Events cast long shadows before.
One such event would be a war.
But how are shadows to be seen
When total darkness fills the screen?

The lights of Saxon England were going out, and in the gathering darkness a gentle, grey-beard prophet foretold the end. When on his death-bed Edward spoke of a time of evil that was coming upon the land his inspired mutterings struck terror into the hearers.

When Small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set.

When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set.

This is good, and all good things cast shadows.

Above all, the ominous clouds of those phenomena that we are with varying success seeking to explain by means of the quantum of action, are throwing their shadows over the sphere of physical knowledge, threatening no one knows what new revolution.

The future is merely a shadow which blocks out the joys of the present and emphasizes the miseries of the past.

It is sometimes difficult to avoid the impression that there is a sort of foreknowledge of the coming series of events.

He cou'd foretel whats'ever was By consequence to come to pass; As death of great men, alterations, Diseases, battles, inundations. All this, without th' eclipse o' th' sun, Or dreadful comet, he hath done, By inward light; away as good, And easy to be understood; But with more lucky hit than those That use to make the stars depose, Like Knights o' th' post, and falsely charge Upon themselves what others forge: As if they were consenting to All mischiefs in the world men do: Or, like the Devil, did tempt and sway 'em To rogueries, and then betray 'em.

Presentiment is that long shadow on the lawn Indicative that suns go down; The notice to the startled grass That darkness is about to pass.

With prophecies the commentator is often a more important man than the prophet.

By the sole fact of being accomplished, reality casts its shadow behind it into the indefinitely distant past: it thus seems to have been pre-existent to its own realization, in the form of a possible. From this results an error which vitiates our conception of the past; from this arises our claim to anticipate the future on every occasion

There is a proverb my grandmother used to repeat: Old sins have long shadows.

Magical shadow with symbolic powers! A voice from the distant past, an evocation, Is it not mine prepared for incantation?