Earwa > The Darkness That Comes Before

Quotes worth quoting: The Wikiquote project

<< < (2/7) > >>

What Came Before:

--- Quote from: lockesnow ---The ruins were far too old to contradict the forest outright. They had been submerged, worn and unbalanced by ages of its weight. Sheltered in mossy hollows, walls breached earthen mounds, only to suddenly end, as though restrained by vines that wrapped them like great veins over bone.
- AK
Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Darkness that Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing) (p. 8). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.

“Weeping may muddy the face... but it does cleanse the heart.”
- Leweth
Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Darkness that Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing) (p. 15). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.

Smoky dreams. Dreams drawn from the sheath.
- DA
Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Darkness that Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing) (p. 46). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.

Ink might be immortal, but meaning was not.
- DA
Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Darkness that Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing) (p. 51). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.

“Zealots holding out redemption in one hand to draw attention away from the whip in the other. Sooner or later, everyone sees the whip.”
- DA
Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Darkness that Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing) (p. 57). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.

Faith may die, but her sentiments remain eternal.
- DA
Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Darkness that Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing) (p. 58). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.

He held the word in his mouth, as though it were a morsel of questionable food.
- DA
Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Darkness that Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing) (p. 63). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.
--- End quote ---

What Came Before:

--- Quote from: Wilshire ---lots of quotes about time. very nice.
love the last one.

it seems that the wikiquote people dont much like my formatting... which i thought i copied from another page pretty exactly but whatever.
--- End quote ---

tekne:
"It is only after that we understand what has come before, then we understand nothing."
give your vision, how  you do comprehend this statement !please!
we are having trouble in interpreting  it to other language...

Wilshire:
There are others here that are more versed in language then myself, but I'll give it a try anyway. It will probably be more confusing after I'm done  :P

I think this sentence is mostly just a play on words so that it would sound cool when read (in english) and reflect the title
Break it into its two parts

1) It is only after that we understand what has come before
2) Then we understand nothing


First part:
"What has come before" is just a phrase used to describe the past. So it means the same thing as:

"It is only after that we understand the past"
This sentence basically states that you can only fully understand the past after it has happened.

That is saying that while you can predict probable outcomes very accurately, you can never be 100% sure what will happen until after it has happened. The general idea is that nothing is certain with 100% probability. After all, the probability that you will win the lottery is essentially 0, and yet people do still win.

The second part:
"Then we understand nothing"

This can be taken with the first half to generally say that there are times that something occurs that is unpredictable or unlikely. There was no way to forecast that an unlikely event would take place before it happened.



You could then re-write the old sentence to say something like this:

"The future cannot be predicted with absolute certainly, it is only upon reflecting on the past that events can truly be predicted (up until the present). But, since you are only reading history rather than predicting it, you are forecasting nothing, and thus you understand nothing."

I doubt this will be much help but I tried   :)

Madness:
Wilshire did a decent job.

The actual quotation is "if," by the way.

If it is only after (something has occurred) that we understand what has come before (, that is, what actually happened when it actually occurred), then we (can) understand nothing (in the moment when things are actually happening).

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page