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More "Vital" Quotes from Famous Books



... it will ever remain true that ownership, or property in man is not in itself wrong, and that it may be benevolent to all concerned. It is interesting to recollect that in proportion as human relations are cardinal, or vital, they approach most nearly to ownership, as in the case of parent and child. The highest relation of all, that between man and God, finds its most perfect expression in terms conveying the idea of ownership on the part of God. 'For ye are not your own;—therefore glorify ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams

... in his side, and for the first time he thought of his wound. Passing his hand to it, he found it was clotted with blood. The cold air had stopped the bleeding, and thus saved his life. Though the bayonet had gone clear through him, his hurt was not mortal, for no vital part was injured. ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various

... pirate's body literally flew into mist as a half-kilogram shell tore through his armor and exploded. Costigan shut off his beam, and, with not the slightest softening of one hard lineament, stared around the air-room; making sure that no serious damage had been done to the vital machinery of the air-purifier—the very ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith

... could have predicted the position of the parties to-day. The Democratic party is old enough to have outlived and defeated all other parties, young enough to represent the progressive spirit of to-day. It must be founded on vital principles and have a living faith. Its creed from its first to its thirty-ninth article is an abiding trust in the people, a belief that men, irrespective of the accident of birth or fortune, have a right to a voice in the government that rules them. Its principles ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter

... understand my design to be to get up to the South Side and ultimately to the Danville Railroad, as soon as he had heard of the movement commenced on the 29th. These roads were so important to his very existence while he remained in Richmond and Petersburg, and of such vital importance to him even in case of retreat, that naturally he would make most strenuous efforts to defend them. He did on the 30th send Pickett with five brigades to reinforce Five Forks. He also sent around to the right of his ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... its individual so much as its related life which is contemplated." The silent presence of children in the roles of the Greek drama is very impressive (350. 21). At Rome, though childhood is more of a "vital force" than in Greece, yet "it is not contemplated as a fine revelation of nature." Sometimes, in its brutal aspects, "children are reckoned as scarcely more than cubs," yet with refinement they "come to represent the more spiritual side of the family life." ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... of it. These are but pictures and images of Christians. We have mouths and faces of saints: but O how little of divine affection or of soul-desires, breathes in us! We are deniers of the power of godliness, by resting in a form, and this is the great sin of this generation. The essentials, the vital spirits of Christianity are exhausted, and some dry bones, like an anatomy of a Christian, remain behind. I beseech you, gather your spirits to this spiritual walking: they only can follow the Spirit. Your bodies are earthly and lumpish, and the way is all upward to the holy hill. ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... their horses and rode away. The spokesman had hit the vital point unerringly; for cow-punchers are shrewdly alive to frankness, and it often draws out the best that is in them; but its opposite affects them unfavorably; and I, needing sleep, sighed to think of their late sitting up over that joke. I walked to the board box painted "Hotel Brunswick"—"hotel" ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister

... think I know the sort of entertainments you mean. But please do not beg a vital question by calling them plays. I dont pretend to be an authority; but I have at least established the fact that these productions, whatever else they may be, are certainly ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw

... exclaimed, "I burn! I burn!" She found that the fire had at last seized upon her vital parts, which made her still cry "I burn!" until death had put an end to her intolerable pains. The effect of that fire was so extraordinary, that in a few moments she was wholly reduced to ashes, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... the wit to slip from the net, to dig him a vital thrust with the trident: "If you thought that, why ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson

... Even the unfavourable description so often quoted of Eneas Silvius, reports the common people as having "abundance of flesh and fish," no small ingredient of wellbeing, and records rather a complete absence of luxuries than that want which reduces the vital strength of a nation. The same authority tells of exportations of "hides, wool, salt fish, and pearls," the latter a curious item, although there were as yet no manufactures, and even such necessaries as horse-shoes and every kind of harness had to be imported ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... indispensable to the prosperity and well-being of any and every organisation, and especially of a Christian church, that the teachings of its minister be in accord with the convictions of a majority of its members upon vital questions of eternal interest, with the end and aim of securing the greatest efficiency of that body in the community, as an example and a shining light before men to guide their steps in the strait and narrow ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... like this: whether a man in a fit of madness can have more physical strength than if he is in his senses; and we may admit this without on that account ascribing to him more strength of mind, if by mind we understand the vital principle of man in the free use of his powers. For since those crimes have their ground merely in the power of the inclinations that weaken reason, which does not prove strength of mind, this question ...
— The Metaphysical Elements of Ethics • Immanuel Kant

... horrible skill as the crones of the African race who have derived their knowledge from the West India Islands. Whether it should be brought near the head by concealment in a pillow, or near the more vital portions of the body itself through use of a bandage worn near the skin,—the effect would be the same—insensible debilitation, decline, death! But the latter plan would be much the more rapid; and in neither event, when the deed was done, would there be one mark, perceptible ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... intention of opposing the new government, and carrying himself free from every appearance of a factious spirit. He remarked:—"I retired from office because, from the first moment of my public life, I have taken an active and decided part on a great and vital question, that of the extension of political privileges to the Roman Catholics. For eighteen years I have constantly offered an uncompromising, but, I hope, a temperate, fair, and constitutional resistance to every proposition ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... type—the impossibility of continuing to share the life of the Western Church. Neither in the East nor in the West was a separation desired; but it was inevitable, since the lives of East and West were moving in different directions. It was the fall of Constantinople that first weakened the vital force of the Eastern Church. May we hope that the events of modern times are leading her ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... life now "hid with Christ in God?" Dost thou know the blessedness of a vital and living union with a living, life-giving Saviour? Canst thou say with humble and joyous confidence, amid the fitfulness of thine own ever-changing frames and feelings, "Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me?" "Jesus liveth!"—They ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff

... length of the intolerable hours, O nights that are as aeons of slow pain, 30 O Time, too ample for our vital powers, O Life, whose woeful vanities remain Immutable for all of all our legions Through all the centuries and in all the regions, Not of your speed and variance WE ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson

... its origin and its destiny. I have thought much of Plato's mysterious ideas of light. Those ideas were doubtless brought from the East; for as that is the quarter where the sun rises, so we have thence derived many vital truths, which have kept a spark of life within the beautiful ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child

... terror of the moment, George Hammond had mistaken this reflection of the window for the window itself, and shot impulsively at the man he undoubtedly saw covering him from the trellis without. But while this explained the shattering of the mirror, how about the other and still more vital question, of where the bullet went afterward? Was the angle at which it had been fired acute enough to send it out of a window diagonally opposed? No; even if the pistol had been held closer to the man firing it than she had reason to believe, the angle still would be oblique enough ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green

... surprising fact that they are so poorly developed, or quite absent, in the females of so many animals. With female deer the development during each recurrent season of great branching horns, and with female elephants the development of immense tusks, would be a great waste of vital power, supposing that they were of no use to the females. Consequently, they would have tended to be eliminated in the female through natural selection; that is, if the successive variations were limited in their transmission to the female sex, for otherwise ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... one. The essential thing is that no undue strain be placed upon that great fund of capital as a whole which is derived from incomes of all kinds. It is this fund which in its turn is one of the vital forces necessary for the normal activities and progress of industry. If that fund is suddenly and too greatly reduced, the effect upon commerce and industry is liable to be abrupt ...
— War Taxation - Some Comments and Letters • Otto H. Kahn

... the woman he loved; that was something he could face, something he could live down. But it was the manner of it. It was the fact of Will's treachery that had opened the vital wound. ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... desert was a place prepared For weary hearts to rest; The hillside was a temple blest; The grassy vale a banquet-room Where he could feed and comfort many a guest. With him the lily shared The vital joy that breathes itself in bloom; And every bird that sang beside the nest Told of the love that broods o'er every living thing. He watched the shepherd bring His flock at sundown to the welcome fold, The fisherman at daybreak fling His net across the ...
— Music and Other Poems • Henry van Dyke

... situation be considered. While at almost every point of subordinate importance the Confederates were holding their own, they were at those points, where the war assumed its grand proportions, and the issue was vital, ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke

... not consistent with strict scientific accuracy to say the person is asleep," said the emir; "for the vital processes are entirely in abeyance and the subject is devoid of any evidence of life. The pulse is still, for the heart no longer beats and all the blood having retreated to that inmost citadel of the body, the skin has the pallor of death. Only in a little spot upon the crown is ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis

... sinister because it is not seen. These lyrics and romances are "dramatic" not only in the sense that the speakers express, as Browning insisted, other minds and sentiments than his own, but in the more legitimate sense that they are plucked as it were out of the living organism of a drama, all the vital issues of which can be read ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... doubt it. Shall a mechanical experiment succeed infallibly, and the one vital experiment of humanity remain a chance? Is corn to grow by method, and character by caprice? If we cannot calculate to a certainty that the forces of religion will do their work, then is religion vain. And if we cannot ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond

... for the gate, and the other, stung in some vital part by the last words, stood motionless, white with anger, staring after her, first in silence, but presently she began talking audibly to herself. "My son—my son pick up with a girl! My son leave his mother to go on the parish!"—but I stayed to hear no more; it made ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson

... Hormayer, p. 795)] Among these letters was one which strongly inculpated Gunther. It was written by Baron Eskeles Flies to a commercial friend in Amsterdam. It stated that he (Eskeles Flies) had just received a communication of such vital importance that it was worth much more to him than the thousand ducats he had paid to his informer. The emperor, tired of his contention with Holland regarding the navigation of the Scheldt, had agreed ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... a man of head being at the centre of it, the whole matter gets vital. Swift, to Camp of Sablons; to secure the Artillery, there are not twenty men guarding it! A swift Adjutant, Murat is the name of him, gallops; gets thither some minutes within time, for Lepelletier was also ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... the Roman Catholics. There was violent commotion in Oxford. Keble and Newman strenuously opposed the measure. In 1830 there was revolution in France. In England the Whigs had come into power. Newman's mind was excited in the last degree. 'The vital question,' he says, 'is this, how are we to keep the Church of England from being liberalised?' At the end of 1832 Newman and Froude went abroad together. On this journey, as he lay becalmed in the straits of Bonifacio, he wrote his immortal hymn, ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore

... then, can I describe this girl, when painter, sculptor, writer—all—would miserably fail at attempting to portray a beauty whereon imagination might gaze in frank amazement and admit itself surpassed! Here, indeed, was all the vital, colorful magnetism of a type that men are quick ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... help themselves, and be forced to exercise their energy and address. This was the principal design of their hard fare; there was another not inconsiderable, that they might grow taller; for the vital spirits, not being overburdened and oppressed by too great a quantity of nourishment; which necessarily discharges itself into thickness and breadth, do, by their natural lightness, rise; and the body, giving and ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... must die, beloved dust, And all your beauty stand you in no stead; This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head, This body of flame and steel, before the gust Of Death, or under his autumnal frost, Shall be as any leaf, be no less dead Than the first leaf that fell,—this wonder fled. Altered, estranged, disintegrated, lost. Nor shall my love avail you in your hour. In spite of all ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... disappeared when there is scarcely a scratch upon it. Therefore, if you are playing in an important match with a ball that has already been used at a large number of holes, it may be advisable to put down a new one when long work with the driver and brassy is a vital necessity. A close watch for loss of shape should also be kept on these rubber-cored balls. They vary very much in this respect, and not only is it impossible to putt well with a ball that is not perfectly round, but it never flies so well as one ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon

... of the most vital importance were made in the rebels' plan for the capture of Dublin, however, which were eventually to be the deciding factor of the whole situation, and to which more than anything they must be said to owe the sudden ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard

... very quiet; she never spoke much. Any one who has been oppressed with the weight of a vital secret for years, and much more any one the character of whose life has been stamped by one event, and that producing sorrow and shame, is naturally reserved. And yet Ruth's silence was not like reserve; it was too gentle and tender for that. ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... girls for the cultivation and training of the romping instincts which are really a serious part of education, for it is by such free exercise of the whole body that the neuro-muscular system, the basis of all vital activity, is built up. The neglect of such education is to-day clearly visible in the structure of our women. Dr. F. May Dickinson Berry, Medical Examiner to the Technical Education Board of the London County Council, found (British Medical Journal, May 28, 1904) among ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... is one of most vital importance to the farmer; indeed, so varied are its modes of action and its effects, that some writers have given it credit for every thing good in the way of farming, and have gone so far as to say that ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring

... Yet, though they were not, as Winthrop says, "of those that dreame of perfection in this world," they surely had vast hopes at heart, and the fire of repressed imagination played around them and before them as a vital and guiding gleam, of untold value to them, and using a mysterious power in their affairs. They were something morbid in their imaginings, but that this morbid habit was a chief source of their power is a mistaken theory. It is true that their errors of imagination were so closely ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... Cambridge,[41] London, and Edinburgh. Mrs. Marcet's Conversations (1818) were spreading the doctrine among babes and sucklings. The Utilitarians were the sacred band who defended the strictest orthodoxy against all opponents. They spoke as recognised authorities upon some of the most vital questions of the day, of which I need here only notice Free Trade, the doctrine most closely associated with the teaching of their revered Adam Smith. In 1816 Ricardo remarks with satisfaction that the principle ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... soft-nosed projectiles, for though this was my first experience with Felis leo, I knew the moment that I faced that charge that even my wonderfully perfected firearm would be as futile as a peashooter unless I chanced to place my first bullet in a vital spot. ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... giving for education, I have felt, scored a real step in advance when Mr. Andrew Carnegie consented to become a member of the General Education Board. For in accepting a position in this directorate he has, it seems to me, stamped with his approval this vital principle of cooeperation in aiding the ...
— Random Reminiscences of Men and Events • John D. Rockefeller

... Dick. She was even more than that. If Lucy was right, from now on she was a part of that experiment in a human soul which he had begun with only a professional interest, but which had ended by becoming a vital part ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... order of things, as he would leave to every true Hollander. "For what," said he, "is a town without canals?—it is like a body without veins and arteries, and must perish for want of a free circulation of the vital fluid."—Ten Breeches, on the contrary, retorted with a sarcasm upon his antagonist, who was somewhat of an arid, dry-boded habit; he remarked, that as to the circulation of the blood being necessary to existence, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... great, that too often we fail to observe or understand the influence for good of a boy's recreational reading. Such books may influence him for good or ill as profoundly as his play activities, of which they are a vital part. The needful thing is to find stories in which the heroes have the characteristics boys so much admire—unquenchable courage, immense resourcefulness, absolute fidelity, conspicuous greatness. We ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger

... we most of us live really with about a score of people. We can't choose our circle altogether, and there are generally certain persons in it whom we should wish away. I think we ought to devote ourselves to our work, whatever it is, and outside of that to getting a real, intimate, and vital understanding with the people round us. That is a problem which is amply big enough for most of us. Then I think we ought to go seriously to work, not arguing or finding fault, not pushing or shoving people about, but just living on the finest ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... this for a long time again, and the boys watched him closely, as though some result of vital importance hung upon ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille

... so now. Ignorance of everything to do with the water is exceedingly common, even in England and Canada. The British mercantile marine is one of the biggest commercial enterprises of all time. It is of very great importance to Canada. It is absolutely vital to England. Yet it is less understood among the general public than any other kind of business that is of national concern. Some people even think that the mercantile marine differs from every other kind of business ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood

... express agent ties them up, affixes his official seal, which is so arranged that the package cannot be opened or tampered with, without breaking. This done, he gives the sender a receipt. This should be cared for as a vital part of ...
— Business Hints for Men and Women • Alfred Rochefort Calhoun

... unsullied, And bury in the grave a guilty passion; But I have been unable to withstand Tears and entreaties, I have told you all; Content, if only, as my end draws near, You do not vex me with unjust reproaches, Nor with vain efforts seek to snatch from death The last faint lingering sparks of vital breath. ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine

... particles, the rose wastes its perfume on the air. So this more spiritual sensibility dwelt in Helen as the latent mesmerism in water, as the invisible fairy in an enchanted ring. It was an essence or divinity, shrined and shrouded in herself, which gave her more intimate and vital union with all the influences of the universe, a companion to her loneliness, an angel hymning low to her own listening soul. This made her enjoyment of Nature, in its merest trifles, exquisite and profound; this gave to her tenderness of heart all the delicious ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... and expelled by my own people!" His voice died away in a loud sob. With his head pressed against the wall he sobbed in great anguish. It was enough to hear one of these sobs, which shook his whole frame, to guess that he had been wounded in the most vital part of his soul. ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko

... are living men, still breathing and moving in their writings; the others, the conquerors of the world, are but the ashes in an urn. The sympathy [19so to speak] between thought and thought is more intimate and vital than that between thought and action. Thought is linked to thought as flame kindles into flame; the tribute of admiration to the MANES of departed heroism is like burning incense in a marble monument. Words, ideas, feelings, with the progress of time harden into substances: ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... writer of books. He heard the sermon, and was greatly taken with it. He wrote out a report of it, and handed his report to me for criticism and correction. He intended to send it for publication to a paper in Pennsylvania. I said to him that his report left out the most essential and vital part of the sermon, and proposed myself to write out an abstract of it for his use. This I did, but my friend Mr. Snyder concluded: "This is a hard saying, who can hear it?" He was not willing to be counted ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler

... taken ill suddenly I had waved to him for help because he chanced to be near. With all my wits about me I might have left him in that belief, for rather would I have deceived him than had him wonder why his welfare seemed so vital to me. But I, who thought the capacity for being taken aback had gone from me, clung to his arm and thanked God audibly that he still lived. He did not tell me then how my agitation puzzled him, but led me kindly to the hill, ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie

... room a beauteous maiden lay, Moaning in agony no words express, A cancer eating rapidly away Her vital force,—so foul and pitiless; And when I saw that face, so young and fair, I thought such anguish was ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King

... of attractive books ... has been added this dainty volume on Poland by Monica M. Gardner, well known as the author of Adam Mickiewicz and Poland: a Study in National Idealism. That the war must have a vital effect on the destiny of Poland is universally acknowledged, and now is the time to study the characteristics of the Poles. ... The chapter devoted to Polish National Customs is quite fascinating, and 'A Day in Cracow' presents vivid glimpses of the chief city of 'Austrian' Poland. The vexatious ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner

... with spirited scenes and stirring adventures, and the boy who reads it attentively will acquire a sound knowledge on subjects that are of vital importance to ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty

... may have been a Jewish one, addressed to the Christian converts from Judaism who were scattered abroad, within or beyond the limits of the Roman Empire. Luther deemed it "an Epistle of straw," by reason of its insistence upon the vital importance of 'works.' But its practical ideal assumes the same basis of Christian faith as is found in the Letters of Paul. The opening references to severe trial seem to show that the persecution begun by Herod Agrippa had already been repeated elsewhere. If the later ...
— Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, Preface and Introductions - Third Edition 1913 • R F Weymouth

... at stake—though it was far more bloody and desperate—the Dutch War of Independence was fought mainly within the country itself, with the population divided, and the Spanish depending on land forces to maintain their rule; but, as in the American war, control of the sea was a vital factor. For munitions, supplies, gold, for the transport of the troops themselves, Spain had to depend primarily on the sea. It is true one could continue on Spanish territory from Genoa, which was Spain's watergate into Italy, across the Mont Cenis Pass, and through Savoy, Burgundy, ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... chance killing, then I should expect as rather probable that after 10,000 years the two bodies would differ slightly in size, colour, and perhaps other trifling characters; this I should call the direct action of physical conditions. By this action I wish to imply that the innate vital forces are somehow led to act rather differently in the two cases, just as heat will allow or cause two elements to combine, which otherwise would not have combined. I should be especially obliged if you would tell me what ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... the new flue as long as he could," said Mrs Morgan. "Mr Proctor took no interest in the garden, and everything had gone to ruin; though I must say it was very odd that anybody from your college, William, should be careless about such a vital matter," said the Rector's wife, with a little asperity. "I suppose there must be something in the air of Carlingford which makes people indifferent." Naturally, it was very provoking, after all the trouble she had taken, to see her husband slicing ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... and serene, the mighty waters rolled through the beautiful and fertile earth. A vital breeze rose from their bosom. Every being responded to their genial influence. The sick were cured, the desponding became sanguine, the healthy and light-hearted broke into shouts of laughter, jumped from their camels, and embraced the fragrant earth, or, wild in their renovated ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli

... of the Siamese deals principally with religious topics. The "Kammarakya," or Buddhist Ritual,—a work for the priesthood only, and therefore, like others of the Vinnaya, little known,—contains the vital elements of the Buddhist Moral Code, and, per se, is perfect; on this point all writers, whether partial or captious, are of one mind. Spence Hardy, a Wesleyan missionary, speaking of that part of the work entitled "Dhamma-Padam," ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... causing the delay, and M. de Piles, who had been twice sent to urge them forward, had only succeeded in bringing a corps of one thousand two hundred arquebusiers and two hundred horse.[648] It was now expected, however, that realizing the vital importance of opposing to Anjou a powerful Protestant army, the viscounts would abandon their short-sighted policy; and it was the intention of Conde and Coligny, after effecting a junction, to march with the combined armies to meet the ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... be the case—that you are a personal (or impersonal, if you like) friend of Mr. Rodney McCune. Whatever the motive, ulterior or otherwise, which prevents you from operating my paper as I direct, I should have been informed of it. This is a matter vital to the interests of our community, and you have hitherto shown yourself too alert in accepting my slightest suggestion for me to construe this failure as negligence. Negligence I might esteem as at least honest and frank; your course has been ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington

... for himself and hold his own in a hand-to-hand struggle. He had no rights that the herd of children among whom he was thrown felt bound to respect; and if he were not able to maintain his rights, he must go down helplessly, and he did go down daily, often hourly. But he had will and vital force, and these brought him always to his feet again, and with strength increased rather than lost. On the days that Mrs. Burke went out he lived for most of the time in the little street, playing with the children that swarmed its pavements, often dragged from before wheels or horses' ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur

... Andromeda passage, afford ample indication of how deeply Browning had drunk of that vital stream whose waters are the surest conserver of the ideal loveliness which we all of us, in some degree, cherish ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp

... Paderborn which was to be brought into Sennelager Camp to act as the stationary engine to supply power to the fumigator. But to our dismay we learned that the traction engine in question could not be driven to the camp under its own power because some of the vital parts constituting its internals had broken down, and repairs would be quite out of the question until it reached the camp. This we were told would demand the towage of the engine over the last three miles. We learned, moreover, that as horses were absolutely unobtainable at any ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney

... doubt, dear Ju—, I mean Home—I have no doubt," he continued, with a gusto infinitely annoying, "that you needed this rod. I am afraid that you are as yet unconverted; that you have as yet no saving, no vital sense of Christianity. Some sin, perhaps, ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar

... that should the old chief lose his life Reginald would be deprived of the only clue which might lead to its elucidation. He determined, therefore, to take the first favourable opportunity of telling the rajah who he was, and entreating him to give him the information that was of such vital importance to his future interests. Reginald had been led to believe that the rajah would be very unwilling to enter on the subject, and he had therefore hesitated to introduce it, till he felt more sure than he had hitherto ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston

... the excitement or exaltation which in the dramatic experience usurps the place of definite feeling. We have met this phenomenon before. Aesthetic emotion in general, we have heard, consists just in the union of a kind of stimulation or enhanced life, with repose; a heightening of the vital energies unaccompanied by any tendency to movement,—in short, that gathering of forces which we connect with action, and which is felt the more because action is checked. Just such a repose through equilibrium of impulses is given by the dramatic conflict. Introspection makes assurance ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer

... sympathizes with any nation nor any individual who have for their motto "Emancipation," as emancipation means to Catholicism a vital blow to her teachings, as slavery of both body and soul ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg

... to speak, but he could only look. She had meant to withdraw, but she remained to return his look with the lingering, quiet, steady gaze which time and place and circumstance seemed to make the most natural mode of expression for the things that were vital between them. What passed thus defied all analysis of thought, as well as all utterance in language, but it was understood by each in his or her own way. To her it was the greeting and farewell of souls in different spheres, who again pass one another in space. For him ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King

... your children," so the letter ran, "I should so love to see them, and stay the night." Liso was greatly annoyed. She had just arranged a meeting with one of her numerous lovers, and this invitation upset everything. However, as it was of vital importance to her to keep in with her aunt, she at once decided to put off her previous engagement and take her children to see ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell

... my dear fellow," Fortescue cut in, "but you know as well as I do that you get case after case where the cellar diagnosis is simply vital. I had a case last week, a most interesting thing—" he turned to the group of us as he spoke—"a double lesion of a gas-pipe under a cement floor—half a dozen of my colleagues had been absolutely baffled. They had made an entirely false diagnosis, operated ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock

... his speech to fail began. For from his feet up to his breast was come The cold of death, that had him overnome*. *overcome And yet moreover in his armes two The vital strength is lost, and all ago*. *gone Only the intellect, withoute more, That dwelled in his hearte sick and sore, Gan faile, when the hearte felte death; Dusked* his eyen two, and fail'd his breath. *grew dim But on his lady yet ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... would avoid strong drinks, and take only a moderate portion of meat, they would escape much suffering from wounds and injuries to which all are liable, and which in so many cases prove fatal, although no vital part has been touched. I have seen the strongest men die from a slight scratch; and the weakest apparently recover from the most terrible hurts. The strong men have eaten and drunk to gratify their palates; the weak ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston

... practice we owe his most vivid and notable work. "The poetry of Robert Browning," says Pater, "is pre-eminently the poetry of situations." He selects a character, no matter how uninteresting in itself, and places it in some situation where its vital essence may become apparent, in some crisis of conflict or opportunity. The choice of good or evil is open to it, and in perhaps a single moment its fate will be decided. When a soul plays dice with the devil there is only a second in which to win or lose; but the second may be worth ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... carcass, and shoot the bird when it alights; but it is very difficult to kill them in this way, on account of their strong thick feathers, as well as the tenacity of life which they possess: it can only be done when the shot takes effect in a vital part. This method, therefore, is not much practised. A second plan is, to wait until the condor has gorged himself to repletion, when, like most other vultures, he is unable to fly for some time after. ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... the national representation has noted with delight that the Government, having at heart the future of the country when it declared the neutrality of Bulgaria, is maintaining this attitude strictly and loyally, as the international necessities and the most vital interests ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times

... be felt, and her hands were icy cold, her voice sank to nothing, her eyelids scarcely raised, as if the strain of the day had exhausted all vital warmth or energy, and her purpose accomplished, annihilation was succeeding. Much terrified, Albinia would have hurried in search of remedies, but she raised her hand imploringly, and murmured, 'Please don't. I'm not faint—I'm not ill. If you would only ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... climbing down, perplexed equally, as I gather, by the management of her parapluie and of her—enfin, her petticoats. The candid anxiety of her round, underdone face, as she so wonderfully writhed to maintain the standard of pudicity dear—even vital—to the matron of the British Isles appealed—vividly, though mutely—to the forbearance that, seeing, would still seem not to see, her foot, her ankle, her mollet—as I early learned to say in Paris, where, however, so exigent a modesty is ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor

... be said that such things do no harm, I hasten, in one sense, at least, to agree. Far from it; they do good. They do good in the most vital matter of modern times; for they prove and print in huge letters the truth which our society must learn or perish. They prove that wealth in society as now constituted does not tend to get into the hands of the thrifty or the capable, but actually tends to get ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton

... the material would have survived. We've found a good many books and papers in excellent condition. But only a really vital culture, an organized culture, will publish magazines, and this civilization had been dying for hundreds of years before the end. It might have been a thousand years before the time they died out completely that such activities as ...
— Omnilingual • H. Beam Piper

... proceeding to the interior must not exceed nine in number, for which the horses are capable of conveying five months' provisions and equipment. The remaining half of the party will have full employment in the repair of the schooner and care of the stores—points of vital importance to the Expedition. It is therefore proposed to make the following division of the party, which, under existing circumstances, appears ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory

... alluded to. The seventh article makes the eternity of the State and the security of the Imperial house depend upon wise administration by well-selected officials, but says nothing of hereditary rights. How is such a vital omission to be interpreted, except on the supposition that Shotoku, who had witnessed the worst abuses incidental to the hereditary system of the uji, intended by this code to enter a solemn ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... that we all, indeed I think it likely that we do not all, take it home to our thoughts with sufficient seriousness that this mysterious growth in the thing sown implies a mysterious vital power or force which is inherent ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival

... impotently abandons it, carries us straight into the presence of the King. Thus it has found room both for the keen speculator on theological problems and for the mystic who, because he feels God, declines to reason about Him—for a Maimonides and a Mendelssohn, but also for a Nachmanides, a Vital, and a Luria' (M. Joseph, op. cit., p. 47). Used in a vague way, mysticism stands for spiritual inwardness. Religion without mysticism, said Amiel, is a rose without perfume. This saying is no more precise ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams

... of love! for when all other means of salvation failed, a spark of this vital fire softened the man's iron will until a woman's hand could bend it. He let me take from him the key, let me draw him gently away and lead him to the solitude which now was the most healing balm I could bestow. Once in his little room, he fell down on his ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott

... nor to help out a turn except under very exceptional circumstances and with the express permission of the Judges. The Judges must, however, satisfy themselves that the Candidates understand the use of the stick, and could, in emergencies, where speed is vital, increase their speed and steadiness on difficult snow by ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse

... the boy got so deathly pale, and seemed to suffer so intensely, that even Mistress Gowrie was obliged to acknowledge that it might be best to wait till the doctor came. Indeed, it soon became evident to all that Blackie's blows had touched some vital part, and Geordie's herding ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae

... together—amongst the rest, that she was always gloomiest on a Sunday—and concluded that religion was the cause of her misery. This made him ready to welcome the merest hint of its falsehood. Well might the doctrine be false that made such a good woman miserable! He had no opportunity of learning what any vital, that is, obedient believer in the lord of religion, might have to say. Nothing he did hear would, without the reflex of his mother's unhappiness, have waked in him interest enough for hate: what was there about the heap of ashes he heard called the means of grace, to set him searching ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald

... of him, and fascinated. Clear, before her eyes, as in a vision, she could see the sardonic, licentious mockery of his eyes, he moved towards her with subtle, animal, indifferent approach. The strangeness of his hands, which came quick and cunning, inevitably to the vital place beneath her breasts, and, lifting with mocking, suggestive impulse, carried her through the air as if without strength, through blackmagic, made her swoon with fear. For a moment she revolted, it was horrible. She would break the spell. But before the resolution had formed ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... not attended to. We get elaborate returns showing the number of persons vaccinated. Then comes an outbreak of smallpox, and on investigation we learn that the vaccinations so fully reported were made on paper only! In other words, the continuance of this work, of such vital importance to the Filipino people, is still directly dependent upon continued control by American ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... do something—it is a form of vital energy and the best thing it does, it does for the beloved. Flowers are love's own properties. And so flowers, natural or artificial, are a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... how can a mind like Vittoria's find matter to suit her in such sentences? He asked himself the question, forgetting that a little time gone by, while he was aloof from the tumult and dreaming of it, this airy cloudy language and every symbolism, had been strong sustaining food, a vital atmosphere, to him. He did not for the moment (though by degrees he recovered his last night's conception of her) understand that among the noble order of women there is, when they plunge into strife, a craving for idealistic truths, which ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the Catholics are far better prepared than before. They have endeavoured, by means of these leagues, to organize themselves in our manner; but there is one vital difference. We know that we are fighting for our lives and our faith, and that those who hang back run the risk of massacre in their own homes. The Catholics have no such impulse. Our persecutions have been the work of the mobs in the towns, excited by the priests; and these ruffians, ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty

... materials, but has much the appearance of a dried and compressed mixture of horse dung and cow dung, with an abundance of the "fiber" or mycelium, "the greyish moldy, or thready matter," which constitutes the vital part of the spawn. In the selection of spawn this is an important item, that is, the presence of an abundance of "fiber" or mycelium. It can be seen on the surface, usually showing an abundance of these whitish threads or sheets, or a distinct moldy appearance ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson

... felt sooner or later in every home. Like snow disappearing under the sunshine, the life of Madeleine was fast melting away. At length, as if she knew when the absorbing heat would melt the last crystal of the vital principle, she summoned her family around her to wish them that last thrilling farewell which is never erased from the tablet of memory. In the farewell of the emigrant, torn by cruel fate from country and friends, hope smiles in his tears; the fortune that drives away can bring ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... cases of heterogenesis. At present I should prefer any mad hypothesis, such as that every disintegrated molecule of the lowest forms can reproduce the parent-form, and that the molecules are universally distributed, and that they do not lose their vital power until heated to such a temperature that they decompose ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... came a snapping as of something inside my brain ... then, for a period, blankness ... then a gradual awakening with that feeling of exhilaration one experiences only after the most blissful sleep. I opened my eyes, feeling strong and light of limb and charged with a marvelous vital energy—but, as I peered about me, my lips drew far apart in astonishment, and I am sure that I gaped like one ...
— Flight Through Tomorrow • Stanton Arthur Coblentz

... case? Then, with one of his quick changes of mood, he laughed at himself. "I'm jealous because I think I'm not the only victim! It's time I consulted a physician. I'm going dotty. She's a wonder, though, that woman. What a brain, and what a splendid presence! But there's something vital lacking; no soul, no conscience—that's the trouble," he commented inwardly—little dreaming that he exactly voiced the criticism universally passed upon himself. Then his thoughts took a new tack. ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford

... the cure. "Doing one's duty brings a knowledge of the religious principles which are a vital necessity ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac

... of sense because the spiritual things were ever present, and as clear as day. Yet did they not forget that spiritual things are symbolised by things of sense; and so the smallest herb of grass was vital to their tranquil contemplations. We who have lost sight of the invisible world, who set our affections more on things of earth, fancy that because these monks despised the world, and did not write about its landscapes, therefore they were dead to its beauty. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... us; all dungings and other sordid temperings being but the vicars succedaneous to this improvement." Moreover, this being one of those "worn-out and exhausted lay fields which enjoy their sabbath," had perchance, as Sir Kenelm Digby thinks likely, attracted "vital spirits" from the air. I harvested twelve bushels ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... vital division of the religious part of our Protestant communities is into Christian optimists and Christian pessimists. The Christian optimist in his fullest development is characterized by a cheerful countenance, a voice in the major key, an undisguised enjoyment of earthly comforts, and a short ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... and stage of development when the raising of a decided issue between right and wrong was a matter of vital consequence. Although he had little more than rounded out a dozen years of life, his natural bent of mind and the influences surrounding him had been such as to make him seem at least two years older ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley

... should not take either the biggest or the most picturesque tree to illustrate it. Here is one of my favorites now before me, a fine yellow poplar, quite straight, perhaps 90 feet high, and four thick at the butt. How strong, vital, enduring! how dumbly eloquent! What suggestions of imperturbability and being, as against the human trait of mere seeming. Then the qualities, almost emotional, palpably artistic, heroic, of a tree; so innocent and harmless, yet so savage. It is, yet says nothing. How it rebukes by its ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... a secret ambition to read as he read, to make the dead lines of print glow with color and throb with music. There was something magical in his interpretation of the drama's printed page. With voice and face and hand he restored for duller minds the visions of the poet, making Hamlet's sorrows as vital as ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... exposed to the blast, a thick coating of bark, designed to protect, and which effectually does protect, the sap-vessels and the process of circulation to which they are adapted, from the injury which necessarily must otherwise ensue. Now, if an animal is in danger of suffocation from want of vital air, instead of starving by being exposed to its unqualified rigour, instinct or reason directs the sufferer to approach those apertures through which any supply of that necessary of human life can be attained, and induces man, at the same time, to free himself ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 352, January 17, 1829 • Various

... of things must necessarily be as subsisting in a universal here and an everlasting now. This is, no doubt, a highly abstract conception, but I would ask the student to endeavour to grasp it thoroughly, since it is of vital importance in the practical application of Mental Science, as ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward

... by his brother and as he now sat on a pile of cloaks within the marquee, the rapid discoloration of the white skin, could be distinctly traced, marking as it did the progress of the deadly poison towards the vital portion of the system. In this trying emergency all eyes were turned with anxiety on the slightest movement of her who had undertaken the cure, and none more eagerly than those of Henry Grantham and Gertrude D'Egville, the latter of whom, gentle even ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... gloomy contemplation of futurity, to a juster sense of good and evil The peculiarity of her religious persuasion afforded an introduction to frequent discussions of the real opinions of that church, to which Julia had hitherto belonged, although ignorant of all its essential and vital truths. These conversations, which were renewed repeatedly in their intercourse while under the protection of his sister in London, laid the foundations of a faith which left her nothing to hope for but the happy termination of ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper

... his poem a very marked contrast between the death of Adonais (Keats) as a mortal man succumbing to 'the common fate,' and the immortality of his spirit as a vital immaterial essence surviving the death of the body: he uses terms such as might be adopted by any believer in the doctrine of 'the immortality of the soul,' in the ordinary sense of that phrase. It would not however be safe to infer that Shelley, at the precise ...
— Adonais • Shelley

... beside Vivier and examining the wound in the dog's scalp. "The bullet only creased his skull! It didn't go through! It's just put him out for a few hours, like I've seen it do to men. Get the surgeon! If that bullet in his body didn't hit something vital, we'll pull ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune

... crazed them. It is truly a marvel that their physical constitutions did not break down under the exhausting excitements, the contortions of frame, the force to which the bodily functions were subjected in trances and fits, and the strain upon all the vital energies, protracted through many months. The wonder, however, would have been greater, if the mental and moral balance had not thereby ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... robbery of the bank, had, equally unknown to himself, been cleared of any complicity in that affair—and yet, as witness the conversation of a moment ago, it was still the topic of New York, still the vital issue that filled the maw of the newspapers with ravings, threats, and execrations against the Gray Seal, snarling virulently the while at the police for the latter's ineptitude, ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... opposite of this. The more points of contact there are, the more danger of friction there is, and the more carefully should people guard against it. If you see a man only once a month, it is not of so vital importance that you do not trench on his rights, tastes, or whims. He can bear to be crossed or annoyed occasionally. If he does not have a very high regard for you, it is comparatively unimportant, because your paths are generally so diverse. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various

... ever to have looked at the history of religion in any state, or at any period, and not to feel that the test laws have been the weakest ground upon which any faith could stand. Were tests any security for the heathen religion against the vital spirit of the heaven-descended energy of Christianity? Yet we are aware that every act of the life of a heathen was in itself a test. He could not sit to his meat, he could not retire to rest, he could not go through the most simple transactions of ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington

... had at last built up a firm and powerful support. With this assured, his policy, both domestic and foreign—the key to which was still the blockade—might be considered victorious at all points. There remains to be noticed, however, one event of the year 1864 which was of vital importance in maintaining ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... temperatures; that spores of bacteria can survive high temperature; that seeds of plants and germs of animals in a state of "latent life" can survive prolonged drought and absence of oxygen. It is possible, according to Berthelot, that as long as there is not molecular disintegration vital activities may be suspended for a time, and may afterwards recommence when appropriate conditions are restored. Therefore, one should be slow to say that a long journey through space is impossible. The obvious limitation of Lord Kelvin's theory is that it ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... of my own king, George III., were amongst the first destined victims to this dreadful contest, and that neither the chief, nor the greater part of his warlike associates, would within a few short hours, breathe again the vital air ! ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay

... this double audience in my mind, I have used to a very large extent, in my description of the people's life, the documents they have left behind themselves, so that the best expression may be given of the vital fact that a town is built and fashioned and inspired not by a few great men, but by the many persistent citizens who dwell in it, working their will from age to age without shadow ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook

... national necessity is as vital and even more pressing than the Panama Canal. It is worthy of the great Republic and of the great engineer—an achievement if successful which would twin with Panama and make Colonel Goethals immortal and our country's beneficence and ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall

... the political terminology of the present day, the whole western movement of our people was simply the most vital part of that great movement of expansion which has been the central and all-important feature of our history—a feature far more important than any other since we became a nation, save only the preservation of the Union itself. It was ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... description in Chapter III, a clear idea will have been obtained of the power house building and its adjuncts, as well as of the features which not only go to make it an architectural landmark, but which adapt it specifically for the vital function that it is called upon to perform. We now come to a review and detailed description of the power plant equipment in its general relation to the building, and "follow the power through" from the coal pile to the shafts of the ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous

... had been found. But the picture of Daggett's situation that occurred to his mind, urged him on, and he proceeded. Every precaution had been taken to exclude the cold, as it is usually termed, which, as it respects the body, means little else than keeping the vital heat in, and very useful were these provisions found to be. Skins formed the principal defence, though the men had long adopted the very simple but excellent expedient of wearing two shirts. Owing to this, and to the other measures taken, ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... of questions. At nearly every page of Mr. Gladstone's active career the vital problem stares us in the face, of the correspondence between the rule of private morals and of public. Is the rule one and the same for individual and for state? From these early years onwards, Mr. Gladstone's ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... his Belgians, on the other hand, knew full well that, in barring the invader's road, they were inevitably sacrificing their homes, their wives and their children. Unlike the heroes of Sparta, instead of possessing an imperative and vital interest in fighting, they had everything to gain by not fighting and nothing to lose—save honour. In the one scale were fire and the sword, ruin, massacre, the infinite disaster which we see; in the other was that little word honour, which also represents infinite things, but things ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck

... propagandism and some centuries of political rule and religious oppression, this religion is still an exotic, and finds, on the whole, small place in the affection of the people. This is owing in part to its want of adaptation and inherent lack of vital power. As Sir Monier William has said: "There is a finality and a want of elasticity about Mohammedanism which precludes its expanding beyond a certain fixed line of demarcation. Having once reached this line, it appears to lapse backwards—to ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... emendation, however specious, is mistaken. The original reading is, not a spendthrift's sigh, but a spendthrift sigh; a sigh that makes an unnecessary waste of the vital flame. It is a notion very prevalent, that sighs impair the strength, and wear out the ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson

... and had gold or embroidered bags in their hands, like those she had seen at Nice station. They went in looking straight ahead, and men ran up the steps quickly. Surely this was more than a mere building. There was something alive and vital and mysteriously attractive about it, though it was not beautiful at all architecturally, only rich looking and extraordinary, with its bronze youths sitting on the cornice and plaster figures starting out of the ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... close to the right side of the nearest buffalo, and drawing his bow at the moment of passing, buried the arrow to the feather. In an instant the horse wheeled to avoid the thrust which the wounded buffalo often makes; but Blackwolf's victim was stricken in a vital part, and he rolled over struggling and bleeding in the throes of deadly agony. Right and left the Indians scoured the plain in hot pursuit of the doomed and frightened animals, and never halting in the chase, but rushing from one to another as the huge beasts shouldered along in their ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... bunk-house he wondered vaguely what purchase he had to make that was so important as to induce him to make a special trip to Prouty. But since Pinkey had not chosen to tell him and Wallie had a talent for minding his own business, he dismissed it; besides, he had more vital things to think ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart

... a horse is death," said I, "if it touches a vital part. I am not, however, of your lordship's opinion with respect to mules: a good ginete may retain his seat on a horse however vicious, but a mule—vaya! when a false mule tira por detras, I do not believe that the Father of the Church himself could keep ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... him to Brussels, Dorothy, and he has learned something that will be of vital interest to you," Philip went on, idly leaning against the gate as if fate itself had sent him there to ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon

... the time, as she whirled, she was conscious also of some strange dim need. A sense of discomfort oppressed her arms. She hadn't everything she required for this solitary orgy. Something more was lacking her. Something essential, vital. But what on earth it could be she ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen

... his cloak for Queen Elizabeth to walk upon? See what a robe the maples have thrown down for you and me to walk upon! How one hesitates to soil it! The summer robes of the groves and the forests—more than robes, a vital part of themselves, the myriad living nets with which they have captured, and through which they have absorbed, the energy of the solar rays. What a change when the leaves are gone, and what a change when they come again! A naked tree may be a dead tree. The dry, inert bark, the ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... conversation which prompted her, unconsciously, to leave him. She had, without any special indication of herself, included herself among that company of old maids who are born and live and die without that vital interest in the affairs of life which nothing but family duties, the care of children, or at least of a husband, will give to a woman. If she had not meant this she had felt it. He had understood her meaning, ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... have all been traceable to some working of the principle of monopoly, and it is important to know whether any established policy of governments lends force to this evil influence. Import duties were established in America for the purpose of protecting industries as such, and a vital question now is whether they have now begun to protect ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark

... Cabinet ministers disagreed with the majority on a vital question, and rose with a threat to resign. One of his friends advised the chairman to do anything to recover his aid, whereupon he ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams

... of nations on the other side the Atlantic. Party feeling, unless it be of a very enlightened, patriotic, and unselfish kind, is apt to breed the worst types of mental perversity, and give birth to paradoxes of the most startling character. And when a great national document, discussing matters vital to the well-being, prosperity and political advancement of the republic is declared by one influential paper to contain "no pregnant thought of statesmanship, no conspicuously original idea, no new issue to inspire discussion in Congress and among the people," and ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various

... to make the likeness complete he disdains those "fellows of infinite tongue, that can rhyme themselves into ladies' favours ... a speaker is but a prater; a rhyme is but a ballad." But if Shakespeare had had any vital sympathy for soldiers and men of action he would not have degraded Henry V. in this fashion, into a feeble replica of the traditional Hotspur. In those narrow London streets by the river he must have ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... as a new way of validating their meaning for the individual. Faith, in our common use of the term, has hardened down into an intellectual acceptance of Protestant theologies, but certainly for St. Paul and probably for Luther it was far more vital than this and far more simple. It was rather a resting upon a delivering power, the assurance of whose desire and willingness to deliver was found in the New Testament. It was an end to struggle, a spiritual victory won ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins

... for many hundreds of years Christianity should have been received, generation after generation should have lived under its vital action, upon no sufficient argument, and suddenly such an argument should turn up as a reward to a man in a country not Christian for being more incredulous than his ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... or "vital fluid" theory of disease which ruled during the Middle Ages. According to this, all disease was due to the undue predominance in the body of one of the four great vital fluids,—the bile, the blood, the nervous ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... dips, a hearth fire, and a loving heart! Earth had nothing more to give, and my spirit seemed glorified within me. I had a curious feeling of melting within me, which was by no means a desire to weep, but rather as if all the vital parts of the man I was had been suddenly turned to warm water. I cannot tell if any one has ever felt the like before, but certainly I did that night, and "warm water" comes as near to the real thing as I can ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... Culture and Christianity are so interwoven that we may never expect either, separate from the other, as a blessing to the world. The very fact that the Protestant nations of the earth, where God is honored by a free Bible, are the chief exponents of true culture, attests this connection. So vital is this relation that, "United they stand; ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen

... immediate neighbors and give proof of the friendship we really feel? I hope that the members of the Senate will permit me to speak once more of the unratified treaty of friendship and adjustment with the Republic of Colombia. I very earnestly urge upon them an early and favorable action upon that vital matter. I believe that they will feel, with me, that the stage of affairs is now set for such action as will be not only just but generous and in the spirit of the new age upon which ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... unobtrusively, and the grave dug out of sight of Gosshawk. But of course it could not long escape observation; that is to say, it was seen by the clerks; but the directors and manager were all seated round a great table upstairs absorbed in a vital question, viz., whether or not the Gosshawk should imitate some other companies, and insure against fire as well as death. It was the third and last discussion; the minority against this new operation was small, but obstinate and warm, and the majority ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... vitality, but the traits are all there. John A. Logan was a magnificent type of this temperament. Abraham Lincoln personified it in all its angularity and simplicity. Governor Ross, of this State, is strongly marked with it; while, to come nearer home, your own Barney Gibbs is as good an example of the vital phase of it as Lincoln was of the motive. Nearly all the Presidents of the United States were strongly endowed with this temperament, except Rutherford B. Hayes, who, on the contrary, was a fine example of the magnetic. You will remember that he was ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor

... lecturer; but one's attention to him depended on two things - a primary interest in the subject, and some elementary acquaintance with it. If, for example, his subject were the comparative anatomy of the cycloid and ganoid fishes, the difference in their scales was scarcely of vital importance to one's general culture. But if he were lecturing on fish, he would stick to fish; it would be essentially a ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... in the yard close by, and two professional bakers, with their assistants, were kept busy baking for the whole post. There happened to be a back entrance to this kitchen, and although the convalescents were not allowed inside, many were the interviews held at said door upon subjects of vital importance to the poor fellows who had walked far into the country to obtain coveted dainties which they wanted to have cooked "like my folks at home fix it up." They were never refused, and sometimes a dozen different "messes" were set off to await claimants,—potato-pones, cracklin bread, ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers

... of a part of the original draft. Had the Commission had the entire code revised they could not have shown greater wisdom. For the parts incomplete were those dealing with the Family Law and Successions, and the Commission remembered that these were the parts that occasioned the most vital objections to the old code. The Parliament referred the revised draft code to a Committee of their own, of which Mr. Hatoyama, the present Speaker, was made the chairman. After making a careful examination and some important modifications, Mr. Hatoyama reported favorably to its adoption. ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various

... conscience and sense of duty to be a party to it, when, at the same time, with the great increase of crime, I saw the extreme physical distress of the people of Ireland, arising from a deficiency of that which they had been accustomed to make their principal food. I felt, I say, that it was of vital importance that provision should first be made, by an effort on the part of the government, to relieve the physical wants of the people before this measure should be brought forward; and I resolved that I could ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... excellent as a daily conventional rule, but it should yield when there is a great natural question at issue. Modesty! a fictitious, artificial, inculcated shame to intrude itself between two people considering gravely the vital matter of their love, their union, ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross

... what capacity?' he persisted. 'Will ye risk your crowns in defence of King James's one, or will ye strike in, hit or miss, with these rogues of Devon and Somerset? Stop my vital breath, if I would not as soon side with the clown as with the crown, with all due ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... religion," he continued gently, "hasn't proved much of a vital force in your life, has it? Didn't it go to pieces at the first ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... bastion of welfare capitalism. The economy consists of a combination of free market activity and government intervention. The government controls key areas, such as the vital petroleum sector (through large-scale state enterprises), and extensively subsidizes agriculture, fishing, and areas with sparse resources. Norway maintains an extensive welfare system that helps propel public sector expenditures to more than 50% of GDP and results in one ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... was now far spent, She kneeled upon the floor. Her head she leant Down on the cold stone of the window-seat. God knows if there were any vital heat In those pale brows, or if they chilled the stone. And as she knelt, she made a bitter moan, With words that issued from a bitter soul,— 'O Mary, Mother, and is this thy goal, Thy peace which waiteth for the world-worn heart? Is it for this I live and ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray

... had changed. Indubitably Milly regarded him with a mixture of wonder and of awe. He had taken command of the situation in the house and developed it rationally. The house itself had become a converging point for all medical science could do for a man hit in a vital spot and having little chance of recovery. But what Raven knew to be the common sense of the measures he brought to pass, Milly, in her wildness of anxiety, looked upon as the miracles of genius. She even conciliated ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... later conflicts with Holland, while England was still able to live on its own products, the Dutch were in the position in which we are now, for the command of the sea was vital to their daily life. Their whole wealth depended on their great fishing fleets in the North Sea; their Indiamen which brought the produce of the East to Northern Europe through the Straits of Dover; and the carrying trade, in which they were the carriers ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale

... smoulder; and even Macedonia, formerly so tranquil, consumed its strength in the intestine strife that arose out of its new democratic constitutions. It was the fault of the rulers as well as the ruled, that the last vital energies and the last prosperity of the nations were expended in these aimless feuds. The client states ought to have perceived that a state which cannot wage war against every one cannot wage war at all, and that, as the possessions and power enjoyed by all ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... that such vast interests are involved,—the instruction of over twenty million pupils, requiring the service of more than half a million teachers, involving the expenditure of nearly three hundred million dollars per annum, and of vital interest to the whole population,—many educators believe that the bureau should be elevated to the dignity of a department of the government with a ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley

... of the adventure he said nothing. As secrecy seemed to be a vital element in his fifteen-cent scheme, I showed no embarrassing curiosity. Indeed, I felt but little, though I was certain that the adventure was connected with the world-cracking revelations of Monsieur Saupiquet, and was undertaken in the interest ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... words would be immortalized in print! and she would soar up and up... Some day, in the big magazines... Everybody would read her name there—all Cherryvale—and, perhaps, Ridgeley Holman Dobson would chance a brilliant, authoritative article on some deep, vital subject and wish to meet ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin

... . . . Something in her—that no fever or poison or death could take away—something for him! The thing was vivid to him for moments afterward; it lingered in dimmer outlines for hours; but as the days passed, he could only hold the vital essence of what he had learned ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... dramatic series from King John to Henry VIII, another series of equal rank, from Edward VI to the Landing of William of Orange. This is the only historical development of Europe which unites in itself all vital elements, and which we might look upon without overpowering pain. The tragedy of St. Elizabeth shows that Kingsley can grapple, not only with the novel, but with the more severe rules of dramatic art. And Hypatia proves, on the largest scale, that ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley

... belief that she had committed no sacrilege but enriched herself, perhaps immeasurably, perhaps eternally. She hardly dared steep herself in the infinite bliss. But his glance seemed to ask for some assurance upon another point of vital interest to him. It beseeched her mutely to tell him whether what she had read upon his confused sheet had any meaning or truth to her. She bent her head once more to the ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... he saw his master, he testified his joy by wagging his tail. He could do no more; he tried to rise, but his strength was gone. The vital tide was ebbing fast; and even the caresses of his master could not prolong his life for a few moments. He stretched out his tongue to lick the hand that was now fondling him in the agonies of regret, as ...
— Minnie's Pet Dog • Madeline Leslie

... if we do not take another method. Delolme on the British Constitution will not save us; deaf will the Parcae be to votes of the House, to leading articles, constitutional philosophies. The other method—alas, it involves a stopping short, or vital change of direction, in the glorious career which all Europe, with shouts heaven-high, is now galloping along: and that, happen when it may, will, to many of us, be probably a rather ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... between life and death. Miller's knife-thrust, although it had made a deep and dangerous wound, had not pierced any vital part; the amount of blood lost made Alfred's condition precarious. Indeed, he would not have lived through that first day but for a wonderful vitality. Col. Zane's wife, to whom had been consigned the delicate task of dressing the wound, ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... I can think of,' he responded, 'is for der next man—you hear me all, you men—to stick your knife at the end of the blood—where it collects in a lump. Dere is der creature's stomach, and a vital spot.' ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson

... obtained, while their approbation will form the greatest incentive and most gratifying reward for virtuous actions, and the dread of their censure the best security against the abuse of their confidence. Their interests in all vital questions are the same, and the bond, by sentiment as well as by interest, will be proportionably strengthened as they are better informed of the real state of public affairs, especially in difficult conjunctures. It is by such knowledge that local prejudices and jealousies are ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... with Craven she realized painfully how much she had missed him. Among all these people, many of them talented, clever, even fascinating, she was only concerned about him. To her he seemed almost like a vital human being in the midst of a crowd of dummies endowed by some magic with the power of speech. She only felt him at this moment, though she was conscious of the baron, Mrs. Ackroyde, Bobbie Syng, the duchess, and others who were near her. This ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... sight of the curious eyes of visitors. He was also glad that he had no other prisoner for company. His situation was one in which he wanted to be alone. To the plan that was forming itself in his mind, solitude was as vital as the cooperation of ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood

... important, the occupation of a captured line by this organization at once will supply a powerful, concentrated, and controlled fire, either to repulse a counter-charge or to fire on a discomfited, retiring enemy. Being a horsed organization, it can arrive at the critical point at the vital moment when, the defender's first line having been thrust out, our line being disorganized, a counter-charge by the enemy would be most effective, or controlled fire by our own troops on him ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker

... Many languages go incredibly far in this respect, it is true, but linguistic history shows conclusively that sooner or later the less frequently occurring associations are ironed out at the expense of the more vital ones. In other words, all languages have an inherent tendency to economy of expression. Were this tendency entirely inoperative, there would be no grammar. The fact of grammar, a universal trait of language, is simply a generalized expression ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir

... island,—recently gleaned from guide-books;—and when, presently, the whole party went for a stroll in a flower-strewn meadow, he took such decided possession of her, that the two were allowed to fall back, and discuss at their leisure one and another question of vital interest which he ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller

... past, nor despair of his future success."—Duncan's Cicero, p. 121. "Her monuments and temples had long been shattered or crumbled into dust."—Lit. Conv., p. 15. "Competition is excellent, and the vital principle in all these things."—DR. LIEBER: ib., p. 64. "Whether provision should or not be made to meet this exigency."—Ib., p. 128. "That our Saviour was divinely inspired, and endued with supernatural ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... strong man, but I staggered as I spoke. All creation was exaggerated. Colour grew more vivid, motion more rapid, life itself more vital. I hardly saw her for a moment, but I heard her voice—pitilessly sweet. She would not subdue one of her charms in compassion. Perhaps she did not know ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... familiar ease of manner, and a light off-hand vein of talk, which made the philosophy less sensible to the taste than any other ingredient in his pharmacopoeia. Turning everybody else out of the room, he examined his patient alone—sounded the old man's vital organs, with ear and with stethoscope—talked to him now on his feelings, now on the news of the day, and ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... soul. The struggle for freedom of every living thing has no conscience. Throughout the living world, from ameba to man, parasitism and slavery together with their by-products, physical and spiritual degeneracy, appear as the after effects of the more vital individual's efforts to remain alive and free. The origins of slavery may be seen in the parasitisms of the infectious diseases which kill man. The change from parasitism to slavery was an inevitable step of creative intelligence. In the transition evolution made one of those breaks ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... grasps the offered gift, the mouth that feeds upon the bread of God, the voice that says to Christ, 'Come in, Thou blessed of the Lord; why standest Thou without?' Such a faith alone brings us into vital connection with Jesus. Without it, you will be none the richer for all His fulness, and may perish of famine in the midst of plenty, like a man dying of hunger outside the door of a granary. They who believe take the Saviour who is given, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... all the vital functions are performed as in the waking state. She is fed with milk, broth and wine, which is given her in a spoon. Her mouth even sometimes opens of itself at the contact of the spoon, and she swallows without the slightest difficulty. At other ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus

... incessant coquetries of attire, its panoramic beauty of mountain and cape and sea-front, its parade of corporeal and egotistic pleasures, its primordial and undisguised appeal to the carnival spirit, its frank, exotic festivity, its volatile and almost too vital atmosphere, and, above all, its glowing and over-odorous gardens and flowerbeds, its overcrowded and grimly Dionysian Promenade, its murmurous and alluring restaurants on steep little boulevards—it was all a blind, Durkin argued with ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer

... Railways. The only difference of opinion has arisen from the anxiety of the parties to obtain a Railway of some description or other, which has led them to support different competing schemes; but all parties have united in the strongest representations of the vital importance to the district of obtaining a good Railway communication, in addition to those afforded by the Canals. A memorial signed by the representatives of 46 iron-works, 57 furnaces, and 98 collieries, ...
— Report of the Railway Department of the Board of Trade on the • Samuel Laing

... having failed in this attempt to infuse energy and decision into the counsels of his Chief, he turned him out and formed a Ministry with Carson in the office of First Lord of the Admiralty, at that time one of the most vital in the Government. Colonel James Craig also joined the Ministry as ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... been returned with the writing. Neither was there any word to him concerning his prayer to Pharaoh for the liberty of Rachel. It began to dawn on him that he had been released only after he had been sufficiently punished; that he had failed in the most vital aims of his mission; that the signet, having been found, seemed now to be lost irretrievably. For a space his relief at his freedom was overshadowed by chagrin, but after a little he recovered himself. "At least I am free to care ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... to be an interesting and valuable one. The topics discussed are of vital importance to the work, and the addresses will be worthy of the topics. Lowell is accessible, and its ...
— The American Missionary — Vol. 48, No. 10, October, 1894 • Various

... quickly,—"I know them now. They have great absurdities, great vices even, but they have virtues, or, at the least, estimable qualities; in them lies the vital force of ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... Asiatic problem, however, is the political relation of the United States and the Asiatic Powers, especially in the Pacific. This is less intimately vital, but is important in view of the rapidly growing tendency of both China and Japan to expand in trade and political ambitions. This is a problem of political rather than social science, but since the welfare of both races is concerned, ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... marking signs of good or evil in the dispositions of our fellow-beings; just as in the beating of a single artery under the touch, we discover an indication of the strength or weakness of the whole vital frame. ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins

... assigned for the phenomenal ill-luck of the theater, but undoubtedly the vital objection to it as a Temple of Drama lay in the fact that nobody could ever find the place where it was hidden. Cabmen shook their heads on the rare occasions when they were asked to take a fare there. Explorers to whom a stroll through the Australian ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill

... it is vital to adopt the right frame of mind in your attempt to achieve self-hypnosis, particularly a deep state. If you approach hypnosis with a "prove-it-to-me" attitude, nothing is going to happen. Self-hypnosis requires practicing a set of mental exercises or mental gymnastics. ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers

... been organized into subdivisions; the Executive Committee shall have power to call, when they shall so determine, upon a Board of Delegates, to consist of three representatives from each division to confer with them upon matters of vital importance. ...
— A Sketch of the Causes, Operations and Results of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856 • Stephen Palfrey Webb

... effective beyond a few thousand miles range at most—and the dark star could span millions. If the invader passed on, its havoc would be only a trifle smaller, for it had already destroyed two members of the solar system and was now striking at its most vital part. Without the sun, life would die, but even with the sun the planets must rearrange themselves because ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei

... formed the vital flaw in the general defence; and it was upon these that Dick turned, charging at the head of his men. So vigorous was the attack that the Lancastrian archers gave ground and staggered, and, at last, breaking their ranks, began to crowd back into the houses from which they had so recently ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... schools disagree widely on this subject, and there are remedies employed with success the effect of which the most intelligent are unable to account for. So long as there is a single one of this character to be found, and while the operations of the vital functions are so concealed from us that we are unable fully to comprehend the process by which any specific operates, so long it is impossible to prescribe as a conditon of patentability, a full explanation of the mode ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... came upon her; she wept; and I desisted. It was my soul that she desired with the fire of her mighty love, and not my body.... And again, since it is to myself and to you alone I tell it, I would add this vital fact: it was this "new beauty which my finest dreams have left unmentioned" that made it somehow possible for me to desist, both against my animal ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood

... lady, you are perfectly right! I subscribe unreservedly to the rule, and try to follow it; but you have overlooked another rule—the most vital of the code." ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott

... Lord God was dealing with him as with a son, educating him, chastening him, purifying him and teaching him, by the chances and changes of his mortal life; whosoever, I say, has had any real taste of vital experimental religion—to David's Psalms he has gone, as to a treasure house, to find there his own feelings, his own doubts, his own joys, his own thoughts of God and His providence—reflected as in a glass; everything ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley

... passion for clap-trap, only wanting to be left alone to push trade and make money; so ignorant as to believe that feudalism can be abated without any heroic Stein, by providing that in one insignificant case out of a hundred thousand, land shall not follow the feudal law of descent; without a single vital idea or sentiment or feeling for beauty or appropriateness; well persuaded that if more trade is done in England than anywhere else, if personal independence is without a check, and newspaper publicity unbounded, that is, by the nature of things, to be great; misled every morning by the magnificent ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell

... our friends, the populists, have enacted rather peculiar divorce laws. And without some vital cause, the application must be signed by both parties. It's in the nature ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read

... responsive to each other meet, and they at once strike the chord of ardent social enjoyment in their companionship, and the note of prelude to an enthusiastic friendship. Let a sudden separation come in the external world, and the mutual spiritual experience is strangely full of color, of vital sympathy, of vivid perceptions. Evidently, the spirits of each meet and mingle, independent of the fact that a thousand miles of distance lie between the individuals. What is distance to the spiritual being? It is not an element which bears ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting

... which "is not of the Father, but is of the world"? Life itself we know is of the Father. In whatever sense we take that much-meaning word, life is God's gift. The mere physical being, if that be life, is the creation of His mighty word. The continuance, the prolongation of the vital function, if that be life, that too is the result of His never-sleeping care. The surrounding circumstances, the scenery of our experience, if that be life, is also of His arranging. The spiritual vitality, all the higher powers as we call them, ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser

... joy had he known how carefully Randall Clayton had already entered the accidentally found address in the little silver-clasped address book, in which he had recorded, with judicious cabalistic cloudiness, the combinations of his safes and certain vital private ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage

... was a clear green light. The sky gave it out, and there seemed to be also a green glow from the earth. Charlotte went down the hill with the evening air fresh and damp in her face. Lilacs were in blossom all about, and their fragrance was so vital and intense that it seemed almost like a wide presence in the ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... intoxication, is certainly one of fumigation. The face of a German is composed invariably of the following features: two eyes, a nose, a mouth, and a pipe. Whichever of these features is movable, the pipe at least is a fixture. Fortified by this vital organ, he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various

... never had been robust, began to show the effects of sedentary life, but the warning of a long siege of nervous dyspepsia was suffered to pass unheeded, and for five or six years he labored prodigiously, his mind expanding and his intellect growing more brilliant as the vital powers decayed. ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field

... Sometimes hasty, unjust, or even ungenerous, he was indifferent to the enemies he too needlessly created, and was hated by many and not loved even by those who respected his devotion and competence. He spared neither his subordinates nor, least of all, Edwin Stanton, and spendthrift of vital force and energy went his way, one of the great war ministers like Carnot and Pitt. Now, as they stood about to part, he showed feeling with which few would have given him credit, and for which ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell

... Bill had been near the point of utter exhaustion from his day's toil in the snow and his labor of building the fire. The vital nervous fluids no longer sprang forth to his muscles at the command of his brain: they came tardily, if at all. The fountain of his nervous energy had simply run down as the battery runs down in a motor, and it could ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall

... eloquence to move and persuade men is universally recognized. To-day the public speaker plays a vital part in the solution of every great question and problem. Oratory, in the true sense, is not a lost art, but a potent means of imparting information, instruction, ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser

... to be done? There is but one way—the Cross of Christ, "by which," as Paul says, "the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world." It is only through death to the world that we can be freed from its spirit. The separation must be vital and entire. It is only through the acceptance of our crucifixion with Christ that we can live out this confession, and, as crucified to the world, maintain the position of irreconcilable hostility to whatever is of its spirit and not of the Spirit of God; ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray

... health and strength must be preserved intact; therefore during the remainder of that day an abundant supply of food was provided for them, and they were urged with the utmost solicitude to partake of it freely. Which they did; for as Phil remarked to Dick, their strength was never of such vital importance to them as now; since it was not to be supposed that they were going to submit to be slowly tortured to death without at least making an effort to escape; and for that effort to be successful they must ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... prosperous bastion of welfare capitalism, featuring a combination of free market activity and government intervention. The government controls key areas, such as the vital petroleum sector, through large-scale state enterprises. The country is richly endowed with natural resources - petroleum, hydropower, fish, forests, and minerals - and is highly dependent on its oil production and international oil prices, with oil and gas accounting ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... grew as he played with it. As his spin took on a more complicated character, his zest rose. He went forth on Sunday feeling as if some vital change was impending. His little cruise loomed up large, important, epochal. He laughed at himself and thought, with his customary optimism, that a vacation was worth waiting twelve years for, if waiting endowed it with such a flavor. ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger

... vigils, in which case he is denounced as a Ritualist. Or he may be either a Unitarian Deist like Voltaire or Tom Paine, or the more modern sort of Anglican Theosophist to whom the Holy Ghost is the Elan Vital of Bergson, and the Father and Son are an expression of the fact that our functions and aspects are manifold, and that we are all sons and all either potential or actual parents, in which case he is strongly suspected by the straiter Salvationists of being little better than ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw

... thick, black moustache, and Anthony liked her less than he could have wished. But she had been Jan's nurse, and was faithful and trustworthy beyond words. He would never let Jan go to the country ahead of him, for without her he always left behind everything most vital to his happiness, so she was to join him next day and see that ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker

... of man, there exists a wide difference of opinion on some of the most vital questions respecting his nature and origin. Anthropologists are now, indeed, pretty well agreed that man is not a recent introduction into the earth. All who have studied the question, now admit that his antiquity is very ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... hands that had carried off three sentinels, would, it was reasonable to believe, make no attempt to spirit away a whole company of men. And for future action as well as to put an end to the superstitious terror of the soldiery, the vital necessity was to clear up the mystery. He had no belief in the theory that these men deserted. He knew them too well. He prided himself mat he was thoroughly acquainted with his own regiment, and had well-grounded reasons for pride in his men. For this reason he was the more chary of exposing ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... It evidently never occurred to you, Jay, that it's an inconvenience to us—that all this vital knowledge should lie, purely by accident, in the hands of the one man who's too damned ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... own inconsistencies in dwelling upon accidents in Tess's life as if they were vital features. It was for herself that he loved Tess; her soul, her heart, her substance—not for her skill in the dairy, her aptness as his scholar, and certainly not for her simple formal faith-professions. ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... lamp, The mountains, woods, and streams, the rolling globe, And Wisdom's mien celestial. From the first Of days, on them his love divine he fix'd, 70 His admiration: till in time complete What he admired and loved, his vital smile Unfolded into being. Hence the breath Of life informing each organic frame; Hence the green earth, and wild resounding wares; Hence light and shade alternate, warmth and cold, And clear autumnal skies and vernal showers, And all the fair variety of things. But not alike ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside

... of Taking Food is not a matter of indifference; very young infants make an exception; for, as their consumption of vital power is more rapid, they may be more ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... tortuous snies, to be groped along dexterously with the poles, but dropped at last into better water, ending at a portage, where we dined. This portage led to the farmhouse of a Mr. Houle, a native of Red River, who had left St. Vital fifty-eight years before, and was now settled at a beautiful spot on the right bank of the river, and had horses, cows and other cattle, a garden, and raised wheat and other grain, which he said did well, and was evidently prosperous. After a regale of milk we embarked for the first Wahpooskow ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair

... particularly was the queer trick of my memory that had never recalled anything vital of Beatrice whatever when I met Garvell again that had, indeed, recalled nothing except a boyish antagonism and our fight. Now when my senses were full of her, it seemed incredible that I could ever ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... human aims, human relations in the business of life, such as hardly another can possess. Even the poet, greatly wise in virtue of his sympathy, will scarcely understand a given human condition so well as the man whose vital tentacles have been in contact with ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... the telephone bell rang, sharply, insistently in the hall. It went on ringing, again and again, a curiously vital sound in the quiet house; but Anstice did not hear it, and at length the ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes

... weight from one leg to the other, as he stood at a shop entrance with his lady's mantle over his arm; twice have I seen one stroke his chin, and several times have I observed others, during the month of July, conduct themselves in many respects like animate objects with vital organs. Lest this incendiary statement be challenged, levelled as it is at an institution whose stability and order are but feebly represented by the eternal march of the stars in their courses, I hasten to explain that ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... almost constant enemy to disclose. Enough, however, was known to leave no doubt of the greatness of the risks, and it was the master's part to represent them. The occasion, however, was not one of a mere diversion, of a secondary operation, but of one vital to the nation's cause; and Hawke's reply, stamped with the firmness of a great officer, showed how little professional timidity had to do with his laudable care of his fleet in Basque Roads two years before. "You have done your duty in warning me," he replied; ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan

... from various sources receives careful thought in connection with its use in gunpowder; so, too, the sulphur used for this particular purpose, and there is recommended as a source of this ingredient, the common pyrites so abundant throughout the States. Among other topics, of vital interest in these days, discussed in the continuing articles, is the manufacture of spirit from potatoes. The method employed in Germany is presented in detail after which it ...
— James Cutbush - An American Chemist, 1788-1823 • Edgar F. Smith

... was projected high into the air. Mr Falconer's boat was being hauled rapidly towards it. A long lance with which he was armed was quickly buried in the side of the huge creature, going deep down into a vital part. The other boats gathered round it, from each a lance was darted forth, the whale rolling over and over in his agony, and coiling the rope round him, when suddenly, with open jaws, he darted at one of the boats, and then attacked another. Kitty shrieked out with fear, for it was ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston

... lived—and, the beautiful steps went up at the back to the 'pantry and to the side was the smoke house', she jumped up and illustrated—'the smoke come up from here, and the meat was hangin' all here', she showed vital interest in everything she told, and was absorbed in her subject, as when we relate experiences which ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... may be readily exhausted; for a time the bite would then be harmless. Contrary to the general impression, snake-venom when swallowed is a deadly poison, as proved by the experiments of Fayrer, Mitchell, and Reichert. Death is most likely caused by paralysis of the vital centers through the circulation. In this country the wounds invariably are on the extremities, while in India the cobra sometimes strikes ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... forward and picked up the little boy, who, although fearfully bitten about the leg, was still alive. It had not before uttered a sound, but now it began to cry as it saw the blood streaming from the wounded limb. As far as I could judge, no vital part had been touched, and I told Aboh to say to the mother, that if she would let us doctor it we would do so, as I had hopes of its recovery. Having washed it then and there in cold water, we stopped the blood, bound ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston

... in the duties of secret devotion is a mark of religious declension. It is well said that prayer is the Christian's vital breath. A devout spirit is truly the life and soul of godliness. The soul can not but delight in communion with what it loves with warm affection. The disciple, when his graces are in exercise, does not enter into his closet and shut ...
— Food for the Lambs; or, Helps for Young Christians • Charles Ebert Orr

... said. He understood the instrument, certainly, for if there is one characteristic more than another which should distinguish pen methods it is Directness. The nature of the pen seems to mark as its peculiar function that of picking out the really vital features of a subject. Pen drawing has been aptly termed the "shorthand of Art;" the genius of ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis

... containing literally nothing whatever but one old silver coin. But the coin, to those who knew, was more solitary and splendid than the Koh-i-noor. It was Roman, and was said to bear the head of St. Paul; and round it raged the most vital controversies about the ancient British Church. It could hardly be denied, however, that the controversies left ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton

... road to and from the church. He recognized them all, and knew them by their horses when some distance away. As clothes betray a person when his face is not observable, so do horses and sleighs on a country road. They seem to be vital parts of the owners, and to separate them would be fatal. No one could imagine Mrs. Stickles seated in a finely-upholstered sleigh and driving a high-mettled horse. She and Sammy, the home-made pung and the old lean mare plodding onward, ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody

... resolved to resist to the end, and would brook no parleying with the enemy. They were in fact political nationalists of a different school and leaning from the aristocrats and the priests. The latter regarded political life and the Temple service as vital parts of the national life, and believing that the legions were invincible were anxious to keep peace with Rome. The Zealots regarded personal liberty and national independence as vital, and, to vindicate them, fought ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich

... harder one than the council's. The moral shock of the atomic bombs had been a profound one, and for a while the cunning side of the human animal was overpowered by its sincere realisation of the vital necessity for reconstruction. The litigious and trading spirits cowered together, scared at their own consequences; men thought twice before they sought mean advantages in the face of the unusual eagerness to realise new aspirations, and ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... smallest orb That circles through the sky; He would not give A meteor to my guidance; would not leave The coloring of a cloudlet to my hand; He locks my beating heart beneath its bars And keeps the key himself; He measures out The draughts of vital breath that warm my blood, Winds up the springs of instinct which uncoil, Each in its season; ties me to my home, My race, my time, my nation, and my creed So closely that if I but slip my wrist Out of the band that cuts ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... once broken, his return to strength was rapid. Although accompanied by delirium, and though running its full course of weeks, the "mountain fever" is not as intense as typhoid. The exhaustion of the vital forces is not as great, and recuperation is easier. In two days Bennington was sitting up in bed, possessed of an appetite that threatened to depopulate entirely the little log chicken coop. He found that the tenancy ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White

... far, to her, he continued to remain the same familiar baby she had always known—the same and utterly vital part of her soul and body. No sudden fulfilment of an apocalypse had yet wrought any occult metamorphosis in ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers

... common cause with Dr. Dollinger, "looking more to points where they agree, and not to points where they differ." Why should not the same rule be adopted towards brethren who differ from ourselves so little on points that are vital and eternal? The principle which I would apply to the circumstances, I think, may be thus stated: I would join with fellow-Christians in any good works or offices, either of charity or religion, where I could do so without compromise ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... is shown to be dependent upon and concurrent with the vegetative processes of the demonstrated organisms characterizing these ferments; so it can be shown with equal clearness and certainty that the entire process of what is known as putrescence is equally and as absolutely dependent on the vital processes of a given and discoverable ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various

... of disease is removed, will of herself, restore health to the body. Reduce the strength of the patient, and you reduce the patient's power to get well. Do bleeding, blistering, starving and drastic purges strengthen the vital forces, or add power to the recuperative system? No! All these tend to reduce the restorative forces by weakening the alimentary, respiratory, circulatory and nervous systems of the body; the only powers upon which the physician may rely, and to ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline

... off to the northwest with a bold, large, and dignified movement. The coloring, blue and silver, purple-brown and bronze-green, was harmonious with the grouping of lines. It was all fresh and vital, wholesome ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... highest moment ought not to be overlooked. In view of our increasing population, social complexities, and industrial and commercial engagements of all kinds, time is of vital importance for the purposes of domestic legislation and internal improvements. Is the time and brainpower of our legislators, and of those of our colonies too, to be diverted perpetually from their own special concerns ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 9: The Expansion of England • John Morley

... blending of the eclogue with the mythological tale. The drama was developing on independent lines. Thus although, like the other romances of the late Greek school, it supplied many incidents and descriptions to be found in later works, it played no vital part in the history of pastoral, and left no mark either on the general form or on the spirit that animated the kind. Longus' romance finds its true descendant, as well as its closest imitation, in a work that achieved celebrity on the eve of the French ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... Nonentitarians of vulgar mould, he tenants it with Soul or Spirit, or Mind, which Soul, or Spirit, or Mind, according to his own showing, is nothing but body in action; in other terms, organised matter performing vital functions. Idle declamation against 'facts mongers' well becomes such self-stultifying dealers in fiction. Abuse of 'experimentarians' is quite in keeping with the philosophy of those who maintain the reality of mind in face of their own strange statement, that magnetism is the ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell

... Carson appeared on the next morning. Living at some distance from Mrs. Wykoff's, she did not come until after breakfast. The excellent lady had thought over the incident of the day before, and was satisfied that, from lack of nutritious food at the right time, Mary's vital forces were steadily wasting, and that she would, in a ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur

... fret and fume, And thus in strife themselves consume; Or from each other wildly start, And with a noise forever part. But see the happy, happy pair, Of genuine love and truth sincere; With mutual fondness while they burn, Still to each other kindly turn; And as the vital sparks decay, Together gently sink away; Till life's fierce trials being past, Their ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain

... have a fleet for every harbor, it would be impossible to depend upon this kind of defense, as the enemy would select whichever harbor he found least prepared to receive him. It would be of vital importance that we defend every harbor of importance, as a neglect to do so would be like locking some of our doors and leaving the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various

... fattened by being fed, out of the water, if their gills are wet from time to time with humid moss, to prevent them from becoming dry. Fish separate their gill-covers wider in oxygen gas than in water. Their temperature however, does not rise; and they live the same length of time in pure vital air, and in a mixture of ninety parts nitrogen and ten oxygen. We found that tench placed under inverted jars filled with air, absorb half a cubic centimetre of oxygen in an hour. This action takes place in the gills only; for fishes on which a collar of ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... For this beneficent vital-spark every body, but a lawyer, is in search; and it is what every body, but a lawyer, is delighted to find. No wonder therefore that a lawyer should meet discomfiture, and confusion, when he pretends to discuss the abstract nature ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... to New York to investigate various business interests of her late husband, and finds herself face to face at the outset with the two most vital ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks

... and when we should have to sustain the onslaught of an entire army. Would the people, that great revolutionary populace of the faubourgs of Paris, abandon their Representatives? Would they abandon themselves? Or, awakened and enlightened, would they at length arise? A question more and more vital, and which we repeated to ourselves ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... Sixth Reader, were presented to us samples of the best English ever written. If you can find, up in the garret, a worn and frayed old Reader, take it down and turn its pages over. See if anything in these degenerate days compares in vital strength and beauty with the story of the boy that climbed the Natural Bridge, carving his steps in the soft limestone with his pocket knife. You cannot read it without a thrill. The same inspired hand wrote "The Blind Preacher," and who that ever can read it can forget the ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... your eyes in the black-blue gloom, and watch the weird gush of lights that follow your every motion: each luminous point, as seen through the flood, like the opening and closing of an eye! At such a moment, one feels indeed as if enveloped by some monstrous sentiency,—suspended within some vital substance that feels and sees and wills alike in every part, an infinite ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... was fortunate that we found you at liberty and able to assist us in a matter which is of vital importance to us both. This is Miss Anita Lawton, daughter of the late Pennington Lawton, who desires your aid on a most ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander

... most) houses I have visited, I see in the bookcase large publications in six or seven well-bound parts and as good as new, dealing with subjects of little interest to anyone who breathes the vital air of heaven. Such titles as Science for All, The Thames from its Source to the Sea, The Queens of England are among the commonest on the boards of the books I allude to. The presence of these editions indicates ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... cheerfully and as though it were really not a matter of vital importance, that there is no doubt that I have got IT. He remarks that IT is all over the place, and that he has a couple of hundred other cases at the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various

... the union of soul and body. Thus the movement of heavy and light things results from their substantial form: for which reason they are said to be moved by their generator, as the Philosopher states (Phys. viii, 4). Wherefore this movement is called "vital." For which reason Gregory of Nyssa (Nemesius, De Nat. Hom. xxii) says that, just as the movement of generation and nutrition does not obey reason, so neither does the pulse which is a vital movement. By the pulse he means the movement of the heart which is ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... brother, who had taken up his quarters again, after the war, in his mansion in the Avenue of the Bois de Boulogne, where he was consuming the fortune left him by his wife, Louise de Mareuil, become prudent, with the wisdom of a man struck in a vital part, and trying to cheat the paralysis which ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola

... seems to have been as natural to the man as his amiable manner) is sometimes made his reproach, as if it were his sole merit, and as if he had concealed under this charming form a want of substance. In literature form is vital. But his case does not rest upon that. As an illustration his "Life of Washington" may be put in evidence. Probably this work lost something in incisiveness and brilliancy by being postponed till the writer's old age. But whatever ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... Ocean as the capricious and tyrannical god of the poets. Everything in his depths was working with a vital regularity, subject to the general laws of existence. Even the tempests roared ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... room. I looked at her bare neck, lithe and perfumed, on which rested her knotted hair confined by a jewelled comb; that neck, the seat of vital force, was blacker than hell; two shining tresses had fallen there and some light silvern hairs balanced above it. Her shoulders and neck, whiter than milk, displayed a heavy growth of down. There was in that knotted mass of hair something ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... which they will call illness. You see, the Jivros are our doctors. Much of the wisdom of our race is in their hands. They are our priests and our administrators. They leave to us only useless occupations which will not allow us to be dangerous. For centuries they have been taking over every vital function of our life. I am allowed to live only so long as I am a willing tool, and foolish enough to wreak their evil will upon my people. It is a part I cannot continue to play. Every instinct of my being shrinks from what I am forced to order done daily, from ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell

... like the evil genius in the fairy tale, now dwindling to a mere seed, now bursting into a devouring fire. When, with an honest purpose, we probe it and pluck at it, still we may detect it in the lowest socket of the heart. Often it is most vital when we feel most sure that it is vanquished. It delights in the garb of humility, and finds its food in the profession of self-renunciation. See its grossest expression in the desire for physical superiority—the glory of the ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin

... Pacific, by way of Baffin's or Hudson's Bay, several expeditions were organized to complete the discoveries of Mackenzie, and survey the North American coast. These expeditions were not fraught with any great danger, and the results might be of the most vital importance alike to geographical and nautical science. The command of the first was entrusted to Franklin afterwards so justly celebrated, with whom were associated Dr. Richardson, George Back, then a midshipman in the royal navy, and two ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... of circulatory process into which mental excitements and physiological changes enter, and these are so subtly related to each other that one always increases the other, until the maximum desire is reached, to which the will must surrender. Nature needs this automatic function; otherwise the vital needs of individual and race might be suppressed by other interests, and neglected. In the case of the sexual instinct, the mutual relations between the various parts of this circulatory process are especially complicated. Here it must be sufficient to say that the idea of sexual ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg

... good book and great, that too often we fail to observe or understand the influence for good of a boy's recreational reading. Such books may influence him for good or ill as profoundly as his play activities, of which they are a vital part. The needful thing is to find stories in which the heroes have the characteristics boys so much admire—unquenchable courage, immense resourcefulness, absolute fidelity, conspicuous greatness. We believe the books of EVERY BOY'S LIBRARY ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton

... from a very early period any aggressive policy of absorption in regard to the Hawaiian group, a long series of declarations through three-quarters of a century has proclaimed the vital interest of the United States in the independent life of the Islands and their intimate commercial dependence upon this country. At the same time it has been repeatedly asserted that in no event could the entity of Hawaiian statehood cease by the passage of the Islands ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... people. From the want of this arose unjust wars, unjust legislation, unjust monopoly, of which the existing Corn Laws were the most grievous instance. There was no danger in confiding the suffrage to the working classes, who had a vital interest in the public prosperity, and had evinced the truest ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... would suggest, that as each brick in a magnificent structure might have had no special value alone on the road-side, yet, in combination with many others, its size, position, quality, becomes of vital consequence; so with the actors in any great reform, though they may be of little value in themselves; as a part of a great movement they may be worthy of mention—even important to the completion ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... thing, by dying, ceases to have vital operations: for which reason, by a kind of metaphor, a thing is said to be deadened when it is hindered from producing ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... quarter, from being merely an odd piece of loose change, took on a vital, tangible character of its own. Translated into smokes, it gave a smoke a new value. He had started in to make a box of cigarettes last a day; but he was now resolved to make them last two days. This allowed him one after each meal ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... in quiet, decorous talk, touching on nothing vital, but holding a smoldering fire underneath. The young men said nothing about the fact that the regiment had been called to duty, and soon the camp on the bluff would be breaking up. They dared not touch on the past, and they as little ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine

... exultation of the past and with confidence of the future of the Original Democratic Party, we can think of nothing like it but Charles II. taking the Solemn League and Covenant, with an unctuous allusion to the persecutions WE Covenanters have undergone, and the triumphs of vital piety to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various

... moment and narrowed his eyes. "Now," he said "it is of vital importance to you to know who gave that order ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss

... Roman Empire. The municipal system, which from the names and duties of its officers would seem to represent a surprising amount of local independence in matters of administration, even a collection of small almost free republics, had lost all its strength and all its vital power by the grinding exactions of a centralized despotism, which was compelled to support its declining power by strengthening the very forces which were working its destruction, at the expense of destroying those from which it ...
— The Communes Of Lombardy From The VI. To The X. Century • William Klapp Williams

... things in the right perspective.... She had made friends with him because he was one of the few private soldiers who could speak her language. It was but natural that she should tell him of the sunken packet. It was one of the most vital facts of her life. But just an outside fact: nothing to do with any shy mysterious workings of her woman's soul. She might have told the story to any man in the company without derogation from her womanly dignity. And any man Jack of them, having Jeanne's confidence, having the knowledge ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... her old tone with him. For the moment both forgot the possible issue of this errand upon which they were going; only the vital relations at ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond

... who was present told his majesty that the only thing that saved your life was your threat to aim at Branicki's head. This frightened him, and to keep your ball from his head he stood in such an awkward position that he missed your vital parts. Otherwise he would undoubtedly have shot you through the heart, for he can split a bullet into two halves by firing against the blade of a knife. It was also a lucky thing for you that you escaped ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... and to an extent which he little suspected. That Upper Dam trout was to her like the first taste of blood to the tiger. It seemed to change, at once, not so much her character as the direction of her vital energy. She yielded to the lunacy of angling, not by slow degrees, (as first a transient delusion, then a fixed idea, then a chronic infirmity, finally a mild insanity,) but by a sudden plunge into the most violent mania. So far from being ready to die at Upper Dam, her desire now was to live there—and ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke

... our vital organs, and of the cessation to be, so that we move no longer upon the face of the earth, and that our places know us no more, or the idea of being swept away suddenly into eternal oblivion, and of being ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... important questions. Every effort was made to suppress these reports, but again the press gained the day. Henceforth the nation could learn how far its representatives really represented the will of the people, and so could hold them strictly accountable,—a matter of vital importance in ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... and the following Sunday Dr. Hoffman marched into the parlor with a vital at-home step. Margaret was up-stairs. Hanny sat in her little rocker reading her Sunday-school book. He smiled and came over to her, took away her book, and clasping both hands drew her up, seated himself, and her on his knee before ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas

... Lutheranism wanted. The latter had, indeed, in its favor, the liberty of inquiry, which is also a want of the human mind; and had proclaimed the authority of individual reason: but it had so lost that which is the necessary basis and vital condition of all revealed religion—the principle of infallibility; because nothing can live except in virtue of the laws that presided at its birth; and, in consequence, one revelation cannot be continued and confirmed without another. Now, infallibility is nothing ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... have it, he met in full flight one of the two dingoes that had escaped him on the day of the attack upon wounded Jess. It was an evil chance for that dingo. A fanged whirlwind smote him, and rended him limb from limb before he realized that the devastating thing had come, scattering his vital parts among the scrub and tearing wildly at his mangled remains. A mother kangaroo was surprised by the ghostly grey fury, at some distance from the rest of her small mob, and, though she fought with the fury of ten males of her species (bitterly conscious of the young thing ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson

... that ever did, or did not, "buckle to." Then would come a happy cure to aching bones—made whole with honourable bruises, oblivious of pain, the "bruchia livida," lithesome and triumphant. Your devotion to the sex has been seasoned under burning sun and winter frost, and has yet vital heat against icy age, come on fast as it will. You would not chill, Eusebius, though you were hours under a pump in a November night, and lusty arms at work ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... will see what I mean. The Trentino is, you will note, nothing but a prolongation of the valleys of Lombardy and Venetia. Held by Austria, it is like a great intrenched camp in the heart of northern Italy, menacing the valley of the Po, which is one of the kingdom's most vital arteries, and the link between her richest and most productive cities. From the Trentino, with its ring of forts, Austria can always threaten and invade her neighbor. She lies in the mountains, with the plains ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell

... allay. The affair of Lord A- and Mrs. B- is too well known to need repetition—it could not succeed a second time. Abelard F- having paid the debt of nature, there was no impediment but a visit to the temple of Hymen, on which point the lady was determined; and the yielding suitor, wounded to the vital part, most readily complied. It is due to the countess to admit, that since her present elevation, her conduct has been exemplary and ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... is rendered by him who, with fearlessness and honesty, with sanity and disinterestedness, does his life work as a member of such a body. Especially is this the case when the legislature in which the service is rendered is a vital part in the governmental machinery of one of those world powers to whose hands, in the course of the ages, is intrusted a leading part in shaping the destinies of mankind. For weal or for woe, for good ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt

... that the enjoyment of it might be restored to him—it was possible. Whether that possibility ever came off or not, he literally dared not regard it just then. To put himself in safety was the one, the vital consideration. And his Highmarket property and his share in the business only represented a part of Mallalieu's wealth. He could afford to do without all that he left behind him; it was a lot to leave, he ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher

... transmitted the letter from France to Captain Jones, with directions that he endeavor to intercept and capture this transport. The destitution of the American army at this period of the war was frightful: devoid of clothes, arms, provisions, powder,—everything, in fact, which is apparently vital to the existence of an army; continually beaten, menaced by a confident, well-equipped, and disciplined enemy in overwhelming force, and before whom they had been habitually retreating, they were only held together by the ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... ghost's command, and has the same origin. For there is no apathy like that of an over-mastering passion, whether it be love or jealousy, or a new faith, or a terrible doubt. It draws away the life from other duties and interests, and leaves them pale and semi-vital. Men thus possessed acknowledge the duties they evade, let slip occasion, are "lapsed in time and passion," and are surprised at their ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... Irishman as that rude person I told you about at the outset and I want to see everyone, concluded he, all creeds and classes pro rata having a comfortable tidysized income, in no niggard fashion either, something in the neighbourhood of 300 pounds per annum. That's the vital issue at stake and it's feasible and would be provocative of friendlier intercourse between man and man. At least that's my idea for what it's worth. I call that patriotism. Ubi patria, as we learned a smattering of in our classical days in Alma Mater, vita bene. Where you can live ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... different tones and with a different gospel. Yet my words should have a sweetness his had not, my gospel a power that should draw where his repelled. For my love, shaken not yet shattered, wounded not dead, springing again to full life and force, should breathe its vital energy into her soul and impart of its endless abundance till her heart was full. Entranced by this golden vision, I rose and looked from the window at the dawning day, praying that mine might be the task, ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope

... living creatures now on the earth must, therefore, have had some origin. That origin is not due to spontaneous generation, according to the testimony of the most enlightened scientists, Professor Haeckel to the contrary notwithstanding. The various vital manifestations and exhibitions of force in the universe are due to some cause. The intuitions of mankind, as well as the teachings of science, declare there must be a cause lying behind the universe which ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 11, November, 1880 • Various

... getting away from Dartymoor, because the place had used her bad, and she hated the sight of it; but Jonathan, a proud chap even then, got the lawyers to look into the matter, and they told him that 'twasn't vital for Dunnabridge to be sold, though it might ease his pocket, and smooth his future to do so, 'specially as Duchy wanted the place rather bad, and had offered the value of it. And Jonathan's mother was on the side of Duchy, too, and went ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough

... to tell another to calm himself, but who among us can compass such a frame of mind when he is hit in a vital spot? The ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman

... conception. The king and his court were surrounded by pimps, panders, courtesans, and flatterers. The example of the court spread throughout the country—religion became a jest and laughing-stock; and those who were not to be cajoled out of their soul's eternal happiness—whose vital godliness preserved them in the midst of such evil examples and allurements, were persecuted with unrelenting rigour. The virtuous Lord William Russel, and the illustrious Sydney, fell by the hands ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... the first quarter of the eighteenth century had very little rest. Until long past midnight a noisy, lawless, drunken rabble made the streets hideous. It was quite three o'clock, when as physiologists tell us the vital forces are at their lowest, before it could be said that the city was asleep. And that sleep did not last long. Soon the creaking of market cart and waggon wheels, the shouts of drovers and waggoners, tramping horses, bellowing ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce

... in the navy knew, Captain Vince was a most dangerous swordsman. In duel or in warfare, no man yet had been able to stand before him. With skilled arm and eye and with every muscle of his body trained, his sword sought a vital spot in his opponent. There was no thought now in the mind of Vince about disarming the pirate and taking him prisoner; this terrible wild beast, this hairy monster must be killed or he himself must die. Through the whirl and clash and hot breath of battle he had ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton

... of the most able and learned of ecclesiastical writers, and possessed also a mind most vigorous and original. His discoveries in pneumatic chemistry have exceeded those of any other philosopher. He discovered vital air, many new acids, chemical substances, paints, and dyes. He separated nitrous and oxygenous airs, and first exhibited acids and alkalies in a gaseous form. He ascertained that air could be purified by the process of vegetation, and that light evolved pure air from vegetables. He detected ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... exaltation which in the dramatic experience usurps the place of definite feeling. We have met this phenomenon before. Aesthetic emotion in general, we have heard, consists just in the union of a kind of stimulation or enhanced life, with repose; a heightening of the vital energies unaccompanied by any tendency to movement,—in short, that gathering of forces which we connect with action, and which is felt the more because action is checked. Just such a repose through equilibrium of impulses is given by the dramatic conflict. Introspection makes assurance ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer

... to discover the women who were living on homesteads and who, in their own way, played so vital a part in developing the West. One of our nearest neighbors—by straining our eyes we could see her little shack perched up against the horizon—put on her starched calico dress and gingham apron and came right over to call. The Widow Fergus, she ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl

... duty to promote their advancement in the world. To promote, such is the perversity of unprincipled prejudices, the future welfare of the very beings whose present existence they imbitter by the most despotic stretch of power. Power, in fact, is ever true to its vital principle, for in every shape it would reign without controul or inquiry. Its throne is built across a dark abyss, which no eye must dare to explore, lest the baseless fabric should totter under investigation. ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

... surprising, and at that particular moment so inconsequent. Was his daughter not weighing—with prayer, he hoped, and certainly with all her senses—the prospect of an alliance with the Duke of Marshire? How, then, could she pause in a meditation of such vital interest to make capricious remarks ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... is, to take care of that vital principle of every state, its revenue. The next is, to preserve the magistracy and legal authorities in honor, respect, and force. And the third, to preserve the property, movable and immovable, of all the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... have no reason to believe that any such is at present contemplated; but that the principle of the "sliding scale," as it is called, will be firmly adhered to, we entertain no doubt whatever. The conduct of the agricultural interest, with reference to subjects of such vital importance to them as the Corn-Law Bill and the Tariff, has been characterized by signal forbearance and fortitude; nor, let them rest assured, will it be lost upon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... knife with which he had so often threatened, and with which he yet seemed destined to take, though in the last gasp of his own, the soldier's life. With one hand he felt along the prisoner's body, as if seeking a vital part, and sustained his own weight, while with the other he made repeated, though feeble and ineffectual, strokes with the knife, all the time rolling, and staggering, and shaking his gory head in a manner most horrible to behold. But vengeance was denied the dying ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird

... Mr. Cabell's stories, read his Beyond Life, which explains his theory of romance. He maintains that art should be based on the dream of life as it should be, not as it is; that enduring literature is not "reportorial work"; that there is vital falsity in being true to life because "facts out of relation to the rest of life become lies," and that art therefore "must become more or ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert

... tranquillity, cheerfulness, and courage, whether we are distinctly conscious of it or not, lies in the ultimate conviction, that God is good,—that his providence, his order of things in the world, is good; and theology, in the largest sense of the term, is as vital to us as the ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey

... not claim to set any particular merit on his own action, and went on to claim it. By which time his train was ready. It was indeed vital that he should be in London to meet a commission which had shown such reluctance to trade with foreign devils, and had been, moreover, so punctilious in its demand for ceremonious receptions, but he had not the slightest doubt about his ability to reach London before the boat ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace

... he lives day and night. Knock at that door and you will find him at home. Touch upon some vital need in his business— some defect or tangle that is worrying him—some weak spot that he wants to remedy—some cherished ambition that haunts him—and you will have rung the bell of his interest. A few openings that are designed ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous

... will not sprout; while, not being above one or two degrees below the freezing-point, the tubers will not be frostbitten. Another mode is to scoop out the eyes with a very small scoop, and keep the roots buried in earth; a third mode is to destroy the vital principle, by kiln-drying, steaming, or scalding; a fourth is to bury them so deep in dry soil, that no change of temperature will reach them; and thus, being without air, they will remain upwards of a ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... moment, When the pangs of death already touch me, Firmly my mind against injustice strives, And the last impulse to my vital powers Is given by anxious wishes to redeem My fellowmen from pain; surely my end, Howe'er accomplished, is not ...
— Andre • William Dunlap

... of the bear, he counselled them to adopt a different plan. He said—what was true enough—that at such a height they might miss the bear; or, even if they should hit him, a bullet would scarce bring him down—unless it should strike him in a vital part. In the contingency of their missing, or only slightly wounding him, the animal would at once ascend further up into the tapang; and, hidden behind the leaves and branches, might defy them. He ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid

... evident than that the same measure of life or of vital energy—power of growth, power of resistance, power of reproduction—is not meted out equally to all the individuals of a species, or to all species, so it is evident that this power of progressive development is not meted ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... or wavering. A single concession to the arbitrary tendencies of Lincoln's Cabinet, so as to allow interference with the free expression of Maryland's will when the crisis shall arrive, would not only, I believe, crush the hopes of the vast majority of this State's inhabitants, but also betray the vital interest of the Southern Confederacy ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... with circumspection. So far, beyond seeing the main entrance and the guard-room cells, Rasul Khan had not done much towards securing that full information about the fort, its garrison, and its defences, which it was of such vital importance to gain. He had, however, secured a footing, and, while with apparent readiness he prepared to rejoin his men outside, he politely insisted that he must leave his own sentry to guard the prisoners; "for," ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband

... heaven, with the rare unreserve bred of tobacco, and the communicative influence of midnight. Talk of this kind draws men very close together; and in the course of it Lenox discovered—as others had done before him—that this man who had become so intimately linked with the vital issues of his life was no mere good comrade, but a dynamic force, challenging and evoking ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... and subsequent vital statistics as to Baker's university and clerical career are from the account of him in J. and J.A. Venn, ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker

... dedication that Mr. Bok has prepared for this little volume is addressed to American schoolboys and schoolgirls, but its message is just as vital for the older reader. In the prime of life and on the threshold of his Third Period, Mr. Bok has begun to give practical demonstration of the kind of service that is possible for those who are sincerely ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok

... modes of social and intellectual activity, and the progress of every nation is bound up with an international progress of which they are now the natural pioneers. It cannot be too often repeated that the day has gone by when any progress worthy of the name can be purely national. All the most vital questions of national progress tend to merge themselves into international questions. But before any question of international progress can result in anything but noisy confusion, we need a recognized mode of international intelligence and communication. That ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... of our bodies cherish hope not light, That they shall have a happier fate when dead; Together to entomb them, may some wight, Haply by pity moved, be hither led." She the poor remnants of his vital sprite Went on collecting, as these words she said; And while yet aught remains, with mournful lips, The last faint breath of ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb

... walk upon it. Was it the gallant Raleigh who threw down his cloak for Queen Elizabeth to walk upon? See what a robe the maples have thrown down for you and me to walk upon! How one hesitates to soil it! The summer robes of the groves and the forests—more than robes, a vital part of themselves, the myriad living nets with which they have captured, and through which they have absorbed, the energy of the solar rays. What a change when the leaves are gone, and what a change when they come again! A naked tree may be a dead tree. The dry, inert bark, the rough, ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... to the nervous centres (the spine, the cerebellum and the brain), and, in fact, to the whole nervous system, and the reaction is almost immediate; the vascular system, participating in it, sends the blood from the larger vessels and the vital parts, to the capillaries of the skin; and when, through repeated applications of the sheet, the system is relieved and harmony restored, in a sufficient degree, in and among the different parts of the organism, to enable them to resume their partly impeded ...
— Hydriatic treatment of Scarlet Fever in its Different Forms • Charles Munde

... were years and whose scenes were continually passing before her. It gave a new zest to life, made this world more real, and diminished her longings for the next. In narrowing her friendships it made them more vital and satisfactory; and being in communion with hundreds of other minds in the country, reading their thoughts became almost like personal intercourse with them, and was a new happiness to her. Studying daily a subject of such vast complications, her mind perceptibly grew, and from year to year she ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... months, and become so much exhausted as to be obliged to keep her bed most of the time. The task of providing for the wants of both fell, consequently, upon Ellen. Increased exertion was more than her delicate frame could well endure. Daily were the vital energies of her system becoming more and more exhausted, a fact of which she was painfully conscious, and which she, with studious care, sought to conceal ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur

... in Literature," announced Thomasina, solemnly, "and I am deeply pained by the exhibition! I will give you one more chance in Arithmetic before going on to the higher branches, because, as you are aware, this is a most vital and important subject. Write down, please: A and B each inherited thirty thousand pounds. A invested his capital in gold-mine shares to bring in eighteen per cent, interest. B put his money into the Post Office Savings Bank, and received two and a half per cent. State ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... to character. He was a remarkable personality, who interpreted an era of unusual interest, vital and picturesque, with a result unparalleled in literary annals. When he died in England in 1902 the English papers paid him very high tribute. The London Spectator said of him: "No writer of the present day has struck so powerful and original a note as ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock

... that's what makes the whole thing so perfectly ridiculous. Just think of two children, one of twenty and the other of twenty-three, proposing to decide their lifelong destiny in such a vital matter! Should we trust their judgment in regard to the smallest business affair? Of course not. They're babes in arms, morally and mentally speaking. People haven't the data for being wisely in love till they've reached the age when they ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... virulent poison. From a spirit of boyishness he then vigorously pierced his father in the breast with a whetted shaft equipt with excellent wings. That shaft, O king, penetrated the body of Pandu's son and reaching his very vital caused him great pain. The delighter of the Kurus, Dhananjaya, deeply pierced therewith by his son, then fell down in a swoon on the Earth, O king. When that hero, that bearer of the burthens of the Kuru's fell down, the son of Chitrangada also became deprived of his senses. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... made its mark on his view of the relations of a young man of spirit with parents and pastors. He mixed his colours, as might have been said, with the general sense of France, but his early American immunities and serenities could still swell his sail in any "vital" discussion with a friend in whose life the principle of authority played so large a part. He accused Probert of being afraid of his sisters, which was an effective way—and he knew it—of alluding to the rigidity of the ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James

... eighteenth century at one of those periods of revision when it has become absolutely necessary to examine the foundations of its teaching, at any risk of temporary disturbance to the faith of individuals. The advantage ultimately gained was twofold. It was not only that the vital doctrines of Christian faith had been scrutinised both by friends and enemies, and were felt to have stood the proof. But also defenders of received doctrine learnt, almost insensibly, very much from its opponents. They became aware—or if not they, at all events their successors ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... cosmogony of Chutsz was dualistic. All nature owed its existence to the Ri and Ki, the determining principle and the vital force of primordial aura that produces and modifies motion. Wang held that these two were inseparable. His ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... smile often accompanies what is called "the white voice." This is a voice production where a head resonance alone is employed, without sufficient of the apoggio or enough of the mouth resonance to give the tone a vital quality. This "white voice" should be thoroughly understood and is one of the many shades of tone a singer can use at times, just as the impressionist uses various unusual colors ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini

... seemed to be invulnerable in their vital parts. It is true that the Satsuma had lost a funnel, and that both masts of the Kashima were broken off, but except for a few holes above the armor-belt and one or two guns that had been put out of action and the barrels of which pointed helplessly into ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff

... that's the point that pierceth to the quick. Would Atropos would cut my vital thread, And so make lavish of my loathed life: Or gentle heav'ns would smile with fair aspect, And so give better fortunes to my love! Why, is't not a plague to be a ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... his face uplifted to the scattering drops, moving with a free and faun-like spring that seemed to mark him as a being closely allied to Nature, curiously vital ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell

... great many of the older and more illiterate ones among them are very superstitious, being implicit believers in signs, charms, apparitions, etc.; and most of them, also, entertain the opinion that the moon exerts an occult influence over many things of vital importance to the residents of this mundane sphere; and no power that could be brought to bear could induce some of them to plant corn, make soap, kill pigs, or perform many other important duties in certain phases of the moon, for ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter

... not investigated the subject of dietetics very much, but I have no doubt that the inhabitants of our whole land make too much use of animal food. No doubt it obstructs the vital powers, and tends to unbalance the healthful play and harmony of the various organs and their functions. There is too much nutriment in a small space. An unexpected quantity is taken; for with most people a sense of fullness is the test of a ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott

... grave a guilty passion; But I have been unable to withstand Tears and entreaties, I have told you all; Content, if only, as my end draws near, You do not vex me with unjust reproaches, Nor with vain efforts seek to snatch from death The last faint lingering sparks of vital breath. ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine

... upon other and still more desperate schemes. The Topeka Constitution was never received nor legalized; its officers never became clothed with official authority; its scrip was never redeemed; yet in the fate of Kansas and in the annals of the Union at large it was a vital and pivotal transaction, without which the great conflict between freedom and slavery, though perhaps neither avoided nor delayed, might have assumed altogether different ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... from his spiritual songs. They are more objective in form and less fiery in spirit. Most of them follow their themes quite closely, reproducing in many instances even the words of their text. Kingo is too vital, however, to confine himself wholly to an objective presentation. Usually the last stanzas of his hymns are devoted to a brief and often striking application of their text. He possessed to a singular degree the ability to express a thought tersely, as for instance in the following stanza, ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg

... have designed to narrate the life of Christ four times over, and to communicate it thus to mankind. (54) For though there are some details related in one Gospel which are not in another, and one often helps us to understand another, we cannot thence conclude that all that is set down is of vital importance to us, and that God chose the four Evangelists in order that the life of Christ might be better understood; for each one preached his Gospel in a separate locality, each wrote it down as he preached it, in simple language, in order that the history of Christ might ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part III] • Benedict de Spinoza

... himself or on me. My health is irretrievably ruined. I should have utterly sunk under it; but, by God's good providence, the malady of my husband took a new direction. It appeared to prey less upon the brain, and more upon other vital parts of the constitution. He wasted away and died. I indeed live; but I, too, have wasted away, body and soul, for I have no health and no joy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... faculty of working for the public good, of which he felt himself utterly devoid, was possibly not so much a quality as a lack of something —not a lack of good, honest, noble desires and tastes, but a lack of vital force, of what is called heart, of that impulse which drives a man to choose someone out of the innumerable paths of life, and to care only for that one. The better he knew his brother, the more he noticed that Sergey Ivanovitch, and many other people ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... East (and the youthful reader does not have to study Lane's learned foot-notes to imbibe all this), but beyond and above the knowledge of history and geography thus gained, there comes something finer and subtler as well as something more vital. The scene is Indian, Egyptian, Arabian, Persian; but Bagdad and Balsora, Grand Cairo, the silver Tigris, and the blooming gardens of Damascus, though they can be found indeed on the map, live much more truly in that enchanted realm that rises o'er "the foam of perilous seas in ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown

... coming nearer and nearer, right into the tent place now, while his hot breath fanned the dreamer's cheek, and his hands were resting upon his chest as if feeling for a vital spot to strike. With a tremendous effort, Dallas sprang up and struck at him, when there was a loud snarling yelp, and Abel cried in alarm, "What ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn

... where it was carried up to the upper deck, forming a "citadel," inside which her ten 18-ton and 12-ton guns were well protected. In this way her guns, waterline, and engines—or "vitals," as these are known for short—were fully protected at the expense of less vital parts of the ship. Though smaller and less expensive than the Minotaur she was a far more efficient ship. Her broadside was 1818 pounds. The Sultan, another ship of much the same type, had a broadside of 1964 pounds. During the early sixties another type of vessel came ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston

... two larvae which eat live prey: that of the Sphex and that of the Hydrophilus.[5] Uric acid, the inevitable product of the vital transformations, or at all events one of its analogues, must be formed in both. But the Hydrophilus' larva shows no accumulation of it in its adipose layer, whereas the Sphex' ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... retires when it is upon active service, there are sure to be spiteful stories getting about, often without the slightest foundation. But even if it had been true, it would hardly be to Bathurst's disadvantage now he is no longer in the army, and courage is not a vital necessity on the part ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty

... desirable that we should retain a distinction in regard to which Galen and the ancient physicians were very definite. They used pathos as the wider term involving affection (affectio) in general, not necessarily impairment of vital tissue; when that was involved there was nosos, disease. We have to recognize the distinction even ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... had been performed, and Dr. Warren had said either wound might have caused death; for the skull was badly fractured, and vital organs had been pierced by the dagger, which the papers called it, though it really was a paper ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele

... "Paradise Lost" among the great epics of the world; not rendered obsolete by changes in belief; the inevitable defects of its plan compensated by the poet's vital relation to the religion of his age; Milton's conception of the physical universe; his theology; magnificence of his poetry; his similes; his descriptions of Paradise; inevitable falling off of the later books; minor ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett

... we have made an advance in the definition of Force, and have come to consider Force as a kind of energy; the application of Force being the application of energy. Such terms as Mechanical Force, Chemical Force, Vital Force, are therefore out of date, and in their place the more definite ideas of energy are substituted. Instead, therefore, of getting such terms as Transformation of Forces, we now get Transformations of Energy. In the chapter on Energy, I hope to show that even that is not a satisfactory solution ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper









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