"Vicissitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... marched under 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 ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... acknowledged law. How long their arbitrary 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
... 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 ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... 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 ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... 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 annihilated her. But the great ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... you claim as His empire? Is any state subject to more frequent and cruel revolutions than that of this unknown monarch? How can we attribute to an immutable God, powerful enough to give solidity to His works, the government of a world where everything is in a continual vicissitude? If I think to see a God unchanging in all the effects advantageous to my kind, what God can I discover in the continual misfortunes by which my kind is oppressed? You tell me that it is our sins that force Him to punish us. I will answer that God, according to yourselves, is not immutable, ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... (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 ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... another Exploit, that conveys a true Idea of his Gratitude and Honour XXXV He repairs to Bristol Spring, where he reigns paramount during the whole Season XXXVI He is smitten with the Charms of a Female Adventurer, whose Allurements subject him to a new Vicissitude of Fortune XXXVII Fresh Cause for exerting his Equanimity and Fortitude XXXVIII The ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... 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
... coeternal unto Thee, the Trinity, yet partaketh of Thy eternity, and doth through the sweetness of that most happy contemplation of Thyself, strongly restrain its own changeableness; and without any fall since its first creation, cleaving close unto Thee, is placed beyond all the rolling vicissitude of times. Yea, neither is this very formlessness of the earth, invisible, and without form, numbered among the days. For where no figure nor order is, there does nothing come, or go; and where this is ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... To give light on the Earth!' and it was so. And God made two great Lights, great for their use To Man, the greater to have rule by day, The less by night, altern; and made the Stars, And set them in the firmament of Heaven To illuminate the Earth, and rule the day In their vicissitude, and rule the night, And light from darkness to divide. God saw, Surveying his great work, that it was good: For, of celestial bodies, first, the Sun, A mighty sphere He framed, unlightsome first, Though of ethereal mould; then formed the Moon Globose, and every magnitude of Stars, ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... the lake, and watched the ripples roll away and disappear, and ruminated on a life full of color and vicissitude. He remembered the Arizona days, the endless burning sand, the dull routine of a cavalry trooper, the lithe brown bodies of the Apaches, the first skirmish and the last. From a soldier he had turned journalist, tramped the streets of Washington in rain ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... not adequate to the 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, commercial speculations, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Quincy Adams • John Quincy Adams
... of successive generations owned and reverently guarded 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 married. Such ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... still another 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 old woman in every one's way; she wished she were in ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 view life's ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... smouldering senses in 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
... reference, from the humble 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 condensed, he conceived himself entitled to some share of that ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... 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 nations ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... had succeeded the overworked Fawkner, was, somewhat later, bought up by the "Argus", under Wilson and Johnston, in succession to Kerr. The Herald, when quitted after an excellent and timely sale by its founder early in the gold times, was soon after shipwrecked in the storm of vicissitude that characterized some of the first ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... 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
... 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 every ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... particulars of this affair, and in the same state of general 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, on all ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... got within the reef, we anchored in nineteen fathom, over a bottom of coral and shells. And now, such is the vicissitude of life, we thought ourselves happy in having regained a situation, which but two days before it was the utmost object of our hope to quit. Rocks and shoals are always dangerous to the mariner, even where their situation has ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... 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, ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... 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 ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... send 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 ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... 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 own appearance and circumstances were so altered ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... The principle which comes forward 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 ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... sound was continuous, like the passing of a train; no rise or fall could be distinguished; minute by minute the ocean heaved with an equal potency against the invisible isle; and as time passed, and Herrick waited in vain for any vicissitude in the volume of that roaring, a sense of the eternal weighed upon his mind. To the expert eye the isle itself was to be inferred from a certain string of blots along the starry heaven. And the schooner was laid to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and eye as bright, as in her girlhood. Her cheek was less rounded than it was formerly; but the matronly dignity and motherly kindness that characterized her, amply compensated for its loss. True types of man and womanhood were they, whom no dangers or vicissitude could daunt, no trials swerve from the path of right or inclination. Mr. Duncan well knew the undertaking he proposed was not one to be entered into thoughtlessly, or without due preparation. His habits from earliest infancy, of daily encountering the perils ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... 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 to ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... 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
... 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 ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... reverie, and the 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 ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... which plainly showed, that if now, under these 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 hoisting ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... his ancestral home—a Puritan Who reads his Bible daily, loves his God, And lives serenely in the faith of Christ. For threescore years and ten his life has run Through varied scenes of happiness and woe; But, constant through the wide vicissitude, He has confessed the Giver of his joys, And kissed the hand that took them; and whene'er Bereavement has oppressed his soul with grief, Or sharp misfortune stung his heart with pain, He has bowed down in childlike faith, and said, "Thy will, O God—Thy will be done, not mine!" His gentle wife, ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... middle age of Mrs Blair had been more free from trial than is the common lot; but the last few years had been years of great vicissitude. She was now a widow and childless; for though it might be that her youngest son was still alive, she did not know that he was; and his life had been the cause of more sorrow than the death of all ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... G.H.Q., where I had half an hour's talk with the greatest British commander. I can see yet his patient, kindly face and that steady eye which no vicissitude of fortune could perturb. He took the biggest view, for he was statesman as well as soldier, and knew that the whole world was one battle-field and every man and woman among the combatant nations was in ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... to be, and really was, well said. For he whose happiness rests with himself, if possible, wholly, and if not, as far as is possible,—who is not hanging in suspense on other men, or changing with the vicissitude of their fortune,—has his life ordered for the best. He is the temperate and valiant and wise; and when his riches come and go, when his children are given and taken away, he will remember the proverb—"Neither ...
