"Adversity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Minnesota great pride to know that, under all phases and conditions of our territory and state, whether in prosperity or adversity, the school fund has always been held sacred, and neither extravagance, neglect nor peculation has ever assailed it, but it has been husbanded with jealous care from time to time since the first ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... throne by Charles the dauphin, a prince educated in the school of adversity, and well qualified, by his consummate prudence and experience, to repair all the losses which the kingdom had sustained from the errors of his two predecessors. Contrary to the practice of all the great princes of those times, which ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... Jones, "and an honoured acquaintance too. When I do not love and honour the man who dares venture everything to preserve his wife and children from instant destruction, may I have a friend capable of disowning me in adversity!" ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... developed itself, and showed the thriving seeds of all he wished him to become—how he traced in him new traits of his early friend, that awakened in his own bosom old remembrances, melancholy and yet sweet and soothing—how the two orphans, tried by adversity, remembered its lessons in mercy to others, and mutual love, and fervent thanks to Him who had protected and preserved them—these are all matters which need not to be told. I have said that they were truly ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... paralysis at Hawthorne's age; for, as we have seen, the process of disintegration and failure of his powers had been going on for years. Nor did this follow, as commonly happens, a protracted period of adversity, but it came upon him during the most prosperous portion of his life. The first ten years following upon his marriage were years of anxiety, self-denial and even hardship; but other men, Alcott, for example, have suffered as much and yet lived to a good old age. It may ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... widowed Lady of the Sea Crowned with corals and sea-weed and shells, Who her long anguish and adversity Had seemed to drown in ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... Christ never spoke of riches except in words of warning. We are not apt to regard them in that light to-day. Men are trampling each other down in the pursuit of wealth. "Be not deceived." He who sets his heart upon money is sowing to the flesh, and shall of the flesh reap corruption. "Adversity hath slain her thousands, but ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... by name, he addressed an abridgment of his first great book, the smaller work being called the "Synopsis." He ultimately returned from exile, and again reached a very honourable position, to which he was well entitled in virtue of the great fortitude with which he had borne adversity. ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... envy are consistent in the same man; for whoever is uneasy at any one's adversity is also uneasy at another's prosperity: as Theophrastus, while he laments the death of his companion Callisthenes, is at the same time disturbed at the success of Alexander; and therefore he says that Callisthenes met with man of the greatest ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... atmospheric disturbance which will be felt everywhere in this region as a bad season, or are we merely the victims of exceptional local conditions? If the latter, there is food for thought in picturing our small party struggling against adversity in one place whilst others go smilingly forward in the sunshine. How great may be the element of luck! No foresight—no procedure—could have prepared us for this state of affairs. Had we been ten times ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... imaginary similitudes, the same word is used at once in its primitive and metaphorical sense. Thus health, ascribed to the body natural, is opposed to sickness; but attributed to the body politick stands as contrary to adversity. These parallels therefore have more of genius, but less of truth; they often please, but they ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... told in his narrative published in New York in 1849.[2] He was born in Shelby county, Kentucky, in May, 1815, the son of a slave mother and a white father, and his childhood he sums up by saying that he was "educated in the school of adversity, whips and chains." Of his ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... motherless, steals from harsh labor and yet harsher surroundings, runs to the home of sacred memories, clambers to the attic, and spends the night in anguished solitude. This was his first Gethsemane. For ten years buffeted and beaten, battling with adversity, sometimes losing but never lost, snatching learning here and there, hating sham, loving passionately, misunderstood, misapprehended, too stubbornly proud to ask apologies or make useless explanations, fighting poverty in the depths of privation, wrestling existence from toil he ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... Hong-Kong. Even the bright eyes of Molly Machowl could not pierce through this cloud. Rooney himself had lost much of his hopeful disposition. As for Edgar Berrington, Joe Baldwin, and David Maxwell, they were silently depressed, for adversity had crushed ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... not according to the sense whereto you stretch it. It may be that the sincerity of the affection which you bear me moveth you to harbour in your breast those refractory thoughts concerning me, with a suspicion of my adversity to come. We have this saying from the learned, That a marvellously fearful thing is love, and that true love is never without fear. But, sir, according to my judgment, you do understand both of and by yourself that here stealth signifieth nothing else, no more than in a thousand ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... had known adversity, Though born in such a high degree; In pride of power, in beauty's bloom, Had ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... hated and feared. Although at a distance they might pity and almost love him, when near present he was only an object of terror. The remembrance of the past came back vividly to their minds. They recognised, too, that in his adversity they had betrayed and forsaken him; now the day of his triumph or ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... prosperity, of triumph, is the most dangerous period in the experience of a young man. He is on the top of the wave, and he sees not the dark abyss that yawns on either side of him. Truly we need adversity to keep us from forgetting God and duty; to keep us from forgetting that truth and justice are more mighty than ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... believe it all,' the old lady calmly replied. 'It is very wonderful; there must be a good strain somewhere in the blood, and struggle and adversity are grand teachers, we are told. It is very interesting, and I am most ready to help them in any way you advise, my dear Eugenia, or that you think would be accepted. But understand me, I would do the same if I had never heard their name till to-day. ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... pay off all. What was left unpaid at his death was cleared afterwards by the success of his annotated edition of his novels. No tale of physical strife in the battlefield could be as heroic as the story of the close of Scott's life, with five years of a death-struggle against adversity, animated by the truest sense of honour. When the ruin was impending he wrote in his diary, "If things go badly in London, the magic wand of the Unknown will be shivered in his grasp. The feast of fancy will be over with the feeling of independence. He shall no longer have the delight ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... you have known them long before your adversity, and while the means of succouring them were in ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... have not had considerable experience of troops in peace and war may imagine that regiments are, at all times, sustained by a great pride in their past, and a determination to live up to it. Alas! in some cases this spirit dies away in adversity. I have seen the 23rd Royal Fusiliers in good times and in bad, and I have never ...
— The 23rd (Service) Battalion Royal Fusiliers (First Sportsman's) - A Record of its Services in the Great War, 1914-1919 • Fred W. Ward
... circles of fashion then, have left any of their scattered members to grace the glittering circles now! The wheel of fortune has ceased not its revolutions for a moment. Hopes that once spread their gay leaves to the pleasant airs have been blighted and scattered by the chilling winds of adversity. ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... I have always found that proud and stately princes who will hear but few, are more liable to be imposed upon than those who are open and accessible: but of all the princes that I ever knew, the wisest and most dexterous to extricate himself out of any danger or difficulty in time of adversity was our master King Louis XI. He was the humblest in his conversation and habit, and the most painful and indefatigable to win over any man to his side that he thought capable of doing him either mischief or service: tho ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... indulgent husband and father; and he hoped that his daughter, thus left alone in the world without any earthly protector, would not wholly despair, but would strive for his sake to bear up against adversity, and prove herself worthy of the father who had lost his life in trying to serve her in his old age. And so farewell! His eyes were now about to close for the last time upon the scenes of this earth. Signed ELIAS HANCHETT, M.D., with the customary flourish beneath the name, as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... incessant, profitless effort. I feel very sorry for this friend, and perhaps it is hardly fair to insist upon the pleasure of dreaming in the presence of one whose dream-experience is so unhappy. Still, it is true that my dreams have uses as many and sweet as those of adversity. All my yearning for the strange, the weird, the ghostlike is gratified in dreams. They carry me out of the accustomed and commonplace. In a flash, in the winking of an eye they snatch the burden from my shoulder, the trivial task from my hand and ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... no such calamities as destitution and distress. As a matter of fact easy circumstances have less influence on conduct than is generally believed; prosperity generates criminal inclinations as well as adversity, and on the whole the rich are just as much addicted to crime as the poor. The progress of civilisation will not destroy crime. Many savage tribes living under the most primitive forms of social life present a far more edifying spectacle of respect for person and property ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... exploit, far away, at and near Quetta, when his native companions and friends heard of his death. The grief felt was so profound, that it seemed irreparable to the men who mourned their beloved friend, as the leader who was also their constant companion, and always cheerful with them under every adversity. The Oriental may be unappreciated by the Saxon till the latter knows the sentimental side of every Asiatic character, but then the floodgates of human sympathy are opened, and the very counterpart of characteristics and qualities exhibited by Saxon ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... learnt her first lesson in that school where we all are called to study sooner or later—the school of Adversity; where some of us pass creditably, whilst others are ploughed, and a few—a very ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... solemn as the day of judgment; giant fir-trees, pines and spruces, beautifully clothed in perpetual green even to the lower dead limbs which nature has covered with a verdure of moss—like our dead hopes, blasted by the fires of adversity but made radiant by the fore-gleams of immortality. There the bright mistletoe is suspended from dead tree-tops, like beauteous crowns adorning the heads of those who have died rather than surrender to the low and base; there deep canyons, brilliant with the diamonds made by the sun from the scintillating ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... her cheeks and shaking her dainty little head as if she would fain banish all her painful imaginings with the action, "I must not repine at my lot, for the good Father above has taken care of me through all my adversity, giving me a comfortable home when I, an orphan, had none to look after me. And, the good baroness, too—she may be haughty, but then she is of a very noble family, and has been brought up like most German ladies of rank ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... have borne adversity well, and that is in a measure a preparation for the well-bearing of prosperity. But there's no telling. The heart is deceitful, and it is no easy to carry a full cup. You'll need grace, Lilias, my ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... was not, on the whole, beneficial to that doughty young warrior. Prosperity went harder with him than adversity. As long as he had his hill to climb, his foe to vanquish, his peril to brave, Dick had the makings of a hero. But when fortune smoothed his path, when the foe lay at his feet, when the peril had passed behind, then Dick's troubles began. Popularity turned his head, and laid him ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... tenderness I formerly received the indulgences of a beloved child; and, if in your prosperity I thought myself happy in the idea of being so nearly related to you by adoption, I still think it more so now I see you in adversity. Thank heaven and your adoption for my comfortable situation! your maternal conduct was amply displayed in teaching me all the necessary female arts; and I am happy in the reflection, that I can ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... in gray with a heart of gold? Does he sit down in sullenness and despair? Not for a day. Surely God, who had stripped him of his prosperity, inspired him in his adversity. As ruin was never before so overwhelming, never was restoration swifter. The soldier stepped from the trenches into the furrow; horses that had charged Federal guns marched before the plow, and fields that ran red with human blood in April ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... of astrology and fortune-telling is a disease which peculiarly affects weak intellects, ruled by ignorance, or afflicted by adversity. In the future, such persons seek a mitigation of the present; and the illusive enjoyments of the mind make them almost forget the real sufferings of the ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... the eastern sky was cotton, the sometime royal claimant, unsceptred, but still potent and full of beauty. About the embers of a burned dwelling, elder, love-pop, and other wild things spread themselves in rank complacency, strange bed-fellows adversity had thrust in upon the frightened sweet-Betsy, phlox and jonquils of the ruined garden. Here the ground was gay with wild roses, and yonder blue, pink, white, and ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... affairs. The sin of his ambition is forgiven him for the good end he made. But for all his splendid energy and his brilliant parts, for all the charm of his bold assault on fortune and his dauntless bearing in adversity, we cannot turn from him to his rival but with changed and softened eyes. For Lincoln, indeed, is one of the few men eminent in politics whom we admit into the hidden places of our thought; and there, released from that coarse clay which prisoned him, we companion him forever with the gentle ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... but I do not more wonder at finding a man in this age who can be a friend to adversity, than that Fortune should be so much my friend as to direct you to me; for she is a lady I have not ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... such life of low degree? Thou 'rt gone and, desolating house and home, * Hast fouled the fount erst flowed from foulness free: Thou wast my fame, my grace 'mid folk, my stay; * Mine aid wast thou in all adversity! Perish the day, when from mine eyes they bore * My friend, till sight I ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... gave out an intimation of the projected start on the morrow to the household the same evening, as soon as the two reached the little dwelling by the creek which they were about to abandon so remorselessly after the long shelter it had given them in their adversity! ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... have never been amalgamated with society, are strangers to poverty themselves, and cannot comprehend its operation upon others; born and moving in a sphere where the chilling blasts of indigence never penetrate, or the clouds of adversity appal, they have no conception of the more delightful gratification which springs from the source of all earthly happiness, the pleasure and ability of administering to the wants and comforts ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... came. Infidelity is a wretched affair even in prosperity; but in adversity it is still worse. And adversity overtook me. In the spring of 1857 we had a reasonable income, from property which we supposed to be of considerable value. A few weeks later a panic came, and our income fell to nothing; our property was valueless; instead of a support it ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... Rimrock, for half what a white man could; and when Rimrock had lost his mine, at the end of a long lawsuit, Woo Chong had followed him to town. There was a long tally on the wall, the longest of all, which told how many meals Rimrock owed him for; but Rimrock knew he was welcome. Adversity had its uses and he had learned, among other things, that his best friends were now Chinamen and Mexicans. To them, at least, he was ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... shown herself a friend to Frances in her prosperity, and, what is still more rare, also in adversity, was grievously afflicted by her death. It was she who announced it to Madame Angelica Szymanowska, born Swidzinska, whom Frances had held at the baptismal font with the prince royal in the cathedral ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... The well-conducted regime of Briarcroft had had its due effect, and had considerably toned down her unconventional Colonial ways; while the trouble through which she was passing, like all seasons of adversity, had made her older and more thoughtful than before. There was still no news of any kind from her father, and no answer had yet been received from the cousins in New Zealand. Miss Poppleton's manner towards ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... is stronger than death; it rises superior to adversity, and towers in sublime beauty above the niggardly selfishness of the world. Misfortune cannot suppress it; enmity cannot alienate it; temptation cannot enslave it. It is the guardian angel of the nursery and the sick bed; it gives an affectionate concord to the ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... carried so far as to interfere with the claims of domestic affection. At least it was faithful and sincere, and the man on whom fortune had frowned, the fallen minister, or the disgraced courtier, was followed in his adversity by the kindness of his friends. Of all the virtues this is perhaps the one which in our hurried age tends most to disappear. It is left for the occupation of idle hours, and the smallest piece of triviality which can be tortured into the name of business, is allowed to crowd away those constantly ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... the principles of the old school had not been changed or lost, if they had been retained and developed up to the present day, what a wonderful legacy the vocal profession might have inherited in this age, the beginning of the twentieth century. Adversity, however, develops art as well as individuality; hence the vocal art has much to expect ...
— The Renaissance of the Vocal Art • Edmund Myer
... disposition, every state of life will afford some opportunities of contributing to the welfare of mankind. Opulence and splendour are enabled to dispel the cloud of adversity, to dry up the tears of the widow and the orphan, and to increase the felicity of all around them: their example will animate virtue, and retard the progress of vice. And even indigence and obscurity, though without power to confer happiness, may at least prevent misery, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... for boys. It is bright and readable, and full of good sense and manliness. It teaches pluck and patience in adversity, and shows that right living leads ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... ourselves, my dear child: we meet with people whose whole power comes from without, who are brilliant and haughty in the sunshine of good fortune, but crest-fallen, cowardly, and cringing in the cold days of adversity. Nevertheless, they are constituted originally like other people: they are neither greater fools as a general rule, nor less gifted than their neighbors; where they fail is in the heart, but that is enough to spoil everything. And so with reptiles: the heart is their weak point also. ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... precaution. In a moment, and before I could see how it happened, a wild crow, who had grappled with the shrieking and helpless bird, was entangled in the latter's claws, swiftly disengaged by Gunga Dass, and pegged down beside its companion in adversity. Curiosity, it seemed, overpowered the rest of the flock, and almost before Gunga Dass and I had time to withdraw to the tussock, two more captives were struggling in the upturned claws of the decoys. So the chase—if I can give it so dignified a name—continued ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... L. It is the last blow for her. The fate of some of us is as it were a medal on which are struck the image and superscription of sorrow. Adversity has worked so well that there is no room for any symbol of joy. But I think that this dedication of a life to grief is not unaccompanied by a secret compensation in the conviction that misfortune is at last complete; it is something ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... right which she thinks is hers in the matter, willingly would he have told him of it; but she neither dares nor ought to do so. And the fact that the one sees the other, and that they dare not speak or act, turns to great adversity for them; and love grows thereby and burns. But it is the custom of all lovers that they willingly feed their eyes on looks if they can do no better, and think that because the source whence their love buds and grows delights them therefore ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... Thy Holy Word teaches us to pray for others, as well as for ourselves, we most humbly beseech Thee, of Thy goodness, O Lord, to comfort and succour all those who are in trouble, sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adversity, especially such as may now be exposed to the dangers of the deep, or afflicted with cold and hunger. Bestow upon them Thy rich mercies, according to their several wants and necessities, and deliver ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... there yet lingered the affectation of blending the classic character with his own, the character was more noble and the affectation more unseen. But this manner was only the faint mirror of a mind which, retaining much of its former mould, had been embellished and exalted by adversity, and which if it banished not its former faculties, had acquired a thousand new virtues ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... answered Sir Christopher, "and plight thee my knightly troth to observe the conditions. And in this, my adversity, it is a consolation to know that the noblest spirit who is to sit in judgment on me, believes me not wholly lost to the duties and sensibilities of ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... exercised the most important influence upon the life of Mme. de Sevigne was Corbinelli, the wise counselor, who, with a soul untouched by the storms of adversity through which he had passed, devoted his life to letters and the interests of his friends. No one had a finer appreciation of her gifts and her character. Her compared her letters to those of Cicero, but he always sought to temper her ardor, and to turn her thoughts toward an elevated Christian ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... were near and dear gathered to listen to their vows, and wish them well in life. Whether those kind wishes were deserved or not, and whether the Fates that direct the steps of all human kind led theirs along the pleasant walks of prosperity and happiness, or among the rocks and thorns of adversity, we will leave to the imagination of those who have read this story, for here ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... not prove a very easy task, for the great fish kept diving under the companions of its adversity, and keeping its head boring down towards ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... written in 1805, is on the model of Gray's 'Ode to Adversity,' which is copied from ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Resolution, as it has always been termed, was thus adopted respectively, not jointly, by the two Houses of Congress. Its declarations, contained in the concluding clauses, though made somewhat under the pressure of national adversity, were nevertheless a fair reflection of the popular sentiment throughout the North. The public mind had been absorbed with the one thought of restoring the Union promptly and completely, and had ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... a visit to his native place in Derbyshire, and his poor relations shared his prosperity, and blessed him, and Mr. Bartley upon his report; for Hope was one of those choice spirits who praise the bridge that carries them safe over the stream of adversity. ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... because Harding and his companion spoke of these things, they were men to despair. Far from that. They looked their situation in the face, they analysed the chances, they prepared themselves for any event, they stood firm and straight before the future, and if adversity was at last to strike them, it would find in them men prepared to struggle ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... degenerate characters, about him, is brightened by the thought of his loyalty to his court painter and life-long friend. When the king's favourites fell, those who had been the friends of Velasquez, the artist loyally remained their friend in adversity as he had been while they were powerful. This constancy, even to the royal enemies, was never resented by Philip. He honoured the faithfulness of his artist, even as he himself was faithful in this friendship. Philip's court was such that there was little to paint that was ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... sides by enemies, and most anxiously waiting for supplies. But as affliction may strengthen the understanding, as gold is tried by fire, and virtue may be confirmed in weakness, these things are suffered to happen; since adversity (as Gregory testifies) opposed to good prayers is the probation of virtue, not the judgment of reproof. For who does not know how fortunate a circumstance it was that Paul went to Italy, and suffered so dreadful a shipwreck? But the ship of his heart remained unbroken amidst ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... the Council might understand, and that ye would conceive it upon my words, and put it in writing, and let me hear it again. And if it be according to my meaning, so to pass it to my lordships for my better comfort in mine adversity.' To this I answered her Grace: 'I pray you, hold me excused that I do not grant your request in the same.' Then she said: 'It is like that I shall be offered more than ever any prisoner was in the Tower, for the prisoners be suffered to open their mind to the Lieutenant, and he to declare the same ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... In my adversity and lonely trouble I had drawn near to Him and his blessed Son—our Mediator, and example, and only strength. Dear as was still the memory of that earthly love, the only real passion I had ever known, could ever know, it ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... showed not only more courage, but more sound sense than I could have believed. All the frivolity of her former character vanished at the first touch of adversity; just as of old, Harry, we left the tinsel of our gay jackets behind, when active service called upon us for something more sterling. She advised, counselled, and encouraged me by turns; and in half an ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... my countrymen! How kindly have they been fortified by nature against the assaults of adversity; and if they blindly rush into dangers, they cannot be denied the possession of gallant hearts to fight their ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... a shrewd little shopgirl who had come up with him through the struggle by the slow, patient steps described in many of our most improving biographies. As frequently occurs, though it doesn't get into the biographies, she who had played a helpful role in adversity, could not withstand affluence. She bloated physically and mentally, and became the juicy and unsuspecting victim of a horde of parasites and flatterers who swarmed eagerly upon her, as soon as the rough and contemptuous protection of her husband was removed ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... are the undoubted composition of the celebrated princess whose name they bear, the contemporary of our Queen Elizabeth; of equal abilities with her, but of far unequal fortunes. Both Elizabeth and Marguerite had been bred in the school of adversity; both profited by it, but Elizabeth had the fullest opportunity of displaying her acquirements in it. Queen Elizabeth met with trials and difficulties in the early part of her life, and closed a long and successful reign in the happy ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... ought not, while fully prepared to face success, to be yet utterly unable to endure failure. I would have urged also what a consolation the consciousness of your action, what a delightful distraction in adversity, literature ought to be. I would have recalled to your mind the signal disasters not only of men of old times, but of those of our own day also, whether they were your leaders or your comrades. I would even have named ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the children of one God. Its heroes struggle not against, but upward and onward toward, the higher powers who are always on their side. Its highest conception of beauty is not aesthetic, but moral. With it prosperity and adversity have exchanged meanings. It finds enemies in those worldly good-fortunes where Pagan and even Hebrew literature saw the highest blessing, and invincible allies in sorrow, poverty, humbleness of station, where the former world recognized only implacable foes. While it utterly ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... sake of children, it is justifiable; if entered into as a remedium to avoid worse evils, it is pardonable; the idea of the mutual society, help, and comfort that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity, hardly existed, and could hardly ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... arms. In 1914, when they were commanders, France was inferior to a still greater degree in point of numbers to Prussianized Germany. In armament, France was inferior at first to her enemy. The French High Command has thus been trained by adversity to do all that human intellect can against almost overwhelming hostile material forces. General Joffre, General Castelnau—and, later, General Petain, who at a moment's notice displaced General Herr—had to display ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... the uses of adversity. It not only strengthens family affection, but it teaches us all to walk humbly with God." It is not surprising that she was disposed to cultivate the society of those who could blend piety with cheerfulness, and with whom she might be on friendly terms without ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... have often, for all that, been obliged to bend their heads to such circumstances; in fact, those