"Vicissitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... using as a model the character of one, who, last Wednesday, we put away for the resurrection. About sixty years ago, just before the day of their marriage, my father and mother stood up in the old meeting-house, at Somerville, to take the vows of a Christian. Through a long life of vicissitude she lived blamelessly and usefully, and came to her end in peace. No child of want ever came to her door, and was turned away. No stricken soul ever appealed to her and was not comforted. No sinner ever asked her the way to be saved, and was not ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... (for Memory can) How thy first years in even current ran; How every pleasure, every good, combined To feast with countless sweets thy tranquil mind: Each passing joy a kindred joy pursued, Nor ask'd the aid of sad vicissitude. Swift flew thy boat, thro' isles with verdure crown'd, Heaven's smile above, and prosperous seas around: O'er the smooth waves Hope's cheering zephyr pass'd, And every wave seem'd smoother ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... 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 ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... out-door pleasures; but with it came a dismal rain-storm, which left the ground as 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. By 10 A.M. the whirling flakes ceased, but a more sullen, leaden, ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... of that easy, wayward, truant class whom the world is accustomed to designate as nobody's enemies but their own. Bred to a profession for which he never qualified himself, and reared in the expectation of a fortune he has never inherited, he has undergone every vicissitude of which such an existence is capable. He and his younger brother, both orphans from their childhood, were educated by a wealthy relative, who taught them to expect an equal division of his property; but too indolent to court, and too honest to flatter, the elder gradually lost ground in ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... comprehensiveness and amplitude they filled the imagination. I was unwilling to believe that in no region of the world, or at no period could these ideas be realized. It was plain that the nations of Europe were tending to greater depravity, and would be the prey of perpetual vicissitude. All individual attempts at their reformation would be fruitless. He therefore who desired the diffusion of right principles, to make a just system be adopted by a whole community, ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... superior enemy, is unavoidably exposed to excessive fatigue, and extreme hardship. The effect of these hardships was much increased by the privations under which the American troops suffered. While in almost continual motion, wading deep rivers, and encountering every vicissitude of the seasons, they were without tents, nearly without shoes, or winter clothes, and ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... rude the sound. All at her work the village maiden sings; Nor while she turns the giddy wheel around, Revolves the sad vicissitude of things[368].' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... This vicissitude is so observable, that it would be unnecessary to dwell upon it were it, sic not of such infinite ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... the means by which the great masses of men 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 ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... Voltaire's facility was his greatest fault; better he had elaborated his periods, like Rousseau; who, notwithstanding, wrote too much. The latter, however, of all modern writers, best knew the value of his own mind. His prime of life was passed in vicissitude and study. He did not set himself about writing books for mankind, until he knew what they possessed and what they wanted. It was his opinion that a writer who would do any good should stand upon the pinnacle of his age, and from thence ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... have seen her under every variety of circumstances, placed in peculiar situations and fearful positions, from nearly the antarctic to the tropic, cooled by the frigid clime of the extreme of South America, or parched by the heats of North Australia; under every vicissitude, from the grave to the gay, I have struggled along with her; and after wandering together for eighteen years, a fact unprecedented in the service, I naturally parted from her with regret. Her movements, latterly, have been anxiously watched, and the chances are that her ribs will ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... 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 ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... great nobles, whose mutability of faith had so happily corresponded with every ecclesiastical vicissitude of the last three reigns, political and personal considerations may well be supposed to have held the first place; and though the old religion might still be endeared to them by many cherished associations ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... and days of birth She plays as if she owned the earth. Through every swift vicissitude She drums as if it did her good, And still she sits from morn till night And plunks away with main and might, Do, re, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... resurrection. About eighty years ago, and just before their marriage day, my father and mother stood up in the old meeting-house at Somerville, New Jersey, and took upon them the vows of the Christian. Through a long life of vicissitude she lived harmlessly and usefully, and came to her end in peace. No child of want ever came to her door and was turned empty away. No one in sorrow came to her but was comforted. No one asked her the way to be saved but she pointed him to the cross. When the angel of life came ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... 