— Menexenus • Plato
... "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 if he discovered, he would not be of that judgment, and many things may fall ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... one of the 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 sorrows and trials which await ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... exclamations, "Oh for a 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 the great national cause itself, in which there was every ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... supporters, and a few others of independent judgment, whose own domestic experiences had been not without vicissitude, came up and warmly shook hands with Phillotson; after which they expressed their thoughts so strongly to the meeting that issue was joined, the result being a general scuffle, wherein a black board was split, ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... expired since its first meeting. The ministry affected to insinuate, that the states-general were unwilling to concur with his majesty in vigorous measures against France, during the existence of a parliament which had undergone such a vicissitude of complexion. The allies of Great Britain, far from being suspicious of this assembly, which had supplied them so liberally, saw with concern that according to law it would soon be dismissed; and they doubted whether another could ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... of success, the spirit of aggrandisement, and consequently the spirit of mutual jealousy, seized upon all the coalesced powers. Some sought an accession of territory at the expense of France, some at the expense of each other, some at the expense of third parties; and when the vicissitude of disaster took its turn, they found common distress a treacherous bond of faith and friendship. The greatest skill conducting the greatest military apparatus has been employed; but it has been worse than uselessly employed, through the false policy of ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... this was true of Dickens; and what kind or quality of nature such intercourse expressed in him, of what strength, tenderness, and delicacy susceptible, of what steady level warmth, of what daily unresting activity of intellect, of what unbroken continuity of kindly impulse through the change and vicissitude of three-and-thirty years, the letters to myself given in these volumes could alone express. Gathered from various and differing sources, their interest could not have been as the interest of these; in which everything comprised in the successive ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... the 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, which, while they are limited in giving to others, cannot ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... ambitious youth, 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, and in which the most solid worth and learning ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... passing before his eyes. Yet what historian has ever told his story with more spirit, ever sketched his characters with more living truth, or led our curiosity onward through the labyrinth of political intrigue, parliamentary struggle, and national vicissitude, with so light, and yet so leading a hand? A part of this charm arises from the interest which he himself took in his performance. He evidently delighted in the revival of those scenes in which he had once figured, and the powerful portraiture which, in his study, realized the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... 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
... disagreeable one; for to be pent up in the hold of a ship was a deprivation of liberty, which, fresh as they were from their native hills, they could not relish. They felt, therefore, as patriots, a loss of freedom, but not a whit of appetite; for, in truth, of the latter no possible vicissitude short of death could ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... 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 ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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 ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... recognition; here and there a house she could remember had altogether disappeared; a new one had replaced it that before long might be replaced by a newer still. To Olivia the consoling thought was precisely in this state of transition, to which rapid vicissitude, for better or for worse, was something like a law. It made the downfall of her own family less exceptional, less bitter, when viewed as part of a huge impermanency, shifting from phase to phase, with no rule to govern it but the necessities of ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... England 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 the light ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... and earlier, the lives of artists were adventurous; political relations gave scope to incident; and Michel Angelo, Salvator Rosa, and Benvenuto Cellini furnish almost as many anecdotes as memorials of genius. In modern times, however, vicissitude has chiefly diversified the uniform and tranquil existence of the artist; his struggles with fortune, and not his relations to public events, have given external interest to his biography. It is the mental rather than the outward life which is fraught with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... of the neighbouring 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 deeply, ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... if he had not found the elements of a bouleversement, was competent to have created them. But just as nature gave the instinct, fortune supplied the breeding and the occasion. The heir, pupil, find victim of a second family of Atreus and Thyestes, the child was trained into demoralization, vicissitude, and daring. Believed himself to have been the favorite lover of the most lovely of his sisters, he describes her as the "Atrocious memoir-writer," a "Messalina, boasting of the purity of her morals, and an absconding wife, bragging of her ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... is certain the Imagination may be so differently affected in Sleep, that our Actions of the Day might be either rewarded or punished with a little Age of Happiness or Misery. St. Austin was of Opinion, that if in Paradise there was the same Vicissitude of sleeping and waking as in the present World, the Dreams of its Inhabitants ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... 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 ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... [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 ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Love in '76 - An Incident of the Revolution • Oliver Bell Bunce
... of death 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
... to find, in all the range of the past, a man whose career has been so full of wonderful and exciting vicissitude as that of Louis Philippe. His life covers the most eventful period in French history. The storms of 1789 consigned his father to the guillotine, his mother and brothers to imprisonment, and himself and sister to poverty and exile. There are few romances ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... great 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 ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... the forest, and beheld a wide landscape of mountain-swells and valleys intermixed, and old Graylock and the whole of Saddleback. Over the wide scene there was a general gloom; but there was a continual vicissitude of bright sunshine flitting over it, now resting for a brief space on portions of the heights, now flooding the valleys with green brightness, now making out distinctly each dwelling, and the hotels, and then two small brick churches of the distant village, ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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
... described in 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 ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... Cruz. It stands in the centre of a spacious bay, on a gentle acclivity surrounded with retiring hills, and the noble promontory of the Peek rising majestically behind it, dignifies the scene beyond description, being continually diversified with every vicissitude of the surrounding atmosphere, emerging and retiring thro' the fleecy clouds, from the bottom of the mountain ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... that it ceased to be the seat of the governors of Massachusetts; for, assuredly, it would have been ominous of evil to the commonwealth if the chair of state had tottered upon three legs. Being therefore sold at auction,—alas I what a vicissitude for a chair that had figured in such high company!—our venerable friend was knocked down to a certain Captain John Hull. This old gentleman, on carefully examining the maimed chair, discovered that its broken leg might be clamped with iron and made as serviceable ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... her saloon a new and terrible vicissitude seemed to sport with his passion—she was nowhere to be seen. Had the Italian cantatrice fled? Again he was in despair-stupefied with disappointment. As he stood uncertain how to act, in the midst of the floor, he heard, as from a distance, ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... 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. ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... thousands of chartered banks, under an infinity of regulations and restrictions against excesses and frauds; and we have had, as the appropriate commentary, three tremendous cataclysms, in which the whole continent was submerged in commercial ruin, besides a dozen lesser epochs of trying vicissitude. The history of our trade has been that of an incessant round of inflations and collapses; and the amount of rascality and fraud perpetrated in connection with the banks, in order to defeat the restrictions upon them, has no parallel but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... 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 sparkling. He would have ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... 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 by ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... 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; and the Jew he would sometimes fasten on, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... the heart, and, totally indulged, soon require a change and vicissitude in our minds; wherefore, in the midst of your griefs, your feet involuntarily wandered after Darandu, and your soul, softened by idle sighs, was the more easily impressed by the deceits of ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... Mr. Grandcourt, the happy lover?" said Mrs. Meyrick, who, in her way, was as much interested as Mab in the hints she had been hearing of vicissitude in in the life ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... 