only escape whose hearts have been steeled by time or adversity. Well, nothing would please the lady in one of her caprices short of Sir Marmaduke's going alone to the jungle and killing a tiger or two for her. This caused him some ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... with the price of other commodities as the periods of prosperity and adversity follow one another ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... prosperity are as sure to occasion them as are sorrows, for to Paul the 'evil day' is that which especially threatens moral and spiritual character, and these may be as much damaged by the bright sunshine of prosperity as by the midwinter of adversity, just as fierce sunshine may be as fatal as killing frost. They may also arise, without any such change in circumstances, from some temptation coming with more than ordinary force, and directed with terrible accuracy ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... United States! "in the days of adversity consider." Are not the signs of the times indicative of the necessity of a change ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... the time of the day, it were enough, the day of a tempestuous life, drawn on to the very evening ere I began. But those inmost and soul-piercing wounds, which are ever aching while uncured; with the desire to satisfy those few friends, which I have tried by the fire of adversity, the former enforcing, the latter persuading; have caused me to make my thoughts legible, and myself the subject of every opinion, wise ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... was an erring man, but he had the right to be angry with crimes of which he could never be guilty. His ways were not always our ways, nor his thoughts our thoughts; but he walked his way, such as it was, courageously, and the temper of his thoughts was not unheroic. He was loyal to his leaders in adversity; he was true to friends who were sometimes untrue to him; his voice was always raised against oppression; he had the courage to speak up for Ireland and her liberties in some of the darkest days in our common history. To Thackeray he ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... in the many days of his adversity Captain Kettle had never shunned any risks which came in his way, with this new prosperity fresh and pleasant at his feet, he was beginning to tell himself that risks were foolish things. He arrived off Dunkhot and rang off his engines, and ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... now I am made or lost; He runs the best who holds out to the Post: And all the Comfort in Adversity, Is to see others ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris
... who dwell high above For the hardships of poverty wedded to love; Whose awful temptations you never can know, When the unfeeling winds of adversity blow; When the loved one is lying all helpless abed, And children are crying and begging for bread. Yes, little you dream, ye rich sons of Jove Of the trials of love ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... half hour together Sally Ashton learned to appreciate for the rest of her life Aunt Patricia's value, learned to understand why Mrs. Burton cared for her so devotedly and considered her a tower of strength in adversity. In this uncertain world in which we live there are fair weather and foul weather friends. Miss Patricia belonged to the number who not only fail to strike other people when they are down, but who spend all their energy ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... the trouble. If she were dull and conceited she could be both happy and contented. But she's bright, and she lacks egotism, so she'll never be either. Adversity would temper a girl like her; prosperity ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... depressed (and this man's temperament caused such often to be his fate), he would creep to the most likely bush and there disappear as to his upper half. It is a fine thing in this turbulent life thus to have some quiet refuge against the snarlings of adversity. ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... co-operation this year, seems but a reiteration of needless panegyric; yet it would not be just to conclude this message without some such expression of grateful appreciation. The enthusiastic and unswerving loyalty of all our leaders has been a constant shield against the adversity of these gloomy times, and has been wonderfully successful in maintaining the United at a high ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... small or weak could transform the girl into a flame of wrath, and her weakest spot was her overpowering sympathy with anyone in distress, without any inquiries into the direct cause of the adversity, which spot caused her to be considerably taken in by many of ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... told of a Liverpool daily paper in those days. It was struggling with adversity, and the manager, a worthy Scotsman, sat in his office on Monday morning with the weekly statement before him, showing ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... robes and folded turbans, are oblivious of the power of the sun to scorch. There is a young man who toils amidst those vines and melons—yet already he bears the scars of desperate combats, and trouble and adversity have wrought wrinkles on his brow, and added lines of care to a ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... basic principle was the union of the several states and kingdoms into one nation, as the only true foundation of Italian liberty. This purpose he avowed in his writings and pursued through exile and adversity with inflexible constancy, and it is largely due to the work of this earnest patriot that Italy today is a single kingdom instead of a medley of separate states. Only in one particular did he fail. His persistent purpose was to establish ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... with high purpose and integrity. Among his papers at Murray Bay is a prayer, intended apparently for daily use, in which he asks that he may be vigilant in conduct and immovable in all good purposes; that he may show courage in danger, patience in adversity, humility in prosperity. He asks, too, to be made sensible "how little is this world, how great [are] thy Heavens, and how long will be thy blessed eternity." It is the prayer of a strong soul facing humbly and reverently the tasks ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... have given it a name by which it is known over half the world. One of the sovereign virtues of this famous law is its simplicity, which is such that all hearing must understand; and obedience is so easy that any nation refusing is unfit to exist except in the turbulence and adversity that will surely come to it. When a people would avert want and strife, or having them, would restore plenty and peace, this noble commandment offers the only means—all other plans for safety or relief are as vain as dreams, and as ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... blasphemy, and so was Jesus Christ. What a grim joke it will be if the Freethinker is found guilty and punished for the same crime as the preacher of the Sermon on the Mount! Truly adversity makes ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... could not lose. Yet, as the morning wore on, I found myself almost unconsciously becoming distinctly pro-Jukes. I did not like the man. I objected to his face, his manners, and the colour of his tie. Yet there was something in the dogged way in which he struggled against adversity which touched me and won my grudging support. Many men, I felt, having been so outmanoeuvred at the start, would have given up the contest in despair; but Arthur Jukes, for all his defects, had the soul ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... in good health here, and— (earnestly) Tyndarus, speak up boldly to him, yourself,— say that we have never been at variance, that I have never had reason to find fault with you (nor you to think me obstinate) and that you have served your master to the full even in such adversity. ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... unknown to those who are guided by mere considerations of interest; in every change of condition, it continues entirely distinct from the sentiments which we feel on the subject of personal success or adversity. But as the care a man entertains for his own interest, and the attention his affection makes him pay to that of another, may have similar effects, the one on his own fortune, the other on that of his friend, we ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... believe I may have said this before to you, but I risk repeating it. It is nothing to bear the privations of adversity, or, more properly, ill fortune; but my pride recoils from its indignities. However, I have no quarrel with that same pride, which will, I think, buckler me through every thing. If my heart could have been ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... mean is this—if I find him in adversity, I shall be ready to offer him my hand; it will then be for him to say whether he will take it. But if the storm blow over, in such case I would rather that we should ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... be, survive, slowly came upon him, with the taunts of his foe. It was possible that there was that still in him which might be grander and truer to the ambitions of his imaginative childhood under adversity, than in the voluptuous sweetness of his rich and careless life. It was possible, if—if he could once meet the fate he shuddered from, once look at the bitterness of the life that waited for him, and enter on its desolate and arid waste without going back to ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... is gone," he said. "Let me forget it, and wake to the new life that opens before me. A new life—born in a police cell, baptized in a criminal court, suckled in a prison, and trained in solitary adversity. That is the fate for which I have been reserved. I may be nearly fifty when I come out—a broken-down man, without reputation and without a hope. Truly, the dream is at an end; and oh, God of Heaven, make her forget me as ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... youth and the neglects of my calling, they all do stare me in the face here; . . . the world hath sadly mistaken me: no man knoweth what guiltiness is in me.' And to Lady Boyd, speaking of some great lessons he had learnt in the school of adversity, he says, 'In the third place, I have seen here my abominable vileness, and it is such that if I were well known no one in all the kingdom would ask me how I do. . . . I am a deeper hypocrite and a shallower professor than any one could believe. Madam, pity me, the chief of sinners.' ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... pleases." Again, Sura xx. 4, says: "The fate of every man have we bound round his neck." As is well known, fatalism as a practical doctrine of life has passed into all Mohammedan society. "Kismet" (it is fated) is the exclamation of despair with which a Moslem succumbs to adversity and often dies without an effort to recover. In times of pestilence missionaries in Syria have sometimes found whole villages paralyzed with despair. Yielding to the fatalism of their creed, the poor mountaineers have abandoned all means of cure and resigned themselves to their fate. ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... future be avoided; and it threw the blame of all that had happened on the malice of William and on the blindness of a nation deluded by the specious names of religion and property. None ventured to propose that a negotiation should be opened with a prince whom the most rigid discipline of adversity seemed only to have made more obstinate in wrong. Something was said about inquiring into the birth of the Prince of Wales: but the Whig peers treated the suggestion with disdain. "I did not expect, my Lords," exclaimed Philip Lord Wharton, an old Roundhead, who had commanded a regiment ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... husband; second, she had lost her money (or the greater part of it); and third, she lived at Northampton, Massachusetts. Mallet's compassion was really wasted, because Cecilia was a very clever woman, and a most skillful counter-plotter to adversity. She had made herself a charming home, her economies were not obtrusive, and there was always a cheerful flutter in the folds of her crape. It was the consciousness of all this that puzzled Mallet ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... the moment Phillip Lawson uttered these words he was a richer man, though he knew it not. He had to drink deeper of the dregs of adversity ere he shall have ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... dedication to Charles II. is not filled with mean, flattering encomiums, but abounds with bold touches in favour of truth and with the wisest counsels. "Thou hast tasted," says he to the King at the close of his epistle dedicatory, "of prosperity and adversity; thou knowest what it is to be banished thy native country; to be overruled as well as to rule and sit upon the throne; and, being oppressed, thou hast reason to know how hateful the Oppressor is both to God and ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... the promptest operation of the righteousness of Jehovah. In doing so they do not preach what is new or free, but have at their command, like Jehovah Himself, only the Law of Moses, setting before their hearers prosperity and adversity in conformity with the stencil pattern, just as the law is faithfully fulfilled or neglected. Of course their prophecies always come exactly true, and in this way is seen an astonishing harmony between inward worth and outward circumstance. Never does sin miss its punishment, ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... heads and killed more people than reverses and grief; either because it takes a longer time to get convinced of utter ruin than great good fortune, or because the instinct of self-preservation compels us to seek, in adversity, for resources to mitigate despair; whereas, in the assault of excessive joy, the soul's spring is distended and broken when it is suddenly compressed by too many thoughts and too many sensations. Sophocles, Diagoras, Philippides, died of joy. Another Greek expired ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... Harmony was right. He could offer her nothing but his shabby self, his problematic future. Perhaps, surely, everything would have been settled, without reason, had he only once taken the girl in his arms, told her she was the breath of life itself to him. But adversity, while it had roused his fighting spirit in everything else, ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... had seen and heard too many foolish things said and done since the beginning of this horrible siege; had taken part too many times in one of the most wretched spectacles in which a people can show vanity in adversity. He was heart broken to see his dear compatriots, his dear Parisians, redouble their boasting after each defeat and take their levity for heroism. If he admired the resignation of the poor women standing in line before the door of a butcher's shop, he was every day more sadly tormented ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... in the Pope's arsenal, dear colleague, but it may serve unless we do something. If the people can be persuaded that the Pope is their one friend in adversity, there couldn't be a better feather in the Papal cap. Happily our people love to sing and to dance as well as to weep and to pray. So we needn't throw up ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... in order, Mohammed now began to enjoy his power as the undisputed ruler of a large number of Arab tribes. But success has been the undoing of a large number of men who were great in the days of adversity. He tried to gain the good will of the rich people by a number of regulations which could appeal to those of wealth. He allowed the Faithful to have four wives. As one wife was a costly investment in those olden days when brides were bought directly from the parents, ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... all their duties in life towards them—but with how much more by those who can never remember them without thinking of occasions of kindness and assistance neglected or disregarded. Many of them have perhaps left behind them widows and children struggling with adversity, and soliciting from us aid which we strive ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... he might have love and yet be poor. And poverty spoils a young man's happiness, unless he holds our transcendental views of the fusion of interests. I know nothing more wearing than happiness within combined with adversity without. It is as if you had one leg freezing in the draught from the door, and the other half-roasted by a brazier—as I have at this moment. I hope to be understood. Comes there an echo from thy waistcoat-pocket, Blondet? Between ourselves, let the heart alone, ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... inquiry is not to discover a method by which a nation may engross the trade that ought to belong to others, it is only to enable it, by industry and other means, to guard against the approaches of adversity, which tend to sink it far below its level, thereby making way for the elevation of some other nation, on the ruins ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... the other in the reward of contemplation; the one turneth away from evil and doth good, the other hath no evil from which to turn away, but rather a Great Good Which it enjoys; the one is in conflict with the foe, the other reigns—conscious that there is no foe; the one is strong in adversity, the other knows of no adversity; the one bridles the lusts of the flesh, the other is given up to the joys of the Spirit; the one is anxious to overcome, the other is tranquil in the peace of victory; the one is helped in temptations, the other, without temptation, rejoices in its Helper; the one ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... a quick thought flashed through his mind that some men are seen at their worst in adversity. He was ready enough to find excuses for Horner, for men are strange in the gift of their friendship, often bestowing it where they know it is ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... visit unless you get a chaperon, and you want me to chaperon you," said Adelaide, who was not minded to be put in the attitude of being the recipient of a favor from this particular young woman at this particular time, when in truth she was being asked to confer a favor. "Adversity" had already sharpened her wits to the extent of making her alert to the selfishness disguised as generosity which the prosperous love to shower upon their little brothers and sisters of the poor. She knew at ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... wheel of fortune, which continually alternates adversity with prosperity, was giving Bellona the Furies for her allies, and arming her for war; and now transferred our disasters to the east, as many presages and portents foreshowed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... the economic problem of the returning service men. They have been assimilated into our industrial life with little delay and with no disturbance of existing conditions. The day of adversity has passed. The American people met and overcame it. The day of prosperity has come. The great question now is whether the American people can endure their prosperity. I believe they can. The power to preserve America is in the same hands to-day that it was when the German army was almost at the ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge |
