What is anterior?

Famous quotes containing the word anterior:

“But now moments surround us
Like a crowd, some inquisitive faces, some hostile ones,
Some enigmatic or turned away to an anterior form of time
Given once and for all. The jetstream inscribes a final flourish
That melts as it stays.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)

“I find it more credible, since it is anterior information, that one man should know heaven, as the Chinese say, than that so many men should know the world.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)