"Vicissitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... went home and, sending for Bowers, the two sat talking earnestly. For Bowers it had been a day of vicissitude which he was only partially competent to face. Rooted out of a small practice in a small village, and caught up in the sweep of irresistible progress, he had never had to fight for his point. The weight and momentum Clark put before him were too great for that. ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... 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 to note how Balzac stood at the beginning of the great ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... listening to. He has immured his intellect in the catacombs of the Romish Church, but he has not been able to quench it, and even there it radiates a splendor through the gloom. His saintly character is as indubitable as the subtlety of his mind, and no vicissitude has impaired the charm of his style, which is pure and perfect as an exquisite and flawless diamond; serene and chaste in its usual mood, but scintillating gloriously in ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... one, who, last Wednesday, we put away for the resurrection. About sixty years ago, just before the day of their marriage, my father and mother stood up in the old meeting-house, at Somerville, to take the vows of a Christian. Through a long life of vicissitude she lived blamelessly and usefully, and came to her end in peace. No child of want ever came to her door, and was turned away. No stricken soul ever appealed to her and was not comforted. No sinner ever asked her the way to be saved, and was not ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... the place, and living bravely on, truly and literally the Monarch of all he surveys. The avidity with which we drink in such details, seems to depend upon some principle in our nature; for a feeling of the same kind is excited by all other narrations of vicissitude. The picture of calamity would be merely tiresome, were it not for the rebound we expect: we want to see what the unfortunate whose story we follow will do; by what steps he will try to reascend, or by what expedients he will make for himself ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various
... not always seasonable; but it was his nature, and he could not help it. He was joyous as the May morning; and thus he continued for years, laughing at everything—pleased with everybody—almost universally liked—and his bold, free, and happy spirit unchecked by vicissitude ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... sovereign, reigned till 1797. He took part in the first coalition against revolutionary France, and in the second and third partitions of Poland. Frederick William III. reigned from 1797 to 1840, during which time Prussia experienced every vicissitude of fortune. The first war with imperial France, in 1806-7, led to the reduction of her territory and population one half; and what was left of country and people was most mercilessly treated by Napoleon I., who should ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... we gather up and comprehend The volume of vicissitude, and take Account of loving, for each other's sake, And ask how love began and how will end (If there be any end of love, O friend Of my worst hours and best desires!)—and stake Our all upon the sweetness and the ache Of what men's stories and ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... the intelligence Heaven hath bestowed upon us for our greatest good, to our ruin, repugning nature's design and the universal order and vicissitude of things, which implieth that every man should use his instrument and means for his ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... The name was inscribed on the site of the family vault, under Dean Stanley, in 1867. Clarendon's mother had been buried there in 1661; and afterwards his third son, in 1664. It is at the foot of the steps to Henry VII.'s Chapel.] We have endeavoured, from the varied episodes of his life of strange vicissitude, and from the records of his strenuous action, of his undaunted courage, and of his well-tried loyalty, to draw the portrait of Lord Clarendon, to describe his character as we conceive it, and to vindicate his place in history. We have not sought to conceal his foibles, nor to ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... you trouble me; I feele A soddaine change; each organ of my soule Suffers a strong vicissitude; and, though I do detest a voluntary death, My Conscience tells me that it is most iust That the cursd author of such impious ills ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... larger and grander state imaged to them with mysterious sublimity in the idea of Death or Eternity. In accordance with this belief, they expressed in their dwellings the sentiment of transitoriness and vicissitude, and in their tombs the immortality of calm repose. And so their houses have crumbled into dust ages ago, but their tombs are eternal. In all the relations of Life the sentiment of Death was present in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... cover and to replace it, he had passed from broad daylight to complete obscurity, from midday to midnight, from tumult to silence, from the whirlwind of thunders to the stagnation of the tomb, and, by a vicissitude far more tremendous even than that of the Rue Polonceau, from the most extreme peril to the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... no animal is immortal. Everything grows old, everything passes away, everything disappears, everything, in short, is annihilated. Look upon the species: everything subsists, everything is permanent and immutable, though in a constant vicissitude. Ever since there have been on earth men that have taken care to preserve the memory of events, no lions, tigers, wild boars, or bears, were ever known to form themselves by chance in caves or forests. Neither do we see any fortuitous productions ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... stimulus to exertion. Life being what it is, we should take it as we find it: we gain nothing by going out of our way to find an easier path. The beaten road is safest. The man who boldly says, "Let me know the fulness of life; let me taste all that it has to present of vicissitude, joy, sorrow, labour, struggle; let me know all that common people endure, and endure with them; let me be no exception to the common rule, enjoy no special privilege, ask for no immunity from things harsh ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... sermon was the 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 general custom of serious minded laymen ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... bottom