The prophecies of Nostradamus consist of upwards of a thousand stanzas, each of four lines, and are to the full as obscure as the oracles of old. They take so great a latitude, both as to time and space, that they are almost sure to be fulfilled somewhere or other in the course of a few centuries.
Charles Mackay (1814-1889) Scottish poet, journalist, song writer
Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, “Fortune-Telling” (1841)
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The ways of dead people are not our ways. They have a very oblique way of expressing themselves, and often they’ll tell you something that can be interpreted many ways; it gives them a way out while preserving their reputation for infallibility.
S. P. Somtow (b. 1952) Thai-American music composeer, conductor, author [Somtow Papinian Sucharitkul; สมเถา สุจริตกุล; Somthao Sucharitkun]
“Lottery Night,” World Fantasy Convention Program Book (1989-10)
(Source)
Collected in Gardner Dozois, ed., Year's Best Science Fiction 7 (1990) and Somtow, Dragon's Fin Soup (1998).
I have run into this difficulty with Scripture in the past. It tells you enough to get interested, but never enough to be of any immediate use. It is as though the author gets his kicks by tantalizing.
