Literary notes about ORACLE (AI summary)
The term oracle in literature is employed with multifaceted meanings, ranging from a literal divine spokesman or physical temple to a metaphor for authoritative wisdom. At times, it designates a tangible object or sacred site—imbued with both physical and spiritual power—as seen in descriptions of measured constructions and inscriptions [1][2][3]. In other instances, writers use the term figuratively to depict a person or message that carries decisive and sometimes ambiguous guidance, influencing characters’ destinies or revealing hidden truths [4][5][6]. Moreover, oracles serve as narrative devices that bridge the human experience with the transcendent, offering prophecies and insights that propel the story forward and lend an air of inevitability to the unfolding events [7][8].
- Now the oracle was twenty cubits in length, and twenty cubits in breadth, and twenty cubits in height.
— from The Bible, Douay-Rheims, Complete - And he made the oracle in the midst of the house, in the inner part, to set there the ark of the covenant of the Lord.
— from The Bible, Douay-Rheims, Complete - "Know thyself" and "Nothing too much" were inscribed upon the Delphic oracle.
— from Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson - Carrie turned her eyes toward him as to an oracle.
— from Sister Carrie: A Novel by Theodore Dreiser - But his vanity was at once reassured and flattered; he saw that they were really expecting him as an oracle.
— from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Hereupon Homer remembered the oracle and, perceiving that the end of his life had come composed his own epitaph.
— from Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica by Hesiod - Of this oracle it is thus written: "And there was a famine over the land, beside the first famine that was in the days of Abraham.
— from The City of God, Volume II by Bishop of Hippo Saint Augustine - The third is that at the oracle of Ammon: these are considerable settlements.
— from The Geography of Strabo, Volume 3 (of 3) by Strabo