Preceded Quotes & Sayings

In view of her present ease, Anais Nin knows that the description of what she was like as a child will be difficult to accept and so will occasion laughter [...] Nin also knows, however, how much we need to believe that such a triumph over handicaps is possible and how much our admiration for an accomplished person can be discouraging rather than encouraging to our own aspirations if we are not reminded of the struggles that preceded that success. Finally, she also knows that the tendency to cling to the idea that the person who exhibits remarkable qualities was invariably born with exceptional talents and advantages may be an inverted way of rationalizing one's own passivity and mediocrity. — Evelyn Hinz

I prefer to have one gigantic laugh preceded by several smaller laughs rather than a bunch of medium laughs all along. — Ron Shock

Karma is simply the law of cause and effect in action. All moments and occurrences are caused by other moments and occurrences that preceded them in an endless, causal chain. — Frederick Lenz

It was in these sessions that I first came across the "To my shame" technique ... You can get away with any admission, however appalling, so long as it's preceded by the words "to my shame."
... The self-accusatory prefix robs the listener of the right to disapprove ...
SANS "TO MY SHAME."
I used to exploit women because I couldn't cope with being alone ...
CORRECT RESPONSE. He didn't say "to my shame!" You bastard! You viscious selfish bastard.
It's like "Simon Says" for junkies. — Russell Brand

You should go tho the past, looking not for messages or warnings, but simply to be humbled by the weight of human experience that has preceded the brief flicker of your own few days. — Pat Barker

When every action of yours is preceded by witnessing, then every move you make in this world becomes perfect and significant. — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

By mid-summer only Ma Barker remained in Chicago, lost in her jigsaw puzzles. Karpis drove over to visit her one weekend and found she was doing surprisingly well. He and Dock took her to see a movie. To their horror, the film was preceded by a newsreel warning moviegoers to be on the lookout for Dillinger, Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, Karpis, and the Barkers. Karpis scrunched low in his seat as their pictures flashed on the screen. "One of these men may be sitting next to you," the announcer said. Karpis pulled his hat low over his forehead. — Bryan Burrough

Mysteries are powerful, Cialdini says, because they create a need for closure. "You've heard of the famous Aha! experience, right?" he says. "Well, the Aha! experience is much more satisfying when it is preceded by the Huh? experience." By creating a mystery, the writer-astronomer made dust interesting. He sustained attention, not just for the span of a punch line but for the span of a twenty-page article dense with information on scientific theories and experimentation. — Chip Heath

His reputation preceded him before he got here. — Don Mattingly

Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation — Willard Van Orman Quine

The heritage of the American Revolution is forgotten, and the American government, for better and for worse, has entered into theheritage of Europe as though it were its patrimony
unaware, alas, of the fact that Europe's declining power was preceded and accompanied by political bankruptcy, the bankruptcy of the nation-state and its concept of sovereignty. — Hannah Arendt

Men are made uneasy; they flinch; they cannot bear the sudden light; a general restlessness supervenes; the face of society is disturbed, or perhaps convulsed; old interests and old beliefs have been destroyed before new ones have been created. These symptoms are the precursors of revolution; they have preceded all the great changes through which the world has passed. — Henry Thomas Buckle

Five days after the Tsarnaev brothers blew up Boston's most sacred event, and just 24 hours after one brother was killed and the other was caught, everyone decided that it was OK to play baseball at Fenway again. The game happened on a Saturday afternoon, preceded by an emotional ceremony and many prayers. — Bill Simmons

There is no man," [the painter Elstir] began, "however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived in a way the consciousness of which is so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly, if he could, expunge it from his memory. And yet he ought not entirely to regret it, because he cannot be certain that he has indeed become a wise man - so far as it is possible for any of us to be wise - unless he has passed through all the fatuous or unwholesome incarnations by which that ultimate stage must be preceded. . . We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world."
Marcel Proust
Within a Budding Grove (translated by C. Scott Moncrieff) — Marcel Proust

Death is like thunder in two particulars; we are alarmed, at the sound of it; and it is formidable only from that which preceded it. — Charles Caleb Colton

