"Providence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... quaint old saying of John Flavel the Puritan is right, 'The man who watches for Providence will never want a Providence to watch.' In other words, he who trusts his concerns to a higher power, he who puts his cause in the Lord's hands, will never be disappointed. The God who rules the universe will not forget to attend to him, but will watch him, ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton
... even than the deck officers, how mortally the ship was hurt. They called to their aid every resource of a business that is nothing but emergencies. Engines plus wit, plus the grace of God—and the engines were useless. Wits, then, plus Providence. The pumps made no impression on the roaring flood; they lifted floor plates to strengthen the bulkheads and worked until it was death to work longer. Then, fighting for every foot, the little band retreated to the after stokehole. Lights were out forward. The Chief was the last ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... education, and been able, through that means, to have advanced myself in the world, I would, like thousands of others who had an early fondness for literary pursuits, soon have laid aside my pen and given to trade the best energies of my mind. But Providence guided my feet into other paths than these. They were rough and thorny at times, and I often fainted by the way; yet renewed strength ever came when I felt the weakest. If my earnest labor has not been so well rewarded in a money-sense as it might have been ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... of the bringing home of the boat; of the wonder of the villagers; of John's happy amazement? She could not bear to contemplate the prosaic, commonplace method of sending John to buy his own boat when it was within the power of Denas and herself to be an unseen gracious providence to him. So after a moment's thought she said: "There be Tris Penrose. It will be busy all and happy all for him to be about such ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Its object was to show the growth of Rome under the guidance of Providence. Cf. the purpose ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... had it not been for the doctor." He shook his head, wagging it at me. "Oh, doctor, doctor, to think what I lost in you! Why, we could have taken our time over the strong-room, barring your little intervention. You're a real daisy, and I won't forget it. But now it's in the hands of Providence. It's war. Sir John, I congratulate the double-barrelled leaders. There's two captains here, and that's one too many. I only allow one in my quarters. All right, gentlemen." He took up his flag and waddled towards the door. "Good-morning. ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... for a few weeks in the summer," continued Elizabeth modestly—"some sick child, or occasionally some over-burdened worker, and we always lodge them at Mrs. Sullivan's. It is not much of a place, but we call it 'The Providence House;' the cottage is really our own property, and ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... after a short pause. "Brunettes are best in black—mark my words, now; and blondes are never effective in that color. They do better in bright colors. It is singular, isn't it? You, now, my dear, may wear black with impunity; and since you are called on in the mysterious dispensation of Providence to mourn, you ought at least to be grateful that you are a brunette. If you were a blonde, I really do not know what would ever become of you. Now, I am a blonde—but in spite of that I have been called on to mourn. It—it ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... nothin' agin' that, marm," answered the western captain, with Cromwellian sagacity; "but ef we don't help Providence powerful hard we ain't agoin' ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... finger, and cried loud enough for the caliph to hear him, "Alas! I am fallen again into the same dream and illusion that happened to me a month ago, and must expect again the bastinado and grated cell at the mad-house. Almighty God," added he, "I commit myself into the hands of thy divine providence. He was a wicked man that I entertained at my house last night, who has been the cause of this illusion, and the hardships I must again undergo. The base wretch swore to shut the door after him, but did not, and the devil came in and has turned my brain with this wicked ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... brother, who had none of his scruples. This was in 1670, or thereabouts. A legal transfer was made to my uncle, who, I think, loved my father, and understood that, being set in his ways, he would defy the king's authority to the end. And so—wisely I think—the overruling providence of God brought us to a new land, where we have ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... had always been vaguely taken for granted that no great difference in rank or success could sever them. Fitz was too simple-minded, too honest to himself, to look for great honours in his country's service. He mistrusted himself. Luke mistrusted Providence. ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... surgeons think it best to do with wounded men,—perform whatever operations are necessary, immediately after the first injury, so as to make one and the same "shock" take the place of more. In this way of Providence, I am sure I have repeatedly seen accumulated sorrows, which, if distributed through longer intervals, might have darkened a lifetime, lived through, and in a considerable degree recovered from, even in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... forgot her first love, and wedded this new settler; who took her to the town a few miles inland, where he carried on a retail fishmonger's business, knowing but little of fishing himself, either deep-sea or along-shore. But Providence had not blessed their union, for not a child had been born to them, and after but three years of married life, when Fauchon, the husband, was out one day in a fishing smack, which he had just bought to carry on business for himself with men under ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... flood-gates of scepticism were opened, and he was soon battling with unbelief. He then fell in with one who was a pure Deist, and was shorn of every shred of dogma which he had ever held, except a belief in the personality and providence of the Creator. ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... will illustrate this. No one can take either Lingard's or Macauley's History of England as anything more than a plea for either writer's personal views. Gibbon's anti-Christian feeling is as perceptibly disabling to him in many passages as in the church historians is their search for "acts of Providence," and the hand of ...
— An Ethnologist's View of History • Daniel G. Brinton
... and again, but no voice replied. It may seem strange that we, the two youngest on board, should have survived, while all the men were drowned, but then, not one of them could swim. We could, and, under Providence, were able to struggle for ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... the lanthorn near the cot, having the flint and box in my pocket. There was indeed an abundance of candles in the vessel; nevertheless, it was my business to husband them with the utmost niggardliness. How long I was to be imprisoned here, if indeed I was ever to be delivered, Providence alone knew; and to run short of candles would add to the terrors of my existence, by forcing me either to open the hatches and ports for light, and so filling the ship with the deadly air outside, or living in darkness. ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... North for giving the Negro a chance to spend a dollar while withholding from him the opportunity to make one. But in the Providence of God all this has been changed by the great war in Europe, which has created a labor scarcity in the North, East and West, and the Negro is now being given a chance to make a dollar there as well as spend one. The white man of the North is due no special credit for this, ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards
... life; and that it is, lastly, the true and real antidote and preservative from heavy-headedness, irregular and disorderly intellectual functions, from loss of the rational faculties, memory, and senses, and from all nervous distempers, as far as the ends of Providence and the ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... say it was cancelled. Moreover your first objection still remained, for I was nearly penniless then, although, in the good providence of God, I am comparatively rich now. I therefore resolved to obey your injunctions, sir, and keep away from your house and from your daughter's distracting influence, until I could return with a few of those pence, which you appear ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... idea, the body of the Roman Republic had been sound. But when he had gone out from his Consulship, with resolves strung too high that he would remain at Rome, despising provinces and plunder, and be as it were a special providence to the Republic, gradually he fell from his high purpose, finding that there were no Romans such as he had conceived them to be. Then he fell away and became the man who could condescend to waste his unequalled intellect in attacking Piso, ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... sexton, 'it was the foulest deed ever man did; but let not thy mind brood on it, nor think how thou mayest get thyself avenged. Leave that to Providence; for He whose wisdom lets such things be done, will surely see they meet their due reward. "Vengeance is Mine; I will repay, saith the Lord".' And he took his hat off and hung it on ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... undergone so great changes, and is it not yet arrived at the period of its perfection? How can a philosopher, who is so much employed in contemplating the beauty of nature, the wisdom and goodness of Providence, allow himself to entertain such mean ideas of the system as to suppose, that, in the indefinite succession of time past, there has not been perfection in the works of nature? Every material being exists in motion, every ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... something like an hour before our melancholy-looking guest had fully improved the opportunity with which a benignant Providence had supplied him,—a freak in which, one might conclude, she seldom indulged. He ceased to eat, and sat for a moment gazing pensively at the dishes. It seemed to me—but in this I may possibly be mistaken—that a darker shade of sadness possessed his face at the conclusion than ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... retain his eye-glass had apparently the effect of forcing his mouth chronically open, which somewhat marred his appearance; while his natural good-humor lapsed too frequently into the lamentations of an idle man that Providence neglected him or that his ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... eminently professional, severely cut features, and the careful limitation of whisker, which seemed so completely in harmony with his shaven upper lip and the unsympathetic scrutiny of his double eyeglass; then, losing some of its brightness among the little ripples of brown hair which a gracious Providence had forbidden her hat to conceal, fell like a halo upon the pale green wall behind ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... are henceforward to be hallowed in the memory of those who survive. I had never before, and have never since, seen her so divinely transfigured. Was Death the most perfect form of her celestial beauty, or did Providence intend this first and solemn impression, as a foreshadowing of that unchangeable image of beauty, which I was destined to entomb in my ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... passport for Paris, and he felt sure that as he was a Protestant neither M. de Baville nor M. de Montrevel would give him one. A lucky accident, however, relieved his embarrassment and strengthened his resolution, for he thought he saw in this accident the hand of Providence. ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Government started loans for motors. Come to think—hey?— there ben't no such tearin' difference between motors an' steam—not on principle. And as for reggilations, I've a doo respect for County Council till it sets up to reggilate Providence, when I falls back on th' Lord's text to Noey that, boy an' man, I've never known fail. While th' earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest shall not cease. And again," continued Un' Benny Rowett, "Behold, I say unto you, ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... tribes, the immediate followers of the warlike Prophet. With the rise of Islam the modern Persian was doomed to be carried into India. This country, from the time of Alexander, had enjoyed repose from external aggression, had been ruled by its native princes, and been permitted by Providence to exercise, without control or reproof, the degrading superstitions, and the unnatural and bloody rites of a religion at the formation of which the fiends of cruelty and lust seem to have presided; but reckoning was now about to be ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... she pauses to contemplate the stranger ere she disappears. The antiquary draws a chair and seats himself beside Anna. "Thy life and destiny," he says, fretting his bony fingers over the crown of his wig. "Blessed is the will of providence that permits us to know the secrets of destiny. Give me your hand, fair lady." Like a philosopher in deep study, he wipes and adjusts his spectacles, then takes her right hand and commences reading its lines. "Your history is an ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... Heaven' is equivalent to our 'The course of Providence.' The lady's words are, literally, 'The steps of Heaven.' She makes but a feeble wail; but in Chinese opinion discharges thereby, all the better, the duty ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... was by a miracle averted is no credit to this prisoner. That, instead of being the most execrated murderer in the history of our land, he is only on trial for a felony he has not himself to thank. He has to thank the Merciful Providence on High who caused the red man's heart to relent at the ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... the resolution (which proves more than anything else Revillagigedo's goodness, and the confidence which all classes had in him) to consult the viceroy as to the means of converting the young man to better habits. It seems as if the hand of an avenging Providence had conducted this unfortunate mother to take a step so fatal to her son. She told the viceroy that she had in vain attempted to check him, that his days and nights were spent with profligate companions in gambling-houses and in cock-pits, and that she feared ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... listen to me," he observed. "Some of you are proposing one thing, and some another; but let me advise you to go on steadily doing your duty, smartly obeying our officers, and leaving all the rest in the hands of Providence. It is the business of the officers to plan and command, and, depend on it, they'll order us to do what ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... only by enjoyment of the results could one tolerate the mechanical labour inseparable from all intellectual toil. It was true that he had himself drifted into official duties, but here Hugh saw the guidance of a very tender providence, which had provided him with a species of discipline that he could never have spontaneously practised. His great need had been the application of some hardening and hammering process, such as should give him that sort of concentrated alertness which his education had failed to bestow; and none the ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... it poured its huge volume upon the beach, bore him along with it. With the swiftness of thought I sprang forward, and succeeded in throwing my arms round him, ere the next advancing wave dashed over us. And now my foresight in fastening the rope 104around me proved, under Providence, the means of saving both our lives. Though thrown to the ground by the force of the water I contrived to retain my grasp of Coleman, and we were hauled up and conveyed beyond the reach of the surf by the strong arms of those on shore, ere another ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... her long years of drudgery she rebelled at the dullness of her life. With Evelina such fits of discontent were habitual and openly proclaimed, and Ann Eliza still excused them as one of the prerogatives of youth. Besides, Evelina had not been intended by Providence to pine in such a narrow life: in the original plan of things, she had been meant to marry and have a baby, to wear silk on Sundays, and take a leading part in a Church circle. Hitherto opportunity had played her false; and for all her superior aspirations and carefully ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... Captains Bligh and Portlock, in the Providence and Assistance, conveying breadfruit plants from Tahiti to the West Indies, saw a portion of the south-east coast of New Guinea, when on their way to pass through Torres Strait. A line of coast extending ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... laws of all well-regulated states have taken care to enforce this duty: though providence has done it more effectually than any laws, by implanting in the breast of every parent that natural [Greek: storge], or insuperable degree of affection, which not even the deformity of person or mind, not even the ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... my inmost being, I exclaimed inwardly: "Protect me, Lord, but this time with all your might. A drop of water, Lord; a drop of water!" I waited—no appreciable succor reached from above. It was not till a week afterward that I understood the intentions of Providence. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Philip was the one most dependent upon his friend, however, and now he felt as if he were torn away from his chief support. He reasoned with himself that he had been letting affection for his friend come between him and Heaven; he tried to feel that Providence had interfered to break down his idol; yet to all this he could not but answer that Maurice had been always a help, and that it was impossible to believe that Providence would accomplish his good by the hurt of his benefactor. He did assure himself that his suffering was the will ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... Transport—Her religious influence on the men—Miss Hattie S. Reifsnyder of Catawissa, Penn. and Mrs. Cynthia Case of Newark, Ohio, her assistants are actuated by a similar spirit—Miss W. F. Harris of Providence, R. I., also on the Transport, for some months, and previously in the Indiana Hospital, in Ascension Church and Carver Hospital, and after leaving the Transport at Harper's Ferry and Winchester—Her health much broken by her excessive labors—Devotes herself to ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... Fortiori: if it be unlawful to rebel against a Heathen Emperor, then much more against a Christian King. The Corollary is this, and every unbiassed sober man will subscribe to it, that since we cannot pry into the secret Decrees of God, for the knowledge of future Events, we ought to rely upon his Providence, for the Succession; without either plunging our present King into necessities, for what may never happen; or refusing our obedience to one hereafter, who in the course of nature may succeed him. One, who if he had the will, could never ...
— His Majesties Declaration Defended • John Dryden
... insolence. I had resolved on making it; and only hesitated, day by day, as my mother dwelt upon the dangers which would follow. And when you determined on removal, it seemed to me the most fortunate providence, it promised to spare me the necessity of making this painful revelation at all. Surely, I thought, and my mother said, as this will put an effectual stop to his presumption, there will be no need to narrate ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... straws for the superintendent or even for the policemen, if only the story could be made to tell well for himself hereafter. It was his object to have thrashed Crosbie, and now, as he looked at his enemy's face, he acknowledged that Providence had been good ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... as he meditated upon the awful gravity, the fearful helplessness, of their situation. But it was a merciful Providence which prevented him from foreseeing the hideous reality which awaited them in the grim depths ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... he replied. "It was a favour so natural and so constantly rendered (till this nonesuch business) that the law has never looked to it. And now admire the hand of Providence! A stranger is in Fleming's printing-house, spies a proof on the floor, picks it up, and carries it to me. Of all things, it was just this libel. Whereupon I had it set again—printed at the expense of the defence: sumptibus moesti rei: heard ever man the like ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... destruction of a dinner sometimes was attended with the loss of a life. Later the back-bars were made of iron. On them were hung iron hooks or chains with hooks of various lengths called pothooks, trammels, hakes, pot-hangers, pot-claws, pot-clips, pot-brakes, pot-crooks. Mr. Arnold Talbot, of Providence, Rhode Island, has folding trammels, nine feet long, which were found in an old Narragansett chimney heart. Gibcrokes and recons were local and less frequent names, and the folks who in their dialect called the lug-pole ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... property. The major part of the public had no faith in them and predicted they would never be used for general travel. As for crossing the ocean—why, one was welcome to take his life in his hands if he chose, of course; but to cross in an iron ship—it was tempting Providence! Did not iron always sink? And how people ridiculed Darius Green and his flying machine! Most of the prophets were thought to be crazy. History is filled with stories of men who wrecked their worldly fortunes to perpetuate an idea, ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... to do something for this man. She won't be his wife, but she likes to be his Providence: I shall promise anything, in return for her going quickly back to Venice—or Switzerland—where she often spends the summer. So long as she and Miss Foster are under one roof, I shall not have a ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "The ways of Providence are inscrutable—something inscrutable, Captain Ireton. I make no doubt ye are sufficiently thankfu' ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... Mrs. Stanton's cousin, Gerrit Smith, now Congressman from New York, and his daughter, Elizabeth Smith Miller, the originator of the much-discussed bloomer. Best of all was her long-hoped-for meeting with James and Lucretia Mott and Lucretia's sister, Martha C. Wright. Only Paulina Wright Davis of Providence and Elizabeth Oakes Smith of Boston were disappointing, for they appeared at the meetings in short-sleeved, low-necked dresses with loose-fitting jackets of pink and blue wool, shocking her deeply intrenched Quaker instincts. Although she realized that ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... which has rendered his companionship for these five days as stimulating as the moorland air. How few men have this gift of discharging intellectual invigoration. Indeed, I only know old McQuhatty who has it, and a sportive Providence has carefully excluded mankind from its benefits for half a century. Stay: it once fostered a genius who arose in Campsie, and sent him strung with tonic to Edinburgh to become a poet. But the poor lad drank whisky ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... valleys were still in shadow, they smiled cheerfully in the promise of the bright day that was hastening onward. The village, completely shut in by hills, which swelled away gently about it, looked as if it had rested peacefully in the hollow of the great hand of Providence. Every dwelling was distinctly visible; the little spires of the two churches pointed upwards, and caught a fore-glimmering of brightness from the sun-gilt skies upon their gilded weathercocks. The tavern was astir, and the figure ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... as herself, devoid of any real claim upon them, she found the trio unexpectedly interesting and delightful. They had hailed her as a friend, and her frank, warm-hearted nature responded instantly, speedily according each of them a special niche in her regard. She felt as though Providence had suddenly endowed her with a whole family—"all complete and ready for use," as Tim cheerfully observed—and the reaction from the oppressive consciousness of being entirely alone in the world acted like ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... right to govern the world, and only refrains from doing so because he has more important matters to attend to. He believed, and could give excellent reasons in support of his belief, that the other inhabitants of Ireland were meant by providence to be Gibeonites, hewers of wood and drawers of water for the people of Antrim and Down. He had quite as great a contempt for the Unionist landlords, who occasionally spoke beside him on political platforms, as he had for the Nationalist tenants who were wrestling ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... and your works. It would have been too cruel for me to have learnt with certainty that he whom I regarded as the first writer of the age had become my detractor without motive, without provocation. That it is not so I give thanks to Providence. "M. the duc d'Aiguillon did not deceive you when he told you that I fed on your sublime poetry. I am in literature a perfect novice, and yet am sensible of the true beauties which abound in your works. I am to be included ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... her sometimes that Lydia had been granted her by a merciful Providence in order that she might make that "fresh start all over again" which is the never-realized ideal of erring humanity. Marietta had been a young lady fourteen years before, and fourteen years meant much—meant everything ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... overruling Providence was complete. He believed, even in the darkest days of freedom in our land, in the ultimate extinction of Slavery, and at times, although advanced in years, thought he would live to witness that glorious consummation. ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... (1824-1892), b. Providence, R. I. Literary and political essayist, civil service reformer, and critic. Was a resident in his youth at Brook Farm. Spent four years of his early life in foreign travel. Nile Notes of a Howadji ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... account, however, few even of his village contemporaries grieved for old Wightman. They felt that Providence knew best; that the old man was happily spared the mortification of all that was likely to ensue. For before another year was out the ring fence, which had hitherto encircled the Lexley property, was divided within itself; a paltry distribution of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... for he had a lengthy will made, dispensing some sixteen hundred dollars to different individuals, when he must have known that his whole possessions would not amount to half that sum. As I looked upon him I could but reflect on the mysterious ways of Providence. Before me lay a man, who had for years arrayed himself against me, using all his influence as a man and a minister to injure me, by setting Lewis forward in his wickedness; his family living in extravagance and a style far beyond their means, while mine had labored hard and were sometimes ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... and rehabilitate her lover, the honest fool who allowed himself to be dishonored by those unscrupulous blackguards. Just as I was thinking of going in search of her, she comes to me. As I was about to write to her, she writes to me. Who can deny the existence of Providence after this?" Like many other people, M. Fortunat piously believed in Providence when things went to his liking, but it is sad to add that in the contrary case he denied its existence. "If she has any courage," he resumed, "and she seems to have plenty of it, Valorsay and Coralth ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... dialogues of Plato, the idea of mind or intelligence becomes more and more prominent. That idea which Anaxagoras employed inconsistently in the construction of the world, Plato, in the Philebus, the Sophist, and the Laws, extends to all things, attributing to Providence a care, infinitesimal as well as infinite, of all creation. The divine mind is the leading religious thought of the later works of Plato. The human mind is a sort of reflection of this, having ideas of Being, Sameness, and the like. At times they seem to be parted by a great gulf ...
— Sophist • Plato
... do? "Go up to East Lynne and see him," said her conscience. Barbara's mind was in a strangely excited state. It appeared to her that this visit of Richard's must have been specially designed by Providence, that he might be ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Providence, Louisiana second year after the War. Mother's mother was left in Jackson, Tennessee. Mother was sold at Vicksburg, Mississippi. Father's mother was left at Pittsburg, Virginia. Father was brought to Lake Providence and ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... Mrs. Thornburgh insisted upon it; her obstinacy in the matter, like her dreams of cakes and confections, being all part of her determination to move with the times, in spite of the station to which Providence had ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... his party were in Chicago in March, 1688, when lack of provision forced them to rely on whatever they could find in the woods. It appears that Providence furnished them with a "kind of manna" to eat with their meal. This seems to have been maple sap. They also procured in the woods garlic and other plants. The name Chicago may have come from the Indian word ske-kog-ong, wild ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... to indemnify himself in Turkey for a life of exemplary chastity at home. Pray buy his 'Missellingany', as the Printer's Devil calls it. I suppose it is in print by this time. Providence has interposed in our favour with a fair wind to carry us out of its reach, or he would have hired a Faqui to translate ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... to say that he did not come to Philadelphia of his own accord, but having been sent there by Providence, he ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... It is my sister Maria. I promised long ago that nothing should make me desert her;' and, with a voice faltering a little, but endeavouring to be firm, 'a promise to fulfil a duty appointed by Providence must not he repented of when ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... were looking for news of the West. Here on the pier, I see disembarking the Germans, the Norwegians, the Swedes, the Swiss. Who knows how much of old legendary lore, of modern wonder, they have already planted amid the Wisconsin forests? Soon, their tales of the origin of things, and the Providence which rules them, will be so mingled with those of the Indian, that the very oak-tree will not know them apart,—will not know whether itself be a Runic, a ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... militia and the Naval Reserves had been solicited to enter Wilmington on the 10th of November to assist in disarming every Negro, and aiding in his slaughter and banishment. That the intervention of Providence in the earnest and persistent entreaties of white citizens who were too nobly bred to stoop so low, and the strategy and cunning of the Negro himself, frustrated the carrying out to its fullest intent, one of the most infamous and ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... an apple-tree,"—and Nan looked up with not a little apprehension, but presently tucked her small hand inside the doctor's and was more than ready to go with him. "I thought she looked a little pale," the doctor said, to which Mrs. Thacher answered that it was a merciful Providence who had kept the child from breaking her neck, and then, being at the foot of the church steps, they separated. It had been a great trial to the good woman to give up the afternoon service, but she was growing old, as she told herself often ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... perished at an early hour on the morning of her arrival, at an adversary's sword-point behind a potting-shed near the Petit Trianon. Rumour whispered that it was on account of a woman that he fought and lost, but this last blow of Providence's hatchet was spared his girl bride, innocent, secure in her supreme purity and innate virginity. If evil tongues had even mentioned the word "woman" to her, she would not ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... guest-house for the reception of strangers, but has been much altered since that time. At the north-west corner of the court is a very fine Norman gateway, now surrounded by the modern buildings of the King's School, and a little to the right is a Norman staircase, which by the goodness of Providence was allowed to remain when other destruction was in progress. This beautiful and unique example of a staircase of this early period is the most remarkable feature of the monastic remains. Beyond the Green Court Gate stood the almonry and a granary, and south of these buildings was the Archbishop's ...
— Beautiful Britain • Gordon Home
... anybody I ever see before, you sit up on yore hunkers and tell me I'll have more'n I can swing at the finish. Say, you make me laugh! Listen, Lanpher, for a feller that's come out second best with the Bar S outfit as many times as you have it looks to me like you was crowdin' Providence a heap close." ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... This was not what Enoch wished, but the shock of Halpen's fall was so great that he could not help it. The boy's desire had been to pitch the man out, get in himself, and then have the spy at his mercy. But chance—nay, Providence, for the man's sins ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... severe law against such as should so far degenerate from the dignity of human nature, as to think that our souls died with our bodies, or that the world was governed by chance, without a wise overruling Providence: for they all formerly believed that there was a state of rewards and punishments to the good and bad after this life; and they now look on those that think otherwise as scarce fit to be counted men, since they degrade so noble a being as the soul, and reckon ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... with a ruthlessly consistent sense of status, would still count among the most splendid traits of the class. These have remained in our traditions as the typical "aristocratic virtues." But with these were associated an increasing complement of the less obtrusive pecuniary virtues; such as providence, prudence, and chicanery. As time has gone on, and the modern peaceable stage of pecuniary culture has been approached, the last-named range of aptitudes and habits has gained in relative effectiveness for pecuniary ends, and ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... successes in the past, sometimes the result of fortuitous circumstances, more often of the blunders of our rivals, inspire a presumptuous confidence in successes for the future and a conviction that come what may we are destined to muddle through. A special providence is watching over us—a cousin German to the Kaiser's "good old God." In truth we are tempting Fate, postulating an exception to the law of cause and effect, and looking for Hebrew miracles in the ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... "Looks like Providence was steppin' in," said Elder Hooper to Deacon Pettybone. "Dunno's I ever see a more fittin' as well as proper follerin' up of sinful carelessness by sich consequences as ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... denied? Or why the distinctions of bitter and sweet, of savory and unsavory, unless a palate had been likewise given, conveniently placed, to arbitrate between them, and declare the difference? Is not that Providence, Aristodemus, in a most eminent manner conspicuous, which, because the eye of man is so delicate in its contexture, hath therefore prepared eyelids like doors, whereby to secure it; which extend of themselves whenever it is needful, and again close ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... fails a man, and he finds himself without resources, at the very moment when he feels he must give up, then Providence steps in. Water presented itself in the CEPHALOTES, a species of cup-shaped flower, filled with refreshing liquid, which hung from the branches of coralliform-shaped bushes. They all quenched their thirst with these, and felt new ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... on the point of rushing away through the crowd, when he noticed Gustave's crutch lying on the platform. This was disastrous, and he raised his eyes to heaven as though to call Providence to witness that he would never be able to extricate himself from such awful complications. And, throwing the crutch to his wife, he hurried off, distracted and shouting, "There, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... bewildered eye. Oh the night at noon, I have wondered oft how much the heart will bear, As strand after strand of the toughened cord, strains with the weight and wear. I felt I must fly, weak as I was, to where she was lying; perhaps 'Twas a merciful Providence after all, that I took a relapse. Oh, the weary months that crawled slowly by at a tortoise creeping pace, I seeming to hear the dash of the waves, that hid a beloved face. Time passed, and I learnt that the roaring sea was not the treacherous ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... Wayland; "he that once hath his features by heart would know him amongst a million. He was anticly habited; but he cannot disguise himself from me, God be praised! as I can from him. I will not, however, tempt Providence by remaining within his ken. Tarleton the player himself could not so disguise himself but that, sooner or later, Doboobie would find him out. I must away to-morrow; for, as we stand together, it were death to me to remain within reach ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... dies in a drop of water—carnivorous, insatiable, subsisting on the creatures minuter than himself—is not less deadly in his wrath, less ferocious in his nature, than the tiger of the desert. There may be things around us that would be dangerous and hostile to men, if Providence had not placed a wall between them and us, merely by different modifications ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... daily more supine in aristocratic leisure, more papalizing in their private sympathies. Thus the last years of Sarpi's life were overclouded by a deep discouragement, which did not, indeed, extinguish his trust in the divine Providence or his certain belief that the right would ultimately prevail, but which adds a tragic interest to the old age of this champion of political and moral ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... district we received a message from De Wet that we should enter the Colony as soon as possible, and that he would try to follow us up. He was, however, prevented from carrying out his intentions. It seemed as if Providence had so ordained it that he should not cross the Orange River, or, even crossing it, should not sojourn for a long time in the land of the enemy. For no sooner had he passed the Caledon, than the enemy concentrated on him and succeeded ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... the plenitude of twentieth century sophistication, fully determined that there is no such thing as luck?—that all things are ordered, if not by Providence, at least by an unchangeable sequence ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... Divine revelation vanish away when they are set in the light of this theory of a spiritual progression. Are we reminded that there prevailed, in those earlier days, views of the nature of God and man, of human life and Divine Providence, which we now find to be untenable? That, we answer, is precisely what the theory of development presupposes. If early views of religion and morality had not been imperfect, where had been the development? If symbolical visions and mythical creations had found no place in the ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... "Whereas the Revd Mr. Francis Johnson took some time since the Works of Bishop Bull in 4 volumes 8vo out of this Library, & has return'd only ye 1st, 3rd & 4th Vols & instead of ye 2d Sherlock on providence, it Was then Order'd, that that shd be return'd him again, & that he be requir'd either to send back ye sd 2d vol. or take the remaining three, & send an entire Sett. Order'd likewise that Mr Morrant be requir'd to return B-p. ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen
... they were influenced day by day; so when the time of restitution takes place, which will be long before the consummation of all things, then the Law of Nature, from Moral principles will be practiced and the world will be as one concentrated Family." "The openings to Providence preparatory to that day should be attended to, from principles of duty—lest judgments should perform what offered mercy if not rejected may be ready to accomplish. To feed and clothe another is both the interest and duty of all Masters—and the sixth chapter of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... various great forests of the land, such as green Sherwood and the Andredsweald, were simply patriots maintaining a lawful struggle against foreign oppressors. Martin, on the other hand, maintained that the question was settled by Divine providence, and that the governors of alien blood were now the kings and magistrates to whom, according to Saint Paul, obedience was due. If two centuries did not establish prescriptive right, how ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... countless throngs find their certain way in the transient pasturage on the prairies, along the fresh banks of the rivers, and up every valley and green defile of the mountains, so the salmon, at their allotted seasons, regulated by a sublime and all-seeing Providence, swarm in myriads up the great rivers, and find their way up their main branches, and into the minutest tributory streams; so as to pervade the great arid plains, and to penetrate even among barren mountains. Thus wandering tribes are fed in the desert places ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... not that they are indifferent to money, but that they recklessly miscalculate their own value, and omit to look around and see how much is done by those who are more careful. A man can be young but once, and, except in cases of a special interposition of Providence, can marry but once. The chance once thrown away may be said to be irrevocable! How, in after-life, do men toil and turmoil through long years to attain some prospect of doubtful advancement! Half that trouble, half that care, a tithe ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... other, these fellows who take no trouble are always the first to gain the end. A special Providence seems to aid the poor, helpless creatures. So, while the crowd still pressed at the office-desk, Jerry Swayne, the head clerk, happened to pass directly by the piazza where the inert ones sat, and, raising ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... the Boers towards the locust is very quaint. If a swarm of these insects settles on a Dutchman's land, the owner will not attempt to destroy them because he regards them as a visitation of Providence. But I have heard that he does not scruple to modify slightly the schemes of Providence by shovelling the unwelcome locusts upon any of his neighbours' fields which may adjoin his ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... all; still if a preacher always insisted on the Divine Justice, he would practically be obscuring the Divine Mercy, and if he insisted only on the incommunicableness and distance from the creature of the Uncreated Essence, he would tend to throw into the shade the doctrine of a Particular Providence. Observe, then, Gentlemen, that Physical Theology teaches three Divine Attributes, I may say, exclusively; and of these, most of Power, and ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... the marriage contract, settled the property upon the survivor, and left a little glass of vitriol about for his wife to drink by mistake; but his wife, with the very best intentions, put the glass elsewhere, and Remonencq swallowed the draught himself. The rascal's appropriate end vindicates Providence, as well as the chronicler of manners, who is sometimes accused of neglect on this head, perhaps because Providence has been so overworked by ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... victims of their severity. But Davenport gallantly captures these Quaker guns, and turns them against the enemy himself. "Sir, the hurt that befell so many, by their own rashness, at the Draw Bridge in Boston, being on the day that the Quakers were executed, was not without God's special providence in judgment & wrath, I fear, against the Quakers & their abettors, who will be much hardened thereby." This is admirable, especially as his parenthesis about "their own rashness" assumes that the whole thing was owing to natural causes. The pity for the Quakers, ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... sweet, (For eloquence the soul song charms the sense,) Others apart sat on a hill retired, In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute; And found no end, in wand'ring mazes lost. Of good and evil much they argued then, Of happiness and final misery, Passion and apathy, and glory and shame; Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... imperial throne, embodied in the Caesars,"—those worshipful incarnations of democracy, brought to our view in the tableaux of Suetonius and by the accounts of Tacitus. We have at last returned to Caesarism, or Asiatic absolutism, improved by modern light, and making the emperor a Second Providence, opening and shutting the mouths of the universal-suffrage people, for words or bread, as imperial divinity finds best. This is the progress of our age in Europe, while we, in this hemisphere, have taken, for the first time in history, a rational view of party ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... little ones! Shall they be left a prey to savage power? Can they lift up their harmless hands in vain, Or cry to heaven for help, and not be heard? Impossible! O gallant, generous, Hastings, Go on; pursue, assert, the sacred cause: Stand forth, thou proxy of all-ruling Providence, And save the friendless infants from oppression. Saints shall assist thee with prevailing prayers, And warring ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe
... your establishment, or in your family, perhaps, one of the frightful monstrosities of which each century produces only one. Locusta and Agrippina, living at the same time, were an exception, and proved the determination of providence to effect the entire ruin of the Roman empire, sullied by so many crimes. Brunehilde and Fredegonde were the results of the painful struggle of civilization in its infancy, when man was learning to control mind, were it even by an emissary from the realms of darkness. All these women had been, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... us good-bye with the air of entrusting us to that Providence which is known to have a special ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... disposing thereof is of the Lord.' It was not Josephs wisdome made all things thrive under his hand; but because the Lord was with him; and that which he did, the Lord made it to prosper, Gen. 39. Surely this is a blessing proceeding from the divine providence, which beyond humane capacity so cooperateth with the causes, as that their effects prove answerable, and sometimes (that we may know there is something above the ordinary causes) the success returns with such a supereminency ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... desire to be absolved, I must repent without delay. Exhorted by the worthy nuns, I am daily becoming more alive to a sense of my unworthiness, and convinced of the urgent necessity for beginning a new life of holiness and virtue. Guided to this blessed convent by the finger of Providence, I have been enabled, with the assistance of the best of counsel, to reflect seriously over what has happened, and I have now taken a vow never again to act from the impulse of ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... Agnes—"his end's dreadfully near. He has been a sort of providence to us—he was Sir Nicholas's second self. But he won't put up with such insanity, such wickedness, and that ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... night David had walked from end to end of the five snowbound coaches that made up the Transcontinental. He believed that for him it was an act of Providence that had delayed the train. Otherwise a sleeping car would have been picked up at the next divisional point, and he would not have unburdened himself to Father Roland. They would not have sat up until that late hour in the ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... distinguished career. There was nothing peculiar in kind in his career, only in the force exhibited which lifted him among the few whose destructive energy the world condones and admires as Napoleonic. He may have been an instrument of Providence. When we do not know exactly what to do with an exceptional man who is disagreeable, we call ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... saying also is, Benny, it would be more to the purpose if they brought their boots and shoes. Man, you must have a nerve, to trust Providence as ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the Poet do's justice to his good qualities, and moves the pity of his audience for him, by showing him pious, disinterested, a contemner of the things of this world, and wholly resign'd to the severest dispensations of God's providence. There is a short Scene in the second part of Henry VI., which I cannot but think admirable in its kind. Cardinal Beaufort, who had murder'd the Duke of Gloucester, is shewn in the last agonies ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... shall at least meet it with more firmness than our neighbours, but even in order to do this, we ought not to blind ourselves at the moment of its approach. It seems too probable that it is decreed by Providence that a stop should be put (for reasons probably inscrutable to us) to the progress of arts and civilization among us. It is a melancholy reflection to be born to the commencement of such a scene, and to be called ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... and the clerks and the "cub" hardly needed to glance out the nearest larboard window to know that she was already turning northward into a pleasant piece of river called Nine Mile Reach. A certain Point Lookout was some five miles behind in the east, and the town of Providence, negligibly small, with Lake Providence, an old cut-off, hid in the woods behind it, was close ahead. One of the number mentioned the boat's failure during the night to make the miles expected of ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... upon the whole church of this suffering kingdom, and for whose violence and blood-guiltiness, it is to be feared, this fair attempt to recover our civil and religious rights will never be honoured by Providence with ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... cried Luigi, signing himself with the mystic Sign; "may God and Our Lady be praised! I tell you, Fathers, it is a miracle that we are not dead men!" "'Indeed, a very special protection of Divine Providence said the superior pro tem.; 'and we must all thank God ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... places our weapons right to hand. What would David have done had there not been a stony brook between him and Goliath that day? Just as Gordon with burning face turned to defy his deriders, a pile of small stones lay at his feet. It looked like Providence. He could not row a boat, but he could fling a stone like young David. In a moment he was sending stones up the hill with such rapidity that the group above him ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... chance. The old people did all the courting there was done, which was not much. When a young man desired a wife, a helpmeet was selected for him by casting lots among the marriageable young ladies of the community, and the young man was obliged to abide by the decision, it being supposed that Providence controlled the selection. We are not prepared to say that the young man ran any greater risk of getting an uncongenial or undesirable life companion by this mode of selection than by the more modern ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... naturalist friend in an old mill building in western Manitoba. It was in a pine woods which was peopled with these little Chipmunks. They had hailed the mill and its wood piles, and especially the stables, with their squandered oats, as the very gifts of a beneficient Providence for their use and benefit. They had concentrated on the mill; they were there in hundreds, almost thousands, and whenever one looked across the yard in sunny hours one could see ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... of fifty, with an ample fortune, he relinquished a business, in which he had most diligently laboured, when the full tide of prosperity was flowing in upon him, in order that he might devote his time, and the means placed by Providence at his disposal, to the cause of ...
— The Annual Monitor for 1851 • Anonymous
... wise man, able to understand most men and women better than they understood themselves. With such understanding, naturally enough, went a rare kindness of heart; the addition to these things of a fine sense of humour argued a certain favouritism on the part of a Providence which bestows upon ninety-and-nine mortals but one virtue apiece, and to the hundredth but two. Monseigneur Forest was, I suppose, ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... out of the community. Especially among farmers, religion is a matter of every-day life. What religion the farmer has grows out of his yearly struggle with the soil and with the elements. His belief in God is a belief in Providence. His God is the creator of the sun and the seasons, the wind and the rain. The man who does not with him share these experiences cannot long interpret them for him in terms ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... your hands to the scoops and bail the water out of the boat.—And the rest of you," he went on, addressing the sailors, "pull with all your might! Now is the time; in the name of the devil who is leaving you in this world, be your own Providence! Every one knows that the channel is fearfully dangerous; I have been to and fro across it these thirty years. Am I facing a storm for the first ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac
... to the bar of God," replied the Sole Survivor, looking up over his shoulder, "your understanding is in darkness. I am not stopping this great blessing; under Providence, I am ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... honest out of very Knavery, not out of any Love to Honesty and Virtue, but with a crafty Design to promote and advance more effectually their own Interests; and therefore the Justice of the Divine Providence hath hid this truest Point of Wisdom from their Eyes, that bad Men might not be upon equal Terms with the Just and Upright, and serve their own wicked Designs ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... refined education, training, and association—are undoubtedly as wholly out of order among the UNLETTERED as the Unlettered are out of order in the exalted presence of the Lettered. Each faction may in like aversion ignore or snub the other; but a long-suffering Providence must bear with the society of both. There may be one vague virtue demonstrated by this feud: each division will be found unwaveringly loyal to its kind, and mutually they desire no interchange of sympathy whatever.—Neither ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... there were twenty English to thirty-three French, and these general proportions doubtless obtained throughout the four hours. De Grasse therefore found himself in the presence of a fleet superior to his own, in numbers at least, and by the favor of Providence that fleet so divided that nearly half of it was powerless to act. He had the wind, he had a fine body of captains; what was to prevent him from attacking Hood's nine ships with fifteen, putting one on each side of the six in the ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... that the people—the American people, at least —is about as wise collectively as less numerous collections of individuals, and that the people has really declared emancipation, and is only puzzling how to carry it into effect. After all, it seems to be a law of Providence, that progress should be by a spiral movement; so that when it seems most tortuous, we may perhaps be going ahead. I am firm in the faith that slavery is now wriggling itself to death. With slavery in its pristine vigor, I should think the restored Union neither possible nor desirable. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... moves in a Mysterious Way: how the finished Miss Avery appears as the Instrument of Providence; how Sharlee sees her Idol of Many Years go toppling in the Dust, and how it is her Turn to meditate in ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... by the weekly pension of two sovereigns which she always received on Thursday morning from the hands of Mr. Crumpy himself. In a little time the one excitement of her life was the weekly journey to Mr. Crumpy, whom she came to regard as a man appointed by Providence to supply her with 40s. on Thursday morning. As to poor Sexty Parker,—it is to be feared that he never again became ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... to us most probable that the abode of the children of Israel in Egypt, and the residence of Christ in the same country, have a relation to each other. This supposition rests upon the perception of the [Pg 506] remarkable coincidence which, by divine Providence, generally exists betwixt the destinies of typical persons, and those of the Antitype, so that the former may be considered as an actual prophecy of the latter. But this coincidence must here not be sought in the stay ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... processes of farming, and on the fortunes of war. Since human life is guided by the gods, thought the Romans, there is no act that may not have its god; this system is the objectivation of the conception of divine special providence.[1128] ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... abashed before the majesty of Paris. "If we," say their newspapers, "the wisest, the best, the noblest of human beings, have to succumb to this horde of barbarians that environ us, we shall cease to believe in the existence of a Providence." ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... swept his furrow'd cheek, Remembrance check'd him, and his utt'rance fail'd. For he had known full many a better day; And when the poor-man at his threshold bent, He drove him not with aching heart away, But freely shar'd what Providence had sent. How hard for him, the stranger's boon to crave, And live to want the mite his ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... the governor against Paul; (2)and he having been called, Tertullus began to accuse him, saying: Seeing that by thee we enjoy great quietness, and that very worthy deeds are done for this nation through thy providence, in every way and everywhere; (3)we accept it, most noble Felix, with ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various
... the "architects of their own fortunes," never admit that good luck has had any thing to do with their prosperity. Their pardonable vanity at their own success makes them guilty of a species of ingratitude to Providence. Listen to one of these old gentlemen holding forth to his hopeful son or nephew on his, the said old gentleman's, past life; on his early poverty, his self-denial, his hard work, and his subsequent reward; and the burden of his ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... what the person in Cambridge said. Mr. Graham Bell, our neighbor, has invented this. How wonderful it must be! He has put up wires about Boston, but not farther than Cambridge—yet. He was ambitious enough to suggest Providence. "What!" cried the members of the committee. "You think you can talk along a wire in the air over that distance?" "Let me just try it," said Bell. "I will bear half the expense of putting up the wire if you will bear the ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... earnestly the advent of universal peace, and rejoice that the power of moral principles is increasing in the world, and anticipate the day when the nations shall learn war no more, yet we are fully convinced, both from the Holy Scriptures and the history of the past, that under the overruling providence of God wars occasioned by the oppression, the ambition, and the covetousness of men, are often the means of breaking up the stagnant waters of superstition and irreligion, and securing to the truth a position ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... fly was preying upon some other creatures smaller than himself? And these again, upon others still less; who, though invisible to our eyes, possess life and organisation as well as we. Who knows to the contrary? And who knows the reason why a mysterious Providence has created those beings to be the food of each other? That is a question about which we can ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... miracle-working hand. So it stands for us, as the one central appeal and exhortation which Christ, by His life, by the record of His love, by His Cross and Passion, by His dealings and pleadings with us through His Spirit, and His providence to-day, is making to us all. 'Only believe'—the one act that vitally knits the soul to Christ, and makes it capable of receiving unto itself the fullness of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... present generation of negroes, the childhood of whose race is now gone forever, and who must henceforth fight a hard battle with the world, on very unequal terms. On behalf of my own race, I am glad, and can only hope that an inscrutable Providence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... a madman!" he exclaimed at last, and with a tone of severity that arrested Roland's attention: "does thee curse thee fate, and the Providence that is above thee, because the maid of thee heart is carried into captivity unharmed? Is thee wretched, because thee eyes did not see the Injun axe struck into her brain? Friend, thee does not know what such a sight is; but I do—yes, I have looked upon such a thing, ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... misery is to be placed. Nothing, on the contrary, must have been so unhappy as savage man, dazzled by flashes of knowledge, racked by passions, and reasoning on a state different from that in which he saw himself placed. It was in consequence of a very wise Providence, that the faculties, which he potentially enjoyed, were not to develop themselves but in proportion as there offered occasions to exercise them, lest they should be superfluous or troublesome to him when he did not want them, or tardy and useless when he did. He had in his instinct alone everything ...
— A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of - The Inequality Among Mankind • Jean Jacques Rousseau |
