John Milton Quotes

I wonder that a soothsayer doesn't laugh whenever he sees another soothsayer.

People have always had this craving to have someone tell them the future. Long ago, kings would hire people to read sheep guts. There's always been a market for people who pretend to know the future. Listening to today's forecasters is just as crazy as when the king hired the guy to look at the sheep guts.

Legends of prediction are common throughout the whole Household of Man. Gods speak, spirits speak, computers speak. Oracular ambiguity or statistical probability provides loopholes, and discrepancies are expunged by Faith.

You can make a good living from soothsaying but not from truthsaying.

Divining the future is a lot easier and cheaper than documenting the present.

The pollsters are engaged in an ancient and primitive rite—trying to predict the future.

No serious futurist deals in prediction. These are left for television oracles and newspaper astrologers.

I do believe in prophecy.

In spite of myself, I gave a snort. "Just once, I'd like to hear a simple, straightforward prophecy.

I wished for eternal and intriguing muteness. I would be the Mysterious Dumb Girl, the Enigmatic Elf. The human voice no longer interested me.

All the rest is silence On the other side of the wall, And the silence ripeness, And the ripeness all.

n OthI n g can s urPas s the m y SteR y of s tilLnes s

PROPHECY, n. The art and practice of selling one's credibility for future delivery.

Men, forever tempted to lift the veil of the future-with the aid of computers or horoscopes or the intestines of sacrificial animals-have a worse record to show in these sciences than in almost any scientific endeavor.

Silent," the carved wizardwood on his wrist breathed. "Silent as a blinded ship, floating hull-up in the sea. Silent as a scream underwater.

All silence is. All emptiness. And now: The dawn.

Hushed as midnight silence.

The darkness grew apace; a cold wind began to blow in freshening gusts from the east, and the showering white flakes in the air increased in number. From the edge of the sea came a ripple and whisper. Beyond these lifeless sounds the world was silent. Silent? It would be hard to convey the stillness of it. All the sounds of man, the bleating of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects, the stir that makes the background of our lives - all that was over.

He could not feel her near him in the darkness nor hear her voice touch his ear. He waited for some minutes listening. He could hear nothing: the night was perfectly silent. He listened again: perfectly silent. He felt that he was alone.

Nostradamus, who predicted that Billy Bailey would not come home. Never got a dinner!

And the great spirit of darkness spread a shroud over me...everything was silent-everything. But upon the heights soughed the everlasting song, the voice of the air, the distant, toneless humming which is never silent.

All I want is blackness. Blackness and silence.

There are moments when it's too quiet. Particularly late at night or early in the mornings. That's when you know there's something lacking in your life. You just know.

Midnight brought on the dusky hour Friendliest to sleep and silence.

What is it about silence that makes people uneasy?