"Adversity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... harsher surroundings, runs to the home of sacred memories, clambers to the attic, and spends the night in anguished solitude. This was his first Gethsemane. For ten years buffeted and beaten, battling with adversity, sometimes losing but never lost, snatching learning here and there, hating sham, loving passionately, misunderstood, misapprehended, too stubbornly proud to ask apologies or make useless explanations, fighting poverty in the depths of privation, wrestling ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... Jarl Hacon applies for aid to Thora of Rimmol, a lady whom he had once dearly loved; she is faithful in adversity to the friend of happier days, and conceals the Jarl and his companion in a hole dug for this purpose, in the swine-stye, and covered over with wood and litter; as the only spot likely to elude the hot search of his enemies. Olaf and the Bonders seek for him in Thora's house, but in vain; and finally, ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... monastery. But perhaps everyone is not able to stem the temptations of public life, and if he cannot conquer he may properly retreat. Some have little power to do good, and have likewise little strength to resist evil. Many are weary of the conflicts with adversity, and are willing to eject those passions which have long busied them in vain. And many are dismissed by age and diseases from the more laborious duties of society. In monasteries the weak and timorous may be happily sheltered, the weary may repose, and the penitent may meditate. Those retreats of ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... your first glimpse of Prague, and it was beautiful, so you set about endeavouring to enter into the spirit of the place, to absorb its atmosphere and to study its character. For every ancient city that has stood up against adversity and overcome it has a very definite character of its own. And it is a mysterious, wonderful thing this character, this cachet of a great city; the charm of Paris or the grandeur of London, the glittering stillness of Venice or the insistent ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... pages, the scenes depicting the anguish of separation, the bliss of reunion, and the fortunes of prosperity and of adversity are all, in every detail, true to human nature, and I have not taken upon myself to make the slightest addition, or alteration, which might lead to the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... also, that though I do, thy spirit of remorse and compunction shall never depart from me. Thy holy apostle, St. Paul, was shipwrecked thrice,[345] and yet still saved. Though the rocks and the sands, the heights and the shallows, the prosperity and the adversity of this world, do diversely threaten me, though mine own leaks endanger me, yet, O God, let me never put myself aboard with Hymenaeus, nor make shipwreck of faith and a good conscience,[346] and then thy long-lived, thy everlasting ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... matter of fact, since he had proved himself her friend through thick and thin, through storms and adversity, through high winds and blizzards, the Post Mistress had at last, after much persuasion, awarded him the privilege of standing by her throughout the rest ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... that I can not compose my mind to think {upon it}. Wherefore it is the duty of all persons, when affairs are the most prosperous,[39] then in especial to reflect within themselves in what way they are to endure adversity. Returning from abroad, let him always picture to himself dangers and losses, either offenses committed by a son, or the death of his wife, or the sickness of a daughter,— that these things are ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... I have known in public affairs, General Banks was in his personality one of a small number who were always agreeable and permanently attractive. He was the possessor of an elastic spirit; he was always hopeful of the future and in adversity he saw or fancied that he saw, days of prosperity for himself, for his party, for the commonwealth and for the country. His interest in the fortunes of the laboring classes was a permanent interest, and they ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... are our daily and hourly reminders of the "great tribulation" through which the nation is passing. Of course, one ought not to wish it otherwise. Not, indeed, "sweet," but eminently salutary, are these "uses of adversity," for they prevent us from forgetting, even if we were inclined to such base obliviousness, the grim realities of the strife in which we are engaged. And yet, and in spite of all this, beauty retains its sway over "the common heart of man." Even war cannot destroy, though ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... the adverse wind, and, rapid as the lightning, the telegraph cripples time. The once savage land is the nucleus of the arts and civilization. The nation that from time to time was oppressed, invaded, conquered, but never subjected, still pressed against the weight of adversity, and, as age after age rolled on, and mightier woes and civil strife gathered upon her, still the germ of her destiny, as it expanded, threw off her load, until she at length became a nation envied ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... clearly put than De Maistre's answers to the question which the circumstances of the time placed before him to solve. What is the law of the distribution of good and evil fortune in this life? Is it a moral law? Do prosperity and adversity fall respectively to the just and the unjust, either individually or collectively? Has the ancient covenant been faithfully kept, that whoso hearkens diligently to the divine voice, and observes all the commandments to do them, shall be blessed in his basket and his ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... wonderful hands: they looked eloquent with the histories of generations; their youthfulness seemed centuries old. Yet all over them, barely to be seen, were the marks of life's experience, the delicate but dread sculpture of adversity. ...
— A Cathedral Singer • James Lane Allen
... English mariners were too much for an old man like me. Manuel should have been made dumb—dumb forever, I say. What mattered he—that gutter-born offspring of an evil Gitana, whom I have seen, Senor! I, myself, have seen her in the days of my adversity in Madrid, Senor—a red flower behind the ear, clad in rags that did not cover all her naked skin, looking on while they fought for her with knives in a wine-shop full of beggars and thieves. Si, senor. That's his mother. Improvisador—politico—capataz. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... in another part of the great city, sunk to a lower depth of misery than ever. To him it seemed now that his bad name had taken form in the face of young Forrester, and was dogging him in adversity more relentlessly even than in prosperity. It comforted him not at all to think it had saved him from a drunkard's ruin. He despised himself, when he came to himself, for having been scared so weakly. Yet he avoided his old quarters, and turned his back on the ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... to denote that it is not her old friend still alive. One of the first things the apparition does is "to remind Mrs. Bargrave of the many friendly offices she did her in former days, and much of the conversation they had with each other in the times of their adversity; what books they read, and what comfort in particular they received from Drelincourt's Book on Death. Drelincourt, she said, had the clearest notions of death and of the future state of any who had handled ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... Then he lifted his head quickly. "'Er's bound to last 'nother year." For the first time there was concern in his voice. Adversity does not grip the mind of the Cornish fisherfolk suddenly. It filters slowly through the chinks of the armour God has given them. Cornish men (and surely Cornish maids) were kind to the survivors of the wrecked Armada. It may be that they, ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... might hope for the accomplishment of great things. What the Pope wants is the peace of decay and temporal and spiritual supremacy for the church throughout the land. Experience has taught me that adversity is a great teacher. It tolerates no compromises and rewards only patience and strength. Therefore a state is most fortunate that occupies a position of bare supremacy in arms, where it is punished for mistakes and grows strong ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... night," said Jasmine; "I called it 'The Uses of Adversity.' It was very mournful indeed; it was a sort of story in blank verse of people who were cold and hungry, and I mixed up London fogs, and attic rooms, and curtains that were once white, and had now turned yellow, and sloppy streets covered with snow, with the story. It was really very ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... we have described. The last scene of his life was, perhaps, the most scandalous. Ten days before his death, at seventy-five, he married a young girl merely in order to injure his nephew, an act which proves that neither years, nor adversity, nor what he called his philosophy, nor either of the religions which he had at different times professed, had taught him the rudiments of morality. He died in December, 1715, and lies in the vault under the church of St. Paul ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... you a right proper fool; for a man, merry in adversity, is as wise as Master Rabelais. Many the time have I heard him say a fit of laughter drives away the devil, while the groans of flagellating saints seem as music to Beelzebub's ears. Thus, a wit-cracker is the demon's enemy, and the band of Pantagruel, an evangelical ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... wise that they have given it a name by which it is known over half the world. One of the sovereign virtues of this famous law is its simplicity, which is such that all hearing must understand; and obedience is so easy that any nation refusing is unfit to exist except in the turbulence and adversity that will surely come to it. When a people would avert want and strife, or having them, would restore plenty and peace, this noble commandment offers the only means—all other plans for safety or relief are as vain as dreams, and as empty as the crooning of fools. And behold, here it is: ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... men of the United States! "in the days of adversity consider." Are not the signs of the times indicative of the necessity of a change ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... been fought, were exceedingly disheartened. This experience of the terrible power and vengeance of the English appalled them, and they were quite disposed to abandon Philip. But the great Wampanoag chief was not a man to yield to adversity. This calamity only nerved him to more undying resolution and to deeds of more desperate daring. He had still about two thousand warriors around him, but, being almost entirely destitute of provisions, they for ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... added that none of the princesses who had left France to share the British throne had to endure such misfortunes. Her son was captured and slaughtered under her eyes; then and then only, the strong purpose and high courage, that had supported her during years of adversity, deserted her. She lost heart. After being dragged from prison to prison, Margaret was restored to her country and her family, upon which King Rene, being more of a poet than a king, wrote a madrigal to celebrate his ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... he adds that unless congress comes valiantly to his assistance at once the country will sink into irretrievable ruin. Again he writes: 'Every idea you can form of our distresses will fall short of the reality. I have almost ceased to hope.' These were dark days, and the winds