Vicissitudes Quotes - Page 3

• Surely no man can reflect, without wonder upon the vicissitudes of human life arising from causes in the highest degree accidental and trifling. If you trace the necessary concatenation of human events a very little way back, you may perhaps discover that a person's very going in or out of a door has been the means of coloring with misery or happiness the remaining current of his life.

  Sir Fulke Greville

  Mean, Men, Doors

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• In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed - a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.

  Karl Marx

  Class, Long, Competition

  Karl Marx, David McLellan (2000). “Karl Marx: Selected Writings”, p.251, Oxford University Press, USA

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• The beginning, middle, and end of the birth, growth, and perfection of whatever we behold is from contraries, by contraries, and to contraries; and whatever contrariety is, there is action and reaction, there is motion, diversity, multitude, and order, there are degrees, succession and vicissitude.

  Giordano Bruno

  Order, Opposites, Diversity

  Giordano Bruno (1962). “Cause, Principle, and Unity: Five Dialogues”

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• The greatest vicissitude of things amongst men, is the vicissitude of sects and religions.

  Francis Bacon

  Men, Religion, Sects

  Francis Bacon (1858). “Works of Francis Bacon: 6”, p.514

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• Human ability is an unequal match for the violent and unforeseen vicissitudes of the world.

  Hugh Blair

  World, Violent, Ability

  Hugh Blair (1827). “Sermons ... To which is prefixed, a short account of the life and character of the author, by James Finlayson ... A new edition, etc. With a portrait”, p.17

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• Discussing the attempts of Augustus' generals to add to the extent of the Roman Empire early in his reign:
  The northern countries of Europe scarcely deserved the expense and labour of conquest. The forests and morasses of Germany were filled with a hardy race of barbarians, who despised life when it was separated from freedom; and though, on the first attack, they seemed to yield to the weight of the Roman power, they soon, by a signal act of despair, regained their independence, and reminded Augustus of the vicissitude of fortune.

  Edward Gibbon

  Country, Yield, Race

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• The market is always making mountains out of molehills and exaggerating ordinary vicissitudes into major setbacks.

  Benjamin Graham

  Mountain, Ordinary, Majors

  Benjamin Graham (1959). “The Intelligent Investor: A Book of Practical Counsel”

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• And I thought, eight years ago, when I began carefully charting the progress of American Gods, nervously dipping my toes into the waters of blogging, would I have imagined a future in which, instead of recording the vicissitudes of bringing a book into the world, I would be writing about not-even-interestingly missing cups of cold camomile tea? And I thought, yup. Sounds about right. Happy Eighth birthday, blog.

  Neil Gaiman

  Book, Writing, Eight

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• The mutual-aid tendency in man has so remote an origin, and is so deeply interwoven with all the past evolution of the human race, that is has been maintained by mankind up to the present time, notwithstanding all vicissitudes of history.

  Peter Kropotkin

  Past, Men, Race

  Peter Kropotkin (2016). “Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution”, p.342, Peter Kropotkin

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• You cannot tell whether a person is good or bad by his vicissitudes in life. Good and bad fortune are matters of fate.

  Yamamoto Tsunetomo

  Good Life, War, Fate

  Miyamoto Musashi, Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Inazo Nitobe (2010). “Honor: Samurai Philosophy of Life - The Essential Samurai Collection; The Book of Five Rings, Hagakure: The Way of the Samurai, Bushido: The Soul of Japan.”, p.63, Bottom of the Hill

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• So you see that the process of education, taken in a large way, may be described as nothing but the process of acquiring ideas or conceptions, the best educated mind being the mind which has the largest stock of them, ready to meet the largest possible variety of the emergencies of life. The lack of education means only the failure to have acquired them, and the consequent liability to be 'floored' and 'rattled' in the vicissitudes of experience.

  William James

  Taken, Mean, Ideas

  William James (2008). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.115, Nuvision Pubns

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• The vicissitudes of life resemble one of those gilded balls seen in a fountain. Thrown up by the force of the water, it flies up and down - now at the top, catching the rays of the sun, now cast into the depths, then again shooting up, sometimes so high that it escapes altogether, and falls to the ground.

  Lady Randolph Churchill

  Life, Fall, Water

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• Though the Indian ocean abounds in rich and rare gems, it does not boast a clearer sky nor more unruffled sea. If there be a shore that dreads not the fury of the faithless billows, it is some poor and narrow inlet unknown to the winds.

  Pietro Metastasio

  Ocean, Sky, Wind

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• Which class is happiest, the rich, the middle class or the poor? A very successful executive of a large organization touches upon this vital subject in a long letter to all his salesmen. He uses as his text a passage from Robinson Crusoe which included this: ""My Father bid me observe it, and I should always find that the calamities of life were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind; but that the middle station had the fewest disasters, and were not exposed to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind.

  B. C. Forbes

  Father, Successful, Class

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• There is not a more prudent maxim, than to live with one's enemies as if they may one day become one's friends; as it commonly happens, sooner or later, in the vicissitudes of political affairs.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Political, Enemy, One Day

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• Since our region is endowed with a lot of natural resources, including reasonable supplies of fresh water, we need and we can work together to ensure this area against these vicissitudes.

  Yoweri Museveni

  Water, Together, Needs

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• If we set out with... a scrupulous regard to the Constitution, the government will acquire a spirit and a tone productive of permanent blessings to the community. If on the contrary,... the Constitution is slighted, or explained away, upon every frivolous pretext, the future of government will be feeble, distracted and arbitrary. The rights of the subjects will be the sport of every party vicissitude. There will be no settled rule of conduct, but everything will fluctuate with the alternate prevalency of contending factions.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Sports, Party, Blessing

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• The death of a man's wife is like cutting down an ancient oak that has long shaded the family mansion. Henceforth the glare of the world, with its cares and vicissitudes falls upon the old widower's heart, and there is nothing to break their force, or shield him from the full weight of misfortune. It is as if his right hand were withered; as if one wing of his angel was broken, and every movement that he made brought him to the ground.

  Alphonse de Lamartine

  Fall, Angel, Heart

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• Nothing detains the reader's attention more powerfully than deep involutions of distress, or sudden vicissitudes of fortune; and these might be abundantly afforded by memoirs of the sons of literature. They are entangled by contracts which they know not how to fulfill, and obliged to write on subjects which they do not understand. Every publication is a new period of time, from which some increase or declension of fame is to be reckoned. The gradations of a hero's life are from battle to battle, and of an author's from book to book.

  Samuel Johnson

  Book, Hero, Writing

  Samuel Johnson (1810). “The works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With An essay on his life and genius”, p.406

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• Now, the vicissitudes that afflict the individual have their source in society. It is this situation that has given currency to the phrase social forces. Personal relations have given way to impersonal ones. The Great Society has arrived and the task of our generation is to bring it under control. The study of how it is to be done is the function of politics.

  Aneurin Bevan

  Our Generation, Tasks, Generations

  David A. Reisman, Aneurin Bevan (1996). “In Place of Fear”, Pickering & Chatto Publishers

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• The rich man, when contributing to a permanent plan for the education of the poor, ought to reflect that he is providing for that of his own descendants; and the poor man who concurs in a provision for those who are not poor that at no distant day it may be enjoyed by descendants from himself. It does not require a long life to witness these vicissitudes of fortune.

  James Madison

  Education, Men, Long

  James Madison (1965). “The forging of American federalism: selected writings of James Madison”

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• Amidst the vicissitudes of the earth's surface, species cannot be immortal, but must perish, one after another, like the individuals which compose them. There is no possibility of escaping from this conclusion.

  Charles Lyell

  Science, Escaping, Extinction

  Sir Charles Lyell (1853). “Principles of geology ; or, The modern changes of the earth and its inhabitants considered as illustrative of geology”, p.696

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• The aspect of the venerable mansion has always affected me like a human countenance, bearing the traces not merely of outward storm and sunshine, but expressive also, of the long lapse of mortal life, and accompanying vicissitudes that have passed within. Were these to be worthily recounted, they would form a narrative of no small interest and instruction, and possessing, moreover, a certain remarkable unity, which might almost seem the result of artistic arrangement.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Sunshine, Long, Unity

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (2015). “Complete Novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated Edition): Fanshawe, The Scarlet Letter with its Adaptation, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, The Marble Faun, The Dolliver Romance, Septimius Felton, Grimshawe's Secret and Biography”, p.349, e-artnow

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• Humility consists of knowing that in this world the whole soul, not only what we term the ego in its totality, but also the supernatural part of the soul, which is God present in it, is subject to time and to the vicissitudes of change. There must be absolutely acceptance of the possibility that everything material in us should be destroyed. But we must simultaneously accept and repudiate the possibility that the supernatural part of the soul should disappear.

  Simone Weil

  Humility, Acceptance, Knowing

  "Concerning the Our Father". "Waiting on God". Book by Simone Weil, Routledge & Kegan Paul edition, p. 153, 1972.

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• Masonry is too great an institution to have been made in a day, much less by a few men, but was a slow evolution through long time, unfolding its beauty as it grew. Indeed, it was like one of its own cathedrals which one generation of builders wrought and vanished, and another followed, until, amidst vicissitudes of time and change, of decline and revival, the order itself became a temple of Freedom and Fraternity.

  Joseph Fort Newton

  Men, Order, Long

  Joseph Fort Newton (2013). “The Builders - A Story & Study of Masonry”, p.124, Lulu Press, Inc

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