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Home  »  Familiar Quotations  »  5280 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772-1834 John Bartlett

John Bartlett (1820–1905). Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. 1919.

5280 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772-1834 John Bartlett

 
NUMBER:5280
AUTHOR:Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
QUOTATION:Often do the spirits
Of great events stride on before the events,
And in to-day already walks to-morrow. 1
ATTRIBUTION:The Death of Wallenstein. Act v. Sc. 1.
 
Note 1.
Sed ita a principio inchoatum esse mundum ut certis rebus certa signa præcurrerent (Thus in the beginning the world was so made that certain signs come before certain events).—Cicero: Divinatione, liber i. cap. 52.

Coming events cast their shadows before.—Thomas Campbell: Lochiel’s Warning.

Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present.—Percy Bysshe Shelley: A Defence of Poetry. [back]