quotations about prophets and prophecy
A serious prophet upon predicting a flood should be the first man to climb a tree.
STEPHEN CRANE
The Red Badge of Courage
Of the times in like manner wherein we now live, the Apostle Paul did prophecy that there should be many false prophets: and we do see his sayings therein to be fulfilled.
RICHARD BANCROFT
sermon preached at Paul's Cross, February 9, 1589
False prophet: a prophet whose god is not yet known.
BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA
The Great Pearl of Wisdom
Prophecy is history anticipated and contracted: while history is prophecy accomplished and dilated.
BISHOP NEWTON
attributed, Day's Collacon
The prophets reveal God in all His fulness and variety of being; they speak in human ears the strains of heaven.
EDWARD IRVING
Exposition of the Book of Revelation
To realize that prophecy in the people is like fruit in the tree is to know the unity of life.
KAHLIL GIBRAN
The Kahlil Gibran Reader: Inspirational Writings
Agnes was the worst prophet that's ever existed. Because she was always right. That's why the book never sold.
NEIL GAIMAN
Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
I shall always consider the best guesser the best prophet.
CICERO
De Divinatione
As we see from the Scriptures, it had become a common and proverbial expression that if someone wanted to refer to a prophet, he called him a "fool."
MARTIN LUTHER
The Place of Trust: Martin Luther on the Sermon on the Mount
You got to be worried when they're agreeing about anything.... Prophets. That's the last bloody thing you want prophets to do.
CHINA MIEVILLE
Kraken
The prophet must be his own disciple, or he will make none. Enthusiasm is contagious: belief creates belief.
GEORGE HENRY LEWES
The Principles of Success in Literature
Every minister worthy of the name has to walk the line between prophetic vision and spiritual sustenance, between telling people the comforting things they want to hear and challenging them with the difficult things they need to hear.
TIMOTHY B. TYSON
Blood Done Sign My Name
Fear prophets ... and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.
UMBERTO ECO
The Name of the Rose
My gran'ther's rule was safer 'n 'tis to crow:
Don't never prophesy -- onless ye know.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Biglow Papers
The variable that marks some periods as barren and some as rich in prophetic vision is in the interest, the level of seeking, the responsiveness of the hearers. The variable is not in the presence or absence or the relative quality and force of the prophetic voices. The prophet grows in stature as people respond to his message.
ROBERT K. GREENLEAF
The Servant as Leader
The best prophet is common sense.
EURIPIDES
Helen
What is it with these prophets? Almost without exception ordinary men, some of them with more vices than virtues, suddenly they were touched with fire. Is it that a man sees best the stars when he is prone?
GREY OWL & LITTLE PIGEON
Cry of the Ancients
We may take the prophets as our teachers; but we must not bow down to their idol notions.
T. PARKER
attributed, Day's Collacon
In every man sleeps a prophet, and when he wakes there is a little more evil in the world.
EMIL CIORAN
A Short History of Decay
Either the images of the prophetic style have constant and proper relations to the events of the world, as the words of common speech have proper and constant meanings--or they have not. If they have, then it seems no less difficult to conceive that many events should be shadowed under the images of one and the same prophecy, than that several likenesses should be expressed in a single portrait. But, if the prophetic images have no such appropriate relations to things, but that the same image may stnd for many things, and various events be included in a single prediction, then it should seem that prophecy, thus indefinite in its meaning, can afford no proof of providence: for it should seem possible, that a prophecy of this sort, by whatever principle the world were governed, whether by providence, nature, or necessity, might owe a seeming completion to mere accident.
SAMUEL HORSLEY
Sermons