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 ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... diary. To re-chronicle any part of what is so well known would be idle in the extreme. Of the editors personally, their lives, since they became mature and settled, have presented few events such as are not common to all men,—little of vicissitude, beyond that of pockets now full and now empty,—nothing but a steady performance of duty, an exertion, whenever necessary, of high ability, and the gradual accumulation through these of a deeply felt esteem among all the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... penetration of character was so remarkable that all stood in fear of him; yet fear gave place to admiration. Never had a monarch more devoted servants and followers than David in his palmy days; he was the nation's idol and pride for thirty years. In every successive vicissitude he was great; and were it not for his cruelty in war and severity to his enemies, and his one great lapse into criminal self-indulgence, his reign would have been faultless. Contrast David with the other conquerors of the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... intellectual engine of the time. The serious thinking of the Puritans was given almost exclusively to religion; the other world was all their art. The daily secular events of life, the aspects of nature, the vicissitude of the seasons, were important enough to find record in print only in so far as they manifested God's dealings with his people. So much was the sermon depended upon to furnish literary food that it was the general custom of serious minded ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... 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 ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 1: James Madison • Edited by James D. Richardson
... 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 previously secured by her—and then ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... not previously wanted) in the well-known soul: new notes, but with the added charm of likeness to already loved ones, deeper, more resonant, or perhaps of unsuspected high unearthly purity, in the dear voice. Absence may do it, or change of occupation; or sudden vicissitude of fortune; or merely the reading of a certain book (how many friends may not Tolstoi's "Resurrection" have thus revealed to one another!), or the passing of some public crisis like the Dreyfus business. What! after these years of familiarity, we did not ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... oftener accelerated disaster. For this reason William was a general, and Louis never more than an adventurer; a sure and powerful arm, if only it were directed by a wise head. Louis' pledge once given was good forever; his alliances survived every vicissitude, for they were mostly formed in a pressing moment of necessity, and misfortune binds more firmly than thoughtless joy. He loved his brother as dearly as he did his cause, and for ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... like a history of the Roman Catholic Church, and the relics of bishops and saints meet us at every turn. As early as the third century there are records of its conversion to Christianity; it has passed through every vicissitude of war, pillage, and revolution, until in these latter days it has earned the guide-book appellation of 'a semi-clerical, semi-manufacturing, quiet, clean, agreeable town.' There are about 9000 inhabitants, including ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... their narrative, they met in New York one Ephraim Herrman, a 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 dates from his appointment ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... too 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 ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... 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
... 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 human sacrifices ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... 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 one ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... 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 ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... power of Great Britain could prevent the kingdom of Naples from passing from one vicissitude into another. The French took possession of it in January 1799, and established what they called the Parthenopean Republic. Nelson helped to retake it in June of the same year, and put the itinerant King on the throne. The Neapolitans occupied Rome on the 30th September, ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... selections, entitled, "Aspirations of the World"; and in 1871, a volume of short biographies, entitled "Good Wives," and dedicated, to Mr. Child: "To my husband, this book is affectionately inscribed, by one who, through every vicissitude, has found in his kindness and worth, her purest happiness and most constant incentive ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... in the limelight of '98 can tell the tale to-day? Ladue is dead, leaving little behind. Big Alec MacDonald, after lavishing a dozen fortunes on his friends, dies at last, almost friendless and alone. Nigger Jim and Stillwater Willie—in what back slough of vicissitude do they languish to-day? Dick Low lies in a drunkard's grave. Skookum Jim would fain qualify for one. Dawson Charlie, reeling home from a debauch, drowns in the river. In impecunious despair, Harry Waugh hangs himself. Charlie Anderson, ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... 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 ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... that of the feelings,—had been the links that bound him to the enthusiastic correspondent revealed in the gifted beauty; and the gloomy circumstances connected with her early fate had left deep furrows in his memory. Time and vicissitude had effaced the wounds, and the Light of the Beautiful dawned once more in the face of Evelyn. Valerie de Ventadour had been but the fancy of a roving breast. Alice, the sweet Alice!—her, indeed, in the first flower of youth, he had loved with a boy's romance. He had loved ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... dislocate society; they only alter the incidence of existing dislocation; and all this works steadily towards a restoration—if not of some old Saturnian or Jahvistic Paradise-idyll, at least of a Divine intention and human ideal. Vicissitude of fortune is the very hand of "the Eternal, not ourselves, that maketh for righteousness," the manifestation of the Power behind moral evolution; and we may safely trust the harmony of Universal legislation for this antidote to a grievous disease; we may ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... the fame and the 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 upon the other, ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... of the lucidity, the power of spirit of this saint, explaining the most obscure vicissitude of the soul and the least known, catching and following the operations of God, who dealt with that soul, pressed it in His hands, squeezed it like a sponge, then let it suck up again, fill itself out with sorrows, then wrung it again; making ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... one of us all, Eros, who anticipated this change. High up above the glaciers of Olympus, where the warm crystal shone like ice, and the faint cumuli rained jasmine on us, and the blue light was like the cold acid of a fruit, in the midst of our incomparable felicity I pondered on the vicissitude ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... his frequent attacks of gout the Empress ministered to him night and day in his own rooms with the tender devotion of a mother to a child. Two children were born to them, a son and a daughter, the latter of whom, after a life of strange romance and vicissitude, ended her days in a loathsome dungeon of the fortress of Saints Peter and Paul, the victim of Catherine II.'s vengeance—miserably drowned, so one story goes, by an inundation ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... advertisement Solon had before times given him; which was, that no man, what cheerefull and blandishing countenance soever fortune shewed them, may rightly deeme himselfe happie, till such time as he have passed the last day of his life, by reason of the uncertaintie and vicissitude of humane things, which by a very light motive, and slight occasion, are often changed from one to another cleane contrary state and degree. And therefore Agesilaus answered one that counted the King of Persia happy, because being very young, ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... who saw him wept; And sternly they conveyed him to the tower, Where to four columns, deeply fixed in earth, And reaching to the skies, of iron formed, They bound him; merciless they were to him Who had given splendour to a mighty throne. Mournful vicissitude! Thus pain and pleasure Successive charm and tear the heart of man; And many a day in that drear solitude, He lingered, shedding tears of blood, till times Of happier omen dawned upon ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... Guide to Holiness says: "We remember a poor woman who had had a life of sore vicissitude which she bore with remarkable Christian cheerfulness; and after a time of the suspension of trial, a bad prospect came in sight. She resorted to a friend to whom she confidingly related the threatening evil, and at parting said, 'Oh pray for us.' The case as it was known was taken immediately ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... others who experience this disconcerting vicissitude—for whom the deductions of science as a moral message are ludicrous, but for whom its homicidal negations prove in the end ineluctable. If this is their permanent, if this is their final condition, they will perhaps deserve ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... the spot. They own and guard it to-day. The interesting reminiscences connected with the early history of the Nurse house have been alluded to. It has witnessed an extraordinary variety of the conditions of domestic vicissitude. Scenes rising before the mind in contemplative retrospection, while gazing upon it, present the extremest contrasts of human experience. On the evening of the 25th of October, 1678, Mary and Elizabeth Nurse were ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... and reverses of earthly vicissitude are spoken and felt here in the sequence of words. Perpetual black-and-white through time; then the settled life and untreacherous peace of eternity. Everywhere in the song the note of heavenly hope interrupts ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... as we 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 ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... Valjean had escaped from the city, and, in the twinkling of an eye, in the time required to lift the cover and to replace it, he had passed from broad daylight to complete obscurity, from midday to midnight, from tumult to silence, from the whirlwind of thunders to the stagnation of the tomb, and, by a vicissitude far more tremendous even than that of the Rue Polonceau, from the most extreme peril ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... son, also, when first I beheld these walls, 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
... Choice, as stated above (Q. 13, A. 1, ad 2; A. 3), follows the judgment of the reason about what is to be done. Now there is much uncertainty in things that have to be done; because actions are concerned with contingent singulars, which by reason of their vicissitude, are uncertain. Now in things doubtful and uncertain the reason does not pronounce judgment, without previous inquiry: wherefore the reason must of necessity institute an inquiry before deciding on the objects of choice; and this inquiry is called ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... agitation. The Prince and his supporters availed themselves of these circumstances to strengthen their party in Parliament and out of doors. The passions of the inexperienced, and the hopes of the discontented, are always on the side of youth and excitement; and every vicissitude in the condition of the King that diminished the prospect of his recovery, augmented the ranks of the Opposition, which now became familiarly known as "the Prince of Wales's Opposition." Mr. Pitt acted throughout ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... 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
... magnificently generous as any mortal well could be, he never granted my wish. Any one else but myself would have been tired, disheartened even; but at Court one must never be discouraged nor give up the game. The atmosphere is rife with vicissitude and change. Monotony would seem to have made there its home; yet no day is quite like another. What one hopes for is too long in coming; and what one never foresees on, a sudden comes ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... carillons in their train. Vicissitude Had left these tinkling to the invaders' ear, And ravaged ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... their native force to these moral facts and considerations, the healthy ethical thinker, recognising in himself an innermost self conscious ego which knows itself persistent and identical amidst the multiplex vicissitude of transient conditions, lies down to die expecting immediately to continue his being's journey elsewhere, in some other guise. Leaving out of view these moral facts and considerations, the materialistic naturalist thinker, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... nodded his head for so 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
... I 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