of declivities, rises again to the surface forming springs and wells. As wells take their origin at some depth from the surface, and below the influence of the external atmosphere, their temperature is in general pretty uniform during every vicissitude of season, and always several degrees lower than the atmosphere. They differ from one another according to the nature of the strata through which they issue; for though the ingredients usually existing in them are in such minute quantities as to impart to the water ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... with a hardy race of barbarians, who despised life when it was separated from freedom; and though, on the first attack, they seemed to yield to the weight of the Roman power, they soon, by a signal act of despair, regained their independence, and reminded Augustus of the vicissitude of fortune. [3] On the death of that emperor, his testament was publicly read in the senate. He bequeathed, as a valuable legacy to his successors, the advice of confining the empire within those limits which nature seemed ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... thoughts may suggest to him the vicissitude of day and night, the change of seasons, with all that variety of scenes which diversify the face of nature, and fill the mind with a perpetual succession of beautiful and ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... 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 ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... a revolution which convulsed a kingdom and hurled to the dust a throne, Love saw but a single object, Science but its tranquil toil. Beyond the realm of men lies ever with its joy and sorrow, its vicissitude and change, the domain of the human heart. In the revolution, the toy of the scholar was restored to him; in the revolution, the maiden mourned her lover. In the movement of the mass, each unit hath its separate passion. The blast that rocks the trees shakes a different ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... Pavia. Brusquet had been a hanger-on of the camp at Avignon; Villot, a Paris student; Caillette had received the spirited education of a soldier in the household of his benefactor, Diane's father. And as for the others—how varied had been their careers!—lives of hazard and vicissitude; scapegraces and adventurers—existing ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... I, Persian as I am, have followed their example; and that during the period of my residence at Constantinople, I have passed my time in writing a detailed history of my life, which, although that of a very obscure and ordinary individual, is still so full of vicissitude and adventure, that I think it would not fail to create an interest if published in Europe? I offer it to you; and in so doing, I assure you that I wish to show you the confidence I place in your generosity, for I never would ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... 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 the wilderness—corn ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... acquisitions; but were not those of Eliza still more slender? Could I rely upon the permanence of her equanimity and her docility to my instructions? What qualities might not time unfold, and how little was I qualified to estimate the character of one whom no vicissitude or hardship had approached before the death of her father,—whose ignorance was, indeed, great, when it could justly be said ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... bedside, for it was believed that her end was near. She rallied, and he returned to Onteora. But on the 27th of October came the close of that long, active life, and the woman who two generations before had followed John Clemens into the wilderness, and along the path of vicissitude, was borne by her children to Hannibal and laid to rest at his side. She was in her ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the same manner as they did. Like them also, our children were named from some event, some circumstance, or fancied foreboding at the time of their birth. I was named Olaudah, which, in our language, signifies vicissitude or fortune also, one favoured, and having a loud voice and well spoken. I remember we never polluted the name of the object of our adoration; on the contrary, it was always mentioned with the greatest reverence; and we were totally unacquainted with swearing, and all those terms of abuse ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... pass away, a temperate show Of objects that endure; and by this 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
... 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 the tragedy with ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... 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, without concerning yourself ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... the kingdom as well as that of London, parliament—the Long Parliament, which during its actual or nominal existence for nearly twenty years had experienced every vicissitude of fortune—was at length dissolved (16 March) by its own act, and writs were issued for a fresh parliament to meet on the 25th April.(1162) The new parliament was known as the Convention Parliament ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... day varies the character of the range, exposed to every vicissitude of temperature and climate. White billows of fog beat upon the mountain tops like a silent sea, and blot out the landscape with an impenetrable veil. Thunder echoes through the rocky caves with incessant reverberations, and rain settles down in ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... 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 hour since he lay down to sleep. Sleeping or ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... assuredly presents a more striking example of the vicissitude of human affairs than the capital of the Jews. When we behold its walls levelled, its ditches filled up, and all its buildings embarrassed with ruins, we scarcely can believe we view that celebrated metropolis which formerly withstood the efforts of the most powerful empires, and for a time ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... ever moved before, in any vicissitude of his lithe and agile youth, he clambered up, not down, and crouching back from sight upon the jutting top of the window, he sent his coat ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... both. I surveyed and listened to him with considerable attention. His aspect was noble and ingenuous, but his sunburnt and rugged features bespoke a various and boisterous pilgrimage. The furrows of his brow were the products of vicissitude and hardship, rather than of age. His accents were fiery and energetic, and the impassioned boldness of his address, as well as the tenor of his discourse, full of allusions to the past, and regrets ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... not be denied that in this process of thought, the results of experience have had to contend with many disadvantages; we must not, therefore, be surprised if, in the perpetual vicissitude of theoretical views, as is ingeniously expressed by the author of 'Giordano Bruno', "most men see nothing in philosophy but a succession of passing meteors, while even the grander forms in which she has revealed herself share the fate of comets, bodies that ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... parliament, though the term of seven years was not yet 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 be ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... more than one half now 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 session with scarcely a single division. In the eventful ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... from our 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 ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... with fleeting years; A mournful change, should Reason fail to bring The timely insight that can temper fears, And from vicissitude remove its sting; While Faith aspires to seats in that domain Where joys are perfect—neither wax ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... 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, ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... that he is speaking of such awful and inconceivable things as "God's wounds," though literally he is doing so? Or what honest farmer, who ejaculates "Please the pigs" (such extraordinary things do reform and vicissitude bring together!) supposes that his Protestant soul is propitiating the Pyx, or Holy Sacrament box, of the Roman Catholic Church? Yet time was, when the innocent word "zounds" was written with the same culpatory ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... ways not previously seen (perhaps not previously wanted) in the well-known soul: new notes, but with the added charm of likeness to already loved ones, deeper, more resonant, or perhaps of unsuspected high unearthly purity, in the dear voice. Absence may do it, or change of occupation; or sudden vicissitude of fortune; or merely the reading of a certain book (how many friends may not Tolstoi's "Resurrection" have thus revealed to one another!), or the passing of some public crisis like the Dreyfus business. What! after these years of familiarity, we did not know each other fully? ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... fine and the expense of his discharge. Gratitude and fidelity are inseparable from an honest man; and it was this benevolent act that prompted De Foe to support Harley, with his able and ingenious pen, when Anne lay lifeless, and his benefactor in the vicissitude of party was persecuted by faction, and overpowered, though not conquered, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... 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 ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... overthrown stones, 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
... yield to tilth, and woodlands brown and sear, The falling leaf and crispy pool proclaim the waning year; And sounds of sylvan pastime ring through our valley wide, Vicissitude itself is sweet by ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... 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 ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... for so it seemed to him, a woodsman to whom trees in their general sense were common things. In this great growth he felt a quality and a presence. Its moods were as varied as those of life itself—as it stood triumphing over decades of vicissitude, ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... agitation. The Prince and his supporters availed themselves of these circumstances to strengthen their party in Parliament and out of doors. The passions of the inexperienced, and the hopes of the discontented, are always on the side of youth and excitement; and every vicissitude in the condition of the King that diminished the prospect of his recovery, augmented the ranks of the Opposition, which now became familiarly known as "the Prince of Wales's Opposition." Mr. Pitt acted throughout with the utmost reserve. Deeply ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... uniformly to the centre, compressed each other at a certain distance from it, and, like the stones in an arch of masonry, prevented each other's nearer approach. That island, however, does not experience the vicissitude of land and sea breezes, being too small, and too lofty, and situated in a latitude where the trade or perpetual winds prevail in their utmost force. In sandy countries, the effect of the sun's rays penetrating deeply, a more permanent heat is ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... point of view, the Sabians and Chaldeans of the present day don't dislocate society; they only alter the incidence of existing dislocation; and all this works steadily towards a restoration—if not of some old Saturnian or Jahvistic Paradise-idyll, at least of a Divine intention and human ideal. Vicissitude of fortune is the very hand of "the Eternal, not ourselves, that maketh for righteousness," the manifestation of the Power behind moral evolution; and we may safely trust the harmony of Universal legislation for this antidote to a grievous disease; we may rest confident that whilst this best of ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... the wind I turned to share the transport—Oh! with whom But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb, That spot which no vicissitude can find? Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind— 5 But how could I forget thee? Through what power, Even for the least division of an hour, Have I been so beguiled as to be blind To my most grievous loss?—That thought's return Was the worst pang that sorrow ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... from his mint, 'which it is hoped may please;' and if it does, we will use our 'selectest influence' to induce him to write out for us a series of papers containing his complete autobiography, which we have good reason to believe would overflow with romance and strange vicissitude: 'I was raised,' he writes, 'as we western folks term it, in a small village some fifteen miles from Boston, and when about sixteen years of age I paid a visit to the metropolis for the first time in my life. When I first arrived there I spent some hours in trying to hunt up ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... found in tops of hills, Aristotle insinuates in his meteors, [3037]Pomponius Mela in his first book, c. de Numidia, and familiarly in the Alps, saith [3038]Blancanus the Jesuit, the like is to be seen: came this from earthquakes, or from Noah's flood, as Christians suppose, or is there a vicissitude of sea and land, as Anaximenes held of old, the mountains of Thessaly would become seas, and seas again mountains? The whole world belike should be new moulded, when it seemed good to those all-commanding powers, and turned inside out, as we do haycocks in harvest, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... antagonistic facts. They are transient things, a vicissitude which moves within natural limits, temporary events which are beautiful in their season. But there is also the contrasted fact, that the man who is thus tossed about, as by some great battledore wielded by giant powers in mockery, from one changing thing to another, has relations to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... subordinate to my chief's, and beat him at every game with as little compunction as though he were only my equal, till, at last, vexed at his want of success, and tired of a contest that offered no vicissitude of fortune, he would frequently cease playing, to chat over the events of the time, and the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... of the Ages, native to American soil, may fittingly stand as the symbol of the great Western Republic which, after so many thousand years of spiritual vicissitude and political experiment, rises heavenward out of the wilderness of time, and reveals its golden promise to those who have lost their way in the dark forest of error and oppression. It was long withheld, but it came at last, and about it center the best hopes of mankind. These United States—this ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... a strange and wayward wight, Fond of each gentle, and each dreadful scene, In darkness, and in storm he found delight; Nor less than when on ocean-wave serene The southern sun diffus'd his dazzling sheen. Even sad vicissitude amus'd his soul; And if a sigh would sometimes intervene, And down his cheek a tear of pity roll, A sigh, a tear, so sweet, he wish'd not to controul. ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... precincts of a 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 ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... 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 ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... hand he carried his axe. From under the brim of his coonskin cap his piercing gray eyes kept watch with a quiet alertness—expecting no danger, indeed, and fearing none, but trained to cool readiness for every vicissitude of the wild. ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... misunderstanding of the accounts of these occurrences, that after lengthened cycles of time, and the returns and conjunctions of planets, conflagrations, and floods are wont to happen, and because after the last flood, which took place in the time of Deucalion, the lapse of time, agreeably to the vicissitude of all things, requires a conflagration; and this made them give utterance to the erroneous opinion that God will descend, bringing ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... every thing before them, and cutting off the Saxon dynasty and the Saxon nobles at the edge of the sword; but the right of petition remained untouched. In all succeeding times, from the day when the barons at Runnymede pledged themselves to deny to no man redress of his grievances, through every vicissitude of revolution and of war, down to the day when our forefathers abandoned their native country, the same right of petition continued without challenge. In the next reign, it is true, that of the misguided Charles I, the king invaded the public liberties; and he expiated the wrong, as he ...
— Speech of Mr. Cushing, of Massachusetts, on the Right of Petition, • Caleb Cushing
... outright, and stared at her with renewed interest. He admitted to himself that she was one of the most fascinating women he had ever met, and wondered what vicissitude could have brought such a woman, who used classical illustrations, fluent, cultivated speech, and who was strong grace exemplified, to such a position. She seemed master of her surroundings, and yet not of them, looking down with a hard and lofty scorn on the very men from whom she ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... the capital infliction to a fine of fifty talents. Before the fine was paid, Miltiades expired of the mortification of his wound. The fine was afterward paid by his son, Cimon. Thus ended a life full of adventure and vicissitude. ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... God, so the prayers of the people of God in all the reformed churches, are for 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 ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... I, 'constitutes a religious man, and is to acquire me the world's consideration, nothing is more easy. Why then should I toil through life, a slave to some tyrant, exposed to every vicissitude, uncertain of my existence beyond the present moment, and a prey to ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... another has worked ill, has crumbled at contact with a widening knowledge of the world, and has lapsed from the minds of men. Some articles of faith, however, have maintained themselves through every vicissitude, and possess even more vitality to-day than ever before: it is for the 'science of religions' to tell us just which hypotheses these are. Meanwhile the freest competition of the various faiths with one another, and their openest application to life by their several champions, ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... important portion of the history of the nation, and its details, embracing an account of his own captivity and sufferings in Mexico, were written by Mr. Kendall in one of the most spirited and graphic books of military and wilderness adventure, vicissitude, and endurance, that has been furnished in our times. The work was published in two volumes, by the Harpers, in 1844. It has since passed through many editions, and for the fidelity and felicity, the bravery and bon hommie, that mark all its pages, it is ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... Orphic worshipper to the guidance of an unseen mysteriarch. This acquiescence in the swift succession of calm to fury and stress, resembled the quiet which may be conceived to follow sudden death; the heightened sense of vicissitude in things summoned up and sustained a solemn mood. All the while that we lay charmed and half oppressed in this atmosphere as of an under-world, the clouds were drawing forward on their course; and as their last fringe trailed slowly by and the moon was revealed once more, the spell was ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... care of itself without him—lay at our right hand. From the lawn and drawing-room windows we could see all these varieties of landscape. The color was sometimes a little chilly, but sometimes, also, as animated and full of vicissitude as a drama. I was never tired of it. Its color and freshness revived the eyes which had grown weary of arid plains and blazing skies. It was always cheery, and ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... fire along to his companions; and finding a kindly wind, landed on the fourth day at the appointed harbour. With his crew he entered a land where an aspect of unbroken night checked the vicissitude of light and darkness. He could hardly see before him, but beheld a rock of enormous size. Wishing to explore it, he told his companions, who were standing posted at the door, to strike a fire from ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... 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 ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... 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 ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... Cortes, west of Batabano and opposite to the island of Pinos. From thence, believing he should better escape the snares laid for him by the governor, Velasquez, he passed almost clandestinely to the coast of Mexico. Strange vicissitude of events! the empire of Montezuma was shaken by a handful of men who, from the western extremity of the island of Cuba, landed on the coast of Yucatan; and in our days, three centuries later, Yucatan, now a part of the new confederation of the free states of Mexico, has nearly menaced with conquest ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... considerations. Allowing their native force to these moral facts and considerations, the healthy ethical thinker, recognising in himself an innermost self conscious ego which knows itself persistent and identical amidst the multiplex vicissitude of transient conditions, lies down to die expecting immediately to continue his being's journey elsewhere, in some other guise. Leaving out of view these moral facts and considerations, the materialistic naturalist thinker, recognising his consciousness as only a phantom procession of states across ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the lucidity, the power of spirit of this saint, explaining the most obscure vicissitude of the soul and the least known, catching and following the operations of God, who dealt with that soul, pressed it in His hands, squeezed it like a sponge, then let it suck up again, fill itself out with sorrows, then wrung it again; making it ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... ruffled even the veil behind which it worked, and was alike inaccessible to artifice and love; a versatile, formidable, indefatigable mind, soft, and ductile enough to be instantaneously moulded into all forms; guarded enough to lose itself in none; and strong enough to endure every vicissitude of fortune. A greater master in reading and in winning men's hearts never existed than William. Not that, after the fashion of courts, his lips avowed a servility to which his proud heart gave the lie; but because he was neither ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... anything like the tranquil growth of that civic life which requires something of a steady and settled order and authority to give it being. The revolutions which took place in the country brought perpetual vicissitude to the Castle of Edinburgh, and no doubt destroyed and drove from their nests upon the eastern slopes of the rock the settlers who again and again essayed to keep their footing there. When the family of St. Margaret came ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... inclination, or the ability to understand 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 ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... it depends upon the Obliquity of the Zodiack; the parts of the AEquinoctial answering to equal parts of the {283} Zodiack, being neer the Solstitial points greatest, and near the AEquinoctial points least of all. But beside this Annual Vicissitude of the AEquinoxes, not to say, of the 4. Cardinal Points (which my Hypothesis doth allow and assert;) I believe it will be found, that there is another Annual vicissitude answering to the Suns Apogaeum and Perigaeum. And that the greatest Tydes of all, will be found to be upon ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... since my first trip to sea in her: I have seen her under every variety of circumstances, placed in peculiar situations and fearful positions, from nearly the antarctic to the tropic, cooled by the frigid clime of the extreme of South America, or parched by the heats of North Australia; under every vicissitude, from the grave to the gay, I have struggled along with her; and after wandering together for eighteen years, a fact unprecedented in the service, I naturally parted from her with regret. Her movements, latterly, have been anxiously watched, and the chances are that her ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... 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 ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... community to maintain by law the Congregational worship, which, he says, "is the most ancient form of religious worship there!" "Why should Congregational worship be excluded to make room for others?" asks the Rev. Mr. Fish. "Where will be the end of vicissitude on the adoption of such a principle, and how is it possible, amid the action of rival factions, for pure religion to be promoted." [Pages 7, 8, 9, of Mr. Fish's memorial. Senate, No. 17.] Is this ...
— Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts - Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained • William Apes
