"Vicissitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was my interest at this time sufficient to make another to be knight of the shire; yet when my condition fell, my interest fell with it, and I was looked upon as a stranger among them. Such is the course and vicissitude of worldly things; therefore put no trust ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... have suffered, and what my brother 'madman' has done to undo himself, and every body who was so unlucky as to have the least concern with him, I could not help being sensibly moved on so extraordinary a vicissitude of fortune, to see a great man fallen from that shining light, in which I have beheld him in the house of lords, to such a degree of obscurity, that I have beheld the meanest commoner here decline his company; ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... reverse are sure to await all who live out anything like their term of years, and the missionary is perhaps more liable than other men to meet with a great disappointment. 'Success but signifies vicissitude,' and looking at the history of the growth of the Church, it is impossible not to observe that almost in all cases, immediately upon any extensive progress, there has followed what seems like a strong effort of the Evil One at ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... vegetation, that the weather has generally enabled the plants, (if duly sheltered from the spring frosts, a circumstance to which a planter should always be attentive in selecting his plant patch,) to shoot forward in sufficient strength to bear the vicissitude of transplantation. ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... throne and glorious Silent saw I, that never— When with awful vicissitude He sank, rose, fell forever— Mixed my voice with the numberless Voices that pealed on high; Guiltless of servile flattery And of the scorn of coward, Come I when darkness suddenly On so great light hath lowered, And ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... that he did this work in prison; that after his serious studies it served him for amusement and even consolation, for he was of Timocles's opinion, that Tragedies might serve to alleviate the idea of our misfortunes by carrying our reflexions to the vicissitude of human affairs; and begs some indulgence to a work done partly in prison and partly during illness. The translation is in Latin verse such as the ancient tragic writers used. In the preface Grotius enters into an examination of Euripides's tragedy. He ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... sovereign, reigned till 1797. He took part in the first coalition against revolutionary France, and in the second and third partitions of Poland. Frederick William III. reigned from 1797 to 1840, during which time Prussia experienced every vicissitude of fortune. The first war with imperial France, in 1806-7, led to the reduction of her territory and population one half; and what was left of country and people was most mercilessly treated by Napoleon I., who should either have restored her altogether, or have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... away across three thousand years to when Perugia was one of the thirty cities of Etruria, and kept her independence through every vicissitude until Augustus starved her out in 40 B.C.! Portions of the wall, huge smooth blocks of travertine stone, are the work of the vanished Etruscans, and fragments of several gateways, with Roman alterations. One is perfect, imbedded in the outer wall of the castle: it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... volitions first commence From clear ideas of the tangent sense; From sires to sons by imitation caught, Or in dumb language by tradition taught? Or did they rise in some primeval site Of larva-gnat, or microscopic mite; And with instructive foresight still await On each vicissitude of insect-state?— 430 Wise to the present, nor to future blind, They link the reasoning reptile to mankind! —Stoop, selfish Pride! survey thy kindred forms, Thy brother ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... young trader from Maryland and Delaware, then recently married. This was the son of Augustine Herrman, "first founder and seater of Bohemia Manor." Augustine Herrman was a Bohemian adventurer, born in Prague, who, after a career of much vicissitude, made his way to New Netherland. He became a force at New Amsterdam, and was an original member of the council of nine men instituted by Governor Stuyvesant in 1647. His connection with Maryland matters ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... he who is quick, both seeing and hearing, and who, considering evil and good, estimating the one and the other as variable, and consistent in motion, mutation, and vicissitude, in such wise that the end of one opposite is the commencement of another, and the extreme of the one is the beginning of the other; whose spirit is neither depressed nor elated, but is moderate in inclinations and temperate in desires; to him pleasure is not pleasure, having ever present ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... continent, can place half a million of men in the field at any moment. The second steady-point is China's financial condition. She is the debtor of several Western nations, and they may be trusted to avert from her any vicissitude that would impair her credit as a borrower. Prominent among such vicissitudes is the dismemberment of ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... was satisfied about her; alarm and excitement had restrung her powers, and she knew herself to have done her part, so that she was ready to be both cheerful and important over the evening meal. Mr. Clare was by no means annoyed at this vicissitude, but rather amused at it, and specially diverted at the thought of what would be Mr. Lifford's consternation. Lord Keith's servant had come over, reporting his master to be a good deal worn out by the afternoon's anxiety, and recommending ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... notice that our senses take of the constant vicissitude of things, we cannot but observe that several particular, both qualities and substances, begin to exist; and that they receive this their existence from the due application and operation of some other being. From this observation we get our ideas of CAUSE and EFFECT. THAT WHICH PRODUCES ANY SIMPLE ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... and twice two daughters, so far as I remember?" To him Anius replies, shaking his temples wreathed with snow-white fillets, and says, "Thou art not mistaken, greatest hero; thou didst see me the parent of five children, whom now (so great a vicissitude of fortune affects mankind) thou seest almost bereft {of all}. For what assistance is my absent son to me, whom Andros, a land {so} called after his name, possesses, holding that place and kingdom ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... town, like Bethlehem, the arrival of these strangers would naturally awaken inquiry. After an absence of ten years, the inhabitants probably never expected to see Naomi again. Such is the vicissitude of human affairs, that within a few years many strange mutations occur, even in places of no great extent. Of her former friends or acquaintances, some were, no doubt, consigned to the grave; and her ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... to deviate from their duty, and will, therefore, always want a monitor to recall them; and a new book often seizes the attention of the publick, without any other claim than that it is new. There is likewise in composition, as in other things, a perpetual vicissitude of fashion; and truth is recommended at one time to regard, by appearances which at another would expose it to neglect; the author, therefore, who has judgment to discern the taste of his contemporaries, and skill to gratify it, will have always an opportunity to deserve well of mankind, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... usually confined to the inner life of imaginative men, but Mr. Poe's biography displays a vicissitude and peculiarity of interest such as is rarely met with. The offspring of a romantic marriage, and left an orphan at an early age, he was adopted by Mr. Allan, a wealthy Virginian, whose barren marriage-bed seemed the warranty of a large estate to the young poet. Having ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... cold, wet, and sodden as it had been a month before. The backward season, of which the whole country was now complaining, culminated on the following morning, which ushered in a day of remarkable vicissitude. By rapid transition the rain passed into sleet, then snow, which flurried down so rapidly that the land grew white and wintry, making it almost impossible to imagine that two months of spring had passed. ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... have said, has passed through every imaginable vicissitude. It has been dashed against rocks; indeed, its course has been but a succession of falls from rock to rock; but it has always reappeared, and we have never seen it really lost. Now it begins to lose itself in gulf after ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... and, having accumulated at the bottom of declivities, rises again to the surface forming springs and wells. As wells take their origin at some depth from the surface, and below the influence of the external atmosphere, their temperature is in general pretty uniform during every vicissitude of season, and always several degrees lower than the atmosphere. They differ from one another according to the nature of the strata through which they issue; for though the ingredients usually existing in them are in such minute quantities as to impart to the water no ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... with its historic background, and with all that later researches have discovered relative to the personal adventures of Constance, that I have not the slightest doubt of its individual truth. The result of a life of strange vicissitude; the picture of a tameless will, and high passions, forever struggling in vain against a superior power: and the real situation of women in those chivalrous times, are placed before us in a few noble scenes. The manner in which Shakspeare has applied the scattered ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... part feminine. Was there ever a truly great man, or one with a generous disposition, with a thin beard and a weazen face? On the other hand, show me a man with "royal locks," and I will trust his natural impulses in almost every vicissitude. When we see a genuine man, upon whom Nature has declined to set this seal of her approval, we cannot help an involuntary emotion of admiration for the virtuous and persevering energy with which he must ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... constancy to the sentiments of Tilsit and Erfurt. In any case your Majesty will allow me to assure you, that if fate renders this war inevitable between us, it will make no change in the sentiments with which your Majesty has inspired me, and which are safe from all vicissitude or alteration." ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... Lindsay. I feel an interest in you, and must take the friend and the old man's privilege of giving you an advice. The sailor, of all men, stands most in need of religion. His life is one of continued vicissitude—of unexpected success, or unlooked-for misfortune; he is ever passing from danger to safety, and from safety to danger; his dependence is on the ever-varying winds, his abode on the unstable waters. And the mind takes a peculiar ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... without craft, zealous without bigotry, and humane without effeminacy, he lived a philanthropic, pure, and consistent life. His highest eulogium is that he lived and died in the service of his country; that through every vicissitude his chief care was the national weal; that his chief fame rests in the love and veneration which he awakened in his countrymen; and that few Englishmen of the present century have left more enduring monuments of public ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... or to make is to alter something; to consume is to alter. All the obnoxious characters of change and diversity thus attach themselves to doing while knowing is as permanent as its object. To know, to grasp a thing intellectually or theoretically, is to be out of the region of vicissitude, chance, and diversity. Truth has no lack; it is untouched by the perturbations of the world of sense. It deals with the eternal and the universal. And the world of experience can be brought under control, ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... yield to tilth, and woodlands brown and sear, The falling leaf and crispy pool proclaim the waning year; And sounds of sylvan pastime ring through our valley wide, Vicissitude itself ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... alteration, transition, mutation, transposition, conversion, metamorphosis, innovation, transfiguration, permutation, transference, reversion, reaction, transmutation; substitution, commutation; variety, novelty, vicissitude. Associated word: mutanda. Antonyms: continuation, stability, conservatism, permanence, inertia, monotony, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... singularly unhappy, since, by this unforeseen vicissitude of fortune, she was suddenly, from being an object of envy and admiration, sunk into distress, and threatened with disgrace; from being every where caressed, and by every voice praised, she blushed ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... Crown of Glory the Reward of the Righteous; being Meditations on the Vicissitude and Uncertainty of all Sublunary Enjoyments. To which is added, a Manual of Devotions for Times of Trouble and Affliction: also Meditations and Prayers before, at, and after receiving the Holy Communion; with some General Rules ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 190, June 18, 1853 • Various
... talk of the day appointed for a revolt a fortnight before, as though it were a fete, and the most timid begin to be inured to a state of agitation and apprehension, and to consider it as a natural vicissitude that their lives should ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... Moolk, a grandson of the illustrious Ahmed Shah, reigned in Afghanistan from 1803 till 1809. His youth had been full of trouble and vicissitude. He had been a wanderer, on the verge of starvation, a pedlar and a bandit, who raised money by plundering caravans. His courage was lightly reputed, and it was as a mere creature of circumstance that he reached the throne. His reign was perturbed, and in 1809 he was a fugitive and an ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... to Fox to say that you accept," he said, rising. He seated himself at his desk in the appropriate attitude. He had an appropriate attitude for every vicissitude of his life. These he had struck before so many people that even in the small hours of the morning he was ready for the kodak wielder. Beside him he had every form of labour-saver; every kind of literary knick-knack. There were book-holders that swung into positions suitable to appropriate ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... immured his intellect in the catacombs of the Romish Church, but he has not been able to quench it, and even there it radiates a splendor through the gloom. His saintly character is as indubitable as the subtlety of his mind, and no vicissitude has impaired the charm of his style, which is pure and perfect as an exquisite and flawless diamond; serene and chaste in its usual mood, but scintillating gloriously in the light of ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... circling Hours, with rosie hand Unbarr'd the gates of Light. There is a Cave Within the Mount of God, fast by his Throne, Where light and darkness in perpetual round Lodge and dislodge by turns, which makes through Heav'n Grateful vicissitude, like Day and Night; Light issues forth, and at the other dore Obsequious darkness enters, till her houre 10 To veile the Heav'n, though darkness there might well Seem twilight here; and now went forth the Morn Such as in highest Heav'n, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... brilliant position of the humanists were a perilous temptation; it seemed to him that he too 'through inborn pride could no longer regard the low and common things of life.' He was thus led to plunge into a life of excitement and vicissitude, in which exhausting studies, tutorships, secretaryships, professorships, offices in princely households, mortal enmities and perils, luxury and beggary, boundless admiration and boundless contempt, followed confusedly one ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... quiet of his native fireside; and if, in after life, he did not bitterly repent of the folly, it was because of that light-hearted and sanguine temperament which never deserted him quite, and supported him in all events and through every vicissitude. He had wandered much after leaving his parental home, and was now engaged in an occupation and pursuit which our future pages must develop. Having narrated, in his desultory way to his companion, the facts which we have ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... larger and grander state imaged to them with mysterious sublimity in the idea of Death or Eternity. In accordance with this belief, they expressed in their dwellings the sentiment of transitoriness and vicissitude, and in their tombs the immortality of calm repose. And so their houses have crumbled into dust ages ago, but their tombs are eternal. In all the relations of Life the sentiment of Death was present in some ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... multiplicity of his thoughts, and at length burst out into passionate exclamations: 'What,' says he, 'and where am I? Am I, indeed, HAMET; that son of Solyman who divided the dominion of Persia with his brother, and who possessed the love of ALMEIDA alone? Dreadful vicissitude! I am now an outcast, friendless and forlorn; without an associate, and without a dwelling: for me the cup of adversity overflows, and the last dregs of sorrow have been wrung out for my portion: the powers not only of the earth, but of the air, have combined against me; and how can I stand ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... it seemed to him, a woodsman to whom trees in their general sense were common things. In this great growth he felt a quality and a presence. Its moods were as varied as those of life itself—as it stood triumphing over decades of vicissitude, blight, and storm. ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... be denied that in this process of thought, the results of experience have had to contend with many disadvantages; we must not, therefore, be surprised if, in the perpetual vicissitude of theoretical views, as is ingeniously expressed by the author of 'Giordano Bruno', "most men see nothing in philosophy but a succession of passing meteors, while even the grander forms in which she has revealed herself share the fate of comets, bodies that do not rank in popular opinion among ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... of Ruth's becoming a governess in Mr Bradshaw's family, and had been absent until the time of which I am now going to tell you, would have noted some changes which had imperceptibly come over all; but he, too, would have thought, that the life which had brought so little of turmoil and vicissitude must have been calm and tranquil, and in accordance with the bygone activity of the town in which their ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... pence, and by rigid economy was at last able to purchase—his own body and soul; this, however, was not effected, until he had endured much oppression and insult. He was several times shipwrecked, and finally, after thirty years of vicissitude and suffering, he settled in London and published his Memoirs. The book is said to be written with all the simplicity, and something of the roughness, of uneducated nature. He gives a naive description of his terror at an earthquake, his surprise when he first saw snow, a picture, a ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... was willing to wait, on which after all hangs the reality of all joy or sorrow. Every grief hath that opportunity of cure; every joy that peril of vicissitude. Till time hath ceased from her travail, no man can tell her offspring's sex, whether it be rugged care, or sweet ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... does, we will use our 'selectest influence' to induce him to write out for us a series of papers containing his complete autobiography, which we have good reason to believe would overflow with romance and strange vicissitude: 'I was raised,' he writes, 'as we western folks term it, in a small village some fifteen miles from Boston, and when about sixteen years of age I paid a visit to the metropolis for the first time in my life. When I first arrived ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... expostulated Shih Jung, "has already ascended the spiritual regions, and is no more a mortal being in this dusty world exposed to vicissitude like you and I. Although a mean prince like me has been the recipient of the favour of the Emperor, and has undeservedly been called to the princely inheritance, how could I presume to go before the spiritual hearse ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... of vegetables, roots, and fruit, that can be injured by frost, are stored in cellars; and milk, and wine, and cider, and a thousand "vessels of honor," like tubs and buckets, churns and washing-machines, that are liable to injury from heat or cold, or other vicissitude of climate, find a safe retreat in the cellar. Excepting the garret, which is, as Ariosto represents the moon to be, the receptacle of all things useless on earth, the cellar is the greatest "curiosity shop" ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... Germany were filled with a hardy race of barbarians, who despised life when it was separated from freedom; and though, on the first attack, they seemed to yield to the weight of the Roman power, they soon, by a signal act of despair, regained their independence, and reminded Augustus of the vicissitude of fortune. [3] On the death of that emperor, his testament was publicly read in the senate. He bequeathed, as a valuable legacy to his successors, the advice of confining the empire within those limits which nature seemed to have placed as its permanent bulwarks and boundaries: ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... outright, and stared at her with renewed interest. He admitted to himself that she was one of the most fascinating women he had ever met, and wondered what vicissitude could have brought such a woman, who used classical illustrations, fluent, cultivated speech, and who was strong grace exemplified, to such a position. She seemed master of her surroundings, and yet not of them, looking down with a hard and lofty scorn on the very men from whom ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... however rude the sound; She feels no biting pang the while she sings, Nor, as she turns the giddy wheel around, Revolves the sad vicissitude of things." ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... that the hundred and fifty senators should interchangeably execute the office of supreme magistrate, and each in succession, with the ensigns of royalty, should offer the solemn sacrifices and dispatch public business for the space of six hours by day and six by night; which vicissitude and equal distribution of power would preclude all rivalry amongst the senators and envy from the people, when they should behold one, elevated to the degree of a king, leveled within the space of a day to the condition of a private citizen. This form of government is termed, by the Romans, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... time, just as fresh and beautiful seem to us the brick walls and the busy streets where our lot is cast, and our interests run. There is no condition in life of which we can say exclusively "It is good for us to be here." Our course is appointed through vicissitude,—our discipline is in alternations; and we can build no abiding tabernacles ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... That draw back baffled but to hurl again, 315 Snatched up in wrath and horrible turmoil, Mountain on mountain, as the Titans erst, My brethren, scaling the high seat of Jove, Heaved Pelion upon Ossa's shoulders broad In vain emprise. The moon will come and go 320 With her monotonous vicissitude; Once beautiful, when I was free to walk Among my fellows, and to interchange The influence benign of loving eyes, But now by aged use grown wearisome;— 325 False thought! most false! for how could I endure These crawling centuries of lonely woe Unshamed by weak complaining, ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... rainbow appear together. There is wisdom in the saying of Feltham, that the whole creation is kept in order by discord, and that vicissitude maintains the world. Many evils bring many blessings. Manna drops in ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... still more slender? Could I rely upon the permanence of her equanimity and her docility to my instructions? What qualities might not time unfold, and how little was I qualified to estimate the character of one whom no vicissitude or hardship had approached before the death of her father,—whose ignorance was, indeed, great, when it could justly be said even ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... Throne; it hath fifty words, bearing in each fifty blessings." Q "What sign or verse hath in it nine signs or wonders?" "That in which quoth Allah Almighty, 'Verily, in the creation of the Heaven and the Earth: and in the vicissitude of night, and day; and in the ship which saileth through the sea laden with what is profitable for mankind; and in the rain-water which God sendeth down from Heaven, quickening thereby the dead ground and replenishing the same with all sorts of cattle; and in the change of winds and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... was unpremeditated, and caused by an accidental over-dose of prussic-acid, which she was in the habit of taking for spasms. She was found alone, and nearly dead, behind the door of her apartment. Alas, poor L.E.L.! It was certainly a strange and wild vicissitude of fate that made it the duty of this respectable African merchant, in company with men of similar fitness for the task, to "sit" upon the body—say, rather, on the heart—of a creature so delicate, ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... lot of man when considered in his relations to creatures and to the world. It is a lot full of uncertainty, of instability, of vicissitude; but this should not make us skeptical or cynical; it affords no justification for pessimism. It is a condition arising, on the one hand, from the very nature of limited beings, and on the other, from the vast potentialities of our souls, ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... honor, that warm the very soul to read them. These have furnished themes for national plays and poems, or have been celebrated in those all-pervading ballads which are as the life-breath of the people, and thus have continued to exercise an influence on the national character which centuries of vicissitude and decline have not been able to destroy; so that, with all their faults, and they are many, the Spaniards, even at the present day, are on many points the most high-minded and proud-spirited people of Europe. ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... edicts will be continued in spite of the demonstrations that not even a pretext for them has been given by the United States, and of the fair and liberal attempt to induce a revocation of them, can not be anticipated. Assuring myself that under every vicissitude the determined spirit and united councils of the nation will be safeguards to its honor and its essential interests, I repair to the post assigned me with no other discouragement than what springs from my own inadequacy to its high duties. If I do not sink under the weight of this deep ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... unpracticed in the world to make my skill subordinate to my chief's, and beat him at every game with as little compunction as though he were only my equal, till, at last, vexed at his want of success, and tired of a contest that offered no vicissitude of fortune, he would frequently cease playing, to chat over the events of the time, and the chances of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... shameless profligacy had been the rule and boast; discountenancing vice and impiety by her marked reprobation, and reserving all her favor and protection for genius and patriotism, and honor and virtue. Surrounded at a later period by unexampled dangers and calamities, she showed herself equal to every vicissitude of fortune, and superior to its worst frowns. If her judgment occasionally erred, it was in cases where alternatives of evil were alone offered to her choice, and in which it is even now scarcely possible to decide what course would have been wiser or safer than that which she adopted. ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... happiness. From the cottage cradled on the Shannon's breast to his later home in the poetic solitude of sweet Adare; from the three-cornered garret in the London back street to the tables of the rich and the titled, he had experienced every vicissitude between the antithetical extremes of joy and sorrow. When, at length, the final step was taken, it was not the rash or eccentric choice of momentary impulse, but the matured result of wise and cautious deliberation. He prepared to enter the noble ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... assigned him a task disagreeable to his inclination, a calculation according to the rules of astrology, he made no scruple of turning against her, and affirming that he should henceforth hold her for a cruel and perfidious Jezebel. After a life of storms and perpetual vicissitude, he died in 1534, ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... strange vicissitude rolled over the career of our heroines. Some thousands of pounds gilded the path they passed over. With all the recklessness of youth, they squandered their ill-gotten money. Many a poor ruined family eked out a miserable existence, whilst ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... York, and in that journal, at the date of this writing, he continues to wield his trenchant pen on behalf of the Irish cause. To that cause, through all the lapse of time, and change of scene, and vicissitude of fortune which he has known, his heart has remained for ever true. He has suffered much for it; that he may live to see it triumphant is a prayer which finds an echo in the hearts of all ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... Syrian, whose youth had been spent in pillage and bloodshed. The eldest of the congregation (it was that old slave) opened to them his arms; they fled to the shelter—they crept to his breast—and his hard features smiled as he caressed them. And then these bold and fervent men, nursed in vicissitude, beaten by the rough winds of life—men of mailed and impervious fortitude, ready to affront a world, prepared for torment and armed for death—men, who presented all imaginable contrast to the weak nerves, the light hearts, the tender fragility of childhood, crowded ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... in their train. Vicissitude Had left these tinkling to the invaders' ear, And ravaged street, and ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... of wind and wet, Into his sanctum, where choice fare was spread, And cosy comfort ready to receive Young Ninety-Two, and give him a "send-off" Such as should strengthen and encourage him To make fair start, and face those many moons Of multiform vicissitude with pluck, Good hope and patient pertinacity. And when men sought the Modern MERLIN's ear And asked him what these matters might portend, The shining angel, and the naked Child Descending in the glory of the seas, He laughed, as is his wont, and answered them In riddling ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, Jan. 2, 1892 • Various
... predestined ways— When shame that grows from want of money comes, And sets its brand upon a husband's brow, And makes him walk an alien in the streets: One faithful face, on which a light divine Becomes a glory when vicissitude Is in its darkest mood—one face, I say, Marks not the fallings-off that others see, Seeks not to know the thoughts that others think, Cares not to hear the words that others say: But, through her deep and self-sufficing love, She only sees the bright-eyed youth that won Her maiden heart ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... I have suffered, and what my Brother Mad-man has done to undo himself, and every body who was so unlucky to have the least Concern with him, I could not but be movingly touch'd at so extraordinary a Vicissitude of Fortune, to see a great Man fallen from that shining Light, in which I beheld him in the House of Lords, to such a Degree of Obscurity, that I have observ'd the meanest Commoner here decline, and the Few he would sometimes fasten on, to be tired of his Company; for you know he is ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... Avignon; Villot, a Paris student; Caillette had received the spirited education of a soldier in the household of his benefactor, Diane's father. And as for the others—how varied had been their careers!—lives of hazard and vicissitude; scapegraces and adventurers—existing literally ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... of sorrow and of mirth, Through days of death and days of birth, Through every swift vicissitude Of changeful time, unchanged it has stood, And as if, like God, it all things saw, It calmly repeats those ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... then dawning heresy had become broad day; when Luther had gone to his rest—and there had gathered about his name the hate which mean men feel for an enemy who has proved too strong for them—a passing vicissitude in the struggle brought the emperor at the head of his ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... recollecting, many, I question not, are experiencing the same tragical vicissitude. The eyes of the Sublime Being, who sits upon the circle of the earth, and views all its inhabitants with one incomprehensive glance, even now behold as many tents in affliction as overwhelmed the Egyptians in that fatal night when the destroying angel sheathed his arrows in all the pride ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... of no vicissitude in life in which Roosevelt's participation would not have been welcome. If it were danger, there could be no more valiant comrade than he; if it were sport, he was a sports man; if it were mirth, he was a fountain of mirth, crystal pure and ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... Of Usury Of Youth and Age Of Beauty Of Deformity Of Building Of Gardens Of Negotiating Of Followers and Friends Of Suitors Of Studies Of Faction Of Ceremonies and Respects Of Praise Of Vain-glory Of Honor and Reputation Of Judicature Of Anger Of Vicissitude of Things ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... This vicissitude is so observable, that it would be unnecessary to dwell upon it were it, sic not of such ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... in the air. Another Frenchman, the classical scholar, Louis Le Roy, translator of Plato and Aristotle, put forward similar views in a work of less celebrity, On the Vicissitude or Variety of the Things in the Universe. [Footnote: De la vicissitude ou variete des choses en l'univers, 1577, 2nd ed. (which I have used), 1584.] It contains a survey of great periods in which particular peoples attained an exceptional state ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... a measure to control its destinies by means of its passions. A few wise men have handed down the knowledge of the brick liver to each other from generation to generation, but the rest of the inhabitants are ignorant of its existence. They alone know that every vicissitude of the city's condition is traceable to that source—its sadness, its merriment, its carnivals and its lents, its health and its disease, its prosperity and the hideous plagues which at distant intervals kill one in ten of the population. Is ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... day varies the character of the range, exposed to every vicissitude of temperature and climate. White billows of fog beat upon the mountain tops like a silent sea, and blot out the landscape with an impenetrable veil. Thunder echoes through the rocky caves with incessant reverberations, and rain settles down in a drenching flood. The chill ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... (smiling). I hear the very Gordon that of old Was wont to preach to me, now once more preaching; 75 I know well, that all sublunary things Are still the vassals of vicissitude. The unpropitious gods demand their tribute. This long ago the ancient Pagans knew: And therefore of their own accord they offered 80 To themselves injuries, so to atone The jealousy of their divinities: And ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... their example; and that during the period of my residence at Constantinople, I have passed my time in writing a detailed history of my life, which, although that of a very obscure and ordinary individual, is still so full of vicissitude and adventure, that I think it would not fail to create an interest if published in Europe? I offer it to you; and in so doing, I assure you that I wish to show you the confidence I place in your generosity, for I never would have offered it to any one else. Will ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... periodical spleen. Though in the bitter months, surveying my attenuated body, I exclaim with the melancholy prophet, "My leanness, my leanness! woe is me!" and though, adverting to the state of my mind, I behold it "all in a robe of darkest grain," yet when April and May reign in sweet vicissitude, I give, like Horace, care to the winds, and perceive the whole system excited by the potent stimulus of sunshine.... I have myself in winter felt hostile to those whom I could smile upon in May, and clasp ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... provincial; but if the measure of deeds be the spirit in which they are done, that fidelity to instant duty, which, according to Herbert, makes an action fine, then his length of years should be very precious to us for its lesson. Talleyrand, whose life may be compared with his for the strange vicissitude which it witnessed, carried with him out of the world the respect of no man, least of all his own; and how many of our own public men have we seen whose old age but accumulated a disregard which they would gladly have exchanged for oblivion! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... at this moment a profound conviction which never again deserted him, that the conduct which would violate the affections of the heart, or the dictates of the conscience, however it may lead to immediate success, is a fatal error. Conscious that he was perhaps verging on some painful vicissitude of his life, he devoted himself to a love that seemed hopeless, and to a fame that was ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... The history of this expedition has become an important portion of the history of the nation, and its details, embracing an account of his own captivity and sufferings in Mexico, were written by Mr. Kendall in one of the most spirited and graphic books of military and wilderness adventure, vicissitude, and endurance, that has been furnished in our times. The work was published in two volumes, by the Harpers, in 1844. It has since passed through many editions, and for the fidelity and felicity, the bravery and bon hommie, that mark all its pages, it is likely ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... by being known. He will always give you good advice. Do not think I say so in flattery. No! No! It is from my heart. He will be like his uncle, equally wise and good. . . . He will be of the greatest use to you, and will keep well at your side if a time of vicissitude should come, such as I hope may never be—but, after all, no ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... VI., head of the Holy Romish Empire at this time, was a handsome man to look upon; whose life, full of expense, vicissitude, futile labor and adventure, did not prove of much use to the world. Describable as a laborious futility rather. He was second son of that little Leopold, the solemn little Herr in red stockings, who had such ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... rounds; for it is not to be supposed, that in the progress of the race the antagonists always continued in the same order in which they started. They often changed places in a short interval of time, and in that variety and vicissitude consisted all ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... his slumbers sound, Though Confiscation's vultures hover round. The needy traveller, serene and gay, Walks the wild heath, and sings his toil away. Does envy seize thee? crush th' upbraiding joy; Increase his riches, and his peace destroy; Now fears in dire vicissitude invade, The rustling brake alarms, and quiv'ring shade; Nor light nor darkness bring his pain relief, One shows the plunder, and one hides the thief. Yet still one gen'ral cry the skies assails, And pain and grandeur load the tainted gales; Few know the toiling statesman's ...
— English Satires • Various
... as the inheritance of his father. The greatness of a servant, who was named perfidious because he was successful, awakened the jealousy of the emperor Anastasius; and a war was kindled on the Dacian frontier, by the protection which the Gothic king, in the vicissitude of human affairs, had granted to one of the descendants of Attila. Sabinian, a general illustrious by his own and father's merit, advanced at the head of ten thousand Romans; and the provisions and arms, which filled a long train of wagons, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... Republic!—'Brutus, thou sleepest!'" show the lengths to which, in theory at least, his political zeal extended. Since then, he had but rarely turned his thoughts to politics; the tame, ordinary vicissitude of public affairs having but little in it to stimulate a mind like his, whose sympathies nothing short of a crisis seemed worthy to interest. This the present state of Italy gave every promise of affording him; and, in addition to ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... veracity! and therefore, as I am convinced the public would not believe the wonders I have witnessed, I confine the recital of my adventures to the social circle. But what profession affords such scope for varied incident as that of the soldier? Change of clime, danger, vicissitude, love, war, privation one day, profusion the next, darkling dangers, and sparkling joys! Zounds! there's nothing like the life of a soldier! and, by the powers! I'll give you a song ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... Ignorance that I confess myself to be, and could then, like me, have seen Mr. Hastings make his entrance into this court, and looked at him when he was brought to that bar; not even you, Mr. Windham, could then have reflected on such a vicissitude for him, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... attended with so much vicissitude, alternate defeat and victory, and stained by horrid atrocities, was at its height when Henry IV. was a boy, and had no thought of ever being King of France. His father, Antoine de Bourbon, although King of Navarre and a prince of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... and while they lived on the paternal farm they kept their foolish oath with the stubbornness of a slow country stock, despite the alternate coaxing and chastisement of their parents, notwithstanding the perpetual everyday contact of their lives, through every vicissitude of season and weather, of sowing and reaping, of sun and shade, ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... all, my hymns shall rise Daily to thy gracious throne: Thither let my asking eyes Turn unwearied—righteous One! Through life's strange vicissitude There reposing all my care, Trusting still through ill and good, Fixed and cheered ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... Karnak and Luxor. Dead, respond in chorus the seventy pyramids on the east side the Nile. Assyrian Empire, stand up! Dead, answer the charred ruins of Nineveh. After 600 years of opportunity, dead. Israelitish Kingdom, stand up! After 250 years of miraculous vicissitude, and Divine intervention, and heroic achievement, and appalling depravity, dead. Phoenicia, stand up! After inventing the alphabet and giving it to the world, and sending out her merchant caravans to Central ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... among the motives which, constitutional differences aside, would appeal with about the same force to the two sexes. But the great excess both of suicide (3 or 4 men to 1 woman) and of crime (4 or 5 men to 1 woman) in men, while directly conditioned by a manner of life more subject to vicissitude and catastrophe, is still remotely due to the male, katabolic tendency which has historically eventuated in a life of this nature ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... in inexpressible anguish, when they constructed a smaller and more manageable raft, in the hope of directing it to the shore; but on trial it was found insufficient. On the seventeenth day, a brig was seen; which, after exciting the vicissitude of hope and fear, proved to be the Argus, sent out in quest of the Medusa. The inhabitants of the raft were all received on board, and were again very nearly perishing, by a fire which broke out in the night. The six boats ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... abandoned itself like an Orphic worshipper to the guidance of an unseen mysteriarch. This acquiescence in the swift succession of calm to fury and stress, resembled the quiet which may be conceived to follow sudden death; the heightened sense of vicissitude in things summoned up and sustained a solemn mood. All the while that we lay charmed and half oppressed in this atmosphere as of an under-world, the clouds were drawing forward on their course; and as their last fringe trailed slowly by and the ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... shone. But if with prosperity the gods would also bestow upon us sound judgment, we should not only consider those things which have happened, but those also which may occur. Even if you should forget all others, I am myself a sufficient instance of every vicissitude of fortune. For me, whom a little while ago you saw advancing my standards to the walls of Rome, after pitching my camp between the Anio and your city, you now behold here, bereft of my two brothers, men of consummate bravery, and most renowned generals, standing ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... terrible bereavement. For weeks he was a maniac; and, though Providence spared him again to us, and his mind, thanks to God, is again whole, he is the victim of a profound melancholy, that seems to defy alike medical skill and worldly vicissitude.' ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... dirty clothes. In the sleeping apartment, the parents and their children, boys and girls, are indiscriminately mixed, and frequently a lodger sleeps in the same and only room, which has generally no window,—the openings in the half-thatched roof admitting light, and exposing the family to every vicissitude of the weather. The husband, having no comfort at home, seeks it in the beershop. The children grow up without decency or self-restraint. As for the half-hearted wives and daughters, their lot ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... there, all soaked and bedraggled but still quite legible, I found the cheque, which had been sent to me nearly a month before, and it had been by some accident dropped into the area where it had lain unregarded all this time. There was a feast that night, but the truth is that life was one constant vicissitude, an unfailing series of ups and downs, of jolly happy-go-lucky rejoicings with comrades who were equally careless with myself, and of alternating spells of hardship. "Literature," said Sir Walter, "is an excellent walking stick but a ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... From a foul prison to free air restored. Ought he to thank his kinsman or his wife, Could tears recall him into wretched life? Their sorrow hurts themselves; on him is lost; And worse than both, offends his happy ghost. 1110 What then remains, but, after past annoy, To take the good vicissitude of joy? To thank the gracious gods for what they give, Possess our souls, and while we live, to live? Ordain we then two sorrows to combine, And in one point the extremes of grief to join; That thence resulting joy ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... circumstances, pushed on, the chase would prove an indefinitely prolonged, if not a hopeless one; nor could any crew endure for so long a period, such an unintermitted, intense straining at the oar; a thing barely tolerable only in some one brief vicissitude. The ship itself, then, as it sometimes happens, offered the most promising intermediate means of overtaking the chase. Accordingly, the boats now made for her, and were soon swayed up to their cranes —the two parts of the wrecked boat having been ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... death's sick delay Or seizure of malign vicissitude Can rob this body of honour, or denude This soul of wedding-raiment worn to-day? For lo! even now my lady's lips did play With these my lips such consonant interlude As laurelled Orpheus longed for when he wooed The half-drawn hungering face with ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... went home and, sending for Bowers, the two sat talking earnestly. For Bowers it had been a day of vicissitude which he was only partially competent to face. Rooted out of a small practice in a small village, and caught up in the sweep of irresistible progress, he had never had to fight for his point. The weight and momentum Clark put before him were too great ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... immense hour of my life. No vicissitude, no calamity of this mortal state, no experience that may be to come, can ever have the force, the magnitude of this. All feelings, but a child's feelings, were comparatively new to me, and here, at one moment, I had put into my hand the plummet that sounded hell; ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... clouds. These last, tending uniformly to the centre, compressed each other at a certain distance from it, and, like the stones in an arch of masonry, prevented each other's nearer approach. That island, however, does not experience the vicissitude of land and sea breezes, being too small, and too lofty, and situated in a latitude where the trade or perpetual winds prevail in their utmost force. In sandy countries, the effect of the sun's rays penetrating deeply, a more permanent heat is produced, the consequence of which should be the ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... the Wind I turned to share the transport—O! with whom But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb, That spot which no vicissitude can find? Love, faithful love, recall'd thee to my mind— But how could I forget thee? Through what power, Even for the least division of an hour, Have I been so beguiled as to be blind To my most grievous loss?—That thought's return Was the worst pang that ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... truth he was a strange and wayward wight, Fond of each gentle, and each dreadful scene, In darkness, and in storm he found delight; Nor less than when on ocean-wave serene The southern sun diffus'd his dazzling sheen. Even sad vicissitude amus'd his soul; And if a sigh would sometimes intervene, And down his cheek a tear of pity roll, A sigh, a tear, so sweet, he wish'd ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... buried with little ceremony, and never more thought of until the reign of King William, when, in the strange vicissitude of neglect and vigor, of good and ill success that attended his wars, in the year 1695, the trade was distressed beyond all example of former sufferings by the piracies of the French cruisers. This suffering incensed, and, as it should seem, very justly incensed, the House of Commons. In this ferment, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... mystery in the middle of the floor, or hear some awful sound from its unknown depths. The very shadows on the walls thrown up wildly by the expiring firelight were objects of grotesque terror. Never—never—in her whole youth of strange vicissitude, had the nerves of this brave girl been so tremendously ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... were mistaken. An invalid, with shadowy form and trembling limbs, when I left New England, I awakened to a new life in Minnesota. "Take a gun on your shoulders, kill and eat the wild game of the prairies," said my medical friends. I anticipated vicissitude and deprivation in following such counsel; but these toughened my weak frame, and added zest to frontier labors and pleasures; for I was soon able to do a man's share of the former, and in threading forest and prairie I was brought into delightful nearness to nature in its ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... arrest of Fantomas was their one aim—the young magistrate had gradually come to believe in what had seemed to him nothing but the detective's hypothesis. Open-minded, gifted with an alert intelligence, Fuselier had carefully followed the investigations of Juve and Fandor. He knew every detail, every vicissitude connected with the tracking of this elusive bandit. Since then the magistrate had taken the deepest interest in the pursuit of the criminal. Thanks to his support, Juve had been enabled to take various measures, otherwise almost impossible, avoid the many ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... a whole bears other testimony which is worth considering here. Through every vicissitude of women's education there have always been the few who were exceptional in mental and moral strength, and they have held on their way, and achieved a great deal, and left behind them names deserving ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... Holcroft partially shook off his stupor, and began the experiment of keeping house and maintaining his dairy with hired help. For a long year he had struggled on through all kinds of domestic vicissitude, conscious all the time that things were going from bad to worse. His house was isolated, the region sparsely settled, and good help difficult to be obtained under favoring auspices. The few respectable women in the neighborhood who occasionally "lent a hand" in other homes ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... and comprehend The volume of vicissitude, and take Account of loving, for each other's sake, And ask how love began and how will end (If there be any end of love, O friend Of my worst hours and best desires!)—and stake Our all upon the sweetness and the ache Of what men's stories and ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... consisted of Nine Kingdoms, all which had their several Kings; but now by the vicissitude of Times and Things, they are all reduced under one King, who is an absolute Tyrant, and Rules the most arbitrarily of any King in the World. We will first speak of him as to his Personal Capacity, and next as to ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... renewing, transmutation, conversion, novelty, revolution, variation, diversity, regeneration, transformation, variety, innovation, renewal, transition, vicissitude. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... Self-government. It is true that the political wisdom of nations does not improvise itself, nor reveal itself all at once in its fulness, as Minerva of old sprang from the head of Jupiter, clad in complete armour, but that it develops itself during their historic progress amidst vicissitude, and by turning to profit the lessons of trial and experience. It is this that gives us the hope that in future our nation, enlightened by the painful events of which we are now reaping the sad fruits, will become more clear-sighted, ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... itself, that some geniuses must creep hand and knee through mire, heart pierced with the bramble of experience, up over the jagged pathways to that still place where skies are clear at last. Thompson is the last among the great ones to have known the dire vicissitude, direst, if legends are true, that can befall a human being. We have the silence of his saviour friends, the Meynells, saying so much more than their few public words, tender but so careful. What they knew, and ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... Selection, to sit down with patience in the tedium of safety; the voices of its fathers call it forth. Already in our society as it exists, the bourgeois is too much cottoned about for any zest in living; he sits in his parlour out of reach of any danger, often out of reach of any vicissitude but one of health; and there he yawns. If the people in the next villa took pot-shots at him, he might be killed indeed, but so long as he escaped he would find his blood oxygenated and his views of the world brighter. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... expenditures of the year, and that in two successive years it was found necessary to resort to loans to meet the engagements of the nation. The returning tides of the succeeding years replenished the public coffers until they have again begun to feel the vicissitude of a decline. To produce these alternations of fullness and exhaustion the relative operation of abundant or unfruitful seasons, the regulations of foreign governments, political revolutions, the prosperous or decaying condition of manufactures, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Quincy Adams • John Quincy Adams
... elusive facts concerning the human constitution and character and the working of the human will, were eminently characteristic of the religious life of the American church. In the times when that life was stirred to its most strenuous activity, it was marked by the vicissitude of prolonged passions of painful sensibility at the consciousness of sin, and ecstasies of delight in the contemplation of the infinity of God and the glory of the Saviour and his salvation. Every one who is conversant with the religious biography of the generations before our own, knows of ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... too, of the Lacedaemonians, Conon the Athenian and Pharnabazus being his admirals. For Conon, after the battle of Aegospotami, resided in Cyprus; not that he consulted his own mere security, but looking for a vicissitude of affairs with no less hope than men wait for a change of wind at sea. And perceiving that his skill wanted power, and that the king's power wanted a wise man to guide it, he sent him an account by letter of his projects, and ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... eloquent story of human vicissitude and uncertainty that was told without a word of regret or repining, and as though it were a tale of no interest to anybody. This poor, humble woman before me, whose back was still aching from the movement of bending and lifting the flail hour after hour, was, by right of ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... perform it? "I am the Lord, I change not," that is his name, Mal. iii. 6. "The counsel of the Lord standeth for ever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations," Psal. xxxiii. 11. Men change their mind oftener than their garments. Poor vain man, even in his best estate, is changeableness, and vicissitude itself, altogether vanity! And this ariseth partly from the imperfection of his understanding, and his ignorance because he does not understand what may fall out. There are many things secret and hidden, which ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... year produces negotiations of peace, or preparations for war, new schemes and different measures, by which expenses are sometimes increased, and sometimes retrenched. In such a nation, every thing is in a state of perpetual vicissitude; because its measures are seldom the effects of choice, but of necessity, arising from the change ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... can never harmonize; and even had policy kept Her Highness from avowing a change of sentiments, it never could have continued her enthusiasm, which was augmented, and not diminished, by the fall of her royal friend. An attachment which holds through every vicissitude must be deeply rooted from conviction of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... rise from penury to comfort, and it is the nations in which these qualities are most diffused that in the long run are the most prosperous. Chance and circumstance may do much. A happy climate, a fortunate annexation, a favourable vicissitude in the course of commerce, may vastly influence the prosperity of nations; anarchy, agitation, unjust laws, and fraudulent enterprise may offer many opportunities of individual or even of class gains; but ultimately it will be found that the nations in which ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... may suggest to him the vicissitude of day and night, the change of seasons, with all that variety of scenes which diversify the face of nature, and fill the mind with a perpetual succession of beautiful and ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... of November, and proceeded to Malines, 14 miles distant, formerly one of the greatest cities of Belgium, but now like too many other once celebrated places in that country, affording a melancholy contrast to its former splendour, and proving that in the vicissitude of all sublunary affairs, cities, as well as their inhabitants, ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... became his own. While still a child he accepted from his father, in presence of the withering heads of the conspirators of Amboise, the oath of immitigable vengeance. Pursuits, escapes, the camp, the battle-field, the prison, the court made up no small part of his life of vicissitude and of unalterable resolve. He roused Henri of Navarre from the lethargy of pleasure; he warned the King against the crime of apostasy; he dreaded the mass, but could cheerfully have accepted the stake. Extreme in his rage of party, ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... no shipwreck startles us by its horrors: but the rainbow lifts its head in the cloud, and the breeze sighs through the withered fern. No sad vicissitude of fate, no overwhelming catastrophe in nature deforms his page: but the dewdrop glitters on the bending flower, the tear ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... home, and I remembered then Thy faithful fondness: for not mean the joy, Returning at the pleasant holidays, I felt from thy dumb welcome. Pensively Sometimes have I remarked the slow decay, Feeling myself changed, too, and musing much, On many a sad vicissitude of life! Ah, poor companion! when thou followedst last Thy master's parting footsteps to the gate Which closed forever on him, thou didst lose Thy truest friend, and none was left to plead For the old age of brute fidelity! ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... ever moved before, in any vicissitude of his lithe and agile youth, he clambered up, not down, and crouching back from sight upon the jutting top of the window, he sent his coat sailing ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... the last chapter, lost him for two or three years. During this time Antony himself was involved in a great variety of difficulties and dangers, and passed through many eventful scenes, which, however, can not here be described in detail. His life, during this period, was full of vicissitude and excitement, and was spent probably in alternations of remorse for the past and anxiety for the future. On landing at Tyre, he was at first extremely perplexed whether to go to Asia Minor or to Rome. His presence was imperiously demanded in both places. The ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... Jupiter, and ye gods that are judges of good and evil actions, ye know that not without just cause, but constrained by necessity, we have been forced to revenge ourselves on the city of our unrighteous and wicked enemies. But if, the the vicissitude of things, there by any calamity due, to counter-balance this great felicity, I beg that it may be diverted from the city and army of the Romans, and fall, with as little hurt as may be, upon my own head." Having said these words, and just turning about (as the custom of the Romans is ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... life which began at the Globe Tavern was destined to end at the White House, after years of vicissitude and serious national trouble. Children were born unto them, and all but the eldest died. Great responsibilities were laid upon Lincoln and even though he met them bravely it was inevitable that ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed |
