"Crucial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of African slavery was the incidental issue of Free Trade and Protection,—apparently only economical and industrial in character, but in reality fundamentally crucial. And behind this lay the constitutional question, involving as it did not only the conflicting theories of a strict or liberal construction of the fundamental law, but nationality also,—the right of a Sovereign State to withdraw from ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams
... with him a force very much greater than that before him; but Buell, like McClellan, would not admit that his troops were in condition to move. The result was that Jefferson Davis, more active to protect a crucial point than the North was to assail it, in December, 1861, sent into East Tennessee a force which imprisoned, deported, and hanged the loyal residents there, harried the country without mercy, and held it with the iron hand. The poor mountaineers, with good reason, concluded that the ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... stirring of a curiosity to see what the closing hour of such an occasion might be like. Everything, thus far, had been most seemly, most decorous, full of a pleasant informality and a friendly, trustful goodwill; but the crucial point, he had read, always came about supper-time, after which the rout ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... the promising career which had been interrupted by illness and family bereavement. Next, the forthcoming appearance would be on the regular stage, and in a Shakespearian character, which was always understood to be a crucial test of histrionic genius. Then, the revival of Romeo and Juliet, which had formerly been in contemplation, would probably give way to the still more ambitious project of an entirely new production by a well-known Scandinavian author, with a part peculiarly fitted to the personality ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... by which to live. We don't have to talk late into the night about which form of government is better. We don't have to wrest justice from the kings. We only have to summon it from within ourselves. We must act on what we know. I take as my guide the hope of a saint: In crucial things, unity; in important things, diversity; in all ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... pest recalled Some of the forces to the city's aid From the besieged halls. Nor Caesar gave To sleep its season; swifter than all else To seize the crucial moment of the war. Quick in the darkest watches of the night He leaped upon his ships, and Pharos (25) seized, Gate of the main; an island in the days Of Proteus seer, now bordering the walls Of Alexander's city. Thus he gained A double vantage, for his foes were pent ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... crucial moment in a campaign and you saw that votes for a suffrage amendment were in the balance, you would give of the best that you have, with all the fervency of your heart. But campaigns are not won in a day. They are won only by constant and untiring advance work. The Woman's ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Look Forward and Back at the Woman's Journal, the Organ of the - Woman's Movement • Agnes E. Ryan
... distress or shock, but with a kind of recognising thrill in contact at last with the necessity for action, decision, a climax of high heart-beats. She saw with surprise that she had lived with her passion these weeks and months half consciously expecting that a crucial moment would dissolve it, like a person aware that he dreams and will presently awake. She had not faced till now any exigency of her case. But the crucial moment had leapt upon her, pointing out the subjection of her life, and she, undefended, ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... had come almost to them I called aloud to their leader, when the whole party halted and turned toward us. The crucial test had come. Could we but deceive these men the rest would be ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... if ever there was one—certain words contained in the original resolution proposing that there should be a tribunal constituted "whose orders shall be enforceable by adequate sanction" were omitted. The question of sanction is, no doubt, a crucial one, but it seemed better to substitute the more general words urging an inquiry into the conditions necessary for the establishment of a League, in fact to see generally—looking at the question as a whole—what definite and practical steps should ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... 1640 is the fact that the 'Sonnets' were printed then in a different order from that which was followed in the volume of 1609. Thus the poem numbered lxvii. in the original edition opens the reissue, and what has been regarded as the crucial poem, beginning ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... ample for the modest requirements of himself and Mary. On the subject of his retirement he wrote some touching letters to friends such as Wordsworth and Bernard Barton, and also in his accustomed manner made the crucial event the subject of a delightful "Elia" essay. He had before expatiated on the excellent position of the authors who were not "authors for bread"—men who like himself were employed in business during the day and had to dally with literature in off hours. Certainly Lamb's ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... polytheistic or of polytheistic tendency. It is quite enough that the immortals are deemed to be capable of hearing and answering the prayers of their adorers, and of interfering actively in passing events, either for good or for evil. This, at the root of it, constitutes the crucial difference between polytheism and monotheism; and in this sense the Roman Catholic form of Christianity, representing the oldest undisturbed evolution of a strictly monotheistic doctrine, is undeniably ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... and bashful. Again and again Louis nerved me up. But I didn't know girls. They were strange and wonderful to me after my precocious man's life. I failed of the bold front and the necessary forwardness when the crucial moment came. ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... to sleep. She lay in the cool, fragrant sheets and was happy, and convinced of the presence of the God to whom she had prayed. All night Sydney Lord sat down-stairs in his book-walled sanctum and studied over the situation. It was a crucial one. The great psychological moment of Sydney Lord's life for knight-errantry had arrived. He studied the thing from every point of view. There was no romance about it. These were hard, sordid, tragic, ludicrous facts with ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... sure. It seemed to get mixed with my name—on my arm. I think it was only because tennis and Fenwick are a little alike." His companion thought how near the edge of a volcano both were, and resolved to try a crucial experiment. Better an eruption, after all, or a plunge in the crater, than a ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... The crucial question of wages is one that is extremely difficult to deal with in brief. The accompanying table gives a very general statement as to the range of wages obtained by graduates and the future possibilities in their trades, and read in the light of the comment below it is as specifically accurate ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman
... of responsibility, and his face puckered up as he glanced at his men and grasped the fact that they were looking to him to lead. They were ready enough to obey his orders, but not to give him the advice which he needed at such a crucial time. ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... The crucial time had now come. They were passing over the line of the French trenches. Jack knew this from various signs, and also that in another minute they might expect to be spotted by some of the enemy searchlights. These would be unmasked, and trained on the heavens in ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... over their "unhappy divisions". Still, we wish to be perfectly just, so, in illustration of our contention, we will select, not one of those innumerable minor points which it would be easy to bring forward, but some really crucial point of doctrine, the importance of which no man in his senses will have the hardihood to deny. Let us say, for instance, the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist. Can we conceive anything that a devout Christian would be more anxious to ascertain than ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... experience as this. He had never heard a voice of which he had been so certain that it did not come from any one in the room, and he had never found any somnambulist who had so instantly grasped his most secret thoughts, without the slightest assistance or leading word from himself. Yet at the crucial test—the question of a certainty in the future, this one had stopped short as all stopped, or failed in their predictions of what was to come. He had been startled and almost frightened. Like many Southern Italians, he was at once ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... ways in which our fears have power to wound us most grievously is through our affections, and here we are confronted with a real and crucial difficulty. Are we to hold ourselves in, to check the impulses of affection, to use self-restraint, not multiply intimacies, not extend sympathies? One sees every now and then lives which have entwined themselves with every tendril of passion and ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... thing, whether in history, or literature, or science, or politics that can be more crucial in the fate of a nation to-day than the correct, just, and constructive ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... the agonies of snow-blindness, sore feet, and the pangs of hunger, you are not, to put it mildly, at your best as a member of the social order. They sometimes said things they were ashamed to remember, but both men grew carefuller at crucial moments, and the talkative one more silent as ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... my experience of certain straightforward characters combining a perfectly natural ruthlessness with a certain amount of moral delicacy. Falk obeys the law of self-preservation without the slightest misgivings as to his right, but at a crucial turn of that ruthlessly preserved life he will not condescend to dodge the truth. As he is presented as sensitive enough to be affected permanently by a certain unusual experience, that experience had to ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... agitate and fire his youthful breast, Oh, why should fortune oft' be so unkind, And real life appear in sombre colors drest, And dash to earth bright hopes, and give so much unrest? Oh, why should boyish hopes, and maiden's dreams Fail, sadly fail, to stand the crucial test? Say, why should all the brightness of man's schemes Full often fade away, ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... other hand, the French had the walls of Louisbourg to redress the balance in their favour. These walls were the crucial factor in the problem. Both sides knew they were far from being impregnable. But how long could they withstand a regular siege? If for only one month, then they were useless as a protection to Quebec. ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... be blind days, but too often they are days of overstrained criticism, when from very fear each sees slips and imperfections even where they do not exist. The discovery that she had misjudged Hyde was an exquisite joy to Isabel. This trivial, crucial scruple, of morality or taste, whichever one liked to call it, was the sign of a chastity of mind which could coexist, it seemed, with the coarse and careless sins that he had never denied. After all no marriage on earth is perfect, and ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... Churchill's control and flung it against the bluff. Churchill made a blind leap at the bluff and landed in a crevice. Holding on with one hand, he held the swamped canoe with the other till Antonsen dragged himself out of the water. Then they pulled the canoe out and rested. A fresh start at this crucial point took them by. They landed on the bank above and plunged immediately ashore and into the ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... repeated, and nobody seemed to have found any significance in it. At this late hour Nicholas Crips discovered so much meaning in it that he went out into the wide Domain to be alone among the trees to think it over. His thoughts came back always to the crucial point. ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... opportunity, with so great a power in action, to make trial of motion without contact, the presence of two persons only, the daylight, the place, the size and weight of the table, making the experiment a crucial one. Accordingly we stood upright, he on one side of the table, I on the other side of it. We stood two feet from it, and held our hands eight inches above it. In one minute it rocked violently. ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... as Part 2 in "Man's Place in Nature," the first lecture describing the general nature of the process of development among vertebrate animals, and the modifications of the skeleton in the mammalia; the second dealing with the crucial points of comparison between the higher apes and man, namely the hand, foot, and brain. He showed that the differences between man and the higher apes were no greater than those between the higher and lower apes. If the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... injunction to treat this man with particular courtesy, and was in a quandary what to do in case he came to the crucial point. But to her surprise, instead of pressing his own suit, Mr. Weil began to support in a mild manner the cause ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... worst happen—a stout door which will hold back pursuers for a long time. It opens from a room which shall be yours for the time. The key shall be in your possession. Study to look innocent, Hannah, when you are questioned, and in a crucial moment you may prove a far better defence than a ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... in the letter? There was the critical and crucial question. No matter how artful and cajoling an apology she wrote, she knew exactly how he would treat it. He would write a civil, formal reply, assuring her that her apology was accepted, and there the matter would ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... indeed, we reach a crucial point, though it has usually been overlooked, in the lives of boys and girls, more especially those whose heredity may have been a little tainted or their upbringing a little twisted. For it is here that the transformation of energy ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... It was Johnson's finger diverted his eyes to the crucial place in the prayer-book to which ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... were all very well in their way, but this time she had blundered through excess of caution. In sticking to the post that made her independent she had broken her strongest line of defence. If only she had had the courage to relinquish it at the crucial moment, she would have stood a very much better chance in her contest with Keith. She could then have appealed to his pity as she had done with such signal success two years ago, when the result of the ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... of conflicting emotions, but a single abiding conviction never once left him—he retained implicit faith in her, and he purposed to fight this matter out with Hampton. Even in that crucial hour, had any one ventured to suggest that he was in love with Naida, he would merely have laughed, serenely confident that nothing more than gentlemanly interest swayed his conduct. It was true, he ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... heavy laden. That had been his mental condition, indeed, much of the time since he turned farmer, and I may add that his thoughts occasionally ran in a sarcastic vein—a course ordinarily foreign to him. Shortly before that crucial point in his career, his marriage to Nannie, Randolph Chance had loaned him a beautiful idyl, termed "Liberty and a Living." Randolph himself had read this as a thirsty man reads of cool, rock-paved brooks; Steve read it as a poet, a dreamer, but it would no doubt have had a marked ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... "yes" to this request than the sitting was fixed for the next morning at 11 o'clock. The crucial matter, of course, was the question of precedence, and this would have been difficult to settle had not the Prime Minister caught a bad cold, which caused his sitting to be delayed for some days. Hence it was that at 11 o'clock punctually I was ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... It was the crucial point in the conversation. She held her breath as she awaited his answer. She knew he was no adept at the half-meanings and near-confessions of flirtation, and that she could depend upon his words and actions to ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... preserved for her the chance of possessing the large fortune which she was about to receive with his approval from the Washington Trust Company. No wonder that he looked keenly at the young woman standing before him! What was she now? What had she done with herself these seven crucial years of her life to prepare herself for her good fortune and justify his care of her interests? How had the enjoyment of ease and the expectation of coming wealth, with all its opening of gates and widening of horizons, affected ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... water and opposing violence, and nothing can stop them—unless, sometimes, a grain of sand. For his blind purpose (and clearly the thought of Mrs Anthony was at the bottom of it) Mr Powell had plenty of time. What checked him at the crucial moment was the familiar, harmless aspect of common things, the steady light, the open book on the table, the solitude, the peace, the home-like effect of the place. He held the glass in his hand; all he had to do was to vanish back beyond the curtains, flee with it noiselessly into the night on deck, ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... kind had gone to pieces, but some of the larger lead types and quads still were recognizable. And, the crucial thing, he turned up a jagged bit of stereotype-sheet from under the protection of a concrete plinth that had fallen ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... Latin the observance of quantity and of pitch are the two most difficult points of attainment; and they are the crucial ...
— The Roman Pronunciation of Latin • Frances E. Lord
... never know these crucial perplexities of our life. A man might sink under less! I have just spent the night with one of my most intimate friends.—I have but two friends, the Comte Octave de Bauvan and the Comte de Serizy.—We sat together, Monsieur de Serizy, the Count, and I, from six in the evening till ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... philosophy of the Middle Ages. She was not conscious of change, but change there was. She had, in fact, undergone that dissociation of the moral judgment from a special series of religious formulae which is the crucial, the epoch-making fact of our day. 'Unbelief,' says the orthodox preacher, 'is sin, and implies it': and while he speaks, the saint in the unbeliever gently smiles down his argument, and suddenly, in the rebel of yesterday men see the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the battlefield at a crucial hour for the Allied cause. For almost four years the most formidable army the world has yet seen had pressed its invasion of France and stood threatening its capital. At no time has that army been more powerful and menacing ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... to every human being: He trod the wine-press alone. In all its deepest experiences the soul is solitary. Craving companionship, in the very times when it seeks it most it finds it denied. Every crucial choice must at last be individual. When sorrows are multiplied there are in them deeps into which no friendly eye can look. When the hour of death comes, even though friends crowd the rooms, not one of them can accompany the soul on its journey. It seems as if ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... no entangling acquaintances, nor did he impart to any one the secret of his fortune, loyally reserving it for his partner's first knowledge. To a man of his natural frankness and simplicity this was a great trial, and was, perhaps, a crucial test of his devotion. When he gave up his rooms at the Oriental—as not necessary after his partner's absence—he sent a letter, with his humble address, to the mysterious lock-box of his partner without ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... moral eminence, passed through a crucial ordeal, and it is to be greatly wondered at that the Negro woman emerged with even the ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... some previous existence in a prehistoric cave, or, more tormenting still, with the tingling, psychic prophecy of some amazing emotional experience yet to come. The sort of face, in fact, that almost inevitably flares up into a woman's startled vision at the one crucial moment in her life when she is not supposed to be ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... the evidence before the magistrates with great care, and I have just talked over the crucial points with Aldous, who followed everything to-day, as you know, and seems to have taken special ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... labor during the crucial early period at Jamestown from the tasks of building and provisioning. Sailors and settlers, both, took time off to load the ships with the drug which would bring a good ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... There comes the crucial moment in the race. See the man with the stronger forearms. They are bands of steel that swell in the forearms of Ben Hur. They swing those flying Arabians into the inner ring. Ben Hur wins the race! Where got the Jew those huge forearms? From ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... A sort of madness overcame her, and she let herself fall softly on his breast, resolved to yield to him, and turn this yielding to great results,—staking upon it her future happiness, which would become more certain if she came victorious from this crucial test. But her head had scarcely touched her lover's shoulder when a slight noise was heard without. She tore herself from his arms as if suddenly awakened, and sprang from the cottage. Her coolness came back to her, and she ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... They arrested the spreading flames, but could not reach the fire under the cornice. Then they utilized the siphon bottles; one soldier, held by his legs, hung over the roof and squirted the small stream on the crucial spot. The danger was soon over and the house was saved with quite a group of others that would have ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... well founded, but what assurance is there—if the Book which embodies the code of Christian morality may without irreverence be quoted—that "that which is done is that which shall be done"?[5] That is the crucial question. ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... till the crucial experiment is made, and a pair of birds raised from the egg without ever seeing a nest are shown to be capable of making one exactly of the parental type, I do not think we are justified in calling in the aid of an unknown and mysterious faculty to ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... entire battalions as skirmishers, assisted by entire battalions as supports or reserves. This is a necessary measure to insure good order. Do not throw into the fight immediately the four companies of the battalion. Up to the crucial moment, the battalion commander ought to guard against throwing every one ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... dream-self by its nature largely restricted to the use of symbolism and having at its disposal a vast store of images endlessly susceptible to influences which combine and alter their form, we reach the crucial question, what initiates the dream? This is by no means a mere purposeless thronging of visual images as occasionally happens in the period preceding sleep when faces, forms and scenes flit aimlessly before the mind's eye, some bare replicas of stimulations of the ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... of the palmellae you described in the boxes, and I kept them for several years and demonstrated them as I had opportunity. You also showed me on this visit the following experiments that I regarded as crucial: ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... all clear. The fates don't say whether you will settle down to married life and have four children or whether you will try to go on the cinema and have none. They are only specific about this one rather crucial incident." ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... far from over though, for now came the crucial point in our plans: in order for our small force to infiltrate the city and place the atomic anionizers, the Zards must not only have been distracted and preoccupied with the blaze, but they had also to leave the city almost empty and go to the lake itself, ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... in a matter as crucial as this matter, concerning "the invisible companions of men," not to advance a step beyond our starting-point till we have apprehended it from several different aspects and have gone over our ground again ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... young dog last? That was the crucial question. The hare had had many a run before this to save her skin, and was hardened by the life of the breezy downs and the wide fields. But the dog had never previously been tried in such a way: his life had been more or less an ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... of George III. Two points, however, must be remembered: first, that there was a commercial as well as an agricultural and an industrial stage of development; and secondly, that this period contains merely the central and crucial years of a process of specialization and expansion which occupied centuries of English economic history. There was also before the agricultural stage a pastoral stage; but that lies beyond the scope of English history, ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... backward; and twice had the agile Dick, unharmed, regained his seat before she found her vicious legs again. And a mile beyond them, at the foot of a long hill, was Rattlesnake Creek. Dick knew that here was the crucial test of his ability to perform his enterprise, set his teeth grimly, put his knees well into her flanks, and changed his defensive tactics to brisk aggression. Bullied and maddened, Jovita began the descent of the hill. Here the artful Richard pretended to hold her in with ostentatious objurgation ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... I told myself, that I had met the man before. His remarkable and uncommon cast of features had no niche in my recollection, and yet I knew that in some crucial moment I had looked into those pale ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... Upon women, in crucial hours, may depend the peace of the old, the fortune of the middle-aged, the hopefulness of the young. In such an hour we do not wish to be dismissed as were the women of Socrates's family, who had had no part in the bright life of the ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... and gold. However, severe ethnic violence, the closing of key business enterprises, and an empty government treasury have led to serious economic disarray, indeed near collapse. Tanker deliveries of crucial fuel supplies (including those for electrical generation) have become sporadic due to the government's inability to pay and attacks against ships. Telecommunications are threatened by the nonpayment of bills and by the lack of technical ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... knows what he will do under fire until the test comes, but be it said to their glory, our boys never failed when the crucial hour came. (They were soldiers not of training but of character.) Quietly, with unflinching courage, our boys awaited the onslaught. Finally when the command to fire was given our friend selected his men—no random fire for him. One by one he saw his victims drop ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... just what he saw in my eyes; but it seemed to bother him. He fidgeted a little; as he approached the crucial point, his ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... intervals? With safety we may reject all theories of myth or parable in the scriptural account, and accept the record as it stands; and with equal assurance may we affirm that the temptations were real, and that the trials to which our Lord was put constituted an actual and crucial test. To believe otherwise, one must regard the ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... Warwick, and in many places sprinkled over the northern heights of London; but amid its tame surroundings in this little colliery settlement it looms with a peculiar frowning majesty, a certain bleak loneliness, both unique and impressive. The edifice is of the customary crucial form,—a low stone structure, having a peaked roof, which is supported by four great pillars on each side of the center aisle. The ceiling, which is made of heavy timbers, forms almost a true arch above the nave. There ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... world—is enacted into law, the Government will find itself crippled in respect of taxable resources during the second year of the war; the very year which, if the war does last beyond the present one, will presumably be the crucial period. ...
— War Taxation - Some Comments and Letters • Otto H. Kahn
... the two.... In fact, this stern, yet truthful and merciful, claim makes all the difference between a Faith and a theory." And now there is a moment's pause. Preacher and hearers alike take breath. Some instinct assures us that we are just coming to the crucial point. The preacher resumes: "A statement of this truth in other terms is at present occasioning a painful controversy, which it would be better in this place to pass over in silence if too much was not at stake to warrant a course from which I shall only depart with sincere ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... one of those crucial experiences of life, which, more than the turning of the earth upon its axis, serve to age a human being. For perhaps the first time in the brief span of his remembrance, he had scrutinized himself in the pitiless light of an intelligence higher than his own everyday consciousness; and the sight ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... economy that made him travel second-class from engaging a carriage by the day at Baireuth, since that clearly was worth while, and they found it waiting for them by the theatre. There was still time to drive to Falbe's lodging and get through this crucial ordeal before the opera, and they went straight there. A very venerable instrument, which Falbe had not yet opened, stood against the wall, and he struck a few notes ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... shadow or the wind; for Turnbull had put one foot in a crack of the tree and gone up it as quickly and softly as a cat. Somewhat more laboriously but in equal silence the long legs of the Highlander had followed; and crouching in crucial silence in the cloud of leaves, they saw the whole posse of their pursuers go by and die into the dust ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... the report of Lord Wantage's Committee to do with the present system of military administration? It is as if the noble lord were to call attention to the Tenterden Steeple, and to move that the Goodwin Sands are a danger to navigation." But the breakdown of recruiting was the crucial evidence of the weakness of ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... from the Excelsior half a dozen times. Every second of glancing at the door seemed a minute, and the minutes hours. After the disillusionments she had suffered she actually was beginning to think that he, too, would fail her in the crucial moment, when, at last, the portieres parted, and Derby entered carrying—the celebrated ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... unless China solves this problem herself, the case of Korea being invoked as an example of the fate of divided nations. Fear of Japan and the precedent of Korea, being familiar phenomena, are given a capital position in all this debate, being secondary only to the crucial business of ensuring the peaceful succession to the supreme office. The transparent manner in which the history of the first three years of the Republic is handled in order to drive home these arguments will be very apparent. A fit crown is put on the whole business by the final ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... Marlanx deemed it necessary—even imperative—to the welfare of the movement, that John Tullis should be disposed of summarily before the crucial chapter in their operations. Truxton heard the Committee discussing the fiasco that attended his first attempt to draw the brainy, influential American out of the arena. It was clear that Marlanx suspected Tullis of ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... vastly more serious matter, which was, we may say at once, the crucial ordeal of his life, the same invincible truthfulness, the same innate goodness, the same horror of doing a wrong, are combined with an exquisite sensibility and a capacity for suffering which mark him as a man "picked out among ten thousand." His habit of relentless ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... Ark in which the Torah was kept, on the altar on which the priests offered sacrifices, and on the table that symbolized the kingdom. But the highest of all is the crown of a good name, which a man earns through good deeds, for the crucial test is not the study of the Torah, but the life conforming to it. For this reason also there was a sin offering among the offerings, corresponding to the crown of good deeds, for these alone can serve as an expiation. The two oxen indicate the two ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... of suggestive thoughts on the whole field of science, but is mainly the exposition of the fallacies by which the intellect is deceived and misled, and from which it must be purged in order to attain final truth, and of the new doctrine of "prerogative instances," or crucial observations and experiments ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... to find justification for a pursuit which his human instinct told him had no justification. His reason was fully adequate, but something else failed at the crucial point. He felt definitely uncomfortable and wished that Ralph might have avoided the subject. It was none of his business, anyway. But then, ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... of the noble and steadfast old Friend, could hardly fail to be known as a friend of the slave. Like her father she was ready to labor, and sacrifice and suffer in his cause, and had already made this apparent, had borne persecution, the crucial test of principle, before the war which gave to the world the prominent idea of freedom for all, and thus wiped the darkest stain from our starry banner, ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... and magnificent passage in Dante's Purgatorio which Catholic commentators interpret in sacramental terms but we may well apply in a wider sense to the progress of the human spirit towards the ideal. It occurs at that crucial point where the ascending poet leaves the circles of sad repentance to reach the ...
— Progress and History • Various
... it only to be the sport of the next. That men are slow to recognize genuine merit when it appears in their own age, also proves that they do not understand or enjoy or really value the long-acknowledged works of genius, which they honor only on the score of authority. The crucial test is the fact that bad work—Fichte's philosophy, for example—if it wins any reputation, also maintains it for one or two generations; and only when its public is very large does ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... modern. The introduction of the comparative method of research which has forced history to disclose its secrets belongs in a measure to us. Ours, too, is a more scientific knowledge of philology and the method of survival. Nor did the ancients know anything of the doctrine of averages or of crucial instances, both of which methods have proved of such importance in modern criticism, the one adding a most important proof of the statical elements of history, and exemplifying the influences of all physical surroundings on the life of man; the other, as in the single ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... Watson towards the eminence on which stood the citadel; as they came to it the poor worn beasts could scarcely carry themselves up the hill. By superhuman efforts at last the gates were reached. The crucial point ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... Two had given a good deal of thought to the clothing Barrent would wear upon debarkation. Those first minutes on Earth might be crucial. No cunning could help him if his clothing was obviously strange, outlandish, alien. Typical Earth clothing was the answer; but the Group wasn't sure what the citizens of Earth wore. One part of the Group had wanted Barrent to dress ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... spread the oilcloth into place, and stood up. Who and what was this organisation? What was between it and the Tocsin? What was this immense fortune that was at stake? And what was this priceless packet that was so crucial, that meant victory now, ay, and her life, too, she ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... National Government in any specific or direct manner. But Andrew Johnson was inaugurated as Vice-President on the 4th of March, and the only form of government left in Tennessee was that of which Brownlow was the acknowledged head. The crucial test would come when the senators and representatives, elected under the Brownlow government, should apply ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... hypnotism, automatic writing, crystal-gazing—in short, of any method which will force an entrance into that higher time-world, whereby the forgotten past may become the present. This accomplished, and the crucial moment recovered and transfixed, the victim of the aborted opportunity is led to deal with it as one may deal with the fluid, and may not deal with the fixed. Again his past is plastic to the operation of his intelligence and his will. Here is glad news for mortals: ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... Mississippi, the first attempt to invade from that side under Rosecrans had suffered defeat in the bloody battle of the Chickamauga. Sherman and Thomas resolved to reverse this unfavourable decision and attacked at the same crucial point. An action lasting four days and full of picturesque episodes gave them the victory which was the starting-point of all that followed. To that action belongs the strange fight of Look Out Mountain fought "above the clouds" by men who could not see the wide terrain for ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... The problems confronting the pioneer were not the problems we face to-day. It requires great ability to draft a prospectus; in many of our greatest enterprises drafting the prospectus has been the crucial task. But a prospectus is not a going concern. There is a vast difference between promotion and administration. In the promotional stage of our business life we were solving problems made up of unknown quantities, problems for which the only angle of approach was found ...
— Higher Education and Business Standards • Willard Eugene Hotchkiss
... critical spirit had tried to sort her out, but the soft blur of identity, of personality, of eyes, hair, mouth, laugh, tricks of speech and gesture, that were all so solely and profoundly her own, and yet so mysteriously independent of what she might do, say, think, in crucial circumstances. He remembered her once saying to him: "After all, you were right when you wanted me to be your mistress," and the indignant stare of incredulity with which he had answered her. Yet in these ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... Another crucial point in President Smith's responsibility was his solemnization of the plural marriage between Apostle Abraham H. Cannon and Lillian Hamlin, of which I have already written. One of the women of the dead apostle's ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... letter required turning at this point, and Deulin, for the first time in his life, perhaps, made a mistake at a crucial moment. He allowed his voice to break on the next word, and had to pause for an instant ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... There may be severe pain at the back of the head and in the neck. Difficulty in swallowing soon becomes a marked symptom. The speech assumes a sobbing tone, and occasionally the expression of the face is wild and haggard. As regards the crucial diagnostic test of a glass of water, the following account of a patient's attempt to drink is given by Curtis and quoted by Warren: "A glass of water was offered the patient, which he refused to take, saying ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... strength throughout New England. To guard against such a danger, Hanna sedulously cultivated the popular demand for Governor McKinley and also fought in the state conventions for delegates even against favorite sons. A crucial state was Illinois, where Senator Cullom was powerful. The Senator says that a representative of McKinley offered him "all sorts of inducements" to withdraw, but McKinley's biographer mentions ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... At the crucial point the Trust President is on the stand, a potential criminal needing but one push to be a jailbird, scorned by the upright for leagues around. Let him be acquitted—and in a year all is forgotten. "Yes, he did have some trouble once, just a technicality, ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... about life. A single chapter of the Gospels, or at most two, would contain all the maxims about life which He thought necessary for wise and lofty conduct. His method is rather to put Himself in relation to the crucial occurrences of life, and to reveal the true way of regarding them by His own attitude towards them. When He would teach the beauty of humility it is by putting a little child in the midst of His arrogant and vainglorious disciples, that the child may become the living ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... a spontaneous fungus which grows without proper care, as character is an essential that must be cultivated in the fertile soil of morality, as there is no code of morals which will stand the crucial test of godliness unless it springs from the eternal injunctions laid down in the Holy Bible, and without morals an individual as well as a nation loses its identity among the good of the land, and when this happens, ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... When the crucial moment came for his manhood to answer, the speech of brave denunciation died on his lips. The vision was too wonderful, the heights to which he had been invited too high and thrilling to be dismissed with words. Deep down in every strong man's soul is the ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... the contrary; but if you show that you're not following, he begins at the beginning again, you see! The crucial point in the sham fight," continued his uncle, "is the movement made by the captain himself, in spite of the general's orders, which equally embarrassed both friends and foes. It was this stroke of genius, between ourselves, which forced them to give him the Order ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... dovetail, splice, link; lace, tat. mat, plait, plat, braid, felt, twill; tangle, entangle, ravel; net, knot; dishevel, raddle[obs3]. Adj. crossing &c. v.; crossed, matted &c, v. transverse. cross, cruciform, crucial; retiform[obs3], reticular, reticulated; areolar[obs3], cancellated[obs3], grated, barred, streaked; textile; crossbarred[obs3], cruciate[obs3], palmiped[obs3], secant; web-footed. Adv. cross, thwart, athwart, transversely; at grade ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... her movements; but so incapable did he feel of further effort that lie remained sitting, with his eyes shut. A new sound roused him: she was shivering, and with such violence that the bedstead was shaken. After a crucial struggle with himself, he rose, and crossed the room. She was lying outside the bedclothes. He pulled off an eider-down quilt, and spread it over her. As he did this, his arms were round her, all the beloved body was in his grasp. When he had finished, he did not remove them, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... answer, "It's my little cousin, overcome with emotion. She's been counting the hours till you came—been hearing of you from me and others for a good while; and hasn't been able to talk or think of anything else. She's only fifteen, and the crucial moment is too much for her—the Great Harkless has arrived, and she ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... affecting very important Interests. Don't do anything rash. Don't do anything foolish. Remember that Shares may rise or fall on this." He said "Shares" in a tone of profound respect that I can hardly even indicate. It was the crucial word in ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... entered on his tenancy, and he was anxious to have Romilly ready for publication in the coming autumn. Nevertheless, he did not intend to force its production. Should it demand longer in the doing, so much the worse; he realised its importance, its crucial importance, in his artistic development, and it must have its own length and time. In the workroom he had recently left he had been making excellent progress; Romilly had begun, as the saying is, to speak and act ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... looked encouragement; but at the crucial moment he always held back. So much was at stake, and it was so essential that his first choice should be decisive. He dreaded stupidity, timidity, intolerance. The imaginative eye, the furrowed brow, were what ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... Warfield smiled at him. Then he leaned across the front seat and added impressively, "Bear one thing in mind, Al. The Sawtooth cannot permit itself to become involved in any scandal, nor in any killing cases. We're just at the most crucial point with our reclamation project, over here on the flat. The legislature is willing to make an appropriation for the building of the canal, and in two or three months at the latest we should begin selling agricultural ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... The crucial experiment is this. Offer a bulky and boggy bun to the suspected individual just ten minutes before dinner. If this is eagerly accepted and devoured, the fact of youth is established. If the subject of the question starts back and ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... remind Mr. Healy how he had done this, "rebuking and restraining the prior right of my friend, Jack Redmond." Redmond had not long to wait, however. Another vacancy occurred in another Wexford seat, the ancient borough of New Ross, and he was returned without opposition at a crucial moment in the ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... the views expressed in the last edition; for the evidence which has come to my knowledge in the meantime has on the whole served either to confirm my former conclusions or to furnish fresh illustrations of old principles. Thus, for example, on the crucial question of the practice of putting kings to death either at the end of a fixed period or whenever their health and strength began to fail, the body of evidence which points to the wide prevalence of such ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... it must be remembered, is a physicist and not an astronomer. He developed his theory as a mathematical formula. The confirmation of it came from the astronomers. As he himself says, the crucial test was supplied by the last total solar eclipse. Observations then proved that the rays of fixed stars, having to pass close to the sun to reach the earth, were deflected the exact amount demanded ...
— The Einstein Theory of Relativity • H.A. Lorentz
... circumstances are against her. And neither she nor her mother will try to find out, if they believe I see them dimly. That is where you come in. Only make them believe that. Don't let them suppose I am all in the dark. Say nothing of your crucial experiment just now. Irene—dear girl—has been a good sister to me, and has told many good round lies for my sake. But she will explain to God. I cannot ask you, Lord Ancester, to tell stories on my behalf. My petition is only for a modest prevarication—the cultivation of a reasonable ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... the old manner so well known to his companion as his office style. Piece by piece, he drew from Amidon his story. He dropped back to previous parts of the narrative, and elicited repetitions. He slurred over crucial points as if he did not see their bearing, and then artfully assumed minute variations of the ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... that he was face to face with a question which, as lawyers say, required that the answer should be either "yes" or "no." Still, he made one more attempt to avert the crucial inquiry. ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... come to the crucial matter of my version, the annotative concerning which this "decent gentleman," as we suppose this critic would entitle himself (p. 185), finds a fair channel of discharge for vituperative rhetoric. But before entering upon this subject ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... skillful and daring sailors of Italy and Portugal, and inspired them anew, as often as they returned baffled and discouraged, with his own perennial enthusiasm. Between 1435 and 1460, famous captains in his service—Gil Eannes, Denis Diaz, the Venetian Cadamosto—made those crucial voyages round the Point of Bojador, past the desert to Cape Verde, and beyond as far as Sierra Leone. After 1443 the labors of the Navigator were no longer thought to be wasted; for when the rich traffic in slaves and gold was opened up to Portugal, the greed of gain was added ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... with. History would go; yes;—but a mort of pernicious lies would go with it. Well, well; one speaks of course in jest (partly). But when all is said, China was not unfortunate in having a strong giant of a man, a foreigner withal, at her head during those crucial decades. Ts'in Shi Hwangti guarded China through most of that perilous intermission between the cycles. It was the good that he did that mostly ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... state it, who (you please subjoin) Disfigure such a life and call it names. While, to your mind, remains another way For simple men: knowledge and power have rights, But ignorance and weakness have rights too. There needs no crucial effort to find truth If here or there or anywhere about: We ought to turn each side, try hard and see, 860 And if we can't, be glad we've earned at least The right, by one laborious proof the more, To ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... dazzling political career opens before Sordello; he is discovered to be—not a nameless minstrel, but the son of the great Ghibelline chief, Salinguerra; more marvelous still, he is loved by Palma, in her youthful beauty and fascination; and the crucial question comes, as in some form it must come to every life, whether he shall choose all the kingdoms of power and glory, or that kingdom which is not of earth, ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... fascinating polemics to taunt the Church of Rome with being "always the same." But as a matter of fact the Church is not the same. It improves with the general march of the progress that it condemns. Froude fairly and honourably quotes a crucial instance. Pitt "sought the opinion of the Universities of France and Spain on the charge generally alleged against Catholics that their allegiance to their sovereign was subordinate to their allegiance to the Pope; ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... by the conditions. If you can give me the facts, or your general impression from your study of these floras, I shall be much obliged. I see, of course, many other objections to Geddes's theory, but this seems to offer a crucial ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant |
