Foreseen Quotes

• Opera, next to Gothic architecture, is one of the strangest inventions of Western man. It could not have been foreseen by any logical process.

  Kenneth Clark

  Men, Gdp, Opera

  Kenneth Clark, British Broadcasting Corporation (1970). “Civilization”, London : British Broadcasting Corporation

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• There may have been disillusionments in the lives of the medieval saints, but they would scarcely have been better pleased if they could have foreseen that their names would be associated nowadays chiefly with racehorses and the cheaper clarets.

  Hector Hugh Munro

  Names, May, Saint

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• It is far better to foresee even without certainty than not to foresee at all.

  Henri Poincare

  Absolute Certainty, Certainty, Foreseeing

  The Foundations of Science Science and Hypothesis (p. 129)

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• [Photography] is always like a state of grace, like the appearance of something that I hadn't foreseen, that surprises me and stops me. If I only did what I had in mind, there would be no emotion. It would be like keeping one's eyes shut rather than open, like theorizing rather than seeing.

  Sarah Moon

  Photography, Eye, Grace

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• All is foreseen but the choice is given.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Choices, Given

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• It is rather calming to remember that you really couldn't have foreseen what is happening to you.

  Margaret Widdemer

  Acceptance, Calming, Remember

  Margaret Widdemer (1917). “The Wishing-ring Man”

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• Lighter is the wound foreseen.

  Cato the Elder

  Fame, Lighters, Wounds

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• And he will manage the cure best who has foreseen what is to happen from the present state of matters.

  Hippocrates

  Statistics, Matter, States

  Hippocrates (1849). “The Genuine Works of Hippocrates”, p.234

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• He only can create the greatest imaginable beauty who has endured all imaginable pangs, for only when we have seen and foreseen what we dread shall we be rewarded by that dazzling unforeseen wing-footed wanderer.

  William Butler Yeats

  Beauty, Wings, Dread

  William Butler Yeats (1998). “Mythologies”, p.332, Simon and Schuster

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• O visions ill foreseen! Better had I Liv'd ignorant of future, so had borne My part of evil only.

  John Milton

  Evil, Ignorant, Vision

  John Milton, Henry John Todd (1852). “The Poetical Works of John Milton: With Notes of Various Authors; and with Some Account of the Life and Writings of Milton, Derived Principally from Original Documents in Her Majesty's State-paper Office”, p.508

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• Everything is foreseen, yet freedom of choice is granted.

  Rabbi Akiva

  Choices, Granted, Freedom Of Choice

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• The future of nations cannot be frozen . . . cannot be foreseen. If we are going to accomplish anything in our time we must approach our problem in the knowledge that there is nothing rigid or immutable in human affairs. History is a story of growth, decay and change. If no provision, no allowance is made for change by peaceful means, it will come anyway - and with violence.

  Herbert Hoover

  Peace, Future, Mean

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• That useful alterations will be suggested by experience, could not but be foreseen . . . . It moreover equally enables the general and state governments to originate the amendment of errors as they may be pointed out by the experience on one side or on the other.

  James Madison

  Errors, Government, Sides

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (1842). “The Federalist, on the New Constitution, Written in the Year 1788”, p.204

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• What plan for the regulation of the militia may be pursued by the national government is impossible to be foreseen...The project of disciplining all the militia of the United States is as futile as it would be injurious if it were capable of being carried into execution... Little more can reasonably be aimed at with the respect to the people at large than to have them properly armed and equipped ; and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Respect, Government, Order

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• I came to fantasy fairly late. For some ten years, I had been happily writing fiction and non-fiction for adults. But I always loved fantasy, whether for adults or young people; and at that particular point in my life, I wanted to try it, to understand it, as part of the process of learning to be a writer. The results were beyond anything I could have foreseen. As I've said often and elsewhere, it was the most creative and liberating experience of my life.

  Lloyd Alexander

  Writing, Years, People

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

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• The modern world needs people with a complex identity who are intellectually autonomous and prepared to cope with uncertainty; who are able to tolerate ambiguity and not be driven by fear into a rigid, single-solution approach to problems, who are rational, foresightful and who look for facts; who can draw inferences and can control their behavior in the light of foreseen consequences, who are altruistic and enjoy doing for others, and who understand social forces and trends.

  Robert J. Havighurst

  Light, People, Identity

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• Every phenomenon, however trifling it be, has a cause, and a mind infinitely powerful, and infinitely well-informed concerning the laws of nature could have foreseen it from the beginning of the ages. If a being with such a mind existed, we could play no game of chance with him; we should always lose.

  Henri Poincare

  Powerful, Science, Law

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• He sat a long time and he thought about his life and how little of it he could ever have foreseen and he wondered for all his will and all his intent how much of it was his doing.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Long, Littles, Sat

  Cormac McCarthy (2013). “The Border Trilogy”, p.874, Pan Macmillan

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• A great dread fell on him, as if he was awaiting the pronouncement of some doom that he had long foreseen and vainly hoped might after all never be spoken. An overwhelming longing to rest and remain at peace by Bilbo's side in Rivendell filled all his heart. At last with an effort he spoke, and wondered to hear his own words, as if some other will was using his small voice. "I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Heart, Voice, Long

  The Fellowship of the Ring bk. 2, ch. 2 (1954)

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• No, no, one can imagine nothing in the world, not the least thing. Everything is composed of so many isolated details that are not to be foreseen. In one's imagining one passes over them and hasty as one is doesn't notice that they are missing. But realities are slow and indescribably detailed.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Reality, Missing, Details

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• Many years have passed since that night. The wall of the staircase up which I had watched the light of his candle gradually climb was long ago demolished. And in myself, too, many things have perished which I imagined would last for ever, and new ones have arisen, giving birth to new sorrows and new joys which in those days I could not have foreseen, just as now the old are hard to understand.

  Marcel Proust

  Wall, Night, Light

  Marcel Proust (2008). “The Senses of Consciousness: Swann's Way in Half”, p.33, Lulu.com

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• There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Differences, Economist, Accounts

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• Life, my dear Watson, is infinitely stranger than fiction; stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We could not conceive the things that are merely commonplace to existence. If we could hover over this great city, remove the roofs, and peep in at the things going on, it would make all fiction, with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions flat, stale and unprofitable.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Men, Cities, Mind

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• Let us hope that the advent of a successful flying machine, now only dimly foreseen and nevertheless thought to be possible, will bring nothing but good into the world; that it shall abridge distance, make all parts of the globe accessible, bring men into closer relation with each other, advance civilization, and hasten the promised era in which there shall be nothing but peace and goodwill among all men.

  Octave Chanute

  Distance, Airplane, Successful

  Octave Chanute (1894). “Progress in Flying Machines”

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• The sobs and tears of joy he had not foreseen rose with such force within him that his whole body shook and for a long time prevented him from speaking. Falling on his knees by her bed. He held his wife's hand to his lips and kissed it, and her hand responded to his kisses with weak movement of finger. Meanwhile, at the foot of the bed, in the midwife's expert hands, like the flame of a lamp, flickered the life of a human being who had never existed before.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Life, Fall, Kissing

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