... country; but, in due 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 ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... serene and gay, Walks the wild heath, and sings his toil away. Does envy seize thee? Crush the upbraiding joy, Increase his riches, and his peace destroy— 40 Now fears in dire vicissitude invade, The rustling brake alarms, and quivering shade; Nor light nor darkness brings his pain relief, One shows the plunder, and one hides the thief. Yet still one general cry the sky assails, And gain and grandeur load the ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... 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 ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... be irresistible, unless aided by the magic of smiles; she knew the power of contrast even in charms; she believed the poets, who certainly understand these things, and who assure us that the very existence of love depends on this blest vicissitude. Convinced, or seemingly convinced, of the folly of that fond melancholy in which she persisted for a week, she next appeared all radiant with joy; and she had reason to be delighted by the effect which this produced. Her husband, who had not yet been long enough her husband to cease to be her ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... of 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 their gold, entrusted to the wretched banker ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... agreed 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 ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... de Cortes, west of Batabano and opposite to the island of Pinos. From thence, believing he should better escape the snares laid for him by the governor, Velasquez, he passed almost clandestinely to the coast of Mexico. Strange vicissitude of events! the empire of Montezuma was shaken by a handful of men who, from the western extremity of the island of Cuba, landed on the coast of Yucatan; and in our days, three centuries later, Yucatan, now a part of the new confederation of the free states of Mexico, has nearly menaced with ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... it, and then sent, as before, to purchase, by begging in the day, the reiteration of the torture in the night. Days of menace, insult, and extortion, nights of bolts, fetters, and flagellation, succeeded to each other in the same round, and for a long time made up all the vicissitude of life ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... tide of Time! through what mysterious change Of hope and fear have our frail barks been driven! For ne'er, before, vicissitude so strange Was to one race of Adam's offspring given. And sure such varied change of sea and heaven, Such unexpected bursts of joy and woe, Such fearful strife as that where we have striven, Succeeding ages ne'er again shall ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... man can render to man. The scheme of our life is providentially arranged with reference to that end; and the thousand shocks, agitations, and moving influences of our experience, the supreme invitations of love, the venom of calumny, and all toil, trial, sudden bereavement, doubt, danger, vicissitude, joy, are hands that shake and voices that assail the lethargy of our deepest powers. Now it is in the power of truth divinely awakened in one soul to assist its awakening in another. For as nothing so quickly arouses us from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... they were right well accustomed. I doubt not, but for this thing, only the honest matrons will sue to you for redress."[499] These were sharp measures; we lose our breath at their rapidity and violence. The saddest vicissitude was that which befell the famous Duns—Duns Scotus, the greatest of the Schoolmen, the constructor of the memoria technica of ignorance, the ancient text-book of a priori knowledge, established for centuries the supreme despot ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... nobles at the edge of the sword; but the right of petition remained untouched. In all succeeding times, from the day when the barons at Runnymede pledged themselves to deny to no man redress of his grievances, through every vicissitude of revolution and of war, down to the day when our forefathers abandoned their native country, the same right of petition continued without challenge. In the next reign, it is true, that of the misguided Charles I, the king invaded the public liberties; and he ...
— Speech of Mr. Cushing, of Massachusetts, on the Right of Petition, • Caleb Cushing
... political situation. They 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 be ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... our life is that we do not pray more. And there is no failure so disastrous or criminal as this. It is very difficult to account for it. If in all times of discouragement and vicissitude we could have access to one of the wisest and noblest of our fellow creatures, or to some venerated departed saint, or to the guardian angel deputed to attend our steps, or to the archangel that presides as vicegerent over this system of worlds, how strong and brave we ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... man's hope is laid far, far beyond The sway of tempests, or the furious sweep Of mortal desolation.—He beholds Unapprehensive, the gigantic stride Of rampant Ruin, or the unstable waves Of dark Vicissitude.—Even in death,— In that dread hour, when, with a giant pang, Tearing the tender fibres of the heart, The immortal spirit struggles to be free, Then, even then, that hope forsakes him not, For it exists beyond the narrow verge Of the cold ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... 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 to ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... 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
... 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 for our Daily Practice. Composed for the use of a Noble Family, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 190, June 18, 1853 • Various
... his standard, with his old competitor the Duke of Portland at their head; and the rest had, after many vain struggles, quitted the field in despair. Fox had retired to the shades of St Anne's Hill, and had there found, in the society of friends whom no vicissitude could estrange from him, of a woman whom he tenderly loved, and of the illustrious dead of Athens, of Rome, and of Florence, ample compensation for all the misfortunes of his public life. Session followed session with scarcely ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... one of vicissitude, but generally and ultimately successful, for he made the whole of the comfortable competence of which he died possessed, after he was sixty years of age. While in the beginning of his business career, as an iron merchant in this city, a wealthy rival house ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... hanger-on of the camp at 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
... once stood a homestead, but where there is now only a ruined chimney rising out of a grassy and weed-grown cellar? They offer their fruit to every wayfarer,—apples that are bitter sweet with the moral of Time's vicissitude. ...
— The Old Manse (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... flame and splendour from Jove's head; a rich, idiomatic diction, picturesque allusions, fiery poetic emphasis, or quaint tricksy turns; all the graces and terrors of a wild Imagination, wedded to the clearest Intellect, alternate in beautiful vicissitude. Were it not that sheer sleeping and soporific passages; circumlocutions, repetitions, touches even of pure doting jargon, so often intervene! On the whole, Professor Teufelsdroeckh is not a cultivated writer. Of his sentences perhaps not more than nine-tenths stand ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... held his way; till Morn, Waked by the circling Hours, with rosy hand Unbarred 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 Heaven Grateful vicissitude, like day and night; Light issues forth, and at the other door Obsequious darkness enters, till her hour To veil the Heaven, though darkness there might well Seem twilight here: And now went forth the Morn Such as in highest Heaven arrayed in gold Empyreal; from before her vanished Night, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... 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 of ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... a wire 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
... him was turning yellow in spite of his self-assurance and reliance on his twin gods, money and deception, to carry him through any vicissitude. He made one more effort to bring the matter ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... and to him money to pay his fine and the expense of his discharge. Gratitude and fidelity are inseparable from an honest man; and it was this benevolent act that prompted De Foe to support Harley, with his able and ingenious pen, when Anne lay lifeless, and his benefactor in the vicissitude of party was persecuted by faction, and overpowered, though not conquered, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... obscurity and poverty, with health and a good disposition as a heritage from nature, and with Christian parents as teachers and guides, Abraham Lincoln—sixteenth president of the United States—entered upon life's journey through toil and vicissitude to fame and immortality. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... hospital, I wandered in a sympathetic mood; Where face to face with wormwood and with gall, With wrecks of pain and stern vicissitude, The eye unused to human misery Might ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... 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 diffused his dazzling shene. Even sad vicissitude amused 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 wished not ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... a growth goodness is; nor how slow an approach even a protracted culture makes towards perfection. A life of holiness may end in an apostle. As the tree, that hath felt all the winds of heaven, strikes root in that direction whence they oftenest blow, so goodness must have known vicissitude, to know when to resist and when to bend. To know ourselves is to have endured much and long. We must trace and limn out the map of our whole nature to be sure where it is desert, and where it is fruitful—to know the 'stony ground,'—to discover which needeth the ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... 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 order of the Christian Brothers, whose humble office ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... worth listening to. He has 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 ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... every work, one part must be for the sake of others; a palace must have passages; a poem must have transitions. It is no more to be required that wit should always be blazing, than that the sun should always stand at noon. In a great work there is a vicissitude of luminous and opaque parts, as there is in the world a succession of day and night. Milton, when he has expatiated in the sky, may be allowed, sometimes, to revisit earth; for what other author ever soared so high, or sustained ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... up 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 ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... the place, and living bravely on, truly and literally the Monarch of all he surveys. The avidity with which we drink in such details, seems to depend upon some principle in our nature; for a feeling of the same kind is excited by all other narrations of vicissitude. The picture of calamity would be merely tiresome, were it not for the rebound we expect: we want to see what the unfortunate whose story we follow will do; by what steps he will try to reascend, or by what expedients he will make ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various
... 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 ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Quincy Adams • John Quincy Adams
... straggling 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... extending their limits and maturing their powers upon the opposite shores of the Mediterranean, were now about to begin one of the most memorable struggles of all antiquity—a duel that was to last, with every vicissitude of fortune, for ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... April's first warmth, June's hues and slow perfume, The sweetness drifting by in those long hours While, out of her she nursed, the vital powers Were pressed by pain and pressed by pain renewed, Till, closing the life-long vicissitude, Came starving death with full-heaped summer, and Wrung the last pangs that spirit could withstand ... Or to see age in its prison slowly freeze With impotence more disastrous than disease, While trees flowered on, or all the winter through Upheld brave arms and with spring flowered anew Above ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... a set of characters varied and so attractive as the more prominent figures in this romance, and a book so full of life, vicissitude, and peril, should be welcomed by ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... 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
... 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. It is true, the ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... 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 ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... either as being worldlie wise, and taught by an continuall experience, ever since the creation, judges by likelie-hood of thinges to come, according to the like that hath passed before, and the naturall causes, in respect of the vicissitude of all thinges worldly: Or else by Gods employing of him in a turne, and so foreseene thereof: as appeares to haue bin in this, whereof we finde the verie like in Micheas propheticque discourse to King Achab. (M3) But to prooue this my first proposition, that there can be such a thing as witch-craft, ...
— Daemonologie. • King James I
... can see anything like the tranquil growth of that civic life which requires something of a steady and settled order and authority to give it being. The revolutions which took place in the country brought perpetual vicissitude to the Castle of Edinburgh, and no doubt destroyed and drove from their nests upon the eastern slopes of the rock the settlers who again and again essayed to keep their footing there. When the family of St. Margaret came to a conclusion, and the great historical ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... find it: we gain nothing by going out of our way to find an easier path. The beaten road is safest. The man who boldly says, "Let me know the fulness of life; let me taste all that it has to present of vicissitude, joy, sorrow, labour, struggle; let me know all that common people endure, and endure with them; let me be no exception to the common rule, enjoy no special privilege, ask for no immunity from things harsh and disagreeable"—the man who thinks ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... youthful reminiscence, fresh from his mint, 'which it is hoped may please;' and if it 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 ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... changeableness &c. adj.; mutability, inconstancy; versatility, mobility; instability, unstable equilibrium; vacillation &c. (irresolution) 605; fluctuation, vicissitude; alternation &c. (oscillation) 314. restlessness &c. adj. fidgets, disquiet; disquietude, inquietude; unrest; agitation &c. 315. moon, Proteus, chameleon, quicksilver, shifting sands, weathercock, harlequin, Cynthia of the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... natural and reasonable. The nation, however, overlooked all these considerations. Those who had most loved and honoured the Great Commoner were loudest in invective against the new-made Lord. London had hitherto been true to him through every vicissitude. When the citizens learned that he had been sent for from Somersetshire, that he had been closeted with the King at Richmond, and that he was to be first minister, they had been in transports of joy. Preparations were made for a grand entertainment and for ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of the final success of the paper was the indomitable character of its founder, his audacity, his persistence, his power of continuous labor, and the inexhaustible vivacity of his mind. After a year of vicissitude and doubt, he doubled the price of his paper, and from that time his prosperity was uninterrupted. He turned everything to account. Six times he was assaulted by persons whom he had satirized in his newspaper, and every time he made it tell upon his circulation. ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... comrade in many a vicissitude And he knew that Najib's fondness for him was as sincere as can be that of any Oriental for a foreigner, an affection based not wholly on self-interest. Kirby enjoyed his evening powwows with superintendent beside the campfire; and the little man's amazing faculty ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... what's this? [Reading the inscription by a torch.] "To Rose, from Walter!" Madam, I understand you now. I was deceived. Permit me to be the means of restoring this valued token from a dear friend. Would it not be a strange vicissitude if the finding of the trinket should be the means of losing the friend? Conduct ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Love in '76 - An Incident of the Revolution • Oliver Bell Bunce
... 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 ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... vicissitude. Mrs. Meadows would not hear of being thrust on any one, and was certain that Maria had extorted an invitation; she would never be a burden upon any one; young people liked company and amusement, and she was an ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not to the sun, and Nilus heareth strange voices. Her monuments are but hieroglyphically sempiternal. Osiris and Anubis, her averruncous deities, have departed, while Orus yet remains dimly shadowing the principle of vicissitude and the effluxion of things, but receiveth ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... Eliza 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 to ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... feared at first she had died in her sleep. No—all was well! She wondered a moment at the silver hair, the motionless hands, alabaster but for the blue veins, the frailty of the whole, and its long past of eighty years, those years of strange vicissitude. And through them all no one thing so strange as what she was ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... most beautiful characters in the gallery of Scripture portraits. Her character is peculiarly feminine; and while her path is marked by events of moment, it appeals to our hearts in each vicissitude of her lot. Youth and beauty always throw a charm around the possessor. Faint, perishing, transient as they are, they awaken all the sympathies of our nature; a deep compassion, a foreboding of the future; while the knowledge of the ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... National Assembly of Hungary. Our condition was the same; and if there be any difference, I venture to say it is in favour of us. Your country, before this declaration, was not a self-consisting independent State. Hungary was. Through the lapse of a thousand years, through every vicissitude of this long period, while nations vanished and empires fell, the self-consisting independence of Hungary was never disputed, but was recognized by all powers of the earth, sanctioned by treaties made with the Hapsburg dynasty, ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... gulfs of time; for many a gallant vessel, thought indestructible in its age, has perished;—many a load of words, expected to be in eternal demand, gone to join the wrecks of self-love, or rotted in the warehouses of change and vicissitude. I have said the more on this point, because in an age when the true inspiration has undoubtedly been reawakened by Coleridge and his fellows, and we have so many new poets coming forward, it may be as well to give a general warning against that tendency to ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... of ardour does not explain the whole position, which we have to face with firmness. Epochs come to an end, and before they have their place finally awarded to them in history they are bound to endure much vicissitude of fortune. No amount of sarcasm or of indignant protest will avail to conceal the fact that we stand to-day at the porch, that much more probably we have already penetrated far into the vestibule, of a new age. What its character will be, or what ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... 