of adversity were beating mercilessly against the man into whose hands had been placed the cares of the great struggle for national existence. He was like the kite bravely battling against the wind. But he was made of ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... mind some soothing phrases, some word of comfort and encouragement, Desmond waited till the first paroxysm had passed. What he said then shall not be set down in cold print. You may be sure he proved that friendship between two strong, vigorous boys is no frail thread, but a golden chain which adversity strengthens and refines. Scaife rose up with his heart softened, not by his own tears, but by the tears he saw in ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... saw him as he was—a man broken before his prime, haggard and tired and old, with the fire of his genius quenched for ever in the bitter waters of adversity. ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... kingdom of heaven, and all other things shall be added unto you,' Doubt it not, and consider also how sweet is the tie that doth bind consenting hearts with one true faith—a faith consoling exceedingly—a faith to lift high above the tempests of adversity—to heal the wounds of earth, and to be crowned with glory and ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... Presbyterian, or Puritan—can cast in another's teeth. Each of us committed it in our day of triumph. "What fruit had we then in those things whereof we are now ashamed?" The memory—one-sided, and carefully cultivated—of what each suffered in its turn of adversity has hitherto been a potent agency for keeping us apart. To-day those memories are fading. I was much struck by a remark I heard last spring from the Bishop of Southwark, that one reason why we are more ready nowadays ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various
... urged the horse on, for he could think of no definite plan. He was half way to the Diamond K when he suddenly started and sat rigid and erect in the saddle, drawing a deep breath, his nerves tingling from excitement. He laughed lowly, exultingly, as men laugh when under the stress of adversity they devise sudden, bold plans of action, and responding to the slight knee press Nigger turned, reared, and then shot like a black bolt across the plains at an angle that would not take him ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... When I allowed you to use me like an old shoe? But now you are my superior—and now I can't strive to be honorable any longer. Do you know that this adversity will also change our economic relations? I cannot think of painting any more, but must give up my life's dream and become a pot-boiler ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... Mr. Preston, he obtained three other pupils, from whom he was able to obtain a higher price, and occasionally he effected the sale of a picture, so that he was able to occupy more comfortable rooms, and provide himself with better clothing. The days of his adversity were over, and he now enjoyed a moderate degree of prosperity. Little Mary regained her lost flesh and color, and once more looked as she did when she sat for the figure of the girl in her father's picture, which Paul had sold to Mr. Preston. She came often with her father, when he was ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... did so many circumstances of that kind concur in uniting two young souls by one and the same sentiment. The friendship of Ginevra for Luigi and that of Luigi for Ginevra made more progress in a month than a friendship in society would make in ten years. Adversity is the touchstone of character. Ginevra was able, therefore, to study Luigi, to know him; and before long they mutually esteemed each other. The girl, who was older than Luigi, found a charm in being courted by ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac
... of Sir Walter Raleigh, who had many faults, but who never showed so many merits as in trouble and adversity, may bring me at once to the end of his sad story. After an imprisonment in the Tower of twelve long years, he proposed to resume those old sea voyages of his, and to go to South America in search of gold. His Sowship, divided between his ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... sunk by the Americans, and some retaken by the British. And so, after nearly two years' uninterrupted success, the career of the Essex terminated amid disasters of all kinds. But at least her officers and crew could reflect that they had afforded an example of courage in adversity that it would be ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... can read Hopeful's remarkable history without discovering this about him, that he showed best in adversity and distress, just as he showed worst in deliverance and prosperity. It is a fine lesson in Christian hope to descend into Giant Despair's dungeon and hear the older pilgrim groaning and the younger pilgrim consoling ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... less welcome to Undine. If there was one point on which she was doggedly and puritanically resolved, it was that no extremes of social adversity should ever again draw her into the group of people among whom Madame Adelschein too conspicuously figured. Since her unsuccessful attempt to win over Indiana by introducing her to that group, Undine had been righteously resolved to remain aloof from it; and she was ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... first lesson in that school where we all are called to study sooner or later—the school of Adversity; where some of us pass creditably, whilst others are ploughed, and a few—a ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... convulsions of death were upon him, and he expired almost immediately after our arrival. The frightful, the appalling truth now burst upon me, that I was alone in the desert. He who had faithfully served me for many years, who had followed my fortunes in adversity and in prosperity, who had accompanied me in all my wanderings, and whose attachment to me had been his sole inducement to remain with me in this last, and to him alas, fatal journey, was now no more. For an instant, I was almost ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... neighbours is one of the natural things of life. In the case of individuals how beautifully it shows between two dwellers in the same street or townland. They rejoice together in prosperity; give mutual aid in adversity; in the ordinary daily round work together in a spirit of comradeship; at all times they find a bond of unity in their mutual interests. Consider, then, the sundering of their friendship by some act of evil on either side. The old friendship is turned ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... one of that company was to remember the words in days of adversity and triumph. Soon after that dinner the memories of the little community began to register an unusual procession ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... mark upon him. The mouth had lost something of the smile that once lurked about its corners, but had gained in strength. The eyes, always direct and steady, had more depth. The shoulders had a squarer set, as though they had been braced against adversity. Experience of ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... to this very hour, I have been dependent only on my own head and hands for everything—for very bread. Long years ago—ay, even in childhood—adversity made me think, and feel, and suffer; and would pride allow me, I could tell the world many a deep tragedy enacted in the heart of a poor, forgotten, uncared-for boy . . . But I thank God, that though I felt and suffered, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... select society. She would perhaps be able indirectly, through her sons' influence with the Almighty, to have a voice in most of the arrangements both of this world and of the next. If all this were to come true (and things seemed very like it), those friends who had neglected us in our adversity would not find it too easy to be restored to favour, however greatly they might desire it—that is to say, they would not have found it too easy in the case of one less magnanimous and spiritually-minded ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... its place in history as the home of the Colquhouns, whose feud with the MacGregors led to such murderous results. But perhaps its associations with Robert Bruce in his days of adversity form its greater claim to fame, and the yews on Inch Lonaig, just above, are said to have been planted by him to ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... the soft, childish voice, charmed simple-hearted Nellie, who willingly grasped the hand extended, with these words, "I shall be only too pleased indeed." So the compact was sealed—a compact which remained unbroken through the long months and years that followed. Time and adversity only served to strengthen the bond, and the gray twilight of life found the friends of childhood's ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... been left executor to a friend—you are to pay over his last legacy to X, though a dissolute scoundrel; and you are to give no shilling of it to the poor brother of X, though a good man, and a wise man, struggling with adversity. You are absolutely excluded from all contemplation of results. It was your deceased friend's right to make the will; it is yours simply to see it executed. Now, in opposition to this primary class of actions stands another, such as the habit of intoxication, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... Scotland, differed in no essential particular from the Church of England except that she did not lean upon apolitical Episcopacy—an Episcopacy directed and controlled by parliamentary legislation. She was now in the lowest depths of depression and adversity. Her bishops had become reduced to four and her clergy to forty, and these ministered, it is true without molestation for the most part, to the little remnants of faithful churchmen scattered through the cities and villages of the land. Probably the feeling among outsiders was that ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... an apple tree is Pyrus Malus, of which schoolboys are wont to make ingenious uses by playing on the latter word. Malo, I had rather be; Malo, in an Apple tree; Malo, than a wicked man; Malo, in adversity. Or, again, Mea mater mala est sus, which bears the easy translation, "My mother is a wicked old sow"; but the intentional reading of which signifies "Run, mother! the sow is eating the apples." The term "Adam's Apple," which is applied to the most prominent part of a ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... command of his ships and when everything went prosperously with him, was so overbearing and cruel that some of his men, in desperation at the treatment they received, mutinied against him. But the story shows another side of his character in adversity which it is impossible not ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... guns. His warlike ardor of the first few days had dampened. He had seen and heard too many foolish things said and done since the beginning of this horrible siege; had taken part too many times in one of the most wretched spectacles in which a people can show vanity in adversity. He was heart broken to see his dear compatriots, his dear Parisians, redouble their boasting after each defeat and take their levity for heroism. If he admired the resignation of the poor women standing in line before the door of a butcher's shop, he was ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... death was cleared afterwards by the success of his annotated edition of his novels. No tale of physical strife in the battlefield could be as heroic as the story of the close of Scott's life, with five years of a death-struggle against adversity, animated by the truest sense of honour. When the ruin was impending he wrote in his diary, "If things go badly in London, the magic wand of the Unknown will be shivered in his grasp. The feast of fancy will be over with the feeling of ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... to myself that our present King had been most unlucky in one thing—debts all over the kingdom. Not a man who had struck a blow for the King, or for his poor father, or even said a good word for him, in the time of his adversity, but expected at least a baronetcy, and a grant of estates to support it. Many have called King Charles ungrateful: and he may have been so. But some indulgence is due to a man, with entries few on the credit side, and a ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... more distressed at any disasters which could have befallen himself or his own kingdom; and accordingly, though he was well aware that the greatness of the Roman people was almost more admirable in adversity than prosperity, he had nevertheless sent every thing which good and faithful allies are wont to contribute to assist the operations of war, which he earnestly implored the conscript fathers not to refuse to accept. First of all, for the sake of the omen, they had ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... do something for the little maid, for she had so bravely struggled with adversity of fortune and perversity of family. So there were four flower girls, and the music teacher played at the wedding march! In spite of her efforts, Lohengrin seemed suffering as it came from ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... they sold to make restitution for their crimes? No! Did their present masters, as an act of kindness, redeem them from some heathen tyrant to whom they had sold themselves in the dark hour of adversity? No! Were they born in slavery? No! No! not according to Jewish Law, for the servants who were born in servitude among them, were born of parents who had sold themselves for six years: Ex. xxi, 4. Were the female slaves of the South sold by their fathers? How shall ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... Minnesota great pride to know that, under all phases and conditions of our territory and state, whether in prosperity or adversity, the school fund has always been held sacred, and neither extravagance, neglect nor peculation has ever assailed it, but it has been husbanded with jealous care from time to time since the first dollar was realized from it until the ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... Arctic explorers were not, it is true, searchers for the North Pole. That quest—which has written in its history as many tales of heroism, self-sacrifice, and patient resignation to adversity, as the poets have woven about the story of chivalry and the search for the Holy Grail—was begun only in the middle of the last century, and by an American. But for three hundred years English, Dutch, and Portuguese explorers, and the stout-hearted American whalemen, had been pushing ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... been wasted amid sterile surroundings. Greta Williams had one of those strong womanly characters that are meant to be the prop of weaker natures, that are veritable towers of strength in hours of adversity. It was for this that Olivia grew to love her when she ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... uses of adversity, Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Yet wears a precious ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... incessant, profitless effort. I feel very sorry for this friend, and perhaps it is hardly fair to insist upon the pleasure of dreaming in the presence of one whose dream-experience is so unhappy. Still, it is true that my dreams have uses as many and sweet as those of adversity. All my yearning for the strange, the weird, the ghostlike is gratified in dreams. They carry me out of the accustomed and commonplace. In a flash, in the winking of an eye they snatch the burden from my shoulder, the trivial task from my hand and ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... stood waiting, a man unimposing of height and build yet possessing that innate dignity which no adversity can impair. He said nothing, merely stood and watched the squire with half-comic resignation ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... too volatile, too impassioned; we want a ruler, a master who knows how to make himself obeyed. Hark you, M. Werner, I must continue to speak to you frankly: the only chief, that suits us, is Napoleon: no longer Napoleon the ambitious and the conqueror, but Napoleon corrected by adversity. The desire of reigning will render him docile to the will of France, and of Europe. He will give them both such pledges, as they may require: and I believe the Duke of Otranto will then esteem himself very happy, to be able to concur with M. de ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... some general outdoor activity (and Frederick's ski were pronounced perfect) a thaw occurred. I am bound to say that the event was received philosophically. Not a single member of the company made any complaint; they faced adversity like true Britons and boldly sat in the warm hotel to save themselves for the evening. Nor did their distress put them off their feed; they punished the tea unmercifully, showing scarcely a sign of the aching sorrow which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various
... and oppression shall no more cover the earth to the destruction of your race; but seedtime and harvest shall never fail, and the laborer shall eat the fruit of his hands. Is not your cause developing like the spring? Yours has been a long and rigorous winter. The chill of contempt, the frost of adversity, the blast of persecution, the storm of oppression—all have been yours. There was no substance to be found—no prospect to delight the eye or inspire the drooping heart—no golden ray to dissipate the gloom. The waves of ...
— Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study • Compiled by Grenville Kleiser
... all. She was on the point of calling him by his former name, when the remembrance of what he had been arrested the words on her lips. He was proud; would he not dread to have it known that, in his days of adversity, he had been a servant? For if she betrayed her knowledge of his past, she would be forced to tell where and how that knowledge was gained. No, better wait till they met alone, she thought; he would thank ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott
... heart than Maud Beaudesart's, and will break many more. It is a cruel question; but not to put it would be more cruel still. For while this or that gentlewoman is in danger, no gentlewoman is safe. And the basest type of mind is that which gloats on the adversity of the world's spoiled child; the next basest is that which concentrates its sympathy on the same adversity; the least base, I think, is that which, goaded by a human compassion for all human distress, longs to get a lever under the order of things ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... believe it all,' the old lady calmly replied. 'It is very wonderful; there must be a good strain somewhere in the blood, and struggle and adversity are grand teachers, we are told. It is very interesting, and I am most ready to help them in any way you advise, my dear Eugenia, or that you think would be accepted. But understand me, I would do the same if I had never heard ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... over, Mary showed not only more courage, but more sound sense than I could have believed. All the frivolity of her former character vanished at the first touch of adversity; just as of old, Harry, we left the tinsel of our gay jackets behind, when active service called upon us for something more sterling. She advised, counselled, and encouraged me by turns; and in half an hour ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... Antigone, Unto what land, whose city, have we come? Who is there for this day to entertain With scanty fare the wanderer, Oedipus, Who asks but little and still less receives, Yet with his dole is fain to be content— For time and suffering and a noble heart Have taught me how to bear adversity. But, daughter, if thou seest a resting-place, Either in common ground or hallowed grove, There guide me to a seat, that we may ask What place is this: strangers, we come to learn Of citizens and ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... be a hard schoolmistress, but she is generally found the best. Though the ordeal of adversity is one from which we naturally shrink, yet, when it comes, we must bravely and manfully encounter it. ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... profess to be. But it is self-evident that he who obeys the Bible in sincerity and truth is thus made a thoroughly good man; good in his inward principles and feelings, and good in his outward life; good in his relations to God and man; good in prosperity and adversity, in honor and dishonor, in life and death; a good husband and father, a good neighbor, a good citizen. If there is ever to be a perfect state of society on earth, it must come from simple obedience to the precepts of the Bible, ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... filly had given her all and questioned not. For Sis, by Rex out of Reine, two-year filly, blooded stock, was a thoroughbred. And a thoroughbred, be he man, beast, or bird, does not welch on his hand. A stranger only in prosperity; a chum in adversity. He does not question; ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... absurdity. The hero of this piece unites in himself the three greatest characters upon earth; he is a priest, an husbandman, and the father of a family. He is drawn as ready to teach, and ready to obey, as simple in affluence, and majestic in adversity. In this age of opulence and refinement whom can such a character please? Such as are fond of high life, will turn with disdain from the simplicity of his country fire-side. Such as mistake ribaldry for humour, will find no wit in his harmless conversation; and such as have ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... younger days. She was a lady of great accomplishments, and charming from her frank and affectionate nature. She had the most intense love of knowledge, a delicate and trembling sensibility, and preserved freshness of mind after a life of considerable adversity. As a favourite friend of my father, we had sought her with eagerness; and the most open and cordial friendship was ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... disposition has melted even the stern and selfish;—who, thus rendering life around her happier and better, attracting more closely the hearts of relatives, and making every acquaintance a friend, has, chief of all, beautifully discharged the sacred offices of wife and mother; encountering the day of adversity with a noble self-devotion, enriching the hour of prosperity with wise counsel and faithful love; unwearied in the time of sickness, patient and trustful beneath the dispensation of affliction; in short, by her many ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... had known adversity, Though born in such a high degree; In pride of power, in beauty's bloom, Had wept o'er ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... conspicuously because of the naked branches around. The life within is too strong to fear the shortened day, the cold blast, or the falling snow. So with the man of GOD whose life is maintained by hidden communion through the Word; adversity only brings out the strength and the ...
— A Ribband of Blue - And Other Bible Studies • J. Hudson Taylor
... Work's begun, now I am made or lost; He runs the best who holds out to the Post: And all the Comfort in Adversity, Is to see others as miserable ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris
... You have been wicked men, and therefore weak men; your own vices, and not the Goths, have been your true conquerors.' As I said in my inaugural lecture—that is after all the true theory of history. Men may forget it in piping times of peace. God grant that in the dark hour of adversity, God may always raise up to them a prophet, like good old Salvian, to preach to them once again the everlasting judgments of God; and teach them that not faulty constitutions, faulty laws, faulty circumstances of any kind, but the faults of ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... good man struggling with adversity," said Member for Sark, looking at RATHBONE. "Nothing to goody goody man struggling ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 24, 1890 • Various
... challenging the golden gates of God. 'We bear the burden of the years Clean-limbed, clear-hearted, open-browed; Albeit sacramental tears Have dimmed our eyes, we know the proud Content of men who sweep unbowed Before the legionary fears; In sorrow we have grown to be The masters of adversity. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... no secret stories, there is no secret world, there are no secret friends. The House by the Sea has been drowned, and even its ghosts have forgotten it. After all, there was nothing to remember. The gate to the House is barred, not by a lock but by a laugh. Reality and not adversity has ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... did make a few great singers. If the principles of the old school had not been changed or lost, if they had been retained and developed up to the present day, what a wonderful legacy the vocal profession might have inherited in this age, the beginning of the twentieth century. Adversity, however, develops art as well as individuality; hence the vocal art has much to expect in ...
— The Renaissance of the Vocal Art • Edmund Myer
... many sins I have to atone for,' replied the Duchess, 'from the follies of youth; but now, at an age of discretion and in adversity, oh, how bitterly do I reproach myself for my past levities! But,' continued she, 'has ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 6 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... village, surrounded by a garden of whose claims on my solicitude it was not jealous. There was time for both. It gave me for a wife the maiden that I had ever loved; and it gathered my children round my hearth with plenteousness and peace. I was content: I sought no other lot. It is not adversity that makes me look back upon ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... was still evident from the manner of the gentleman, and the speed at which he drove the horse, that some dreadful event had occurred. His conscience smote him for his disobedience to his mother, and he was not in a fit moral condition to meet the shock of adversity with courage and fortitude. He would have given the world, in that anxious moment, to have undone the work of the last three hours, and effaced their ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... their envy, at honest peoples' heels every day. Let them bark. Mr. Benton was right. They are 'dirty dogs.' But a dog that looks you honestly and frankly in the face, that stands by his master and friend, in all times of trial, in sorrow as in joy, in adversity as in prosperity, in dark days as in bright days, always cheerful, always sincere, earnest, and truthful, and so that his kindness be met, always happy, I like. He is your true nobility of nature below the human. But there are 'curs of low degree;' dogs of neither genial instinct ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... the moment Phillip Lawson uttered these words he was a richer man, though he knew it not. He had to drink deeper of the dregs of adversity ere he shall have cause ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... but added, with almost prophetic insight, "But I have remarked that when great outward prosperity is granted it is often permitted to precede great trials." This was in the summer of 1828; before that year ended the family was struggling in the waves of adversity, losses, and trials—struggling, indeed, to preserve that honest name which had hitherto been the pride of Mr. ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... perfect equanimity of mind, and her sweet and endearing manners; she is no trifling support to Abolitionism, inasmuch as she lightens my labors, and enables me to find exquisite delight in the family circle, as an offset to public adversity." ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... of fact, however, Jack was not insensible to the awkward complication of his predicament. Grief as a mantle is difficult to adjust to the shoulders of the young. It is melted by the ardor of companionship as swiftly as it is spun by the loom of adversity. His interest in the strange scenes that the war brought to pass, his association with people—intimate in a sense with the leading forces of rebellion, the airs of incipient grandeur, these raw instruments of government gave themselves—all these things engrossed the observant faculties ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... He was not inclined to give way to trouble. It has already been seen that he was a boy of obstinate courage, resolute will, and invincible determination. He was capable of struggling to the last against any adversity; and even if he had to lose, he knew how to lose without sinking into complete despair. These moods of depression, or even of despair, which now and then did come, were not permanent. In time he shook them off, ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... been sure the agent had helped Aqua Marine to swallow the ring, she would have let them smash his boxes. And I think she was a little in love with Shot-gun Smith. But what a pity we shall soon have no more Mrs. Brewtons! The causes that produced her—slavery, isolation, literary tendencies, adversity, game blood—that combination is broken forever. I shall speak to Mr. Howells about her. She ought ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... York City, enjoyed every advantage in education and training; his family had been for many generations respected in the city; his father was cultivated and had distinction as a citizen, who devoted his wealth and his energies to serving his fellow men. But, just as incredible adversity could not crush Abraham Lincoln, so lavish prosperity could not keep ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... weeping. He was losing the only friend he had. Elsewhere the servants wandered about restlessly, waiting for news from the front, to learn if they, too, were to join in the mad flight from the city. Few servants love masters in adversity. Self-interest is the keynote ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... is soon told; the pride of both husband and wife was humbled by adversity, and in their heavy affliction each was made to feel what a strength and comfort it was to have a companion who could sympathize not only with the joys but with the sorrows of the other. The boy ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... save his expeditions from disastrous failure. In the Seventh Crusade he attacked, not Jerusalem, but Egypt, then the centre of Mahometan power. He was defeated and made prisoner; his army was practically exterminated. Yet by a personal heroism, which shone even more brilliantly in adversity than in success, he has won lasting fame. His captivity disrupted an empire. The mamelukes, the slave soldiers of Egypt, who had fought most valiantly against him, were wakened to a realization of their own power. They overthrew their sultan, and founded ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... own spiritual development. And as time went on I was more and more convinced that this was an evidence of a lower imaginative faculty in me rather than in him. He had less humor, but he had infinitely more of the grace that belongs to immortality. He had a spirit that withstood adversity, hardship, failure, with a sort of ancient dignity and that could face tragedy with Promethean fortitude. And I love best to think of him in relation to the bare and awful sorrows that show so nakedly in the lives of poor, simple ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... ripe for the role that fate held in store for him in Thueringen. His education was to proceed yet a while longer by the process of flaying. He was to suffer and grow strong; to battle further with the goblins of despair; to tread the quicksands of adversity and fight his way through to a firm footing among the sons of men. Who shall say that it ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... world are said to tempt as the instruments or matter of temptations; inasmuch as one can know what sort of man someone is, according as he follows or resists the desires of the flesh, and according as he despises worldly advantages and adversity: of which things the devil ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... many occasions passed through periods of great distress from failures widespread and panics severe, but it must also be borne in mind that these very bankruptcies are more often the abuse of prosperity than the product of adversity. Over-confidence in men and things has resulted in speculation and precipitated bankruptcy. And if it be urged that to the undue expansion of credit is traceable the greater number of our financial disasters, it may be said with still greater force that all our impetus to industrial achievement ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various |