... however rude the sound. All at her work the village maiden sings; Nor, while she turns the giddy wheel around Revolves the sad vicissitude ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... whipped at their leaving it, and then sent, as before, to purchase, by begging in the day, the reiteration of the torture in the night. Days of menace, insult, and extortion, nights of bolts, fetters, and flagellation, succeeded to each other in the same round, and for a long time made up all the vicissitude of life to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... 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 ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... 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 ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... bare him shoreward out of wind and wet, Into his sanctum, where choice fare was spread, And cosy comfort ready to receive Young Ninety-Two, and give him a "send-off" Such as should strengthen and encourage him To make fair start, and face those many moons Of multiform vicissitude with pluck, Good hope and patient pertinacity. And when men sought the Modern MERLIN's ear And asked him what these matters might portend, The shining angel, and the naked Child Descending in the glory of the seas, He laughed, as is his wont, and answered ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, Jan. 2, 1892 • Various
... and poverty, with health and a good disposition as a heritage from nature, and with Christian parents as teachers and guides, Abraham Lincoln—sixteenth president of the United States—entered upon life's journey through toil and vicissitude to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... indeed, was singularly unhappy, since, by this unforeseen vicissitude of fortune, she was suddenly, from being an object of envy and admiration, sunk into distress, and threatened with disgrace; from being every where caressed, and by every voice praised, she blushed to be seen, and expected to be censured; and, from being generally regarded as an example of happiness, ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... Herrman, a young trader from Maryland and Delaware, then recently married. This was the son of Augustine Herrman, "first founder and seater of Bohemia Manor." Augustine Herrman was a Bohemian adventurer, born in Prague, who, after a career of much vicissitude, made his way to New Netherland. He became a force at New Amsterdam, and was an original member of the council of nine men instituted by Governor Stuyvesant in 1647. His connection with Maryland matters dates from his appointment by Governor Stuyvesant as a special ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... place. Voltaire's facility was his greatest fault; better he had elaborated his periods, like Rousseau; who, notwithstanding, wrote too much. The latter, however, of all modern writers, best knew the value of his own mind. His prime of life was passed in vicissitude and study. He did not set himself about writing books for mankind, until he knew what they possessed and what they wanted. It was his opinion that a writer who would do any good should stand upon the pinnacle of his age, and from ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... part of the year 1867, turning to the press again, he started the Irish Citizen at New York, and in that journal, at the date of this writing, he continues to wield his trenchant pen on behalf of the Irish cause. To that cause, through all the lapse of time, and change of scene, and vicissitude of fortune which he has known, his heart has remained for ever true. He has suffered much for it; that he may live to see it triumphant is a prayer which finds an echo in the hearts ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... 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 ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... gambling, without colour or disguise. Just that which is the impediment and destruction of all genuine commercial enterprise, just that we were taught with every luxury of stage effect. Our simulacrum of a market was ruled by the real markets outside, so that we might experience the course and vicissitude of prices. We must keep books, and our ledgers were overhauled at the month's end by the principal or his assistants. To add a spice of verisimilitude, "college paper" (like poker chips) had an actual marketable ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... the latter. If we would still believe that Mercury is a habitable globe we must depend entirely upon the imagination for pictures of creatures able to endure its extremes of heat and cold, of light and darkness, of instability, swift vicissitude, and violent contrast. ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... childhood of a poet is the mirror 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 that they ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... 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
... others who experience this disconcerting vicissitude—for whom the deductions of science as a moral message are ludicrous, but for whom its homicidal negations prove in the end ineluctable. If this is their permanent, if this is their final condition, they will ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... worldlie wise, and taught by an continuall experience, ever since the creation, judges by likelie-hood of thinges to come, according to the like that hath passed before, and the naturall causes, in respect of the vicissitude of all thinges worldly: Or else by Gods employing of him in a turne, and so foreseene thereof: as appeares to haue bin in this, whereof we finde the verie like in Micheas propheticque discourse to King Achab. (M3) But ...
— Daemonologie. • King James I
... part must be for the sake of others; a palace must have passages; a poem must have transitions. It is no more to be required that wit should always be blazing, than that the sun should always stand at noon. In a great work there is a vicissitude of luminous and opaque parts, as there is in the world a succession of day and night. Milton, when he has expatiated in the sky, may be allowed, sometimes, to revisit earth; for what other author ever soared so high, or sustained his flight ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... toil, however rude the sound. All at her work the village maiden sings; Nor while she turns the giddy wheel around, Revolves the sad vicissitude ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... a whole bears other testimony which is worth considering here. Through every vicissitude of women's education there have always been the few who were exceptional in mental and moral strength, and they have held on their way, and achieved a great deal, and left behind them names deserving of honour. Such were Maria Gaetana Agnesi, who was invited by the Pope and the university ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... Confiscation's vultures hover round. The needy traveller, serene and gay, Walks the wild heath, and sings his toil away. Does envy seize thee? crush th' upbraiding joy; Increase his riches, and his peace destroy; Now fears in dire vicissitude invade, The rustling brake alarms, and quiv'ring shade; Nor light nor darkness bring his pain relief, One shows the plunder, and one hides the thief. Yet still one gen'ral cry the skies assails, And pain and grandeur load the tainted gales; ...
— English Satires • Various
... hope, with sweet vicissitude, Within the hero's mind his joys renew'd. He calls to raise the masts, the sheets display; The cheerful crew with diligence obey; They scud before the wind, and sail in open sea. Ahead of all the master pilot steers; And, as he leads, the following navy veers. The steeds of Night had travel'd ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... the Holy Romish Empire at this time, was a handsome man to look upon; whose life, full of expense, vicissitude, futile labor and adventure, did not prove of much use to the world. Describable as a laborious futility rather. He was second son of that little Leopold, the solemn little Herr in red stockings, who had such troubles, frights, and runnings ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... as fresh and beautiful seem to us the brick walls and the busy streets where our lot is cast, and our interests run. There is no condition in life of which we can say exclusively "It is good for us to be here." Our course is appointed through vicissitude,—our discipline is in alternations; and we can build no abiding tabernacles ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... 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, aged ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... 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, mi, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... delicate instrument to perfect," explained Mr. Hazen. "Always remember that. An inventor must not only be a man who has unshaken faith in his idea but he must also have the courage to cling stubbornly to his belief through every sort of mechanical vicissitude. This Mr. Bell did. June of 1876 was the year of the great Centennial at Philadelphia, the year that marked the first century of our country's progress. As the exhibition was to be one symbolic of our national development in every line, Mr. Bell decided to show his telephone there; to ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... 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 ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... With lordly eye, that reach'd the world's extreme, Methought he look'd, when, gliding on his beam, That winged power approach'd that wheels his car In its wide annual range from star to star, Measuring vicissitude; till, now more near, Methought these thrilling accents met my ear:— "New laws must be observed if mortals claim, Spite of the lapse of time, eternal fame. Those laws have lost their force that Heaven decreed, And I my circle run with fruitless speed; ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... more passed 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 ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... 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 wanting to confirm and strengthen this supposition. Diversified ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... and his wife now joined in dissuading him from further experiments. Were not four years of such vicissitude enough? Who had ever touched India-rubber without loss? Could he hope to succeed, when so many able and enterprising men had failed? Had he a right to keep his family in a condition so humiliating and painful? He had succeeded in the hardware business; why not ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... travel; if, I say, a man once begins to indulge in thoughts like these, it is difficult for him to keep himself calm and sane at all, unless he believes in the great loving Providence that lies above all, and shapes the vicissitude and mystery of life. We can leave all in His hands—and if we are wise we shall do so—to whom great and small are terms that have no meaning; and who looks upon men's lives, not according to the apparent magnitude of the deeds with which they are filled, but simply according to the motive from ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... periods of much greater duration must elapse before it would be possible to authenticate the first appearance of one of the larger plants or animals, assuming the annual birth and death of one species to be the rate of vicissitude in the animal ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... the costs of the mechanical part are comparatively stable, the relation of author and publisher oscillates ceaselessly; and while the cautious publisher by the multiplicity of his transactions may rely upon an average of profits, like all business men plucking stability out of the heart of vicissitude, the author has no such surety. Between merit and reward there is in literature no relation. Just as the music-hall singer may earn a larger income than the statesman, so may the tawdry tale-teller drive the thinker and artist ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... too callous under the scorching blaze of the world. Happy is 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 further extracts from ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... wife, and of how she would have felt had she been able to follow the scenes in some magical mirror through every single vicissitude of my drive. And once more I saw with the eye of recent memory the horses in that long, endless plunge through the corner of the marsh. Once more I felt my muscles a-quiver with the strain of that last wild struggle over that last, ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... 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 ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... And what is more melancholy than 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
... who saw him wept; And sternly they conveyed him to the tower, Where to four columns, deeply fixed in earth, And reaching to the skies, of iron formed, They bound him; merciless they were to him Who had given splendour to a mighty throne. Mournful vicissitude! Thus pain and pleasure Successive charm and tear the heart of man; And many a day in that drear solitude, He lingered, shedding tears of blood, till times Of happier omen dawned ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... the greatest houses in Christendom: and remarkable it is, considering that violent desertion of the Royal House of the Britons by the intrusion of the Saxons, and afterwards by the conquest of the Normans, that, through vicissitude of times, and after a discontinuance almost of a thousand years, the sceptre should fall again and be brought back into the old regal line and true current of the British blood, in the person of ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... some of the most stupendous problems which have ever engaged the restless intellect of humanity. The origin and primaeval constitution of the terrestrial globe, the laws of geologic action through long ages of vicissitude and development, the origin of life, the nature and source of the myriad complexities of living beings, the advent of man, possibly even the future history of the earth, are amongst the questions with which the geologist has to ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... this globe, a power for interchanging sea and land. If this shall be admitted as a just view of the system of this globe, we may next examine, how far there are to be found any marks of certain parts of our earth having more than once undergone that change of posture, or vicissitude of things, and of having had reiterated operations of the mineral kingdom changing their substance, as well as altering their positions in relation to the atmosphere ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... 