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Keystone   /kˈistˌoʊn/   Listen
Keystone

noun
1.
A central cohesive source of support and stability.  Synonyms: anchor, backbone, linchpin, lynchpin, mainstay.  "The keystone of campaign reform was the ban on soft money" , "He is the linchpin of this firm"
2.
The central building block at the top of an arch or vault.  Synonyms: headstone, key.



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"Keystone" Quotes from Famous Books



... nearly four hundred years. A hostile and separate power was planted in the centre of Ireland sufficiently powerful to prevent the formation of another civilisation, yet not sufficiently powerful to impose a civilisation of its own. Feudalism was introduced, but the keystone of the system, a strong resident sovereign, was wanting, and Ireland was soon torn by the wars of great Anglo-Norman nobles, who were, in fact, independent sovereigns, much like the old Irish kings. The Scotch invasion of the fourteenth century ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... Autonomy ("State Sovereignty") and the principle of National Supremacy. Exaltation of the latter principle, as it is recognized in the Supremacy Clause (Article VI, paragraph 2) of the Constitution, was the very keystone of Chief Justice Marshall's constitutional jurisprudence. It was Marshall's position that the supremacy clause was intended to be applied literally, so that if an unforced reading of the terms in which legislative power ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... D, of the Eleventh Pennsylvania Reserve Volunteer Corps, were in camp near Pittsburg. The corps was sent forward to Washington at once, and from that time till the close of their term of service, they gallantly represented the Keystone State in every battle fought by the Army of the Potomac. My brother, Wm. A., was a private in Company C. He enlisted June 10, 1861, and fell, with many other brave men, at the battle of Gaines' ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride

... been carried out as intended, the crown of the vault would have been exactly seven times half the width of the nave. S. Servin, Toulouse, has the keystone of the vault exactly five times the half width. If we desire to have good acoustic qualities in our churches and halls we must observe some such rule. So with the plan. The length of Autun is seven times the width of the nave; Beauvais the same, or would have been, had the nave been ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... I did. Well, that did not prevent our getting on very well together. God made you what I call a scoundrel as he made me what you call a fool. (The effect of this observation on Burgess is to remove the keystone of his moral arch. He becomes bodily weak, and, with his eyes fixed on Morell in a helpless stare, puts out his hand apprehensively to balance himself, as if the floor had suddenly sloped under him. Morell proceeds in the same tone of quiet conviction.) It was not for me ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw

... conjecture sounded a little conceited, be sure it was alternated with others self-depreciatory enough to balance it. But I have no space or need to describe the familiar process of architecture, by which with a perhaps for a keystone, possibilities for pillars, and dreams for pinnacles, lovers are wont to rear in a few idle hours, palaces outdazzling Aladdin's. I shall more profitably give a word or two of explanation to another point. Those familiar with the aristocratic ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy

... hither straight from the Terminal Station, seeking this stately keystone to the great Fair, not to steep my senses and fill my eyes with beauty in myriad forms, but to seek out the great man whose masterful hand was to create for me the passport which was to be my 'open sesame' to all within this fair White City's walls; but when I stood beneath that lofty ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch

... do this, Florry, you cause the whole fabric to totter, for on this doctrine, as a foundation, rests the arch, of which confession is the keystone." ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans

... principles of thrift. In 1799 the first savings bank was started at Windover in Buckinghamshire, by the Rev. Joseph Smith. The Rev. Dr. Henry Duncan opened in Ruthwell, Dumfrieshire, the first savings bank in Scotland in 1810. Thrift is the keystone that supports the arch of the savings bank. The stormy petrel riding in safety on the crest of the wave in instinctive security, symbolizes the security of a depositor in a government savings bank. I do not know that I can say any ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett

... all kinds of insects, especially wingless species, such as maggots, caterpillars, larvae of cockroaches, etc. An eyeless species,[33] the Eciton erratica, rapidly forms covered passages under which to advance, and shows great skill in fitting the keystone to ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... or lately was, the same. It was not a matter with the farmer of the Athanasian creed, or the doctrine of salvation by faith, or any other theological dogma. To him the parish church was the centre of the social system of the parish. It was the keystone of that parental plan of government that he believed in. The very first doctrine preached from the pulpit was that of obedience. "Honour thy father and mother" was inculcated there every seventh day. His father went to church, he went to church ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies

... the word, there may be enough to show that something extraordinary occurred; but not enough, unless we assume the fact to be true on far other grounds, to produce any absolute and unhesitating conviction; and inasmuch as the resurrection is the keystone of Christianity, the belief in it must be something far different from that suspended judgment in which history alone would ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... single harmonious effect. It is a typical example of the piu nel uno. An arch cut out or a single stone would not be so beautiful as one of which each individual stone was shaped for its exact position. Its completion by the locking of the keystone is a delight to witness and to contemplate. And how the arch endures, when its lateral thrust is met by solid masses of resistance! In one of the great temples of Baalbec a keystone has slipped, but how rare ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... on another page, illustrates in a very striking manner the mutual dependence of all the stones, representing the divinely appointed elements of character, on their crown, the keystone, which represents the Sabbath or fourth commandment, the connecting link between the first and second tables of the law and the visible bond of every man and nation ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger

... know what worse we could reproach him with,' said my father; 'I mean of course as far as his profession is concerned; discrimination is the very keystone; if he treated all people alike, he would soon become a beggar himself; there are grades in society as well as in the army; and according to those grades we should fashion our behaviour, else there would instantly be an end of all order and discipline. ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... let me insert as the keystone of all that I have been saying in this chapter, be sincere, and ardent, and consistent, in your own piety. The whole structure which I have been attempting to build, will tumble into ruins without this. Be ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... petty princes in remote provinces becoming in combination formidable to the central power. It was specially the object of Richelieu and Mazarin to check this sort of baronial imperium in imperio, and it became in the time of Louis XIV the keystone of that monarch's domestic policy. This tended to encourage the "hanging on" of grands seigneurs about the court, where many of the chief of them, after having exhausted their resources in gambling or riotous living, became dependent for place or pension ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... evolutional process she invented him, differentiated him, created him in order to produce something better than the single-sexed process can produce. Whilst he fulfils the purpose for which she made him, he is welcome to his dreams, his follies, his ideals, his heroisms, provided that the keystone of them all is the worship of woman, of motherhood, of the family, of the hearth. But how rash and dangerous it was to invent a separate creature whose sole function was her own impregnation! For mark what has ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... room of the New York Giants and sees the attendant work upon the wonderful physique of Christy Mathewson, one cannot help but realize what a potent factor he must have been on Bucknell's team. When Christy played he was 6 feet tall and weighed 168 pounds stripped. He prepared at Keystone Academy, playing in the line. In 1898, when he went to Bucknell, he was immediately put at fullback and played there ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards

... only by secession. The kernel of the matter, to my thinking, lay in the fugitive slave question. The provision of the Constitution for the return of fugitive slaves, though it may seem a matter of detail, was, I think, in reality the keystone of the arch. Make it inoperative, and the institution was doomed. Now many of the Northern States, by 'personal liberty laws' and the like, had long been picking at that keystone. Whatever were the professions of politicians and people as to non-interference, they shrank ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... a moment of expansiveness, "is scarcely worth living unless you are doing good to someone." That I take to be the keystone of him. "I want to be a Good Influence upon all the people I meet." I do not think it has ever dawned upon him that he himself is any way short of perfection; and, so far as I can see, the triumph and end of his good influence ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells



Words linked to "Keystone" :   linchpin, support, coign, mainstay, quoin, building block, coigne, arch



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