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 ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... good work the less for contemning his bad work. He will easily account for the bad work historically, and when he has recognized it, will trouble himself no further with it. In his view no living man is a type, but a character; now noble, now ignoble; now grand, now little; complex, full of vicissitude. He will not expect Balzac to be always Balzac, and will be perhaps even more attracted to the study of him when he was trying to be Balzac than when he had become so. In 'Cesar Birotteau,' for instance, he will be interested ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... their cattle in large open courts, where they were exposed to every vicissitude of the weather, but as intelligence advanced, we find them substituting, first hammels, and then stalls, in which the animals are kept during the whole time of fattening at an equable temperature. The effect of this is necessarily to ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... were 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 ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... disposition; his little wife Jessica saw to the shop, and Heaven had planned him for a peaceful world. Unfortunately Heaven had not planned a peaceful world for him. He lived in a world of obstinate and incessant change, and in parts where its operations were unsparingly conspicuous. Vicissitude was in the very soil he tilled; even his garden was upon a yearly tenancy, and overshadowed by a huge board that proclaimed it not so much a garden as an eligible building site. He was horticulture under notice ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... pity and anger rage. To see and smell the calm months bud and bloom, 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 ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... 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 for our Daily ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 190, June 18, 1853 • Various
... wished merely to be left alone to drag out its remaining days in peace, away from the advance of civilisation and the fervid hurrying of progress: it seemed like a great adventuress retired from the world after a life of vicissitude, anxious only to be forgotten, and after so much storm and stress to be nothing more than pious. There must be many descendants of the Moors, but the present population is wan and lifeless. They are taciturn, sombre folk, ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... over 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 which had so cruelly cast them adrift, reached the coast of Africa in ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... admiration, gratitude,—the affection of the head, not 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 ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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
... 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, perpetuation, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... 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, ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... 1874. Calvert, who was a warm admirer of Phelps, attempted to blend Phelps's method with Charles Kean's, and bestowed great scenic elaboration on the production of at least eight plays of Shakespeare. Financially the speculation saw every vicissitude, and Calvert's experience may be quoted in support of the view that a return to Phelps's method is financially safer than a return to Charles Kean's. More recently the Elizabethan Stage Society endeavoured ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... four is worth the trouble of following. I do not mean to say that the quantity of four gallons can be made at an average, in every distillery, with every sort of grain, and water, or during every vicissitude of weather, and by every distiller, but this far I will venture to say, that a still house that is kept in complete order, with good water, grain well chopped, good malt, hops, and above all good yeast; together with an apt, ...
— The Practical Distiller • Samuel McHarry
... country in Europe. Nor did the most competent judges fail to envy Basel her jewel, and to eulogise its perfections. Painters such as Sandrart, looking at it after it had survived a hundred and fifty years of vicissitude, could exclaim: "It is a work in which the utmost that our art is capable of may be found; yielding the palm to none, whether of Germany or Italy, and justly wearing the laurel-wreath among the ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... 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. And the mind takes a ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... magnificent verse?" "That of the 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 Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... of his tailor, Mr. William Filby, of a suit of "Tyrian bloom, satin grain, and garter blue silk breeches, L8 2s. 7d." Thus magnificently attired, he attended the theater and watched the reception of the play and the effect of each individual scene, with that vicissitude of feeling incident to ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... lasting 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 order of the Christian ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... the 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, suffering ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... come to rest on this or that point of the thorax or abdomen; but it does not stop at any of these, nor is the sting unsheathed, as can readily be ascertained. Indeed, once the contest is opened, the Philanthus becomes so entirely absorbed in her operation that I can remove the cover and follow every vicissitude of ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... 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 ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... "gives life to them that have it," animates, preserves in life, modifies, at least in measure, the evils from which it cannot altogether guard its possessor; and, by giving equanimity to a life of change and vicissitude, proves, in some sort, its own life-giving energy. How infinitely true this is with regard to Him who is absolute infinite Wisdom, and who is our Life, it is our health and joy ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... 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, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, Jan. 2, 1892 • Various
... before Thee may be set free from the fear of vicissitude and the fear of death, may finish what remains before us of our course without dishonour to ourselves or hurt to others, and, when the day comes, may die in peace. Deliver us from fear and favour: from mean hopes and cheap pleasures. Have mercy on each in ...
— A Lowden Sabbath Morn • Robert Louis Stevenson
... attain. They did 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
... (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 human ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the old apple-trees that linger about the spot where 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
... 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 ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... secretary at war, recommending me, in the strongest terms, for a commission in the Guards.—The world was now before me, and the world in the most vivid, various, and dazzling shape; in the boldest development of grandeur, terror, and wild vicissitude, which it exhibited for a thousand years—ENGLAND WAS ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... 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
... 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 Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... rest, 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
... Thus 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 ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... 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, arrayd in Gold Empyreal, from before ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... stone-heaters, and henceforth the practice disappeared, while the name it had given rise to remained—a name which long after the final extinction of the tribe will still exist in the River Assineboine and its surroundings. Nothing testifies more conclusively to the varied changes and vicissitude's Indian tribes than the presence of this branch of the Assineboine nation in the pine forests of the Rocky Mountains. It is not yet a hundred years since the "Ossinepoilles" were found by one of the earliest traders inhabiting the country between the head of ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... knowledge. We make a mighty business of the invention of artillery and printing, which other men at the other end of the world, in China, had a thousand years ago. Did we but see as much of the world as we do not see, we should perceive, we may well believe, a perpetual multiplication and vicissitude of forms. There is nothing single and rare in respect of nature, but in respect of our knowledge, which is a wretched foundation whereon to ground our rules, and that represents to us a very false image of things. As we nowadays ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... for the family of Captain Laughton, who having lost his property by shipwreck and fraud, was drowned on the coast. Governor Arthur gave twenty guineas, and thus fixed the high scale of colonial benevolence, which no vicissitude of public ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... 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 commiseration, but they will hardly deserve castigation, ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... Swift, vol. i, pp. 246-7. "... But Miss Vanhomrigh, irritated at the situation in which she found herself, determined on bringing to a crisis those expectations of a union with the object of her affections—to the hope of which she had clung amid every vicissitude of his conduct towards her. The most probable bar was his undefined connexion with Mrs. Johnson, which, as it must have been perfectly known to her, had, doubtless, long elicited her secret jealousy, although only a single hint to that ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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
... 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 his family ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... us. That divine providence also which hath maintained this cause, and supported His servants in a marvellous manner unto this day, and which this time past hath kept things in an equal balance and vicissitude of success, will, we trust, from this day forth, through the weight of this covenant, cast the balance, and make religion and righteousness to prevail, to the glory of God, the honour of our king, the confusion of our common enemies, and the comfort ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... 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
... not obscurely that God hath framed the mind of man as a mirror or glass, capable of the image of the universal world, and joyful to receive the impression thereof, as the eye joyeth to receive light; and not only delighted in beholding the variety of things and vicissitude of times, but raised also to find out and discern the ordinances and decrees which throughout all those changes are infallibly observed. And although he doth insinuate that the supreme or summary law of Nature (which he calleth "the work which God worketh from the ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... all his life one 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 ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... separated heathen communities—the most significant token of a universal brotherhood, to which all the families of mankind were severally and irresistibly drawn, and by which their common descent was emphatically expressed, or by means of which each and all preserved, amid every vicissitude of fortune, a knowledge of the primeval happiness and dignity of their species. Where authentic history is silent on the subject, the material relics of past and long since forgotten races are not ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... less turbulent assembly, was natural and reasonable. The nation, however, overlooked all these considerations. Those who had most loved and honored 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 a general ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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 ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... David, and bowled away merrily toward Boston without so much as a parting glance at that fountain of dreamlike vicissitude. He knew not that a phantom of Wealth had thrown a golden hue upon its waters, nor that one of Love had sighed softly to their murmur, nor that one of Death had threatened to crimson them with his blood, all in the brief ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Manner, he retires for as many to his Seat within a few Miles of the Town, to the Enjoyment of himself, his Family, and his Friend. Thus Business and Pleasure, or rather, in Sir Andrew, Labour and Rest, recommend each other. They take their Turns with so quick a Vicissitude, that neither becomes a Habit, or takes Possession of the whole Man; nor is it possible he should be surfeited with either. I often see him at our Club in good Humour, and yet sometimes too with an Air of Care in his Looks: But in his Country Retreat he is always unbent, and such a Companion ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... 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 ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... we attended to the wants of the poor, and taught their children the Catechism; we worked and lived like sisters, and I thought all that was life to me was over. I forgot that at twenty-two there is much life yet to come, and that one may go through many a vicissitude of feeling even though one's heart be in ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... 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 ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... tears, potent as it is, might in time cease to 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 ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... 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 ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... 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 of mankind. ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... what 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; ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... 