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 Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... or Ole Bull, as he is generally known to the world, was not only of much interest in its relation to music, but singularly full of vicissitude and adventure. He was born at Bergen, Norway, February 5, 1810, of one of the leading families of that resort of shippers, timber-dealers, and fishermen. His father, John Storm Bull, was a pharmaceutist, and among his ancestors he numbered the Norwegian poet Edward Storm, author of the "Sinclair ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... fruit, that can be injured by frost, are stored in cellars; and milk, and wine, and cider, and a thousand "vessels of honor," like tubs and buckets, churns and washing-machines, that are liable to injury from heat or cold, or other vicissitude of climate, find a safe retreat in the cellar. Excepting the garret, which is, as Ariosto represents the moon to be, the receptacle of all things useless on earth, the cellar is the greatest "curiosity shop" ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... tide of Time! through what mysterious change Of hope and fear have our frail barks been driven! For ne'er, before, vicissitude so strange Was to one race of Adam's offspring given. And sure such varied change of sea and heaven, Such unexpected bursts of joy and woe, Such fearful strife as that where we have striven, Succeeding ages ne'er again shall ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... operations within easy reach of the Asiatic continent, can place half a million of men in the field at any moment. The second steady-point is China's financial condition. She is the debtor of several Western nations, and they may be trusted to avert from her any vicissitude that would impair her credit as a borrower. Prominent among such vicissitudes is the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... true cause of the final success of the paper was the indomitable character of its founder, his audacity, his persistence, his power of continuous labor, and the inexhaustible vivacity of his mind. After a year of vicissitude and doubt, he doubled the price of his paper, and from that time his prosperity was uninterrupted. He turned everything to account. Six times he was assaulted by persons whom he had satirized in his newspaper, and every time he made it tell upon his circulation. On one ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... appealing to the blood so freely poured out in war by the citizens of Maine, to the privations so cheerfully endured while the restrictive measures of the Government were prostrating the most important interests of this commercial people, or to the support of the Union so cordially given through every vicissitude up to the present hour, such a suspicion, if it could arise, would be sufficiently refuted by merely adverting to the forbearance with which they have so long endured the aggressions by a foreign government upon their sovereignty, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... transition, mutation, transposition, conversion, metamorphosis, innovation, transfiguration, permutation, transference, reversion, reaction, transmutation; substitution, commutation; variety, novelty, vicissitude. Associated word: mutanda. Antonyms: continuation, stability, conservatism, permanence, inertia, monotony, perpetuation, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... 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 ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... bitter months, surveying my attenuated body, I exclaim with the melancholy prophet, "My leanness, my leanness! woe is me!" and though, adverting to the state of my mind, I behold it "all in a robe of darkest grain," yet when April and May reign in sweet vicissitude, I give, like Horace, care to the winds, and perceive the whole system excited by the potent stimulus of sunshine.... I have myself in winter felt hostile to those whom I could smile upon in May, and clasp ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... or rye, as also a mixture of each, for eight months in the year; and for the other 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, careful and industrious distiller, cannot fail to produce at an average ...
— The Practical Distiller • Samuel McHarry
... Napoleon life; And he who was the head of armies, when His sabre slew opposing multitudes; Whose dauntless spirit knew no other words In fiercest strife, but "Soldiers, follow me!" Came a poor, drooping, broken, lonely man, To meet reproach, and harsh vicissitude, Base persecution, and destroying hope; To drain the cup of human suffering dry, From which his fever'd lips had scarce refrain'd; When in the tangled wood he trembling lay, Weary and worn, expos'd to sun and storm, Hunger and cold, and nature's helplessness. And when Ajaccio's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... little Pearl, he threw a backward glance; half expecting that he should discover only some faintly traced features or outline of the mother and the child, slowly fading into the twilight of the woods. So great a vicissitude in his life could not at once be received as real. But there was Hester, clad in her gray robe, still standing beside the tree-trunk, which some blast had overthrown a long antiquity ago, and which time had ever since been ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... needs be. 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 ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... natural and reasonable. The nation, however, overlooked all these considerations. Those who had most loved and honoured the Great Commoner were loudest in invective against the new-made Lord. London had hitherto been true to him through every vicissitude. When the citizens learned that he had been sent for from Somersetshire, that he had been closeted with the King at Richmond, and that he was to be first minister, they had been in transports of joy. Preparations were made for a grand entertainment and for a general illumination. The lamps had ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... an 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 ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... obscured by the body of myths that had grown up in the lapse of centuries—which had survived pillage and anarchy, and all the horrors of fire and sword, desolating, devastating—were there before men's eyes, testifying to the amazing vitality which a millennium of strange vicissitude had not only not destroyed, but not even impaired. Such a mighty pile of buildings, as had risen up to heaven there in the old Roman town of Verulam, appealed to the imagination of mankind—the very materials of the massive tower, ruddy in the blaze of the noon-day, ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... the circling Hours, with rosy hand Unbarred the gates of light. There is a cave Within the mount of God, fast by his throne, Where light and darkness in perpetual round Lodge and dislodge by turns, which makes through Heaven Grateful vicissitude, like day and night; Light issues forth, and at the other door Obsequious darkness enters, till her hour To veil the Heaven, though darkness there might well Seem twilight here: And now went forth the Morn Such as in highest Heaven ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... Israel, In 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
... and I be so unlike my present self that pitying friends can only wonder and whisper, How changed! and enemies shall glory in my fall. No. It is vain to strive after certainty in this world of change and vicissitude, since none of us can tell what himself shall be on the morrow. Do what I will, moreover, my child can only inherit a sinful nature." In the midst of gloomy thoughts like these, we turn to the story of Samson's mother, and hear Jehovah directing her to walk before Him ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... which describes a set of characters varied and so attractive as the more prominent figures in this romance, and a book so full of life, vicissitude, and peril, should be welcomed by every discreet novel ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... produce or to make is to alter something; to consume is to alter. All the obnoxious characters of change and diversity thus attach themselves to doing while knowing is as permanent as its object. To know, to grasp a thing intellectually or theoretically, is to be out of the region of vicissitude, chance, and diversity. Truth has no lack; it is untouched by the perturbations of the world of sense. It deals with the eternal and the universal. And the world of experience can be brought under control, can be steadied and ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey |