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 ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... to recognise the mysterious agencies of Heavenly Love when no great worldly adversity forces us to pause and question. Let Fortune strike down a victim, and even the heathen cries, 'This is the hand of God!' But where Fortune brings no vicissitude; where her wheel runs smooth, dropping wealth or honours as it rolls—where Affliction centres its work within the secret, unrevealing heart—there, even the wisest man may not readily perceive by what means Heaven is admonishing, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... draw back baffled but to hurl again, 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 grows wearisome;— False thought! most false! for how could I endure These crawling centuries ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... 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 sorrow ever bore, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... that gave Napoleon life; And he who was the head of armies, when His sabre slew opposing multitudes; Whose dauntless spirit knew no other words In fiercest strife, but "Soldiers, follow me!" Came a poor, drooping, broken, lonely man, To meet reproach, and harsh vicissitude, Base persecution, and destroying hope; To drain the cup of human suffering dry, From which his fever'd lips had scarce refrain'd; When in the tangled wood he trembling lay, Weary and worn, expos'd to sun and storm, Hunger and cold, and nature's helplessness. And when Ajaccio's walls rung ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... facts and the issues. Before briefly stating then the theories he propounded and their development, as shown in successive music dramas, it will be well to summarize the story of a life (1813-83) during which he was called to endure so much vicissitude, trial and temptation, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... I was again alone, and all my hopes and wishes turned toward him. A few hours' sail might again bring me beneath his roof, and once more should I find myself at home. The thought was calming to all my excitement; I forgot every danger I had passed through; I lost all memory of every vicissitude I had escaped, and had only the little low parlor in the "Black Pits" before my mind's eye; the wild, unweeded garden, and the sandy, sunny beach before the door. It was as though all that nigh a year had compassed had never occurred, and that my life at Crown Point, and my return to England ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... not dare to ask the aid of the Recollect fathers, as they thought that the latter were angry at them, as they had murdered a religious in that insurrection. But since the Recollect fathers regarded that as [the vicissitude of] fortune, they took the part of the Indians and did considerable ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... law the Congregational worship, which, he says, "is the most ancient form of religious worship there!" "Why should Congregational worship be excluded to make room for others?" asks the Rev. Mr. Fish. "Where will be the end of vicissitude on the adoption of such a principle, and how is it possible, amid the action of rival factions, for pure religion to be promoted." [Pages 7, 8, 9, of Mr. Fish's memorial. Senate, No. 17.] Is this language for a Christian minister to address to the Legislature of Massachusetts? To petition for an ...
— Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts - Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained • William Apes
... 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 ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... 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. 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 ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... of his future is seen, and because there is something peculiarly touching in this season of innocence and unconsciousness of self in the history of men whose after lives have been torn to pieces by the storms of vicissitude and passion. So far, he had not begun to rhyme—an unusual case, as boys who can make two lines jingle, whether they be poets or not, generally scribble plentifully before leaving school. At the age of fourteen he wrote some verses to his mother on ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... 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 she made her living. ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... Smith, the last heard of him was to this effect: He had strayed out to St. Louis, and, after a few months of vicissitude, had secured the position of bartender in a low liquor saloon. He has very little chance of rising higher. The young tyrant of Smith Institute has not done very well for himself, but he has himself ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... greatness, nor eluded by obscurity; philosophers have endeavoured to reconcile us to that condition which they cannot teach us to mend, by persuading us that most of our evils are made afflictive only by ignorance or perverseness, and that nature has annexed to every vicissitude of external circumstances some advantage sufficient to over-balance ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... for the first time, however strong it may appear, has yet to secure its future: it must struggle with the other elements of the world around it. It will be pressed back, perhaps beaten down: but in the vicissitude of the strife it will develop its inborn strength and establish ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... of Lincoln county (formerly Tryon) was Jacob Forney, Sr. He was the son of a Huguenot, and born about the year 1721. His life was checkered with a vicissitude of fortunes bordering on romance. At the revocation of the edict of Nantes, in 1685, his father fled from France, preferring self-expatriation to the renunciation of his religious belief, and settled in ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... that my life was strange and did not think how well I spoke. Yesterday evening I was briefed to defend a political prisoner before the Deputy Commissioner. What do you think of that for a vicissitude? ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... whole rapt being 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 moon was revealed once more, ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... veterans under his orders as myself. The whereabouts of the Oldest Inhabitant was at once settled, when I looked at them. For upwards of twenty years before this epoch, the independent position of the Collector had kept the Salem Custom-House out of the whirlpool of political vicissitude, which makes the tenure of office generally so fragile. A soldier,—New England's most distinguished soldier,—he stood firmly on the pedestal of his gallant services; and, himself secure in the wise liberality of the successive administrations ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Stanley, in 1867. Clarendon's mother had been buried there in 1661; and afterwards his third son, in 1664. It is at the foot of the steps to Henry VII.'s Chapel.] We have endeavoured, from the varied episodes of his life of strange vicissitude, and from the records of his strenuous action, of his undaunted courage, and of his well-tried loyalty, to draw the portrait of Lord Clarendon, to describe his character as we conceive it, and to vindicate ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... And bare him shoreward out 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
... proved himself to be, under every disadvantage that could retard a man struggling through the world, even from his infancy. His perseverance was remarkable, and he had a depth of feeling which no ill treatment or vicissitude could diminish. He must have risen amongst men; for mind is buoyant, and leaps above the grosser element. He had resolved, in his first situation, to do his duty strictly, rather to overdo than to fall short of it, and to make himself, if possible, essential to his employers. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... happy land in the remote north where the inhabitants enjoy a natural pefection attended with complete happiness obtained without exertion. There is there no vicissitude, nor decrepitude, nor death, nor fear: no distinction of virtue and vice, none of the inequalities denoted by the words best, worst, and intermediate, nor any change resulting from the succession of the four Yugas." See MUIR'S Sanskrit Texts, Vol. ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... scene at Worms, when the 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 ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... of the Ages, native to American soil, may fittingly stand as the symbol of the great Western Republic which, after so many thousand years of spiritual vicissitude and political experiment, rises heavenward out of the wilderness of time, and reveals its golden promise to those who have lost their way in the dark forest of error and oppression. It was long withheld, but it came at last, and about it center the best hopes ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... to the old pedestrian emigrants, what was the tedium suffered by the Indians and trappers of our youth, the imagination trembles to conceive. This is now Saturday, 23rd, and I have been steadily travelling since I parted from you at St. Pancras. It is a strange vicissitude from the Savile Club to this; I sleep with a man from Pennsylvania who has been in the States Navy, and mess with him and the Missouri bird already alluded to. We have a tin wash-bowl among four. I wear nothing but a shirt and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... air, and with in the circumjacent 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 ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... 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
... too soon if all evil and vicissitude were ended. Checks upon our prosperity must fall, and changes tax and interrupt our gains; and he is not most of a man who meets least evil, and loses least of the reward of toil; but he who endures with the manliest courage, the mightiest will to overcome, and most dexterous hand ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... 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, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... devotions, the old man grasped me by the hand. "I am happy," he said, "that we should have met, Mr. 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. ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... men chide they will admire him, And frowning, praise. I could nigh prophesy That the unwonted crosses he has borne In his career of sharp vicissitude Will tinct his story with a tender charm, And grant the memory of his strenuous feats As long a lease within the minds of men As conquerors hold there.—Does the sheet give news Of how the ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... love, all tenderness, all goodness; and may the grace of her Almighty Father keep her from the wail and woe which too often accompany the path of beauty in this life of vicissitude ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... 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 very bad crutch," ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... home, and I remembered then Thy faithful fondness; for not mean the joy, Returning at the happy holidays, I felt from thy dumb welcome. Pensively Sometimes have I remarked thy 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. But fare thee well! Mine is no narrow ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... degraded them. Ricci, the general of the order, would not permit them to land in Italy, to which country they were sent by the king of Spain. Six thousand priests, in misery and poverty, were sent adrift upon the Mediterranean, and after six months of vicissitude, suffering, and despair, they found a miserable refuge on the Island ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... is "wanted" by the officials, he retires to his watery fastnesses, where he can remain in complete safety unless betrayed by his comrades. On the banks of the Tigris stands Ezra's tomb. It is kept in good repair through every vicissitude of rule, for it is a holy place to Moslem and Jew and ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... followed 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 ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... a man grown, and had fought with distinction through the civil war, that he himself became aware of the artistic power that was in him. The events of his life, could they be rehearsed here, would form a tale of adventure and vicissitude more varied and stirring than is often found in fiction. He has spent by himself days and weeks in the vast solitudes of our western prairies and southern morasses. He has been the companion of trappers ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... there between the lives of human beings! Considering the beginning and the end of all mortal careers are the same, how wonderfully is the interval varied! Some, the weeds of the world, dashed from shore to shore,—all vicissitude, enterprise, strife, disquiet; others, the world's lichen, rooted to some peaceful rock, growing, flourishing, withering on the same spot,—scarce a feeling expressed, scarce a sentiment called ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... highest gains and the greatest losses more frequently and more capriciously than for the old sultan of Sinope; and the fortunes of men change rapidly and incalculably in the east. Well might Mithradates now in the evening of his life accept each new vicissitude with the thought that it too was only in its turn paving the way for a fresh revolution, and that the only thing constant was the perpetual change of fortune. Inasmuch as the Roman rule was intolerable for the Orientals at the very core of their nature, and Mithradates himself was ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... 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 ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams |