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 with the utmost reserve. Deeply impressed ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... less essentially noble would have assuredly accepted the overtures that were more than once made to her, and would have purchased her peace with Napoleon by burning a few grains of literary incense on his altar. But though, in a life of more than common vicissitude and temptation, Madame de Stael was betrayed into great weaknesses and into some serious faults, she never lost her sense of the dignity and integrity of literature, and her works are singularly free from unworthy flattery ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... course Disposes her, when over-fondly set On throwing off incumbrances, to seek In man, and in the frame of social life, 35 Whate'er there is desirable and good Of kindred permanence, unchanged in form And function, or, through strict vicissitude Of life and death, revolving. Above all Were re-established now those watchful thoughts 40 Which, seeing little worthy or sublime In what the Historian's pen so much delights To blazon—power and energy detached From moral purpose—early tutored ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... passes his time among the nobles of the land. Serle lodges in Stall-street, up two pair of stairs backwards, walks a-foot in a Bath-rug, eats for twelve shillings a-week, and drinks water as preservative against the gout and gravel — Mark the vicissitude. Paunceford once resided in a garret; where he subsisted upon sheep's-trotters and cow-heel, from which commons he was translated to the table of Serle, that ever abounded with good-chear; until want of economy and retention reduced him to a slender annuity ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... 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
... youthful companion with a look half of pity, half of sympathy, and shrugged up his shoulders as he replied"Wait, young manwait till your bark has been battered by the storm of sixty years of mortal vicissitude: you will learn by that time, to reef your sails, that she may obey the helm;or, in the language of this world, you will find distresses enough, endured and to endure, to keep your feelings and sympathies in full exercise, ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... hemisphere, The world's enlightener vanishes, and day On all sides wasteth, suddenly the sky, Erewhile irradiate only with his beam, Is yet again unfolded, putting forth Innumerable lights wherein one shines. Of such vicissitude in heaven I thought, As the great sign, that marshaleth the world And the world's leaders, in the blessed beak Was silent; for that all those living lights, Waxing in splendour, burst forth into songs, Such as from memory glide and fall away. Sweet love! that dost apparel thee in smiles, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... settlers 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 Alsace, on the Rhine where, under the enlightening influences of the reformation, ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... 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, impassioned, ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... 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 ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... night. The clouds return again After the falling of the latter rain; But to the aged blind shall ne'er return Grateful vicissitude: She still must mourn The sun, and moon, and every starry light, Eclipsed to her, and ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... tire of the West." They, also, 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 ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... of Yuste mistook or maligned him. Six and twenty years after this 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 his army ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... 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 ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... been his 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 ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... from the orgies that took place below, where the sound of music, exquisite music, went up like the cry of an angel imprisoned in a den of brutes, the girl had imagined it all. And through every vicissitude, hidden closer for its utter contrast to all the associations and experience of her daily life, Christian Oakley had kept in her heart its innocent, womanly ideal ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... 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
... necessity that there should be deviation from the original planned economy of a work occupying more than a score of years; but Mr. Ruskin is more than ordinarily susceptible to vicissitude. It is part of his idiosyncrasy to start impulsively with an ill-digested project, and to run off the lines of his argument upon the slightest provocation and at the earliest opportunity. So that ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... is 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 forth, scarce ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wherein the image 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 her birthday, but it is fair to suppose ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... it, when these kindly workings of a sublimer providence, cause the graces of his spirit to shoot forth like "the tender grass springing up out of the earth by clear shining after rain;" and when the experience acquired in seasons of vicissitude, is treasured up in the heart for future use. Mrs. Lyth had her April weather preparatory to the summer of her usefulness, as will appear by ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... 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, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... or next time both of them lying in utter silence and desertion. The same with Mekebleh, sometimes inhabited, but more frequently a pile of broken-down houses, with some remains of antique sculpture lying on the surface of its hill; and the same occasionally, though not so frequent in vicissitude, with Iksal. ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... of a common language. I am in the belief, which may be erroneous, that nobody is wronged in these trades. The taciturn storekeeper, who regards his customers with a stare of solemn amusement as Critturs born by some extraordinary vicissitude of nature to the use of a language that practically amounts to deafness and dumbness, never suffers his philosophical interest in them to affect his commercial efficiency; he drops them now and then a curt English ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... unwise to betray a premature thirst for information on any subject save the history or beauties of the Alcazar. Asking a question now and then of our guide, we wandered from patio to patio, from room to room of that wonderful royal dwelling once called "the house of Caesar." Many a rude shock and vicissitude had it sustained when Goths fought for it with Romans, when Moors seized it from Christians, when Christians won it back, and conducted themselves within its jewelled walls in ways unworthy of their faith and boasted chivalry, ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... far the greater part undertaken by people who desired for themselves, if not for others, freedom for the forms of worship forbidden them at home. Our colonial beginnings were illustrated by sacrifices and martyrdoms even among the lowliest, and their leaders passed in sad vicissitude from pulpit to prison, back and forth, until exile became their refuge from oppression. No nation could have a nobler source than ours had in such heroic fidelity to ideals; but it cannot be forgotten that the religious freedom, which they all sought, ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... his dreams, ambitions, aspirations, and encourage with approval, incite by gentle sarcasm, or enliven by kindly sportiveness; but her person is her own, and he should be made to feel that beyond these bounds he may not pass. Such friendship may endure vicissitude, or separation, and be through life a source of truest inspiration. To be such a friend to a noble man is a worthy ambition. It would prove the possession of more qualities of womanliness than merely to win ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen |
