Vicissitudes Quotes - Page 2

• And as the vicissitudes of Nations beget a perpetual tendency to the accumulation of debt, there ought to be in every government a perpetual, anxious, and unceasing effort to reduce that, which at any times exists, as fast as shall be practicable consistently with integrity and good faith.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Integrity, Government, Effort

  United States. Dept. of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton (1828). “Reports of the secretary of the Treasury of the United States”, p.101

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• Charity depends on the vicissitudes of whim and personal wealth; justice depends on commitment instead of circumstance. Faith-based charity provides crumbs from the table; faith-based justice offers a place at the table.

  Bill Moyers

  Commitment, Justice, Charity

  Jim Wallis, Bill Moyers (2001). “Faith Works: How Faith-based Organizations are Changing Lives, Neighborhoods, and America”, p.18, Council Oak Books

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• For the anointed, traditions are likely to be seen as the dead hand of the past, relics of a less enlightened age, and not as the distilled experience of millions who faced similar human vicissitudes before.

  Thomas Sowell

  Past, Hands, Age

  Thomas Sowell (1995). “The Vision of the Anointed: Self-congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy”, p.118, Basic Books

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• A blossom full of promise is life's joy,
  That never comes to fruit. Hope, for a time,
  Suns the young floweret in its gladsome light,
  And it looks flourishing--a little while--
  'T is pass'd, we know not whither, but 't is gone.

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon

  Light, Joy, Promise

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• The patriarchal, the Jewish, and the Christian dispensations, are evidently but the unfolding of one general plan. In the first we see the folded bud; in the second the expanded leaf; in the third the blossom and the fruit. And now, how sublime the idea of a religion thus commencing in the earliest dawn of time; holding on its way through all the revolutions of kingdoms and the vicissitudes of the race; receiving new forms, but always identical in spirit; and, finally, expanding and embracing in one great brotherhood the whole family of man! Who can doubt that such a religion was from God?

  Mark Hopkins

  Christian, Men, Ideas

  Mark Hopkins (2009). “Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity”, p.196, Applewood Books

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• I would urge you to give priority to the search for God. Allow his spirit to permeate your being. ... If you do not have a deep and patient faith in God, you will be powerless to face the delays, disappointments, and vicissitudes that inevitably come.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Disappointment, Giving, Priorities

  Martin Luther King Jr. (1963). “Strength to Love”

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• It may be observed, that provinces amid the vicissitudes to which they are subject, pass from order into confusion, and afterward recur to a state of order again; for the nature of mundane affairs not allowing them to continue in an even course, when they have arrived at their greatest perfection, they soon begin to decline.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  Art, War, Order

  "Florentine Histories" by Niccolò Machiavelli, book V, chapter 1, 1526.

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• Charity is commendable; everyone should be charitable. But justice aims to create a social order in which, if individuals choose not to be charitable, people still don't go hungry, unschooled or sick without care. Charity depends on the vicissitudes of whim and personal wealth; justice depends on commitment instead of circumstance.

  Bill Moyers

  Commitment, Order, Sick

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• ...And these vicissitudes come best in youth;
  For when they happen at a riper age,
  People are apt to blame the Fates, forsooth,
  And wonder Providence is not more sage.
  Adversity is the first path to truth:
  He who hath proved war, storm, or woman's rage,
  Whether his winters be eighteen or eighty,
  Has won experience which is deem'd so weighty.

  Lord Byron

  Truth, War, Adversity

  Lord Byron (2009). “Don Juan”, p.520, The Floating Press

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• Chair or no chair: a binary relation. But the vicissitudes of moving the body around are infinite. You never know what a person in a chair can do.

  Sarah Manguso

  Moving, Body, Infinite

  Sarah Manguso (2011). “The Two Kinds of Decay”, p.49, Granta

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• Then there are those who plant. they endure storms and all the many vicissitudes of the seasons, and they rarely rest. But, unlike a building, a garden never stops growing. And while it requires the gardener's constant attention, it also allows life for the gardener to be a great adventure.

  Paulo Coelho

  Adventure, Garden, Storm

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• He who accepts life for what it is and never allows himself to be overwhelmed by it does not need to seek refuge for his crushed self-confidence in the solace of a 'saving lie'. If the longed-for success is not forthcoming, if the vicissitudes of fate destroy in the twinkling of an eye what had to be painstakingly built up by years of hard work, then he simply multiplies his exertions. He can look disaster in the eye without despairing.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Lying, Hard Work, Eye

  Ludwig Von Mises (1962). “The free and prosperous commonwealth: an exposition of the ideas of classical liberalism”

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• 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 our of a grassy and weed-grown cellar? They offer their fruit to every wayfarer--apples that are bitter-sweet with the moral of times vicissitude.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Weed, Sweet, Apples

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (2012). “Mosses from an Old Manse”, p.6, Lulu.com

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• He will see himself and life and the world as truly as our human limitations will permit; realizing the brevity and minuteness of human life, he will realize also that in individual minds is concentrated whatever of value the known universe contains. And he will see that the man whose mind mirrors the world becomes in a sense as great as the world. In emancipation from the fears that beset the slave of circumstance he will experience a profound joy, and through all the vicissitudes of his outward life he will remain in the depths of his being a happy man.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Mirrors, Profound

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.133, Lulu Press, Inc

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• One has never said better how much "humanism", "normality", "quality of life" were nothing but the vicissitudes of profitability.

  Jean Baudrillard

  Quality, Said, Simulacrum

  Jean Baudrillard (1994). “Simulacra and Simulation”, p.131, University of Michigan Press

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• Not even the vicissitudes of fortune are contrary to nature or to the providential ordering of the universe. It all flows from the gods, who determine what is needed for the welfare of the whole universe, of which you are a part.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Flow, Welfare, Fortune

  Marcus Aurelius, C. Scot Hicks, David Hicks (2002). “The Emperor's Handbook: A New Translation of The Meditations”, p.27, Simon and Schuster

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• In your friendships and in your enmities let your confidence and your hostilities have certain bounds; make not the former dangerous, nor the latter irreconcilable. There are strange vicissitudes in business.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Friendship, Enmity, Strange

  Lord Chesterfield (2008). “The Modern Chesterfield”, p.246, Wildside Press LLC

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• The sad vicissitude of things.

  Laurence Sterne

  "Sermons, Volume I". Book by Laurence Sterne (Sermon No. 16), 1760.

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• A truley heroic way of life lies in squarely confronting and courageously overcoming the pounding vicissitudes that life always throws in our paths

  Daisaku Ikeda

  Life, Lying, Hero

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• Let it be our endeavour, let it be our task, to keep alight the torch of imperial patriotism, to hold fast the affection and the confidence of our kinsmen across the seas; so that in every vicissitude of fortune the British Empire may present an unbroken front to all her foes, and may carry on even to distant ages the glorious traditions of the British flag.

  Joseph Chamberlain

  Sea, Age, Torches

  Joseph Chamberlain (1897). “Foreign & Colonial Speeches”, London ; New York : Routledge

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• Nietzsche ... argues that all that passes in the life of a society is ephemeral and banausic except for the presence of great personalities, of men like Goethe ... who seem to forge their own destinies, who seem to move unhampered by those burdens of existence which keep most men from rising above the vicissitudes of their daily toil.

  John Carroll

  Moving, Destiny, Men

  John Carroll (2010). “Break-Out from the Crystal Palace: The Anarcho-Psychological Critique: Stirner, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky”, p.76, Taylor & Francis

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• Freedom is a state of mind, I said wondering where I'd heard it before, not a state of being. We are all slaves to gravity and morality and the vicissitudes of nature. Our genes govern us much more than we'd like to think. Our bodies can not know absolute freedom but our minds can, can at least try.

  Walter Mosley

  Thinking, Mind, Trying

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• But if Maggie had been that young lady, you would probably have known nothing about her: her life would have had so few vicissitudes that it could hardly have been written; for the happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.

  George Eliot

  Maggie, Young, Has Beens

  The Mill on the Floss bk. 6, ch. 3 (1860)

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• Art arises in those strange complexities of action that are called human beings. It is a kind of human behavior. As such it is not magic, except as human beings are magical. Nor is it concerned in absolutes, eternities, "forms," beyond those that may reside in the context of the human being and be subject to his vicissitudes. Art is not an inner state of consciousness, whatever that may mean. Neither is it essentially a supreme form of communication. Art is human behavior, and its values are contained in human behavior.

  Baker Brownell

  Art, Communication, Mean

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• The cure is care. Caring for others is the practice of peace. Caring becomes as important as curing. Caring produces the cure, not the reverse. Caring about nuclear war and its victims is the beginning of a cure for our obsession with war. Peace does not comes through strength. Quite the opposite: Strength comes through peace. The practices of peace strengthen us for every vicissitude. . . . The task is immense!

  Sargent Shriver

  War, Caring, Opposites

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