Quotes About Omens

If, then, Virgil says that the gods were such as these, and were conquered, and that when conquered they could not escape except under the protection of a man, what madness is it to suppose that Rome had been wisely entrusted to these guardians, and could not have been taken unless it had lost them! Indeed, to worship conquered gods as protectors and champions, what is this but to worship, not good divinities, but evil omens?

Ancient history is oddly short on incorrect omens.

He felt that it was a mistake to look for signs and portents instead of waiting until they were revealed to him in their own good time.

Here its stock-in-trade was ironies, coincidences, and the only true portents: those that revealed themselves, unmistakable and impossible to ignore, in retrospect.

Lord, thy children are jaded, and their ears go flat with sound. Marveling in the thunder rumbling of thy voice no longer - they hear not, and the omens of the white gull and the flayed oak are as naught to their purblind sight. The prophecy in the thunder, the foreshadowings of the leaves quivering white, the dismay of the grass bent in the merciless wind are naught, lord.

Out to sea, the calm lagoon waters were darkening, while the comets overhead glowed brighter, omens in the gloaming.

No gulls, no luck.

Omens weren't real. But the way people reacted to them was very real.

That was the thing about omens—they were made up. Imagined signals of something nebulous. So why not make them up to be something positive?

See them demons and them omens staring at you, mind control, they want your soul. If he don't see a dollar, somebody visiting Satan

We create our own omens, I think, and then mystify ourselves trying to understand their significance.

O Ruler of Olympus, why did it please thee to add more care to worried mortals by letting them learn of future slaughters by means of cruel omens! Whatever thou hast in store, do it unexpectedly; let the minds of men be blind to their future fate: let him who fears, still cling to hope!]

Omens are everywhere in this world you just have to find the one that fits.

Omens were all very well, but sometimes it would help if people just wrote things down.

His knowledge of country lore was a little hazy, but he felt fairly sure that if the cows lay down, it meant rain. If they were standing it would probably be fine. These cows were taking it in turns to execute slow and solemn somersaults; and Tyler wondered what it presaged for the weather.

Witches knew that mysterious omens were around all the time. The world was always very nearly drowning in mysterious omens. You just had to pick the one that was convenient.

If a rooster crows while you're thinking about a man," the fortuneteller had once told Maria, "then he's the one you'll marry.

reading of birds could not keep off dark destruction

Omens are for fools, but every truth of the future resides in the present, if only we have the will to see

Perhaps what he'd been seeking was simply his own self, and he'd been guilty of imposing omens on words and places.

Let us go whither the omens of the Gods and the iniquity of our enemies call us. The die is now cast." XXXIII.

These things happen in threes,' said Milly in her way of uttering bits of folk-wisdom; she was spooning tea into the heated teapot. She always mixed tea with maxims.

Pre-incident indicators are those detectable factors that occur before the outcome being predicted.

Nothing happened; yet there were disturbing signs and portents.