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Prescient   Listen
adjective
Prescient  adj.  Having knowledge of coming events; foreseeing; conscious beforehand. "Henry... had shown himself sensible, and almost prescient, of this event."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Prescient" Quotes from Famous Books



... approaching in 1641, in the destruction of our ancient monuments in cathedral churches. He hurried on his itinerant labours of taking draughts and transcribing inscriptions, as he says, "to preserve them for future and better times." Posterity owes to the prescient spirit of Dugdale the ancient Monuments of England, which bear the marks of the haste, as well as the zeal, which have ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... newer and better personality dominating that old, unhappy, ignorant self. If at times the man glimpsed that other shadowy self of hers, it was part of her mysterious appeal, her enthralling, baffling charm. It invested her with a shade of inscrutable, prescient sorrow, as of old unhappy far-off things. He hadn't the faintest idea of Nancy Simms, a creature utterly foreign to his experience. And because she did not love him, Anne Champneys never spoke of that old self, never confided in him. He did not know her as she had been, he only knew her as she ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... my Bobus, had foretold that all these months would go by before I should again address you, he would have exhibited prescient talent great enough to establish twenty "mediums" in a flourishing cabalistic business. Alas! they have been to me months of fathomless distress, immensurate and immeasurable sorrow, and blank, blind, idiotic indifference, even to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... altogether unconscious when sleeping. If, however, this early waking were voluntary, I should probably say that it was for the pleasure of listening to the crowing of the cocks at that silent hour when the night, so near its end, is darkest, and the mysterious tide of life, prescient of coming dawn, has already turned, and is sending the red current more and more swiftly through the sleeper's veins. I have spent many a night in the desert, and when waking on the wide silent grassy ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson

... where she adjoined upon a kindred people. Her neighbors were for the most part weak in numbers, though warlike. Armenia, however, to the north-west, Assyria to the west, and Persia to the south, were all more or less formidable. A prescient eye might have foreseen that the great struggles of Media would be with these powers, and that if she attained imperial proportions it must be by their subjugation ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson

... of dreams. The first thought no regard should be given unto them; that their communication from the invisible to the visible world was a mere chimera, without any solid foundation. For, first, said he, if dreams were from the agency of any prescient being, the motives would be more direct, and the discoveries more plain, and not by allegories and emblematic fancies, expressing things imperfect and obscure. 2. Since, with the notice of evil, there was not a power given to avoid it, it is not ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe

... very touching in most that we know of the poor young King of Rome, from his childish but strangely prescient resistance to his removal from Paris to Blois on the approach of the Allies in 1814, to the message of remembrance sent in after years to the column of the Place Vendome, "his only ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... and observation of the recent past, and by a certain prescient sagacity which was at once native and cultivated in him, recognized that the Mediterranean, with its immense indented coast line, its positions of critical importance,—such as the Straits of Gibraltar and the Bosphorus, Egypt and Malta,—and its comparatively short water distances, was the ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... neither in practice nor in speculative questions were the English thinkers of the time prescient of any coming revolution. They denounced abuses, but they had regarded abuses as removable excrescences on a satisfactory system. They were content to appeal to common sense, and to leave philosophers to wrangle ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen

... been, she WAS no more Than what a prescient hope could make,— A dear presentiment of thee I loved ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod

... king's-fisher, (not prescient of the storm, as by his instinct he ought to be,) appearing at that uncertain season before the rigs of old Michaelmas were yet well composed, and when the inclement storms of winter were approaching, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... Mr. Belloc would replace the gloomy view of Gibbon and the exaggerated horrors, to take a conspicuous but not now important example, of Charles Kingsley's Roman and Teuton. He would represent it as a period of wealth and order, full of menace, warning and change, but no more prescient of utter disaster than ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell

... shall be, and commits itself to the representation of this wave of an hour, and this one of the sixty beautiful children of the wave—let him merge in the general run and wait his development.... Still, the final test of poems or any character or work remains. The prescient poet projects himself centuries ahead, and judges performer or performance after the changes of time. Does it live through them? Does it still hold on untired? Will the same style, and the direction of genius to similar points, be satisfactory now? Has no new discovery in science, or arrival ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman

... behind for a room with lamps: And to stand with our Secret mocking itself, And hiding itself amid flowers and mandolins, Stared at by all between salad and coffee. And to see him tremble, and feel myself Prescient, as one who signs a bond— Not flaming with gifts and pledges heaped With rosy hands over his brow. And then, O night! deliberate! unlovely! With all of our wooing blotted out by the winning, In a chosen room in an hour ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters

... rivals gaze, with cares oppress'd, And chilling horrors freeze in every breast, Till big with knowledge of approaching woes, The prince of augurs, Halitherses, rose: Prescient he view'd the aerial tracks, and drew A sure presage from ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... little deed by the pleased surprise with which she will say, "How did you know I wanted it done?" You need not tell her how you knew, but you may be sure she will appreciate you all the more for your prescient thoughtfulness. Her pillows may be flat and hot, her hair uncomfortable, her under sheet wrinkled or untucked from the bottom; all these and a dozen more little things can be arranged so easily, and they conduce so ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery

... and 'tis said, Though hard to drive, thou may'st be led, That is, if one could just agree In view and argument with thee; When standing in the days of yore At "Pooley's Bridge," thine eye ran o'er The picture with a prescient glance; Experience taught thee that thy chance Was then—thy foresight came To aid thee in life's winning game. Although no silver spoon was in Thy mouth, when to this world of sin Thou camest, thou hast forged from fate A path ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett

... perceived that Demetrios had flung control of the future to Perion, as one gives money to a sot, entirely prescient of how it will be used. Perion had his ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al

... Midgard Snake primeval at the right, With demon-crest as haughtily upheaved As though all ocean curled into one wave:— A million rainbows braid that glooming arch; And Death therein is mirrored. At the left, On moves that brother Terror, wolf in shape, Which, bound till now by craft of prescient Gods, Weltered in Hell's abyss. Till came the hour A single hair inwoven by heavenly hand Sufficed to chain that monster to his rock;— His fast is over now; his dusky jaws At last the Eternal Hunger ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere

... intelligence, and if they are limited to the exercise and experience of feeling only," and it must be remembered that Buffon has denied all these powers to the inferior animals, "whence comes that remarkable prescient instinct which so many of them exhibit? Is the mere power of feeling sensations sufficient to make them garner up food during the summer, on which food they may subsist in winter? Does not this involve the power of comparing dates, and the idea of a coming ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... The Immortals' foe, fierce Madhu, slew, Regards broad Earth with love and pride, And guards, in Kapil's form, his bride. His kindled wrath will quickly fall On the King's sons and burn them all. This cleaving of the earth his eye Foresaw in ages long gone by: He knew with prescient soul the fate That Sagar's children should await.' The Three-and-thirty, freed from fear, Sought their bright homes with hopeful cheer. Still rose the great tempestuous sound As Sagar's children pierced the ground. When thus the whole broad earth was cleft, And not a spot unsearched was left, ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... dales dwells The prescient Dis, From Yggdrasil's Ash sunk down, Of alfen race, Idun by name, The youngest of Ivaldi's Elder children. She ill brooked Her descent Under the hoar tree's Trunk confined. She would not happy be With Norvi's daughter, Accustomed to ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... forejudge, forecast; presurmise^; have an eye to the future, have an eye to the main chance; respicere finem [Lat.]; keep a sharp lookout &c (vigilance) 459; forewarn &c 668. Adj. foreseeing &c v.; prescient; farseeing, farsighted; sagacious &c (intelligent) 498; weatherwise^; provident &c (prepared) 673; prospective &c 507. Adv. against the time when. Phr. cernit omnia Deus vindex [Lat.]; mihi cura futuri [Lat.]; run it up the flagpole and see ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... to quit the scene of his mystic Vision, in which he had followed with prescient pain the brief, bright career, the useless fame, the evil love-passion, and final fate of his Former Self,—and crossing the field with lingering tread, he looked back many times to the fallen block of stone where he had sat when he had first perceived ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... circumstances, moves irresistibly towards freedom. The pity was that circumstances, save for one brief and invigorating interlude, were persistently unfavourable to Ireland. The task was enormous, demanding infinitely more self-sacrifice than even the ablest and most prescient of her Parliamentarians realized. Until it was too late, in fact, they never awoke to the true nature of the task, dazzled by illusory victories. Rotten to the core as the Irish Parliament was, they sought, ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... despotic and truly lamentable influence of this belief, the Author is bound to admit that they are far more consistent and logical in their notions of Deity than perhaps any other section of Theists, for it cannot properly be denied that the doctrine of an Omnipotent and Prescient God destroys all distinction of virtue and vice, justice and injustice, right and wrong, among men. Let the omnipotency and prescience of a First Cause be granted, the corollary of 'whatever is, is right,' ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell

... on Friday; Saturday I went to New York; Sunday and Monday I spent at the Yale Club, writing; Tuesday, this telltale letter fell under the prescient eye of my brother. On that day he at once got in touch with me by telephone. We briefly discussed the situation. He did not intimate that he believed me to be in elation. He simply urged me not to attempt to interest anyone in my project until I had ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers

... Bulldog Drummond was published there was no one prescient of the great success of the play which would be made from the story. But those who read mystery stories habitually knew well that a mystery-builder of exceptional adroitness had arrived. Of course, Cyril McNeile, under the pen name "Sapper," was already somewhat ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton

... But, where thy native mountains bare Their foreheads to diviner air, Fit emblem of enduring fame, One lofty summit keeps thy name. For thee the cosmic forces did The rearing of that pyramid, The prescient ages shaping with Fire, flood, and frost thy monolith. Sunrise and sunset lay thereon With hands of light their benison, The stars of midnight pause to set Their jewels in its coronet. And evermore that mountain mass Seems climbing from the shadowy pass To light, as if to manifest Thy ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... British, and American complications—everything, in fact, which helped to shape Canadian destinies—were inevitably connected with the sea; and, more often than not, were considered and settled mainly as a part of what those prescient pioneers of oversea dominion, the great Elizabethan statesmen, always used to ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood

... was silent. The prescient spirit of his famous great grandfather, Henry Ware, had descended upon his valiant great grandson. Hope had not gone from him, but it did not enter his mind that they ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

... that there was a race of men tried upon the earth once, who knew the future better than the past, but that they died in a twelvemonth from the misery which their knowledge caused them. They say that if any were to be born too prescient now, he would die miserably, before he had time to transmit so ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler

... undertook the case. In such similitude of scent, Man ne'er eould think reflections meant. As epicures extol a treat, And seem their savoury words to eat, 110 They praised dead horse, luxurious food, The venison of the prescient brood. The sexton's indignation moved, The mean comparison reproved; The undiscerning palate blamed, Which two-legged carrion thus defamed. Reproachful speech from either side The want of argument supplied: They rail, revile: as often ends The contest of disputing friends. 120 'Hold,' says ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... polysyllabic, and not monosyllabic like Chinese, had no written language beyond certain rude attempts at alphabetic writing, formed from Chinese characters, and found to be of little practical value. The necessity for something more convenient soon appealed to the prescient and active mind of Nurhachu; accordingly, in 1599, he gave orders to two learned scholars to prepare a suitable script for his rapidly increasing subjects. This they accomplished by basing the new script upon Mongol, which had been invented in 1269, by Baschpa, or 'Phagspa, a Tibetan lama, ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles

... fiercer and more savage in the lofty distance? Does the leaf of the forest twinkle futurity? the lonely lichen brighten or pale its lustre with change? Does not the gift of prophecy dwell with the family of the violets and the lilies? The prescient harebells, do they not let drop their closing blossoms when the heavens are niggard of their dews, or uphold them like cups thirsty for wine, when the blessing, yet unfelt by duller animal life, is beginning to drop balmily ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... down the house of Lodi, and won the empire of Hindustan. He was confronted now by the army of the usurper, connected by marriage with that House of Sur which had expelled his own father. The battle, he knew, would be the decisive battle of the century. But, prescient as he was, he could not foresee that it would prove the starting-point for the establishment in India of a dynasty which would last for more than two hundred years, and would then require another invasion from the north, and another battle of Panipat to strike ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson

... glass of milk, Lee and Jackson met for the first time since the war had begun. Lee's hours of triumph had yet to come. The South was aware that he was sage in council; he had yet to prove his mettle in the field. But there was at least one Virginia soldier who knew his worth. With the prescient sympathy of a kindred spirit Jackson had divined his daring and his genius, and although he held always to his own opinions, he had no will but that of his great commander. With how absolute a trust his devotion was repaid one of the brightest ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... when falling weather was at hand and speaking his prophecy by stamping in his stall. He could hear Basil noisily making his way to the barn. As he walked through the garden toward the old family graveyard, he could still hear the boy, and a prescient tithe of the pain, that he felt would strike him in full some day, smote him so sharply now that he stopped a moment to listen, with one hand quickly raised to his forehead. Basil was whistling—whistling joyously. Foreboding touched ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.

