"And this sufficeth right enough, certain, For to destroy our free choice ev'ry deal; But now is this abusion,* to sayn *illusion, self-deception That falling of the thinges temporel Is cause of Godde's prescience eternel; Now truely that is a false sentence,* *opinion, judgment That thing to come should cause his prescience.英文原著 · 《The Canterbury Tales》
"Well, but prescience of isolated events, preceded by no _indicia,_ belongs only to omniscience. Did they not teach you that much at Oxford?"英文原著 · 《A Woman-Hater》
We marvel that we had no prescience of these, and that we did not attain to them sooner. Why has it taken so many generations to reach a foregone conclusion? they neither knew the conclusion nor the means of attaining to it. Man works from ignorance towards greater knowledge with very limited powers. His little circle of light is surrounded by a wall of darkness, which he strives to penetrate and lighten, now groping blindly on its verge, now advancing his taper light and peering forward; yet unable to go far, and even afraid to venture, in case he should be lost.英文原著 · 《Heroes of the Telegraph》
"The present crisis is one in which the nation needs statesmanship and a broad outlook upon the world. In the existing situation we need not the duplicity of a Machiavelli, but the commanding prescience of a Gladstone or an Alfred the Great, or a Julius Caesar. Luckily we have exactly this type of man at the head of affairs."英文原著 · 《My Discovery of England》
"And, certes, if I hadde prescience Your will to know, ere ye your lust* me told, *will I would it do withoute negligence: But, now I know your lust, and what ye wo'ld, All your pleasance firm and stable I hold; For, wist I that my death might do you ease, Right gladly would I dien you to please.英文原著 · 《The Canterbury Tales》
"For other thought, nor other deed also, Might never be, but such as purveyance, Which may not be deceived never mo', Hath feeled* before, without ignorance; *perceived For if there mighte be a variance, To writhen out from Godde's purveying, There were no prescience of thing coming,英文原著 · 《The Canterbury Tales》