Great men, unknown to their generation, have their fame among the great who have preceded them, and all true worldly fame subsides from their high estimate beyond the stars. — Henry David Thoreau

We have of late come to understand that sunrise and sunset are to her times of peculiar freedom. When her old self can be manifest without any controlling force subduing or restraining her, or inciting her to action. This mood or condition begins some half hour or more before actual sunrise or sunset, and lasts till either the sun is high, or whilst the clouds are still aglow with the rays streaming above the horizon. At first there is a sort of negative condition, as if some tie were loosened, and then the absolute freedom quickly follows. When, however, the freedom ceases the change back or relapse comes quickly, preceded only by a spell of warning silence. — Bram Stoker

I think part of being an artist is having the ability to define your own responsibilities. I certainly wouldn't prescribe any. As far as I'm concerned, my biggest responsibility is to my own imagination. We're all conduits. Art preceded me, and it'll be here long after I'm gone. — Pierre Coupey

My two Jamaican cousins ... were studying engineering. 'That's where the money is,' Mom advised ... I was to be an engineering major, despite my allergy to science and math ... Those who preceded me at CCNY include the polio vaccine discoverer, Dr. Jonas Salk ... and eight Nobel Prize winners ... In class, I stumbled through math, fumbled through physics, and did reasonably well in, and even enjoyed, geology. All I ever looked forward to was ROTC.
Autobiographical comments on his original reason for going to the City College of New York, where he shortly turned to his military career. — Colin Powell

Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, he began at the moment that it broke out, believing that it would be a great war, and more memorable than any that had preceded it. — Thucydides

Did I say that the world had never had better color? I left something out of account, a limping, crippled consideration which seems to lose ground as you reach beauty and Orizaba flowers, but soon you find it has preceded you. — Saul Bellow

That was it. She came out of it. She never had such a down as that or such an up as the three days that preceded it, not ever again in her life. The rest of her life was like a long thin line with little diminuendos and tiny little crescendos, and friends visiting from out of town. — Sheila Heti

And [We had sent] Lot when he said to his people, "Do you commit such immorality as no one has preceded you with from among the worlds?

Verily, you practise your lusts on men instead of women. Nay, but you are a people transgressing beyond bounds (by committing great sins)."



And the answer of his people was only that they said: "Drive them out of your town, these are indeed men who want to be pure (from sins)!"


Then We saved him and his family, except his wife; she was of those who remained behind (in the torment).


And We rained down on them a rain (of stones). Then see what was the end of the Mujrimun (criminals, polytheists, sinners, etc.)."
( A translation of Quran,7;80-84) — Qur'an

To say that you can't see echoes of the past in what I do would be absurd. Everything that has preceded me has affected me. — James Frey

Today's free women, as Gloria Steinem might say, are reshaping the world once again, creating space for themselves and, in turn, for the independent women who will come after them. This is the epoch of the single women, made possible by the single women who preceded it. — Rebecca Traister

It is not about surpassing the masters who preceded us but more about opening new artistic vistas. It is about doing the things they didn't have a chance or the time to do. — Liu Dan

We see that every external motion, act, gesture, whether voluntary or mechanical, organic or mental, is produced and preceded by internal feeling or emotion, will or volition, and thought or mind. — Helena Blavatsky

The rather uncomfortable feeling most of us have when we're around snakes is evidence of how this ancient experience continues to influence us today. Throughout the long prehistory of our species and those that preceded it, snakes were a mortal threat. And so we learned our lesson. Others didn't, but that had a nasty habit of dying. So natural selection did its work and the rule
beware of snakes
was ultimately hardwired into every human brain. It's universal. Go anywhere on the planet, examine any culture. People are wary of snakes. Even if
as in the Arctic
there are no snakes. Our primate cousins shared our long experience and they feel the same way: Even monkeys raised in laboratories who have never seen a snake will back away at the sight of one. — Daniel Gardner

A terroir only exists by virtue of one's childhood mythology ... we have invented these words of tradition rooted deep in the land and identity of a region ... because we want to solidify and objectify the magical, bygone years that preceded the horror of becoming an adult. — Muriel Barbery

We want to think of ourselves as truly special creatures that are unique in the universe and, well, we are. And we have that capacity to wonder, to question, and to see ourselves in the context of all of life that has preceded the present time, and all that will go off far into the future, one way or another. — Sylvia Earle

Each stage of cosmic development proceeded more quickly than the stage which preceded it. — Terence McKenna

Calo had dark liquor-colored skin and hair like an inky slice of night; the tautness of the flesh around his dark eyes was broken only by a fine network of laugh-lines (though anyone who knew the Sanza twins would more readily describe them as smirk-lines). An improbably sharp and hooked nose preceded his good looks like a dagger held at guard position. — Scott Lynch

Mythos is the sum total of the early historic and prehistoric myths which preceded the logos. The mythos includes not only the Greek myths but the Old Testament, the Vedic Hymns and the early legends of all cultures which have contributed to our present world understanding. — Robert M. Pirsig

The "terror" of the French Revolution lasted for ten years. The terror that preceded and led to it lasted for a thousand years. — Edward Abbey

Nearly every major breakthrough innovation has been preceded by a string of failed or misguided executions. — Frans Johansson

You always want to know what happened before you. It's a human instinct to know where you came from and what preceded you. — Russell Freedman

I took me to the Banks of the River, and tarried there awhile, as the lowering Sun made one with the Water, giving generously of Itself & its Diverse Colors, in a Splay of Magnificence that preceded a most wonderful Silence. — George Saunders

There is no always," I say. "Nothing persists forever."
"Nothingness persists," she says. She is testing me.
"No. So long as anything exists, nothingness is impossible. In fact, it's nothingness that cannot persist. Nothingness gives way to somethingness. The nothingness that preceded the Big Bang was obliterated. Nothing became something. — Michael Grant

The religionists are the enemies of liberty, and the friends of liberty attack religion; the high-minded and the noble advocate bondage, and the meanest and most servile preach independence; honest and enlightened citizens are opposed to all progress, whilst men without patriotism and without principle put themselves forward as the apostles of civilization and intelligence. Has such been the fate of the centuries which have preceded our own? and has man always inhabited a world like the present, where all things are out of their natural connections, where virtue is without genius, and genius without honor; where the love of order is confounded with a taste for oppression, and the holy rites of freedom with a contempt of law; where the light thrown by conscience on human actions is dim, and where nothing seems to be any longer forbidden or allowed, honorable or shameful, false or true? — Alexis De Tocqueville

Anyone who studies the state of things which preceded the French Revolution will see that the tremendous catastrophe came about from so excessive a regulation of men's actions in all their details, and such an enormous drafting away of the products of their actions to maintain the regulating organization, that life was fast becoming impracticable. And if we ask what then made, and now makes, this error possible, we find it to be the political superstition that governmental power is subject to no restraints. — Herbert Spencer

Days in the past cover up little by little those that preceded them and are themselves buried beneath those that follow them. But each past day has remained deposited in us, as in a vast library where, even of the oldest books, there is a copy which doubtless nobody will ever ask to see. And yet should this day from the past, traversing the translucency of the intervening epochs, rise to the surface and spread itself inside us until it covers us entirely, then for a moment names resume their former meaning, people their former aspect, we ourselves our state of mind at the time, and we feel, with a vague suffering which however is endurable and will not last for long, the problems which have long ago become insoluble and which caused us such anguish at the time ... Incessant upheavals raise to the surface ancient deposits. — Marcel Proust

Increasing access to federal student loans has been a bipartisan effort in Washington, one that I have supported. But it has created what many experts believe is a bubble in higher education, not unlike the housing bubble that preceded the financial crisis. — Marco Rubio

Let us take care of our rights and we therein take care of our prosperity. Slavery is ever preceded by sleep — John Dickinson

I am certain
you are not one of those dreary fellows one reads of who demands that
their lady friends be in possession of a maidenhead. Mine was taken
by a marrow two years ago."
"A marrow, Miss Pertwee? The vegetable that the Italians call il
zucchine?"
"The very same.A most particularly bold and impetuous hot-house
marrow. It was quite the ravishment, I can assure you."
"I consider it no dishonor at all to be preceded by so noble a vegetable. — Vinnie Tesla

When we gaze at the magnificence of an ancient monument and ascribe its achievement to one man, we are guilty of spiritual embezzlement. We forget the army of craftsmen, unknown and unsung, who preceded him in the darkness of the ages, who toiled humbly - all heroism is humble - each contributing his small share to the common treasure of his time. A great building is not the private invention of some genius or other. It is merely a condensation of the spirit of a people. — Ayn Rand

No doubt, it is useful for an artist to know all the forms of art which have preceded or which accompany his. That is a sign of strength if it is a question of looking for a stimulus or recognizing mistakes he must avoid. — Pablo Picasso

Every action is an idea before it is an action, and perhaps a feeling before it is an idea, and every idea rests upon other ideas that have preceded it in time. — Wallace Stegner

Look at yourselves. Some of you teenagers, students. How do you think I feel and I belong to a generation ahead of you - how do you think I feel to have to tell you, 'We, my generation, sat around like a knot on a wall while the whole world was fighting for its human rights - and you've got to be born into a society where you still have that same fight.' What did we do, who preceded you? I'll tell you what we did. Nothing. And don't you make the same mistake we made ... — Malcolm X

Hatred which is completely vanquished by love passes into love: and love is thereupon greater than if hatred had not preceded it ... — Baruch Spinoza

Not in our make-up, to be sure - not in the pose which is preceded by the tantaras of a trumpet - do the essential traits in our character first reveal themselves. But truly in the little things the real self is exteriorised. — Ameen Rihani

I think that every artist dreams of renewing the forms which came before, but I think very few can be considered to have achieved that. We are all dwarves standing upon the shoulders of the giants who preceded us, and I think we must never forget that. After all, even iconoclasts only exist with respect to that which they destroy. — Peter Greenaway

Change is always preceded by a little pain. Some people can change and they don't have to go through so many painful things. But I think that I'm of a personality that I'm a little stubborn, so it's tough for me. — Mel Gibson

I think it may not be a coincidence that the rise of printing and book publication and literacy and the phenomenon of best sellers all preceded the humanitarian reforms of the Enlightenment. — Steven Pinker

As a theoretical physicist, I feel at once proud and humble at the thought of the illustrious figures that have preceded me here to receive the greatest of all honors in science, the Nobel prize. — Murray Gell-Mann

Sparhawk's reputation must have preceded him. The Massachusetts coast, as he was often reminded, was shaped like an ear. It heard everything. — Donna Thorland

Jesus offers unconditional grace; we are to offer unconditional grace. The mercy of Christ preceded our mistakes; our mercy must precede the mistakes of others. Those in the circle of Christ had no doubt of his love; those in our circles should have no doubts about ours. What does it mean to have a heart like his? It means to kneel as Jesus knelt, touching the grimy parts of the people we are stuck with and washing away their unkindnesses with kindness. Or as Paul wrote, "Be kind and loving to each other, and forgive each other just as God forgave you in Christ" (Eph. 4:32). — Max Lucado

My life certainly didn't change overnight. I experienced a waiting period, a time of growth, development, and perseverance as God prepared me. Lessons on patience, trust, surrender, and learning to take hold all preceded my stepping out. But even in this seemingly unimportant time of pruning and trials, God was preparing me for the next step. — Lysa TerKeurst

Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the age and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies. Man has no property in man; — Thomas Paine

Unless we are complete ingrates, the lives of all those men that preceded us should be seen as sacred. Their collective existence paved the way for our own time on Earth. Because — Seneca.

No, we don't accomplish our love in a single year as the flowers do; an immemorial sap flows up through our arms when we love. Dear girl, this: that we loved, inside us, not One who would someday appear, but seething multitudes; not just a single child, but also the fathers lying in our depths like fallen mountains; also the dried-up riverbeds of ancient mothers-;also the whole soundless landscape under the clouded or clear sky of its destiny -; all this, my dear, preceded you. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Vengeance and forgiveness are about reconciling the accounts, but accounting is an ugly description of the tangled ways we're connected. I sometimes think everything comes out even in the end, but an end that arches beyond the horizon, beyond our capacity to perceive or measure, and that in many cases those who trespass against you do so out of a misery that means the punishment preceded and even precipitated the crime. Maybe that's acceptance. — Rebecca Solnit

the future could hold in store a new world of inequality more extreme than any that preceded it. — Thomas Piketty

The promises of the Old Covenant were preceded by an "if" that made them conditional on man's obedience, while the promises of the New Covenant were marked by a divine monergism: — Pascal Denault

Once a person has taken their life, in the inner realms, the suicide will repeat automatically the feelings of despair and fear which preceded his self murder, and go through the act and the death struggle time after time with ghastly persistence ... They remain conscious - often entangled in the final scene of the earth life for a very long time, unaware that they have lost the physical body. — Annie Besant

Haven't you realized that pleasure, which is indeed certainly the one and only reason for the two sexes to come together, is nevertheless not enough to establish a relationship between them? And that though this pleasure is preceded by desire which draws people together, it is however followed by aversion which pushes them apart? It's a law of nature which only love can change. Can we feel love whenever we want? Yet love is always needed, which would be a dreadfully tiresome thing if it hadn't fortunately been realized that it's enough for just one of the partners to feel it, thereby halving the problem, and without even incurring any great loss; in fact, one party is happy to love, the other to please, which is actually a bit less exciting but which can be combined with the pleasure of deceiving and that evens things out, so everyone's happy. — Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos

Migraine attacks are often preceded by visual disturbances, weakness, dizziness, ringing in the ears, and other symptoms. Many patients report that they can avert a migraine attack by smoking a joint at the first warning of onset. Others take a small dosage daily to ward off attacks. Patients say inhaled marijuana is preferable to oral preparations such as Marinol in such situations, because quick treatment is necessary. (There is no evidence that CBD or other non-THC cannabinoids are helpful against migraines.) — Dale Gieringer

We may not be responsible for another's addiction or the life history that preceded it, but many painful situations could be avoided if we recognized that we are responsible for the way we ourselves enter into the interaction. And that, to put it most simply, means dealing with our own stuff. — Gabor Mate

I cannot improve on those spoken for many years by a true legend who preceded me at CBS News. He would say, simply, 'good night, and good luck.' — Mike Wallace

When the boy begins to understand that the visible point is preceded by an invisible point, that the shortest distance between two points is conceived as a straight line before it is ever drawn with pencil and paper ... the fountain of all thought has been opened to him ... the philosopher can reveal him nothing new, as a geometrician he has discovered the basis of all thought. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

For mile after mile the same melodic phrase rose up in my memory. I simply couldn't get free of it. Each time it had a new fascination for me. Initially imprecise in outline, it seemed to become more and more intricately woven, as if to conceal from the listener how eventually it would end. This weaving and re-weaving became so complicated that one wondered how it could possibly be unravelled; and then suddenly one note would resolve the whole problem, and the solution would seem yet more audacious than the procedures which had preceded, called for, and made possible its arrival; when it was heard, all that had gone before took on a new meaning, and the quest, which had seemed arbitrary, was seen to have prepared the way for this undreamed-of solution. — Claude Levi-Strauss

The Illuminati Order was preceded in the 1500's in Spain by the 'Alumbrados', a Christian heresy started by crypto-Jews called 'Marranos'. The founder of the Jesuit Order, Ignatius of Loyola, was a Marrano / Alumbrado. Thus when people today argue whether it is the Jesuits or Zionists or Illuminati who are responsible for our troubles, they are really talking about the same beast. — Henry Makow

Paleontological evidence suggests that the early farmers had more spinal issues, worse teeth, and more anemia and vitamin deficiencies - and died younger - than the populations of human foragers who preceded them. — Leonard Mlodinow

Read the right books. Learn how those who have preceded you have handled the challenges you are currently facing. — Robin S. Sharma

Although she went home that night feeling happier than she had ever been in her short life, she did not confuse the golf course party with a good party, and she did not tell herself she had a pleasant time. it had been, she felt, a dumb event preceded by excellent invitations. what frankie did that was unusual was to imagine herself in control. the drinks, the clothes, the instructions, the food (there had been none), the location, everything. she asked herself: if i were in charge, how could i have done it better? — E. Lockhart

Cuvier had preceded Lamarck in specifying the kinds and degrees of variation, which his own observations and critical judgment of the reports of others led him to admit. — Richard Owen

No matter what night preceded it, she had never known a morning when she did not feel the rise of a quiet excitement that became a tightening energy in her body and a hunger for action in her mind - because this was the beginning of day and it was a day of her life. — Ayn Rand

The boredom of married life inevitable destroys love, when love has preceded marriage. — Stendhal

The old Squire was an implacable man: he made resolutions in violent anger, and he was not to be moved from them after his anger had subsided - as fiery volcanic matters cool and harden into rock. Like many violent and implacable men, he allowed evils to grow under favour of his own heedlessness, till they pressed upon him with exasperating force, and then he turned round with fierce severity and became unrelentingly hard ... Godfrey knew all this, and felt it with the greater force because he had constantly suffered annoyance from witnessing his father's sudden fits of unrelentingness, for which his own habitual irresolution deprived him of all sympathy. (He was not critical on the faulty indulgence which preceded these fits; that seemed to him natural enough.) — George Eliot

Two women, one fat and the other slim, sat on straw-bottomed chairs, knitting black wool. The slim one got up and walked straight at me - still knitting with downcast eyes - and only just as I began to think of getting out of her way, as you would for a somnambulist, stood still, and looked up. Her dress was as plain as an umbrella-cover, and she turned round without a word and preceded me into a waiting-room. — Joseph Conrad

The Qur'an follows on from the two Revelations that preceded it and is not only free
from contradictions in its narrations, the sign of the various human manipulations to
be found in the Gospels, but provides a quality all of its own for those who examine it
objectively and in the light of science i.e. its complete agreement with modern
scientific data. — Maurice Bucaille

Reality prior to my language exists as an unthinkable thought ... life precedes love, bodily matter precedes the body, and one day in its turn language shall have preceded possession of silence. — Clarice Lispector

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States." More important, all of Jefferson's specific digs at the king were preceded by one self-evident fact that obliterated any and all justifications for monarchy, aristocracy, and colonialism until the end of time, even though neither its author nor his comrades truly believed it: All men are created equal. A — Sarah Vowell

The wind whips through the canyons of the American Southwest, and there is no one to hear it but us - a reminder of the 40,000 generations of thinking men and women who preceded us, about whom we know almost nothing, upon whom our civilization is based. — Carl Sagan

This is not a new world - it is simply an extension of what began in the old one. It has patterned itself after every dictator who has ever planted the ripping imprint of a boot on the pages of history since the beginning of time. It has refinements ... technological advances ... and a more sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom. But like everyone of the super-states that preceded it - it has one iron rule: logic is an enemy and truth is a menace. — Rod Serling

Guns neither initiated nor enabled larger changes. Economic, political, and social development preceded and laid the foundation for the invention and use of the gun, not the other way around. — Peter A. Lorge

Competitive rowing is an undertaking of extraordinary beauty preceded by brutal punishment. Unlike most sports, which draw primarily on particular muscle groups, rowing makes heavy and repeated use of virtually every muscle in the body, despite the fact that a rower, as Al Ulbrickson liked to put it, "scrimmages on his posterior annex." And rowing makes these muscular demands not at odd intervals but in rapid sequence, over a protracted period of time, repeatedly and without respite. On one occasion, after watching the Washington freshmen practice, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Royal Brougham marveled at the relentlessness of the — Daniel James Brown

No law of nature, however general, has been established all at once; its recognition has always been preceded by many presentiments. — Dmitri Mendeleev

I have never seen an adequate description anywhere of the amazement, the uncomprehending horror of the bulk of the American people which preceded the firing of that gun at Sumter. Politicians or far-sighted leaders on both sides knew what was coming. And it is they who have written histories of the war. But to the easy-going millions, busied with their farms or shops, the onrushing disaster was as inexplicable as an earthquake. Their protest arose from sea to sea like the clamor of a gigantic hive of frightened bees. — Rebecca Harding Davis

Each new poem is partly propelled by the formal energies of all the poems that have preceded it in the history of literature. — May Sarton

One ambition of poetry, certainly, is to create a reverberant silence in its wake, one that means more or differently than the silence that preceded the poem. — Mark Doty

You can take as much as you can from the generation that has preceded you, but then it's up to you to make something new. — Jackson Browne

The discovery of truth, by slow progressive meditation, is wisdom.
Intuition of truth, not preceded by perceptible meditation, is genius. — Johann Kaspar Lavater

[French Revolution rejected] the sacred foundation both of history and of the state. History was no longer measured on the basis of an idea of God that had preceded it and given it shape. The state came to be understood in purely secular terms, based on rationalism and the will of citizens.
The secular state arose for the first time, abandoning and excluding any divine guarantee or legitimation of the political element as a mythological vision of the world and declaring that God is a private question that does not belong to the public sphere or to the democratic formation of the public will. Public life was now considered the realm of reason alone, which had no place for a seemingly unknowable God. From this perspective, religion and faith in God belonged to the realm of sentiment, not of reason. God and His will therefore ceased to be relevant to public life. — Pope Benedict XVI

God's love preceded His washing us. He washed us from sin because He first loved us. — Joseph Sayibu

For this was the age of The Girl. We had come out of the back parlor, out of the kitchen and nursery, we turned our backs upon the blackboards, shed aprons and paper cuffs. A war had freed us and given women a new kind of self-respect.
The adjective poor no longer preceded the once disreputable "working girl". It was honorable, it was jolly, it was even superior to be a "career girl". — Vera Caspary

What she revealed was not sexy lingerie, but a supportive piece of athletic equipment. After the consolation match that preceded the championship game, both Brazilian and Norwegian players removed their jerseys and exchanged them on the floor of the Rose Bowl. Chastain had previously removed her jersey after regulation to air it out. While training in Florida, the players frequently doffed their shirts after practice in the smothering heat, and they sometimes gave interviews in their sports bras, which were items of utility, not titillation. Chastain 'has brought instant attention to a piece of clothing that is humble and practical, not a traditional bra of shine and lace and cleavage, but a sturdy compression garment,' wrote Ann Gerhart of the Washington Post. 'The sports bra is the cloth symbol of Title IX's success. — Jere Longman

I agree with my colleagues, even the one who just preceded me, that marijuana is probably a dangerous drug, and I would not suggest that we do anything to encourage its use. — Dana Rohrabacher

For there are strong grounds for thinking that, in the evolution of thought, magic has preceded religion . — James G. Frazer

We feel that our actions are voluntary when they follow a decision and involuntary when they happen without decision. But if a decision itself were voluntary every decision would have to be preceded by a decision to decide - An infinite regression which fortunately does not occur. Oddly enough, if we had to decide to decide, we would not be free to decide — Alan W. Watts

Modern man has made no significant leaps in the evolution of consciousness for thousands of years. In fact, we may even be less intelligent than some of the civilizations that have preceded us. Scientists have speculated that the gap of intelligence between great thinkers such as Einstein and Tesla compared to the average human is far greater than the gap between the average human and contemporary apes. What is it that is blocking us from achieving a superior level of intelligence?
Aside from the mental conditioning that our culture has been subjected to, I believe that it is due to an utter lack of understanding human nature. Modern humans are raised in such a negative environment. The corruption of our educational system, economic structure, and media outlets has resulted in a state of ignorance common amongst most individuals. — Joseph P. Kauffman