... Prescient in the changes of the season, they have been the first to go. Men, who can endure greater changes and vicissitudes than all the animal creation put together, have lingered longer; but at last one after another has left Pa-wa-teeg, till all who can go have gone. Col. Brady ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... by some prescient instinct hardly to be expected in one brought up in a swamp, decided that little Ali and the monkey were to be his "companions of the march." So, when the tents were struck and Abdi, the head-man, shouted "Funga nizigo yaka!" and the tented city of yesterday became a scattered heap of ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon

... eye; Touch with nice skill, yet craft-dissembled smile, Gems from the mine and spices from the Isle, Affect no care, yet hope a thrifty sale— The wealth of Empires in th' opposing scale— While he, the poor victim of their selfish creed, Prescient of evil art foredoomed to bleed, Pleased yet alarmed, desiring but deterred, Flutters still nearer like a snake-charmed bird; Alas, too often taken with a toy— Too soon to weep a ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various

... you don't start with me;" so said Gustave de Berensac. The present was one of the moments in which I heartily agreed with his prescient prophecy. Human nature is a poor thing. To speak candidly, I cannot recollect that, amid my own selfish perplexities, I spared more than one brief moment to gladness that Marie Delhasse had eluded the pursuit ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope

... exasperated. But he had a haunting thought about a lanky colored kid in Jarviston, Minnesota. A guy with a dream—or perhaps a prescient glimpse ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun

... maliciously snapped at the blades of the oars, every time they dipped in the water; and in this way accompanied the boat with their bites. It is a thing not uncommonly happening to the whale-boats in those swarming seas; the sharks at times apparently following them in the same prescient way that vultures hover over the banners of marching regiments in the east. But these were the first sharks that had been observed by the Pequod since the White Whale had been first descried; and whether it was that Ahab's crew were all such tiger-yellow barbarians, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... come To the house of the king The prescient two, Fenja and Menja. There must the mighty Maidens toil For King ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre

... roughly; the warm sigh Breathes on her lips; the tear-drop gems her eye. Sweet Sensibility, who dwells inshrined In the fine foldings of the feeling mind; With delicate Mimosa's sense endued, Who shrinks, instinctive, from a hand too rude; Or, like the anagillis, prescient flower, Shuts her soft petals at ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... Suddenly the roar of waves at the farther shore! Look at that head! strong and quiet no more; terror erects the quivering ears; the nostril sinks and contracts with fear; the eye glares and glances from side to side, mad with prescient instinct; the corded veins that twist forkedly from the lip upward swell to the utmost tension of the fine skin; that sweeping mane rises in rough undulations, the forelock is tossed back, the shoulder grows rigid with horror, the chest rises with a long indrawn breath of dismay. Horrible ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... his darkened mind to sanity. And thou, O sleep, subduer of ill, the spirit's repose, thou better part of human life, swift-winged child of Astraca, drowsy brother of cruel death, mixing false with true, prescient of what shall be, yet oftener prescient of sorrow, peace mid our wanderings, haven of man's life, day's respite, night's companion, that comest impartially to king and slave, thou that makest trembling mankind to gain a foretaste ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... of ants, have taken possession of the palace. Hands black, white and brown—more than we could count, are busy there and of all the hundreds of workmen which are astir there, not one got in the way of another, for one little man orders and manages them all, just as the prescient wisdom of the gods guides the stars through the 'gracious and merciful night' so that they may never push or ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... made plain the anger of the gods; The universe gave signs Nature reversed In monstrous tumult fraught with prodigies Her laws, and prescient spake ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... malignant fever after a supper at Fishmongers' Hall, went home, and died. In 1683 the Merry Monarch caused the works of Tangier to be blown up, and abandoned the place, declaring it was not worth the cost of keeping. The Merry Monarch was not prescient. A century afterwards Gibraltar was indebted for a large proportion of its supplies, during the great siege, to the dismantled and deserted British-African fortress. For many reasons Tangier was not ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea

... scarcely jarred with the thoughts of his mind. They had been altogether of war and rumors of war. Every hour that subtile consciousness of coming events, which makes whole communities at times prescient, was becoming stronger. "If the powers of the air have anything to do with the destinies of men," he muttered, "there must be unseen battalions around me. The air I am breathing is charged ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr

... Whether thou seat thee in the room of Peel, Or from Lord Prig extort the Privy Seal, Or our Field-marshal-Treasurer fix on thee, A legal admiral, to rule the sea, Or Chancery-suits, beneath thy well known reign, Turn to their nap of fifty years again; (Already L—, prescient of his fate, Yields half his woolsack to thy mightier weight;) Oh! Eldon, in whatever sphere thou shine, For opposition sure will ne'er be thine, Though scowls apart the lonely pride of Grey, Though Devonshire proudly flings his staff away, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... while, very wistfully, at the Chasseur, where he stood under the Lebanon boughs; then her glance swept bright as a hawk's over the terrace, and lighted with a prescient hatred on the central form of all—a woman's. There were two other great ladies there; but she passed them, and darted with unerring instinct on that proud, fair, patrician head, with its haughty, stag-like carriage and the crown ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... quintessence of dust?" How now, your lordship? We have you on the hip! "Quintessence of dust" comes perilously near to evolution. Does not your lordship remember, too, Hamlet's pursuing the dust of Caesar to the ignominious bunghole? And have you never reflected how the prescient mind of Shakespeare created an entirely new and wonderful figure in literature, the half-human, half-bestial Caliban, with his god Setebos—a truly marvellous resuscitation of primitive man, that in our day has inspired Mr. Browning's "Caliban on Setebos," which ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote

... provincials for right and justice sufficed for condemnation. It seemed as if the intention was to bring the Roman government into the same dependence on the controlling court, as that in which the college of judges at Carthage had formerly held the council there. The prescient expression of Gaius Gracchus was finding fearful fulfilment, that with the dagger of his law as to the jurymen the world ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... dark-hazel iris of the large eyes, lending them an eldritch and baleful glow. Fresh as the overhanging apple-blooms, but immobile as if carved from pearl,—perhaps it was just such a face as hers that fronted Jason, amid the clustering boughs of Colchian rhododendrons, when first he sought old AEetes' prescient daughter,—the maiden face of magical Medea, innocent as yet of murder, sacrilege, fratricide, and plunder,—eloquent of all possibilities of purity and peace, but vaguely adumbrating ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... present moment verifies the prescient conjecture of the philosopher. Such is the licentiousness of our press, that some, not perhaps the most hostile to the cause of freedom, would not be averse to manacle authors once more with an IMPRIMATUR. It will not be denied that Erasmus was a friend to the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... be hardly necessary to say so. And yet, as I turn the leaves, I get occasional glimpses of real thought shining through the overstrained self-consciousness, illuminating my youthful priggishness of demeanour. For instance, how could I have been so prescient to have coupled Emerson and Schopenhauer together so persistently? Here, smudged and corrected to distraction, is a passionate defence of the former, occasioned by some academical trifler dubbing ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee

... (says an ancient writer) with plunder, fire, and slaughter. In time of peace men would believe themselves incapable of the deeds they commit in time of war: "Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?" as one said of old when before the prescient seer who foresaw in the humble ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake

... elate A kingless people, a schismatic State, Nor on his work invoke perpetual doom? Though the whole Sacred College o'er and o'er Pronounce him sainted, prophet was he none Who to Cathaia's legendary shore Deemed that his bark a path had won. In sooth, our Western pioneer Was all as prescient as he Who cried, "The desert shall exult, The wild shall blossom as the rose," And to a passing rich result Through summer heats and winter snows Toiling to prove himself a seer, Accomplished his own prophecy. ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... fleeing away before Him that sits on it, ever burning before their inward eye, how could they wallow amid the mire of animal indulgence? The corruptions of the Church, especially of its official members, are traced with sad and prescient hand in these foreboding words, which are none the less a prophecy because cast by His forbearing gentleness into the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... could think, save only God on high Prescient of all which is to be below, That, from land, beneath such distant sky, Such mighty host would come, to work us woe? 'Twixt shifting sands, which restless whirlwinds blow: Yet they their camp have round Biserta placed, And laid the better part ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... name of the son of Eylimi, the brother of Hiordis. He ruled over lands, and was of all men wisest and prescient of the future. Sigurd rode alone, and came to Gripir's dwelling. Sigurd was of a distinguished figure. He found a man to address outside the hall, whose name was Geitir. Sigurd ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson

... as Kinnicutt inadvertently gasped. "How do you uns know that!" the young man hoarsely demanded, with a challenging accent of doubt, yet prescient despair. ...
— A Chilhowee Lily - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... racking his invention for objects of interest in San Sebastian was a merit. At the end we were satisfied that it was a well-built town with regular blocks in the modern quarter, and not without the charm of picturesqueness which comes of narrow and crooked lanes in the older parts. Prescient of the incalculable riches before us, we did not ask much of it, and we got all we asked. I should be grateful to San Sebastian, if for nothing else than the two very Spanish experiences I had there. One concerned a letter for ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells

... warehouse attached, at Tyre, together with one-half the back rents, if recoverable, should be given to the plaintiff. The governor, or as he put it, Caesar, for his share was to retain the property in Jerusalem and the other half of the rents. In this arrangement Caleb proved himself, as usual, prescient. Houses, as he explained afterwards, could be burned or pulled down, but beyond the crops on it, land no man could injure. Then, after the agreement had been duly signed and witnessed, he gave the names, bringing ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard

... kitchen, a detached building in which the plantation forces were now practically confined, there arose occasional sounds of half-hysterical laughter, snatches of excited talk, now and then the quavering of a hymn. In the kennel yards a hound, prescient, raised his voice, and was joined by another, until the whole pack, stirred by some tense feeling in the air, lifted up in ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough

... gentle, faded afternoon light that I want," he said. "I want you to emerge from your background as if you had bloomed out of it that very moment. Oh! I've got you at your hour, you know! The prescient maternal—that's what I want. The conscious moment when a woman becomes aware that she is potentially a mother. Sheila's done that for you. She's brought it out in you. It was ready, it was waiting there before, but ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley

... into his kingdom. So that then it was fulfilled, as God had long ere foreshowed; and else it could not be; as he himself saith in his gospel: that "not even a sparrow on the ground may fall, without his foreshowing." The prescient Creator wist long before what he of her would have done; for that she should increase the glory of God in this land, lead the king aright from the path of error, bend him and his people together to a better way, and suppress the bad customs which the nation ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown

... plan of action, a plan vividly enough thrown off as she said: "You must stay on a few days, and you must immediately, both of you, meet him at dinner." In addition to which Maud claimed the merit of having by an instinct of pity, of prescient wisdom, done much, two nights before, to prepare that ground. "The poor child, when I was with her there while you were getting your shawl, quite gave ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James

... as did Judge Woodbury. At the age of twenty-seven, he was appointed to the bench of the Supreme Court of the state, on the earnest recommendation of old General Pierce. The opponents of the measure ridiculed him as the "baby judge;" but his conduct in that high office showed the prescient judgment of the friend who had known him from a child, and had seen in his young manhood already the wisdom of ripened age. It was some years afterwards when Franklin Pierce entered the office of Judge Woodbury as a student. In the interval, the judge had been elected governor, and, after a ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... great sapling; upon his head was a very wide hat, the stuff of which I could not see in the darkness. Now and again he would turn and beckon me, and he always went on a little way before. As for me, partly because he beckoned, but more because I felt prescient of a goal, ...
— On Something • H. Belloc

... wrong. See then the acting and comparing powers One in their nature, which are two in ours; And reason raise o'er instinct as you can, In this 'tis God directs, in that 'tis man. Who taught the nations of the field and wood To shun their poison, and to choose their food? Prescient, the tides or tempests to withstand, Build on the wave, or arch beneath the sand? Who made the spider parallels design, Sure as Demoivre, without rule or line? Who did the stork, Columbus-like, explore Heavens not his own, and worlds unknown before? ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope

... brevity of the sound made sustained melodies ineffective, and encouraged the use of a great variety of embellishments and the spreading out of harmonies in the form of arpeggios. It is obvious enough that Bach, being one of those monumental geniuses that cast their prescient vision far into the future, refused to be bound by such mechanical limitations. Though he wrote Clavier, he thought organ, which was his true interpretative medium, and so it happens that the greatest sonority and the broadest style that have been developed in the pianoforte do not exhaust ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... as it would be if the idea present with them was that of the weather that is about to come. This they cannot consciously have; the only natural intermediate link, therefore, between their conscious knowledge and their action is supplied by unconscious idea, which, however, is always accurately prescient, inasmuch as it contains something which is neither given directly to the animal through sensual perception, nor can be deduced inferentially ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler

... conferences for this purpose with the most eminent lawyers,—as Sir Edward Coke, and others!" Such was the monarch whose character was perpetually reproached for indolent habits, and for exercising arbitrary power! Even Mr. Brodie, the vehement adversary of the Stuarts, quotes and admires James's prescient decision on the character of Laud in that remarkable conversation with Buckingham and Prince Charles recorded ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... is liable to no French or other intriguing; and we have taken a bond of Fate that the Balance cannot be canted again. Excellent scheme, think both these heads; and are stirring Germany with all their might, purse in hand, to co-operate, and do it. Inconceivable what trouble these prescient minds are at, on this uncertain matter. It was Britannic Majesty's and Newcastle's main problem in this world, for perhaps four years (1749-1753):—"My own child," as a fond Noodle of Newcastle used to call it; though I rather think it was the other that begot the wretched ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle

... England are commonly represented in the after-dinner oratory of their descendants as men "before their time," as it is called; in other words, deliberately prescient of events resulting from new relations of circumstances, or even from circumstances new in themselves, and therefore altogether alien from their own experience. Of course, such a class of men is to be reckoned among those non-existent human varieties so gravely catalogued ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... may be sure that it is not the work of one who is unable to understand how anything can possibly go right unless he sees to it himself. Nature works departmentally and by way of leaving details to subordinates. But though those who see nature thus do indeed deny design of the prescient-from-all-eternity order, they in no way impugn a method which is far more in accord with all that we commonly think of as design. A design which is as incredible as that a ewe should give birth to a lion becomes of a piece with all that we observe most frequently if it be regarded rather as an aggregation ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... had not earned her thanks. Through pride and faults of temper he had impaired his usefulness and marred his record. Even so there was that which rescued his work from the stigma of failure. He had guarded his people from the tomahawk and the scalping-knife. With prescient eye he had foreseen the imperial greatness of the West. Whatever his shortcomings, they had not been ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby

... will stand as the great Magna Charta, which, by the prescient wisdom of our fathers, dedicated in advance of the coming civilization the fertile and beautiful Northwest, with all its possibilities, for all time, to freedom, education, ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... the real broad-bosomed Mother Earth. What he had left was the Hell upon Earth. What he was going to might be Paradise, but Paul's imagination rightly boggled at the conception of a Paradise more perfect. And, as Paul's prescient wit had conjectured, he was learning many things; the names of trees and wild flowers, the cries of birds, the habits of wayside beasts; what was good for a horse to eat and what was bad; which was the Waggon, and Orion's Belt and the Bunch of Keys in the ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... straight and tall, with the sheen of the moon on her faultless features, he thought she looked the incarnation of some prescient Norn, fit ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... look into another's soul we may enter Paradise. There is an indescribable grace in the air this first day of prescient autumn. The summer has taught me the secret of loneliness and the infinite way of satisfying its desire. To be alone with God we must be intimate with the beauty in the eyes of every face, and yet absolutely detached save ...
— The Forgotten Threshold • Arthur Middleton

... knowledge was left free to wield his mattock in his own way. It must be admitted, that Faraday's purely speculative writings often lack that precision which the mathematical habit of thought confers. Still across them flash frequent gleams of prescient wisdom which will excite admiration throughout all time; while the facts, relations, principles, and laws which his experiments have established are sure to form the body of ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall

... vast mass of fresh water that was pouring into the Gulf of Paria. He correctly divined the cause, and made the deduction that a river with such a volume of water must come from a great distance. His prescient mind showed him the mighty river Orinoco, the wide savannas, and the lofty range of the Andes; but the trammels of the erroneous measurements of astronomers bound them to Asia, and prevented him from picturing ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson

... affrighted suppliants, had with its own hands pushed back the advancing mass of lava, and thus saved the town! Great was the joy, and equally great the gratitude, displayed by these poor souls at Portici, who at once organised a triumphal procession in honour of their prescient patroness "delle mani nere." Does not such an incident, we ask, lend a touch of picturesque medievalism to a modern scene of horror and darkness, exhibiting to us, as it does, the traits of a simple touching faith and of ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... from those eyes That oft had kindled passionate desire He drew an inspiration high and pure, A prescient sense of victory and peace, And falling on his knees once more, he bowed, Kissed her white robe, ...
— Under King Constantine • Katrina Trask

... lay upon his couch at rest Among his officers, he seemed to be Prescient of his fate; for he addressed His friends in verses from an Elegy, And to this line a special accent gave: "The paths of glory lead ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats

... all wonderful, very, very wonderful. There seemed indeed, as Glastonbury affirmed, a providential dispensation in the whole transaction. The fall of his family, the heroic, and, as it now appeared, prescient firmness with which his father had clung, in all their deprivations, to his unproductive patrimony, his own education, the extinction of his mother's house, his very follies, once to him a cause of so much unhappiness, ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli

... of casual information, as careful housewives store seemingly worthless shreds and fragments for which their prescient minds anticipate a possible use some day. Before I left my old friend, she gave me the address of a respectable old-fashioned inn in the City, which, she said, my uncles used to frequent in ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... door, saucepan in hand, prepared to cook at the shortest notice. It was fascinating to see her, at first in the almost brimming lock, majestically erect (she was a regal figure) challenging the horizon with a gaze at once proud, prescient of martyrdom, and prepared; and then, as Sam opened the sluices, to watch her descend, inch by inch, into the dark lock-chamber. Each time this happened Mr. Mortimer exhorted her—"Courage, my heart's best!"—and she made ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... from these three homes naturally became playmates. Mr. Motley's house was a very hospitable one, and Lothrop and two of his young companions were allowed to carry out their schemes of amusement in the garden and the garret. If one with a prescient glance could have looked into that garret on some Saturday afternoon while our century was not far advanced in its second score of years, he might have found three boys in cloaks and doublets and plumed hats, heroes and bandits, enacting more or less impromptu ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... great social sacrifice in taking up a cause so unpopular; but she had no shrinking from duty, however trying it might be. Strong and grand as she was, in her womanly nature, she had nevertheless the largest and tenderest sympathies for the weak and erring. She was prescient, philosophical, just, and generous. The mother of a large family, who gathered around to honor and bless her, she had still room in her heart for the woes of the world, and the latter years of her life were given to earnest, philanthropic ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... overthrown in murderous combat by Caius Marius; another great Teutonic movement, led by Ariovistus, now threatened to precipitate the whole barbaric force of south-eastern Gaul upon the civilized world; and so it occurred to the prescient genius of Caesar to be beforehand and conquer Gaul, and enlist all its giant barbaric force on the side of civilization. This great work was as thoroughly done as anything that was ever done in human history, and we ought to be thankful to Caesar for it every day that we live. The frontier ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske

... that grave Virtuous Father-of-your-Country look, I pay you my respects; you are a light Of leading, as I see you now. Your soul Was never shaken by convulsive doubts Of life or man or liberty; you built Unsceptical of bricks, but such as lay To hand you took, nor did your purpose shake At prescient thought of how your edifice Might be turned pest-house some day. Undismayed By doubt, you rose, and in heroic mould Led—dauntless, patient, incorruptible— A riot over taxes. Not a star In all the vaults of heaven could trouble you With whisperings of more transcendent goals. O despicable, admirable ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke

... unequivocally stated that after Saturday night the future would be in his hands. His! . . . Her secret? Not that she had had lovers, for he had accepted that fact already, and for him the past had ceased to exist. Her husband was dead. Nothing else mattered. Nevertheless, the vague prescient chill he had experienced the night he first met her eyes, and once or twice since, accompanied as it was by a curious sense that just below his consciousness lay the key to the mystery, rattling now and again, ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... powerful and prescient Unknown, before whom the greatest of the Atlanteans prostrate themselves. That was in the Beginning, that is now and always will be. I conjure thee by the magic symbols of the club-foot, the hand with the fingers clenched, and the bat, in this the magical year of Kefana, ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell

... rhythmical creation of beauty'; and the first element of poetry he found in 'the thirst for supernal beauty.' 'It is not,' he repeats, 'the mere appreciation of the beauty before us. It is a wild effort to reach the beauty above.... Inspired with a prescient ecstasy of the beauty beyond the grave, it struggles by multiform novelty of combination among the things and thoughts of time, to anticipate some portions of that loveliness whose very elements, perhaps, appertain solely to eternity.' The poet, then, 'should limit his endeavours ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... on the move, and take what comes; They are not parasites like plants and men Rooted in that which fed them yesterday. Not even Memory shall follow Delphis, For I will yield to all impulse save hers, Therein alone subject to prescient rigour; Lest she should lure me back among the dying— Pilfer the present for the beggar past. Free minds must bargain with each greedy moment And seize the most that lies to hand at once. Ye are too old to understand my words; I yet have ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various

... is the genuine course, the aim, and end Of prescient reason; all conclusions else Are abject, vain, ...
— Milton • John Bailey

... the tiny yellow fragment adhering to the cock of the pistol. He picked up the wick and observed that one end was cut clean, but the other end was blackened and burnt. At that discovery there entered his mind the first prescient warning of the possibility of some deep plan in which the pistol and the wick played important parts. With his brain seeking for a solution of that possibility, he proceeded to examine the pieces ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... which, for its madness as well as guilt, ought to shut a man out of all sober and civil society." Here again, what a stride does the Liberty make? It is, once more, the difference of the times, rather than of the men. The same noble and prescient insight into the springs of national greatness and social progress characterizes the work of both men, but in what different measures? Again, we must say, the disciple is greater than the master. Closely bearing on this topic is the relation of the two men to Christianity. Locke not only wrote ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other

... him, inarticulate with fury; Don Mike faced his enemy with a bantering, prescient little smile. Then, with a great sigh that was in reality a sob, Loustalot abandoned his primal impulse to hurl himself upon Farrel and attempt to throttle; instead, he ran back to the customers' desk and started scribbling another check. Thereupon, the impish Farrel ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... looked down to the Sawdust Pile and observed that the flag still flew from the cupola. The night shadows gathered, but still the flag did not come down; and presently round The Laird's grim mouth a little prescient smile appeared, with something of pain ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... Mr. Stenson well," the Bishop declared, "and I am perfectly convinced that he is too sane-minded a man to dream of taking such a step as you suggest. He, at any rate, if others in his Cabinet are not so prescient, knows what Labour means." ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim



Words linked to "Prescient" :   prescience, discerning



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