless, by excited 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 the ...
— Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study • Compiled by Grenville Kleiser
... 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 and vengefully that it may break a neck or a leg, they leap nimbly into the air ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... could expect that Captain Delmar would, virtually, acknowledge me as his son. I felt that I had to wade through blood, and stand the chance of thousands of balls and bullets in my professional career, before I could do all this; a bright vista of futurity floated before me and, in the far distance, I felt myself in the possession of my ambition, and with my eyes still fixed upon it I dropped fast asleep, revelling still in the same dreams which I had indulged ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... Princess Chandravati was sitting in confidential conversation with her jay. The dialogue was not remarkable, for maidens in all ages seldom consult their confidantes or speculate upon the secrets of futurity, or ask to have dreams interpreted, except upon one subject. At last the princess said, for perhaps the hundredth time that month, "Where, O jay, is there ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... Maintenon, this latter, in conjunction with the king, despite the superiority of their minds, was greatly disturbed at the probable consequences of the step they meditated. Their desire to penetrate into futurity appeared to them as ridiculous as it was criminal, but their weaker feelings triumphed; and the result of their deliberations was that far from relinquishing their intention of searching the book of fate, they should lose neither pains nor ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... 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 ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... vertuous meanes, I 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 course ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... 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
... more or less perfect perception of that blissful state which the Illumined have sought to describe, each individual has come to his present state; and it is only by virtue of the ability to look back over the path, and to look onward a little into relative futurity, that each may record the fact of his gain in consciousness, and what this gain means to the ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... used, as I think they may be understood, without irreverence, or any meaning that would be akin to blasphemy, she seemed to me to be more in charity with her Creator. The ways of God to man had become more justified to her; and her outlook as to the futurity of the world was a more hopeful one. Of course optimism had with her to be long-sighted! But she seemed to have become reconciled to the certainty that he who stands on a lofty eminence must needs see long stretches of dusty road across the plains ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... 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 be withstood ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... liberty to live for self alone becomes in time a weary bondage. Then I realised that I had condemned him also to this hard desert life. I came down and took counsel of the old Sphinx. Those calm, wise eyes, looking on into futurity, seemed to say: 'They only live who love.' That evening I resolved to give up the Nile trip, return home immediately, send for Garth, admit all to him, asking him to let us both begin again just where ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... Dr. Opimian. Civilised. The word requires definition. But looking into futurity, it seems to me that the ultimate tendency of the change is to substitute the worse for the better race; the Negro for the Red Indian. The Red Indian will not work for a master. No ill-usage will make ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... tread Approach the dwellings of the dead, Seeking for some sweet flower of good Within their solemn solitude: And if he finds in fadeless bloom Around some well remember'd tomb, Some cherish'd record of the past Which has defied time's rudes blast, And down futurity's deep vale Shed fragrance on the passing gale, Love's labor, then, the task will be, My gentle Muse, for thee and me. 'Mongst those of old remember'd well, John Wade doth in my memory dwell, A wit of most undoubted feather— A mighty advocate of leather— A solemn man too, when ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... way, 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
... and faithful Love, And Truth severe by fairy fiction drest. In buskined measure 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 fates assign. Be thine ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... from his nerveless frame indignantly 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 transports that with freedom flew; Catch the cool ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... discover that if it is a very fine thing to be mother-in-law to a very magnificent three-tailed bashaw, it presupposes that the wife who makes the connection between the two parties is in harmony with her mother. And so far had Mrs. Gibson's thoughts wandered into futurity. She only wished that the happy chance had fallen to Cynthia's instead of to Molly's lot. But Molly was a docile, sweet creature, very pretty, and remarkably intelligent, as my lord had said. It was a pity that Cynthia preferred making millinery to reading; but perhaps that could be ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the brute creation, but I don't affect cats. Nor can I say that I greatly enjoy their music. I heard the very best bands of tom-cats every night during my sojourn in Moscow, and consider them utterly deficient in style and execution. It belongs, I think, to the Music of Futurity, so much discussed by the critics of Europe during the past few years—a peculiar school of anti-melody that requires people yet to be born to appreciate it thoroughly. The discords may be very fine, and the passion very striking and tempestuous, but it is worse than ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... violence and discord to usurp its reign. We have a magnificent future if we can only preserve the Union as our fathers constructed it. While it lasts there is a great light in the firmament in which all may walk in security, hope, and happiness. It is a light reaching far down the depths of futurity cheering and guiding the steps of our children. It is a light shining to the remotest corner of the earth—raising up the down-trodden and illuminating the homes of the victims of oppression. But let that light be now eclipsed, go out in blood ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... passage whose sublimities awoke the enthusiasm of Macaulay, and delivered him from insufferable boredom, Paul claims to have reached the limits of finality, and he hurls defiance at all the forces of futurity. ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... on the table at which she was seated. This coin had become quite current among us, since the French troops had penetrated into our colony; and it was even said they purchased supplies with it, from certain of our own people. As we had paid the highest price ever given, for these glimpses into futurity, we thought ourselves entitled to have the pages of the sealed book ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... died away from thine ear! Build not the desolate throne of ambition in thy heart; nor be busy with devices, and circumventings, and selfish schemings; lest desolation and loneliness be on thy path, as it stretches into the long futurity! Live not a useless, an impious, or an injurious life! for bound up with that life is the immutable principle of an endless retribution, and elements of God's creating, which will never spend their force, but continue ever to unfold with ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... eyes, when they regard the thrones of sovereigns. But your Majesty has shown, through the whole course of your reign, too great a value for liberal arts to be insensible, that true fame lies only in the hands of learned men, by whom it is to be transmitted to futurity, with marks of honour or reproach to the end of time. The date of human life is too short to recompense the cares which attend the most private condition: therefore it is, that our souls are made as it were too big for it, and extend themselves ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... 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, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... and super-plenitude of soul, which is not afraid to hide itself under the RAFFINEMENTS of decadence—which, perhaps, feels itself most at ease there; a real, genuine token of the German soul, which is at the same time young and aged, too ripe and yet still too rich in futurity. This kind of music expresses best what I think of the Germans: they belong to the day before yesterday and the day after tomorrow—THEY HAVE AS YET ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... of feeling for others as was his. He could not even feel his own misfortunes unless they touched the outward comforts of the moment. It seemed that he lacked sufficient imagination to realise future misery though the futurity to be considered was divided from the present but by a single month, a single week,—but by a single night. He liked to be kindly treated, to be praised and petted, to be well fed and caressed; and they who so treated him were his chosen friends. He had in this the ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... we've quantities of it; And for knowledge if any one burns, We keep an extremely small prophet, a prophet Who brings us unbounded returns: For he can 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. With mirrors so magical, Tetrapods tragical, Bogies spectacular, Answers oracular, Facts astronomical, Solemn or comical, And, if you want it, he Makes a reduction on taking a quantity! Oh! If any one anything lacks, ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... departed—they had borne her over the threshold of her home, and laid her remains in the narrow house where all must one day repose—a plain head-board alone marking the grave in which slumbered what was once Eliza Williams. Like others, she had died sincerely mourned by many—like others, futurity would leave no memorial to tell that she had ever existed. Decay, and rude hands, and careless feet, after the lapse of years, would mar her last resting-place, as many in the grave-yard had already been marred, but the form below could never know nor feel the injury—she slept, and would ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... have been! how eloquent, at least, were her wishes on the side of early warm attachment, and a cheerful confidence in futurity, against that over-anxious caution which seems to insult exertion and distrust Providence! She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... acts, habits, and character," for destiny itself is determined by thinking. Life is won or lost by its master thoughts. As nothing reveals character like the company we like and keep, so nothing foretells futurity like the thoughts over which we brood. It was said of John Keats that his face was the face of one who had seen a vision. So long had his inner eye been fixed upon beauty, so long had he loved that vision splendid, so long had he lived with it, that not only did his ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... is the lively imagination of such minds, which in the very midst of joy can so vividly portray and realize pain, or it may be, indeed, the mysterious voice which links gifted man with a higher class of beings to whom futurity is revealed. Be this as it may, even while the youthful patriot beheld with, a visioned eye the liberty of his country, and rejoiced in thus beholding, there ever came a dim and silent shadowing, a whispering voice, ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... powerful impression on the mind; and whatever vicissitudes in life the Editor or his Readers may experience, he wishes for Himself and for Them, the same philosophic and christian composure, on a retrospect of the past, and the anticipated view of futurity." ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... in the future. They were drawn out of him simply by the exigencies of his work. In the truest sense of the word they were letters, written to meet particular occasions, not formal writings, carefully designed and executed with a view to fame or to futurity. Letters of the right kind are, before everything else, products of the heart; and it was the eager heart of Paul, yearning for the weal of his spiritual children or alarmed by the dangers to which they were exposed, that produced all his writings. They were part of his day's work. ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... hoped, through the means of the picture he was engaged upon, to introduce himself to the good will of the duke; and this accomplished, one important step would be taken towards the goal his fancy had pictured in futurity. ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... animal in its motion, the tree in its growth, the cloud in its course, the mountain in its wearing away. Try always, whenever you look at a form, to see the lines in it which have had power over its past fate and will have power over its futurity. Those are its awful lines; see that you seize on those, whatever else you miss. Thus, the leafage in Fig. 16 (p. 63) grew round the root of a stone pine, on the brow of a crag at Sestri near Genoa, and all the sprays ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... neighbourhood, hoping against hope and endeavouring to make others do the same. The proposals I then made, the result of desperation, I will not repeat, for now, even to myself, I confess they look wild and extravagant. But I felt the whole futurity of shame that awaited us for abandoning the country without a blow. It was well advanced in August before I could persuade myself that no hope remained. The Treasurer of our Scotch Committee came to Ireland expressly to urge me to consult my own safety in ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... whose hearts have already been too much wounded by my error, may be justified in every article, excepting in this heavy curse: and that my father will be pleased to withdraw that before it be generally known: at least the most dreadful part of it which regards futurity! ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... of man? Infinite contradictions—all opposites blended into one—a mass of confused, broken parts, of disjointed fragments—such is he. The circumstances that surround him—the events that happen unto him, are no less strange. What shall be the end? Oh then, abyss of futurity, declare it! unfold thy dark depths—let a voice come up from thy cloudy infinite—let a ray penetrate thy unfathomable profound. If we could but rest till the question is decided! if we could but float softly on the current of time till we reach the haven! But no, we must act. We must do something. ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... may predict that, owing to the continued and steady increase of the larger groups, a 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 ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... has its morning star. Oh, I thank God that his own hand arranged the chiaroscuro of earth!" She spoke earnestly; the expression of her eyes told that her thoughts had traveled into the dim, weird land of futurity. Beulah offered no comment; but the gloom deepened on her brow and her white fingers crept restlessly over the piano keys. After a moment's ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... to New England Puritanism. It is a relentless tale; the characters are singularly free from self-pity, and accept their fate as righteous; they never forgave themselves, they show no sign of having forgiven one another; even God's forgiveness is left under a shadow in futurity. They have sinned against the soul, and something implacable in evil remains. The minister's dying words drop a ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... relations of the country. Its existence at all and its size are, or should be, the reflection of the national consciousness that in this, that, or the other direction lie clear national interests—for which each generation is responsible to futurity—or national duties, equally clear from the mere fact that the matter lies at the door, like Lazarus at the rich man's gate. The question of when or how action shall be taken which may result in hostilities, ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... and the good, who dare to hurl Defiance at his throne, girt tho' it be 315 With Death's omnipotence. Thou hast beheld His empire, o'er the present and the past; It was a desolate sight—now gaze on mine, Futurity. Thou hoary giant Time, Render thou up thy half-devoured babes,— 320 And from the cradles of eternity, Where millions lie lulled to their portioned sleep By the deep murmuring stream of passing things, Tear thou that gloomy shroud.—Spirit, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... victory, it was by that he looked to obtain every thing; he made use of it as a means, when it ought to have been his end. In this manner he made it too necessary; it was already rather too much so. But he confided so much of futurity to it, he overloaded it with so much responsibility, that it became urgent and indispensable to him. Hence his precipitation to get within reach of it, in order to extricate himself ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... Mysterious Deep Do's ten thousand Secrets keep, With attentive Ear I wait; Ease my Mind, and speak my Fate. Soul of Joy! Like Bacchus, we More than India gain by thee. Truths unborn thy Juice reveals, Which Futurity conceals. Antidote to Frauds and Lies, Wine, that mounts us to the Skies, May thy Father Noah's Brood Like him drown, but in thy Flood. Speak, so may the Liquid Mine Of Rubies, or of Diamonds shine. Bottle, whose Mysterious Deep Do's ten thousand Secrets keep, With attentive ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... the devoted wife and mother, the kind neighbor, and the most assiduous student. But her mind bore, as on a mirror, prophetic, shadowy, and pictured glimpses of those awful events which were marching out of futurity toward France. Her letters written during this period show that she gazed upon them with a prescient eye, and heard with keenest ear the alarum of the legions which were gathering for attack. The young men of Lyons, where she and her husband spent the Winters, gathered in her parlors, and heard ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... weel, 'tis weel, we dinna ken What we may live to see, 'Twas Mercy's hand that hung the veil O'er sad futurity! Oh, ye whose hearts are scathed and riven, Wha feel the warld is vain, Oh, fix your broken earthly ties Where they ne'er will break again, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... of some future being, which, ignorantly or coldly believed, begat those perverted conceptions, ceremonies, sayings, which Christians pity or laugh at. Happy are they which live not in that disadvantage of time, when men could say little for futurity, but from reason: whereby the noblest minds fell often upon doubtful deaths, and melancholy dissolutions. With these hopes, Socrates warmed his doubtful spirits against that cold potion; and Cato, before he durst give the fatal stroke, spent part of the night in reading ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... more mine eyes have witnessed since I came to dwell in this humble home by the side of the deep sea. I mind the night weel; it was on Hallowmas Eve; the nuts were cracked, and the apples were eaten, and spell and charm were tried at my fireside; till, wearied with diving into the dark waves of futurity, the lads and lasses fairly took to the more visible blessings of kind words, tender clasps, and gentle courtship. Soft words in a maiden's ear, and a kindly kiss o' her lip were old-world matters to me, Mark Macmoran; though I mean not to say that I have been ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... 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 he must have ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various
... to his posterity, and the throne is still filled by his descendants: a proof, that the foundations which he laid were firm and solid, and that, amidst all his violence, while he seemed only to gratify the present passion, he had still an eye towards futurity. [FN [x] M. West. p. 230. Anglia Sacra, vol. ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... unless this miracle'—THIS MIRACLE, the rejoicing scholar and man of letters, who was not for an age, but for all time, cries—defying tyranny, laughing at princes' edicts, reaching into his own great assured futurity across the gulfs of civil war, planting his feet upon that sure ground, and singing songs of triumph over the spent tombs of brass and tyrants' crests; like that orator who was to make an oration in public, and found himself a little straitened in time to fit his words to ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... dreamy look came into the girl's eyes, just as if a foreknowledge of the drama in which she was so soon destined to play the chief role had suddenly appeared to her through the cloudy and distant veils of futurity. ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... of the nations of Germany. Let his name be engraved in gigantic letters of shining gold on Germany's highest and steepest pinnacle, whence, lighted by the effulgent rays of morn, it may be visible far over the plains on which he bestowed a happier futurity!" This writer also drew a comparison between Napoleon and Charlemagne, in which he designated the latter a barbarous despot and the former the new savior of the world. He says, "Napoleon first solved ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... ostentatiously devout, nor so basely perverse. They go to church as to the play, to gape at others, or to be stared at themselves; to pass the time, and to admire the show; and they do not conceal that such is the object of their attendance. Their indifference about futurity equals their ignorance of religious duties. Our revolutionary charlatans have as much brutalized their understanding as corrupted their hearts. They heard the Grand Mass said by the Pope with the same feelings as they formerly heard Robespierre proclaim himself a high priest of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... friend of mankind must look forwards to the termination of this painful suspense, and eagerly as the inquiring mind would hail every ray of light that might assist its view into futurity, it is much to be lamented that the writers on each side of this momentous question still keep far aloof from each other. Their mutual arguments do not meet with a candid examination. The question is not brought to rest on fewer points, and even in theory scarcely ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... was still sleeping in the womb of futurity. Diabolus was unable to hasten its birth, and an experiment which Bunyan thought would certainly have succeeded was not to be tried. The Deus ex Machina appeared with its flaming sword. The Doubting army was cut to pieces, and ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... way no more! and ill beseems it me, Who came a welcomer in herald's guise, Singing of Glory, and Futurity, To wander back on such unhealthful road, Plucking the poisons of self-harm! And ill 80 Such intertwine beseems triumphal ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... judgments delivered upon creative artists by their contemporaries; yet to trim deftly one's convictions in the hope that they may elastically conform to any one of a number of possible verdicts to be expected from a capricious futurity, is probably as dangerous a proceeding as to avow, without equivocation or compromise, one's precise beliefs. It will therefore be understood that the critical estimates which are offered in the following pages have ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... a good deal of bathing these days, as there is a beautiful little river about a stone's throw away from our billets. By the way, I hope you are continuing as keen as ever on your swimming. As to leave, it has again vanished into the limbo of futurity. I am not particularly sorry. Leave is such a fleeting joy. Just as one is beginning to get into the way of things at home one has to go back again to the Front. I would much prefer to get the War completely ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones |
