"Crucial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... crucial moment had come. I knew that if I weakened now, I was lost. The only possible escape for me, was to see the czar alone, and that I determined to do. The manner of the prince, upon my arrival at the palace, his conduct in the cabinet, the greeting accorded to me by the czar and his bearing ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... of the palmellae you described in the boxes, and I kept them for several years and demonstrated them as I had opportunity. You also showed me on this visit the following experiments that I regarded as crucial: ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... last hour and the last fortnight. Even had she met Peter it might have been to yield with a sort of collapse to mental and physical exhaustion. But to be forced to make a fresh effort now, one of the crucial and fearful struggles of a lifetime, to present her case to Martin now, and force him to her ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... services to his party, Douglas had sooner or later to face his constituents with an answer to the crucial question, "What have you done for us?" It is a hard, brutal question, which has blighted many a promising career in American politics. The interest which Douglas exhibited in the Western Harbors bill was due, in part ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... such as lead, zinc, nickel, and gold. However, severe ethnic violence, the closing of key business enterprises, and an empty government treasury have led to serious economic disarray, indeed near collapse. Tanker deliveries of crucial fuel supplies (including those for electrical generation) have become sporadic due to the government's inability to pay and attacks against ships. Telecommunications are threatened by the nonpayment of bills and by the lack of technical and maintenance ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... his dogmas and go through them one by one, comparing each with his own life. This, it may be said, is a crucial test to which but few philosophers would be willing to accede; but if it shall be found that he never even dreamed of squaring his conduct with his professions, then we may admit that he employed his time in writing these things because it did not ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... them straight, and soon they would come to the crucial point—the spot where they had turned at right ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... married life than the Christian philosophy of to-day is the Christian philosophy of the Middle Ages. She was not conscious of change, but change there was. She had, in fact, undergone that dissociation of the moral judgment from a special series of religious formulae which is the crucial, the epoch-making fact of our day. 'Unbelief,' says the orthodox preacher, 'is sin, and implies it': and while he speaks, the saint in the unbeliever gently smiles down his argument, and suddenly, in the rebel of yesterday men see ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of the noble and steadfast old Friend, could hardly fail to be known as a friend of the slave. Like her father she was ready to labor, and sacrifice and suffer in his cause, and had already made this apparent, had borne persecution, the crucial test of principle, before the war which gave to the world the prominent idea of freedom for all, and thus wiped the darkest stain from our starry banner, ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... as a revolt of light against darkness, on the acceptance or the rejection of which has since depended the destiny for good or evil of the several States composing it, the challenge to each of them being the crucial one, whether they deserved and were fated to continue or perish, and the crucial character of which is visible to-day in the actual conditions of the nations as they said "nay" to it or "yea," the challenge to each at bottom being, is there any truth in ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... to somewhat sober Harry, and he watched his play more carefully. As his run of luck still continued, Shuter's ill-humor increased, till it was quite marked. After the fifth or sixth deal the crucial game arrived. Both players began to bet heavily on their hands. Harry met his opponent's bets without a tremor of excitement, and twice Shuter hesitated as though he would throw up the game—seeing he could not bluff Harry into doing so, and, ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... was inconsistent with his past, such inconsistency must appear, if at all, in his general tone in regard to slavery, in his views as to the policy of compromise, and in his attitude toward the extension of slavery, the really crucial question of ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... medical psychologists make use of hypnotism, automatic writing, crystal-gazing—in short, of any method which will force an entrance into that higher time-world, whereby the forgotten past may become the present. This accomplished, and the crucial moment recovered and transfixed, the victim of the aborted opportunity is led to deal with it as one may deal with the fluid, and may not deal with the fixed. Again his past is plastic to the operation of his intelligence and ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... and literature do without the mellow, last-justifying, averaging, bringing-up of many, many years—a great old age amplified? Every really first-class production has likely to pass through the crucial tests of a generation, perhaps several generations. Lord Bacon says the first sight of any work really new and first-rate in beauty and originality always arouses something disagreeable and repulsive. Voltaire term'd the Shaksperean works "a huge ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... was missing. Nobody knew anything about it. The books having to do with the transaction had mysteriously disappeared. Two days later an Irishman found them floating in the bay, and brought them to the court. But the crucial pages were missing. And then suddenly, while both Judge Hazen and Judge Park were out of town, application was made to the Supreme Court—of which Judge Terry was head—for the release of Jones and Cohen. The ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... the evidence before the magistrates with great care, and I have just talked over the crucial points with Aldous, who followed everything to-day, as you know, and seems to have taken special note ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... World's Peace America's Mission in the Peace Movement America's Mission to Mankind America's Obligation The Arbiter of the World Arbitration versus War The Challenge of Thor The Conflict of War and Peace A Congress of Nations The Cost of Militarism The Cost of Peace The Crucial Parallelism The Dawn of Peace The Dawn of Universal Peace Democracy and Peace Diplomacy and Peace Disillusionment The Dominant Ideal The End; and the Means The Evolution of a Higher Patriotism The Evolution of Justice The Evolution of Law The Evolution of National Greatness as a World Peacemaker ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... fill his boyish mind, And agitate and fire his youthful breast, Oh, why should fortune oft' be so unkind, And real life appear in sombre colors drest, And dash to earth bright hopes, and give so much unrest? Oh, why should boyish hopes, and maiden's dreams Fail, sadly fail, to stand the crucial test? Say, why should all the brightness of man's schemes Full often fade away, like ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... the most timely publication in the Rowley controversy. His work appeared just as the debate over the authenticity of the poems attributed to a fifteenth-century priest was, after twelve years, entering its most crucial phase.[1] These curious poems had come to the attention of the reading public in 1769, when Thomas Chatterton sent several fragments to the Town and Country Magazine. The suicide of the young poet ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone
... deemed it necessary—even imperative—to the welfare of the movement, that John Tullis should be disposed of summarily before the crucial chapter in their operations. Truxton heard the Committee discussing the fiasco that attended his first attempt to draw the brainy, influential American out of the arena. It was clear that Marlanx suspected Tullis of a deep admiration for ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... extended equally to others; that this room, which he may have made peculiarly his own, filling it, perhaps, in proportion to the briefness of sojourn, with his own most personal experience; the landscape made his own through this window, the crucial conversation, receiving unexpected sympathies, held or (more potent still) thought over afterwards in that chair; he knows that this room will become, perhaps, O horror, within a ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... you think. I'm a fine specimen of a man to send on a hunt like that. A weak-kneed mollycoddle who passes into a state of coma at the crucial moment. But—I'm going to ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... resist invasion, would be protected, and this word they thought must be kept at all hazards. It made no difference that, aside from her great navy, England was utterly unprepared for the war. Like the decision which Belgium had had to make the day before, this was a crucial step for the British to take, but to their everlasting honor they did not hesitate. In the case of Germany's declaration of war the German laws say that no war can be declared by the Kaiser alone unless it is a defensive war. Therefore, ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet
... progress elsewhere cheered the efforts of our men in this crucial contest as the German command threw in more and more first-class troops to stop our advance. We made steady headway in the almost impenetrable and strongly held Argonne Forest, for, despite this reinforcement, ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... was Johnson's finger diverted his eyes to the crucial place in the prayer-book to ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... were far from over though, for now came the crucial point in our plans: in order for our small force to infiltrate the city and place the atomic anionizers, the Zards must not only have been distracted and preoccupied with the blaze, but they had also to leave the city ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... or interosseus, anterior and posterior, are situated between the femur and tibia, and according to Smith,[34] the crucial ligaments are necessary to properly join the two bones, because of the character of the structure of the articular ends ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... interesting to note that the quotations from it are from a version that preceded our own. His rules of self-discipline and spiritual culture, while wholly free from unwholesome asceticism, nevertheless required the curbing of all desires, and the utter subjection of every natural prompting to a crucial test, before its innocent or edifying character could ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... probably pass through no more villages and if they did, he would undoubtedly find means to prevent her making herself known. Unless—and a glimmer of hope flickered through her thoughts!—her warder carried his potations to a point where vigilance ceased to be a virtue. Inconsiderately he stopped at the crucial juncture, with all the signs of contentment ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... Buell, like McClellan, had with him a force very much greater than that before him; but Buell, like McClellan, would not admit that his troops were in condition to move. The result was that Jefferson Davis, more active to protect a crucial point than the North was to assail it, in December, 1861, sent into East Tennessee a force which imprisoned, deported, and hanged the loyal residents there, harried the country without mercy, and held it with the ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... will be disappointed by short sentences, just as of old the Continental eater of oysters would have been offended at the offer of an exchange of two live for two dozen dead ones. Annette was in the grand crucial position of English imaginative prose. I recognize it, and that to this the streamlets flow, thence pours the flood. But what was the plain truth? She had brought herself to think she ought to sacrifice herself to Tinman, and her evasions with Herbert, manifested in tricks of coldness alternating ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was busily engaged devouring the last number of the Family Paper. She had come to a most rousing portion in her story—that part in which the duke marries the governess. Betty was, as she said, all in a twitter to see how matters would end; but just at this crucial moment the ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... let his eyes go out the gun port before which he stood, it might have been possible for El Hassan to have picked out the bodies of David Moroka and Fredric Ostrander amidst those of the several hundred Haratin serfs who had swarmed out of the souk area at the crucial moment and stormed the half manned fort—unarmed save for ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... one coming with greater velocity, sees he can not escape by his own speed, so he steps aside and lets that body pass on, as though he moved in obedience to some order. The bystander would ask the question, "How did he know such a dangerous body was approaching?" He finds on the most crucial examination, that the sense of hearing is wholly without reason. The same is true with all the five senses pertaining to man, beast, or bird. This being the condition of the five physical senses, we are ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... fore-front of its new Confession. Every word of the Nicene Creed (as the late Principal Denney pointed out) is in the Confession of Faith of all the Scottish Presbyterians. The Church of Scotland repeats it at its solemn "Assembly Communion" in St Giles'. Its crucial term, the Homoousion, is in the Articles now sent down to Presbyteries with the view of their transmission next May to the United ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various
... undulation, which makes the velocity in air or stellar space greater than in glass or water. By an experiment proposed by Arago, and executed with consummate skill by Foucault and Fizeau, this question was brought to a crucial test, and decided in favour ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... in its essence polytheistic or of polytheistic tendency. It is quite enough that the immortals are deemed to be capable of hearing and answering the prayers of their adorers, and of interfering actively in passing events, either for good or for evil. This, at the root of it, constitutes the crucial difference between polytheism and monotheism; and in this sense the Roman Catholic form of Christianity, representing the oldest undisturbed evolution of a strictly monotheistic doctrine, is undeniably polytheistic. Apart from the Virgin Mary, there is a whole hierarchy of ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... relieving rich men of their loads, to give a rakeoff to the poor. I am the hero of the crowds, as, on my trusty aeroplane, I cleave a pathway through the clouds, to Milky Way and Charles's Wain. I am the pitcher known to fame; I pitch as though I worked by Steam, and in the last and crucial game I win the pennant for my team. I am the white man's final hope, on whom his aspirations hinge, and, notwithstanding all the dope, I knock the daylights from ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... progress in that quiet room. Garth was arriving at his decision without having heard any of her arguments. By the strange fatality of his own insistence, he had heard only two words of her letter, and those the crucial words; the two words to which the whole letter carefully led up. They must have revealed to him instantly, what the character of the letter would be; and what was the attitude of mind towards himself, of ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... still more crucial on May 5 by the placing of the two poles upright in opposite corners of the large cage. For a few minutes after he entered the cage, Julius did not see them, and his time was spent pulling and gnawing at the box. Then he discovered one of the ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... find one who has seen so much of the world as Judge Gibbs has, saying, as he does: "With travel somewhat extensive and diversified, and with residence in tropical latitudes of Negro origin, I have a decided conviction, despite the crucial test to which he has been subjected in the past, and the present disadvantages under which he labors, that nowhere is the promise along all the lines of opportunity brighter for the American Negro than here in the ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... holds true as to ringworm also, occurs in sharply-defined, circumscribed patches, and lupus erythematosus has a peculiar violaceous tint and an elevated and marginate border. A microscopic examination of the epidermic scrapings would be of crucial value in ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... brought up Ill-pause. As also when our Lord was in the wilderness; when He set His face to go up to Jerusalem; when He saw certain Greeks among them that came up to the passover; as also again and again in the Garden. As also on crucial occasions in your own life. As when you had been told not to eat, not to touch, and not even to look at the forbidden fruit, then Ill-pause, the devil's orator, came to you and said that it was a tree to be desired. And, you shall not surely die. As also ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... then? Did I count the cost—did I call it a sacrifice? Life—the mere material actual life of the body— has never weighed with me for one moment. And yet," she added, in a dull, strange voice, "I failed at the crucial test! Failed!—I, who had denied to myself all woman's weakness, all mortal love, all fleshly vanities—failed! I am no more now than the veriest beginner on the path. I, ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... denouement tragic. Stevenson, on the other hand, patches up the matter into a rather tame comedy. It is even much tamer than it would have been in the case of Lovelace and Clarissa Harlowe; for Lovelace is a strong character, a man who could have been put through some crucial atonement, and come out purged and ennobled. But Beau Austin we feel is but a frip. He endures a few minutes of sharp humiliation, it is true, but to the spectator this cannot but seem a very insufficient expiation, not only of the ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... by which this union is manifested to the consciousness, there is no doubt that very many mystics believed in, and looked for, ecstatic revelations, trances, or visions. This, again, is one of the crucial questions of Mysticism. ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... was over, he sat by the open window and thought calmly of what was before him. Von Koren would most likely kill him. The man's clear, cold theory of life justified the destruction of the rotten and the useless; if it changed at the crucial moment, it would be the hatred and the repugnance that Laevsky inspired in him that would save him. If he missed his aim or, in mockery of his hated opponent, only wounded him, or fired in the air, what could he do then? Where ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... be performed when nobody but Merlin was present; he couldn't start this well with all this crowd around to see; a crowd was as bad for a magician's miracle in that day as it was for a spiritualist's miracle in mine; there was sure to be some skeptic on hand to turn up the gas at the crucial moment and spoil everything. But I did not want Merlin to retire from the job until I was ready to take hold of it effectively myself; and I could not do that until I got my things from Camelot, and that would take two ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a failure to distinguish between the possible inheritance of a particular modification, and the possible inheritance of indirect results of that modification, or of changes correlated with it. This is a nice but crucial point on which most popular writers are confused. Let us examine it through a hypothetical case. A woman, not herself strong, bears a child that is weak. The woman then goes in for athletics, in order better to fit herself for motherhood; ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... to the will of the supposed divinity—I say supposed divinity, because a being whose will could be thus moved like a water wheel could not be in any sense divine. If there might be a religious person so foolish and irreverent as to agree to such a test—crucial indeed, but in a far other sense than that imagined —I would put it to him whether the very sense of experiment would not destroy in his mind all faculty of prayer, placing him in the position, no more of a son of God, but of one who, tempting the ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... did know she looked less pleased than ever. She did not want him. The Doctor was a proud man in his quiet way, and he was, moreover, in love, not indeed hopelessly as yet, for love is never wholly irrevocable until it has survived the crucial test, attainment of its object; but Claudius loved, and he knew it. Consequently his pride revolted at the idea of thrusting himself where he was not wanted, and his love forbade him to persecute the woman he worshipped. He also said to himself, "I will not go." He had not ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... mystery. Further, if Christ died as a martyr He might, at least, have had the same comforting presence of God afforded other martyrs in the hour of their death. Why should He be God-forsaken in that crucial hour? Is it right that God should make the holiest man in all the ages the greatest sufferer, if that man were but a martyr? When you recall the shrinking of Gethsemane, could you really—and we say it reverently—call Jesus as brave ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... mother's nearest friend, it is natural you should turn to me in your crucial hour of pain. And in reply to your questions regarding the truth of this anonymous assertion, I will tell ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... roads and trails, fords and bridges, all of which latter were in a shocking condition. At York the timber and brushwood was so dense that travel between the garrison and town was actually by water. His mind made up that war with the United States was inevitable, he was confronted with crucial questions demanding instant solution. Chief of these was the defence of the frontier, 1,300 miles in length, which entailed repairs of the boundary forts, the raising of a reliable militia, the increase of the regular ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... from Johnson shuddered: they had taken from a living creature the things of life, and all because in the crucial hour there had been no one to say a staying word. Man had cheated him of the things that were man's, and then shut him away from the world that was God's. They had made for him a life ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... to think of these very passages as a proof of how right he had been—right, that is, to have put himself forward always, by the happiest instinct, only in impossible conditions. He had the happy consciousness of having exposed the important question to the crucial test, and of having escaped, by that persistent logic, a grave mistake. What better proof of his escape than the fact that he was now free to renew the all-interesting inquiry, and should be exactly, about to do so in different ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... are days of overstrained criticism, when from very fear each sees slips and imperfections even where they do not exist. The discovery that she had misjudged Hyde was an exquisite joy to Isabel. This trivial, crucial scruple, of morality or taste, whichever one liked to call it, was the sign of a chastity of mind which could coexist, it seemed, with the coarse and careless sins that he had never denied. After all no marriage on earth is perfect, ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... feeling hidden behind their iron nasals. No other cathedral in France or in Europe has an interior more refined—one is tempted to use even the hard-worn adjective, more tender—or more carefully studied. One test is crucial here and everywhere. The treatment of the apse and choir is the architect's severest standard. This is a subject not to be touched lightly; one to which we shall have to come back in a humble spirit, prepared for patient study, at Chartres; ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... because it looks big and imposing oftentimes discloses its poor efficiency only after from four to six months of use. This is due to the fact that from time immemorial women have ordained a period devoted to housecleaning twice a year. And it is at this crucial time that they discover if the routine care of rugs and carpets by their vacuum cleaner has accomplished a work satisfactory to them. This conclusion is well borne out by a conversation we had with ...
— The Consumer Viewpoint • Mildred Maddocks
... at the crucial moment, Felicia Verity made irruption upon the scene. But though her entrance was hurried, it differed fundamentally from that earlier one; so that both the man and the girl, standing in the proximity ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... but for what we can only call the indefensible conduct of the King. It pains us to say such things, but, speaking as we do in the public interests (I plagiarise from Barker's famous epigram), we shall not shrink because of the distress we may cause to any individual, even the most exalted. At this crucial moment of our country, the voice of the People demands with a single tongue, 'Where is the King?' What is he doing while his subjects tear each other in pieces in the streets of a great city? Are his amusements and his dissipations (of which we cannot pretend to be ignorant) ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... to Lieutenant Summers," answered Jack, grinning to himself at the other's bewilderment. Even at this crucial moment, he could not resist the temptation to mystify the other a little. "As to knowing you're offshore," he ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... had been a scholar all his life. He taught ethics. He believed in right. He practised his creed. When he came to the crucial experiment he found himself dealing with a rogue. The Rhamda helped him just so far; but once he had the professor in his power it was not his purpose to release him until he was secure of the ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... crucial. If persisted in it is fatal. It will actually mean their rejection as His messenger. This is the critical thing which we seem to have such a hard time getting hold of. The essential qualification for ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... assigned to her; Miss Mann was in a similar dilemma, from which no modern views on the sexes could apparently extricate her; and some young ladies, whose surnames happened to be Low, Coward, and Craven, were quite enthusiastic against the idea. But all this happened afterwards. What happened at the crucial moment was that the lecturer produced several horseshoes and a large iron hammer from his bag, announced his immediate intention of setting up a smithy in the neighbourhood, and called on every one to rise in the same cause as for a heroic revolution. ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... hired. It would be no use questioning them for they would not know either. He could guess who it was, a name came to mind, but there was no way of checking up. This kind of business did not fit well with the crucial balance of his plans for the next two weeks. "Be careful," he said perhaps unnecessarily, "I'm nervous. Union ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... were silent. They had, undetected, held their present position for a whole day. They watched the two lines in the valley as intently as these lines watched each other, for in front of us was one of those crucial points against which attacks are frequently launched by the enemy. The batteries beside which we stood waited hour after hour for that sudden critical moment when the Germans should attempt to launch any attack between the lines. These nine guns could together fire two hundred rounds a ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... not until the birch bark ground upon the shore and he tumbled out in safety did he fully comprehend what had happened. Holding the rope with which they tied their canoe, Wabigoon had taken a desperate chance. His quick mind had leaped like a flash of powder to their last hope, and at the crucial moment, just as the momentum of the birch bark gave way to the whirling forces of the pool, he had jumped a good seven feet toward shore, and had found bottom! Another twelve inches of water under him and ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... hands over their "unhappy divisions". Still, we wish to be perfectly just, so, in illustration of our contention, we will select, not one of those innumerable minor points which it would be easy to bring forward, but some really crucial point of doctrine, the importance of which no man in his senses will have the hardihood to deny. Let us say, for instance, the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist. Can we conceive anything that a devout Christian would be more anxious to ascertain than whether Our Divine Lord and Saviour be really and ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... man,—whom he has sentenced to execution, to choose his own mode of death. His close, dry way, too, of saying things savours of harshness, and differs widely from the Greek severeness of manner observable in Tacitus. The crucial test is to be found in a few trifling matters of style. So far from displaying the same care as Tacitus to avoid a discordant jingle of three like endings, he will write bad Latin to get at the intolerable recurrence. Rather than have a similar ending ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... The one restraint she had was fear of what he might do; and that fear was beginning to decline in face of stronger impulses towards the opportunity which marriage with Gaga would produce. And just in this crucial stage of her reflections came a most striking fresh influence. It was brought by Miss Summers, who returned from the telephone with a solemn expression upon ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... for the modest requirements of himself and Mary. On the subject of his retirement he wrote some touching letters to friends such as Wordsworth and Bernard Barton, and also in his accustomed manner made the crucial event the subject of a delightful "Elia" essay. He had before expatiated on the excellent position of the authors who were not "authors for bread"—men who like himself were employed in business during the day and had to dally with literature in off hours. Certainly Lamb's "hack work," the ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... him travel second-class from engaging a carriage by the day at Baireuth, since that clearly was worth while, and they found it waiting for them by the theatre. There was still time to drive to Falbe's lodging and get through this crucial ordeal before the opera, and they went straight there. A very venerable instrument, which Falbe had not yet opened, stood against the wall, and he struck a few notes ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... the American River. Often has he laughed over haughty Valois' iron-clad bread, his own flinty beans, the slabs of pork, cooked as a burnt offering by slow combustion. Only one audacious Yankee in the camp ever attempted a pie. That was a day of crucial experiment, a time of bright hopes, a ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... crucial moment, when maximum power is being exerted by the cox on the rudder-lines, one of them snaps, and the boat goes out of control. The cox shouts the instructions for an emergency stop, and to back water. The other boat proceeds to the end of the course. It can now be seen that the ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... Dick judged that the crucial moment had now come. Woodville was breathing much more heavily than he was, and seemed to be near exhaustion. Dick darted boldly in, received a swinging right and left on either jaw that cut his cheeks and made the blood flow. But he sent his right to Woodville's ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... into contrasted environments. The result of these antagonistic streams of migration to the West was a struggle between the Lake and Prairie plainsmen, on the one side, and the Gulf plainsmen, on the other, for the possession of the Mississippi Valley. It was the crucial part of the struggle between the Northern and Southern sections of the nation. What gave slavery and State sovereignty their power as issues was the fact that they involved the question of dominance over common territory in an expanding nation. The place of the Middle West in ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... realized that this call was a crucial affair to her, though his long delay in coming proved it to be a casual matter to Mr. Percival. She must make no mistake. In her instant's hesitation, while her soft eyes were looking inquiringly into his face, ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... merciful, claim makes all the difference between a Faith and a theory." And now there is a moment's pause. Preacher and hearers alike take breath. Some instinct assures us that we are just coming to the crucial point. The preacher resumes: "A statement of this truth in other terms is at present occasioning a painful controversy, which it would be better in this place to pass over in silence if too much was not at stake to warrant a course from which I shall only depart with sincere ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... come through that crucial contest in good shape. There had been no serious accident to weaken the team. The injuries to Ellis and Caldwell were only trivial and in a week they would be as well as ever. Of course there were minor wounds and bruises galore, but they were incident ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... moment she stood immovable before the imminence of the crucial scene; then, with a sensation of physical weakness and helplessness, she turned, moved blindly forward, and sank ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... pest recalled Some of the forces to the city's aid From the besieged halls. Nor Caesar gave To sleep its season; swifter than all else To seize the crucial moment of the war. Quick in the darkest watches of the night He leaped upon his ships, and Pharos (25) seized, Gate of the main; an island in the days Of Proteus seer, now bordering the walls Of Alexander's city. Thus he gained A double vantage, ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... and promises so as to demonstrate the vanity of trust in Egypt or in Jehovah, or in any but 'the great king.' Isaiah had been labouring to lift his countrymen to the height of reliance on Jehovah alone, and now the crucial test of the truth of his contention had come. On the one hand were Sennacherib and his host, flushed with victory, and sure of crushing this puny kinglet Hezekiah and his obstinate little city, perched on its rock. On the other was nothing but a prophet's word. Where is the stronger force? ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... diplomatists will come to that business with a certain pre-occupation. Each will be thinking of his country as one thinks of a patient of doubtful patience and temper who is coming-to out of the drugged stupor of a crucial, ill-conceived, and unnecessary operation ... Each will be thinking of Labour, wounded and perplexed, returning to the disorganised or nationalised factories from which Capital has gone a-fighting, and to which it may ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... centered his whole mind on the handling of the Mayflower. No need for worry just at present. That hull would stand any sea and they did not have to buck the storm. But how get into the harbor? That was the crucial effort in which so many came to grief. Ahead, just visible through the rain, the spray and the mist, the Breakwater could already be seen, its back looming above the water like a whale driven aground by the gale. How ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... rights of the Society; the Anarchist saw the rights of the Individual. How therefore were these to be reconciled? The Church stepped in at that crucial point and answered, By the Family—whether domestic or Religious. For in the Family you have both claims recognized: there is authority and yet there is liberty. For the union of the Family lies in Love; and Love is the only reconciliation of ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... passage of l'Echelle, should draw the Convention forces away in that direction to resist it. A kind of rendezvous had been appointed at the church of St. Roch, which was to be used as a depot of supplies and a retreat. Numerous sectionaries were, in fact, posted there as auxiliaries at the crucial instant. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... settle to the bottom. Should the mixture be poured into a horizontal mold, like the floor of a house, the stone and sand settle, forming an ununiform mass. It was at this point that invention commenced, in order to produce a concrete mixture which would overcome this crucial difficulty. Edison, with characteristic thoroughness, took up a line of investigation, and after a prolonged series of experiments succeeded in inventing a mixture that upon hardening remained uniform throughout its mass. In the beginning of his experimentation he ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... in hot blood sooner than an unsanctioned touch. In certain moods the merest contact is as infuriating as a blow. Such an insult, added to the irreparable injury of interrupting their meeting at the most exquisite and crucial moment, drove Captain Jack ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... Upon women, in crucial hours, may depend the peace of the old, the fortune of the middle-aged, the hopefulness of the young. In such an hour we do not wish to be dismissed as were the women of Socrates's family, who had had no part in the bright life of the Athens of which he ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... in large measure to become in harmony with, that of the employer. The economic result of the plan, if it can be made to work, should be to reduce the costs of these establishments below what they are. The crucial question is whether profit-sharing alone in any particular case will insure that the costs will be less than those of competitors, thus giving a source out of which an increased amount, really a wage, can be paid ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... come almost to them I called aloud to their leader, when the whole party halted and turned toward us. The crucial test had come. Could we but deceive these men the rest ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... "why do you pause? It is not late. This is an irritating trick of yours to leave off at the crucial juncture." ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... what she could, in order, as she vainly thought, to shield him from its vengeance for the executive murders of the year before. He too had on him the draft of the secret treaty, the possession of which has enabled us to control the drift of European politics at the most crucial time. ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... woman, which is perhaps one of the crucial tests of a religion as well as of a civilization, Buddhism has somewhat to be praised and much to be blamed for. It is probable that the Japanese woman owes more to Buddhism than to Confucianism, though relatively her ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... crucial experiment is made, and a pair of birds raised from the egg without ever seeing a nest are shown to be capable of making one exactly of the parental type, I do not think we are justified in calling in the aid ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... love her? She was coming to the crucial years. She was very fond and sincere now, but she had cause to be grateful. She knew so little of the world, she had a winsome charm that was unfolding every day, she would be attractive to others. Jane was her fervent admirer, Bridget adored her, ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... he cannot possibly be accounted for by any traceable or verifiable foreign influence, then the burden of proof, in other cases, falls on the opponent. When he urges that other North American supreme beings were borrowed, we can reply that our crucial example shows that this need not be the fact. To prove that it is the fact, in his instances, is then his business. It is obvious that for information on this subject we must go to the reports of the earliest travellers who knew the Red Indians well. We must try to ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... limit the Papal Infallibility to pronouncements ex cathedra—that is to say, to those made by the Pope in his capacity of Universal Doctor; but this only served to raise the ulterior, the portentous, and indeed the really crucial question—to WHICH of the Papal pronouncements ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... indeed, we reach a crucial point, though it has usually been overlooked, in the lives of boys and girls, more especially those whose heredity may have been a little tainted or their upbringing a little twisted. For it is here ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... conscience. The doctrine runs along the edge of a precipice (like all the best ones), but if there is one gift rather than another to be prayed for in this world it is the ability to recognise the crucial moment that sometimes comes in a human life—the moment when The Almighty Himself gets a man—against his conscience—to do right. It seems to be the way that some consciences are meant to grow, by trying wrong things on a little. Thousands of inferior people can be seen every day stumbling ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... which our fears have power to wound us most grievously is through our affections, and here we are confronted with a real and crucial difficulty. Are we to hold ourselves in, to check the impulses of affection, to use self-restraint, not multiply intimacies, not extend sympathies? One sees every now and then lives which have entwined themselves with every tendril of passion and love and companionship and service ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... tissue, five inches across, was found beneath the fascia lata at the distal side of the fracture. I cannot however say that I did not observe many equally severe injuries to the femur produced by Mauser bullets in our own men, and as far as fractures of the skull went, a somewhat crucial test, among the men brought off the battlefield alive, I never saw any difference in ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... a little apprehensively. This was the crucial point in the interview. If Lord Belpher did not now freeze him with a glance and order him from the room, the danger would be past, and he could speak freely. His light blue eyes were expressionless as they met Percy's, but inwardly he was feeling much the same sensation as he was wont to experience ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... fierce temptations; we have heart-breaking sorrows; we are burdened with anxiety and perplexity. But we are left to grope as blind sheep; there is no one to point out the path to us, however dimly; no one to say, at any crucial moment of our ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... It remained for the battle of Sadowa to demonstrate practically the superiority of the needle-gun. This arm had been adopted by the Prussian government and was now for the first time on a great scale brought to the crucial test. Hitherto the old plan of muzzle-loading had been followed by all the nations of Europe and America. In our country the Civil War had come almost to its climax before breech-loading was generally introduced. Austria had continued to use the old muzzle-loading muskets. It ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... A chief point of interest in the volume of 'Poems' of 1640 is the fact that the 'Sonnets' were printed then in a different order from that which was followed in the volume of 1609. Thus the poem numbered lxvii. in the original edition opens the reissue, and what has been regarded as the crucial poem, beginning ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... Erasmus and his fellow-workers as leaders of civilization on a wrong track? Was it true reality they were aiming at? Was their proud Latinity not a fatal error? There is one of the crucial points of history. ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... interesting question, and in many respects the crucial question, to be asked concerning college-bred Negroes, is: Do they earn a living? It has been intimated more than once that the higher training of Negroes has resulted in sending into the world of work, men who could find ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... brow a heavy dew not of the heat, but like that on the forehead of a man in crucial pain. I made nervous haste to seize the opportunity, and said ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... in some ways, crucial. I have spoken with Jesuits and Plymouth Brethren, mathematicians and poets, dogmatic republicans and dear old gentlemen in bird's-eye neckcloths; and each understood the word "facts" in an occult sense of his own. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... examine those three letters, and compare them with this note that I wrote in Mr. Barlow's office. You see that the paper is of the same make, with the same water-mark, but that is of no great significance. What is of crucial importance is this: You see, in each of these letters, two tiny indentations near the bottom corner. Somebody has used compasses or drawing-pins over the packet of notepaper, and the points have ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... Mr. Hannaway Wells put in, with a very non-committal air, "will probably be America. She will bring her full strength into the struggle just at the crucial moment. She will probably do what we farther north have as yet failed to do: she will pierce the line and place the German armies in ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... or the wind; for Turnbull had put one foot in a crack of the tree and gone up it as quickly and softly as a cat. Somewhat more laboriously but in equal silence the long legs of the Highlander had followed; and crouching in crucial silence in the cloud of leaves, they saw the whole posse of their pursuers go by and die into the dust and mists of ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... happened as on March ninth, 1862. In much the same way that the appearance of the Merrimac had brought destruction to the wooden fleet until she was herself forced to flee before Ericsson's Monitor at Hampton Roads, so now at Port Townsend on May seventh a new weapon was made to stand the crucial test. Only this time we were not the ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... in the cause of human liberty; but of liberty for whom? That is the crucial point. In all ages there have been plenty of men who have honorably striven for liberty for themselves. Some there have been who have risen to higher planes. We have an example in Lafayette. He fought to liberate a people who were foreign in language ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... sympathetically. She understood the remarkable effect of Evelyn's beauty upon Mary. Still, she reflected, it had not been potent enough to lure Mary from standing by her colors at the crucial moment. Grace realized that this poor orphan girl, whose only home was Harlowe House, possessed a steadfast, upright nature that must in time win her not only scores of loyal friends, but the respect of all ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... utterances which Kelley credited to the spirits, he cleverly introduced sufficient in the way of references to the elixir of life and the transmutation of metals, to keep alive in Dee's breast the hope of ultimately solving the crucial problems of medieval science. All the money Dee could procure was spent on ingredients for magical formulas, and to such lengths did his enthusiasm carry him that before long he was reduced to poverty. He became so poor, in fact, that when, in the summer of 1583, the Earl of Leicester announced ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... of observation. If the deductions be in accordance with the facts, we accept the theory: if in opposition, the theory is given up. A single experiment is frequently devised, by which the theory must stand or fall. Of this character was the determination of the velocity of light in liquids, as a crucial test of the Emission Theory. According to it, light travelled faster in water than in air; according to the Undulatory Theory, it travelled faster in air than in water. An experiment suggested by Arago, and executed ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... perfectly obvious that her share in the salvation of wayward children was to care for this particular boy and she had asked the Juvenile Court officer to commit him to her. She invited the boy to her house to supper every day that she might know just where he was at the crucial moment of twilight, and she adroitly managed to keep him under her own roof for the evening if she did not approve of the plans he had made. She concluded with the remark that it was queer that the sight of the boy himself hadn't appealed to her, but that the suggestion had come ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... the troops, refusing to sanction useless labor any longer, had marched north with his men. Alfieri, still clinging desperately to a chimera, had decided to remain and scour the desert until his stores gave out. And, at this crucial moment in his enterprise, came Hussain, the unconscious emissary of his rivals. The fact that the Arab was a prisoner spoke volumes. He had tried to communicate with Abdullah, and the watchful Italian had guessed his true ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... critics to-day deny Washington's right to be ranked among the great military commanders of the world, but the truth is that he commanded during nearly eight years and won one of the supreme crucial wars of history against far superior forces. The General who did that was no understrapper. The man whose courage diffused itself among the ten thousand starving soldiers at Valley Forge, and enabled them to endure against the starvation and distress of a winter, may very well fail ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... other banks are afraid of a run and we can't count on much help from them. Some of them have helped us and others have refused. Now, I not only ask you to refrain from drawing out your deposit, but I want you to help us in this crucial moment." The Colonel looked twenty years older and his voice shook perceptibly. Brewster's pity went out to him in ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... round her. His face was very near her own, and his breath came thick and fast, but he waited for her permission still. In his own heart he made this kiss the crucial test of her faithfulness to him. But Elizabeth drew herself away. It seemed as though she ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... even under the ceaseless rain of shrapnel from above the assaulting lines the enemy kept his place. The firing line had thickened until it was a solid mass, one man deep, and in the rear line after line had sprung to its feet and was closing up in support to the crucial assault. At the trenches of the defenders, batteries, with horses falling and being cut away in an instant, dashed to the line, unlimbered and poured in their scattering salutations of zero shrapnel ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... crucial hour, when Fate Tries Monarchs as by fire. All rulers must be more than just - Men starve on bread alone. Old England's sense of RIGHT is great: But now let her aspire To feel more love, and build ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... ruled it, the letter required turning at this point, and Deulin, for the first time in his life, perhaps, made a mistake at a crucial moment. He allowed his voice to break on the next word, and had to pause for an ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... footstep in the hall. The crucial moment had arrived, and her heart palpitated with nervous apprehension. Before Iredale could reply the door was flung open, and Hervey stood in their midst. Instantly every eye was turned upon him. He stood for a moment and looked round. There was a slight unsteadiness in his ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... It was a crucial moment. If Decatur's instructions had not been imperative, he would have thrown prudence to the winds and have tried to cut out the frigate and make off in her. There were those, indeed, who believed that he might have succeeded. ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... ever knows what he will do under fire until the test comes, but be it said to their glory, our boys never failed when the crucial hour came. (They were soldiers not of training but of character.) Quietly, with unflinching courage, our boys awaited the onslaught. Finally when the command to fire was given our friend selected his men—no random fire for him. One by one he saw his victims drop until he had accounted definitely ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... have their measure,' Paul answered, 'until you come to the crucial matters of the heart, and they go ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... a political organization, here in Pennsylvania. In 1960, I think we can elect you President. The world situation will be crucial, by that time, and we had a good-natured nonentity in the White House then, who let things go till war became inevitable. I think President Hartley can be trusted to take a strong line of policy. In the ...
— Time and Time Again • Henry Beam Piper
... expression Christ's consciousness that He is the light, and enmity to Him darkness. Mark, too, His meek submission, as bowing His head to let the black flood flow over Him. Note that Christ brands enmity to Him as the high-water mark of sin, the crucial instance of man's darkness, the worst thing ever done. Mark the assurance that animated Him, that the eclipse was but for an 'hour.' The victory of the darkness was brief, and it led to the eternal triumph of the Light. By dying He ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... involved. During all the previous history of the Government—its wars and political turmoils—the Democratic-Republican forms that characterize its administrations have never faced so insidious or threatening a danger as during that hour. It was a crucial test, and the result a magnificent vindication of the wisdom and patriotism of the founders of our composite form of Government. Its results have but strengthened those forms and broadened the scope of the beneficent ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... the door?" he suggested, as one putting the situation to a sort of crucial test. "Does she never sit on a big chair and take you on ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... this respect must be surrendered. But if Tischendorf and Tregelles are wrong in this particular, it follows of necessity that doubt is thrown over the whole of their critical method. The case is a crucial one. Every page of theirs incurs suspicion, if their deliberate verdict in this instance shall prove ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... asleep; and Akka herself came pretty near dozing off, when she suddenly saw something round and dark rise on the top of a wave. "Seals! Seals! Seals!" cried Akka in a high, shrill voice, and raised herself up in the air with resounding wing-strokes. It was just at the crucial moment. Before the last wild goose had time to come up from the water, the seals were so close to her that they made ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... great questions which the new telescope must help to answer. In such an embarrassment of riches the chief difficulty is to withstand the temptation toward scattering of effort, and to form an observing programme directed toward the solution of crucial problems rather than the accumulation of vast stores of miscellaneous data. This programme will be supplemented by an extensive study of the sun, the only star near enough the earth to be examined in detail, and by a series of laboratory investigations involving ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale
... delicate habit, trod upon a needle which pierced the ball of the great toe; a free crucial incision was made but the needle could not be found; a poultice was applied to the wound and over the poultice ...
— An Essay on the Application of the Lunar Caustic in the Cure of Certain Wounds and Ulcers • John Higginbottom
... past which still claimed him as its own. And now all that remained for him was to slip quietly and unprotestingly into the current which clawed and gnawed at his feet. He had been tried too long; the test, from the first, had been too crucial. He might, in time, even find some solacing thought in the fitness between the act and its environment—here he could fling himself into an obliterating Niagara, not of falling waters, but of falling men and women. Yes, it was a stage all prepared and set for ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... traversed. The literature of American slavery is, indeed, a summary of the literature of the world on the subject. The Bible was made a standard text-book both for and against slavery. Hebrew and Christian experiences were exploited in the interest of the contending parties in this crucial controversy. Churches of the same name and order were divided among themselves and became half ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy
... Geology recorded its conclusions. There is no need to follow in detail how all this reacted upon religion. The accepted religious scheme of things was an intricately interlocking system irresistible in its logic as long as the system remained unchallenged in its crucial points. If these should begin to be doubted then the Christian appeal would have lost, for the time at least, a most considerable measure of its force. The inner peace which we have already seen ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... allurements of gratified taste. The best gift of scholarship is the power it gives a man to descend with all the force of his acquired position, and come into effective union with the world of facts. For it is the crucial test of brave qualities that they are truer and more practical for being filtered through libraries. In reading the "Theages" of Plato we feel a certain respect for the young seeker of wisdom whose only wish is to associate with Socrates; and there ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... his biographer; his story is told with great dramatic and literary art. In its account of the struggle with the greed of Ahab and the licentiousness of Baalism, it sheds a brilliant light upon one of the most crucial epochs of Hebrew history. Even this story, however, is not all of a piece. There is linguistic and other evidence that the chapter (2 Kings i.), in which two companies of fifty men are consumed by fire ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... was to be the supreme test. This evening was to decide which was the great influence of his life—was to prove whether or not love was paramount. This was the crucial hour. "And he knows it," cried Laura. "He knows it. He did not ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... no one thing, whether in history, or literature, or science, or politics that can be more crucial in the fate of a nation to-day than the correct, just, and constructive judgment ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... lantern dropped from either cathead to within a couple of feet of the water. A lookout was stationed on the bowsprit end, another in the crosstrees; and the whole ship's company crowded forward, scouting for enemies or friends. It was now the crucial moment of our enterprise; we were now risking liberty and credit; and that for a sum so small to a man in my bankrupt situation, that I could have laughed aloud in bitterness. But the piece had been arranged, and we must play it to ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... one who does not look back upon his past and wonder what he should have become in life if this or that crucial event had not occurred to set his destiny. It seems to me that if it had not been for the sudden death of my father I, too, might have found our jungle beast a domestic tabby, and have fed it its prey without realizing what I was about. I should have been a lawyer, ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... country far ahead of them, the strange bird, or floating fragment of unfamiliar vegetation, which met those early navigators, there was a certain fantastic experiment, in which, as was alleged, Paracelsus had been lucky. For Browne and others it became the crucial type of the kind of agency in nature which, as they conceived, it was the proper function of science to reveal in larger operation. "The subject of my last letter," says Dr. Henry Power, then a student, writing to Browne in 1648, the last year of Charles ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... to steady her voice, for a sudden desperate sense of loneliness and self-pity had overpowered her as she looked into the sea of faces turned to hers and saw—with the intense spiritual insight granted to the few in crucial moments—the conflicting emotions ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... him of fit associates. On the wisdom with which such a choice was made, would depend his own life and the success of his undertaking. Among thousands of disciples he had to find the right men to whom to entrust his secret purpose and its execution in co-operation with himself. The step was indeed crucial and in taking it he needed not alone the mental qualities which he had exhibited in his role of underground agitator, viz.: serpent-like cunning and intelligence under the direction of the most alert ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... at the last and crucial phase of my investigation. Having the foregoing points clearly in mind, I spent the rest of the day before the inquest in talking to various persons and in going over my story, testing it link by link. I could only find the one weakness which seemed to be involved in Martin's sitting up until 12.30; ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... wound of the scalp is small, so as to render difficult the determination of the extent of the fracture by exploration with the finger, it should be enlarged by crucial incisions, the flaps loosened from the cranium by a suitable scraper (rugine) and folded back out of the way, and any fragments of bone removed by the forceps (pinceolis). If, however, haemorrhage prevents the immediate ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... not look proud of himself just then, and Lloyd Fenneben knew it was one of life's crucial moments ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... owing to its inadequacy that Mr. Gosse's treatment of Browne as an artist in language is the least satisfactory part of his book: for it is difficult not to think that upon this crucial point Mr. Gosse has for once been deserted by his sympathy and his acumen. In spite of what appears to be a genuine delight in Browne's most splendid and characteristic passages, Mr. Gosse cannot help protesting somewhat acrimoniously against that very method of writing whose ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... In the crucial moments of life our minds fasten upon the locality where joys or sorrows overwhelm us. Charles noticed with minute attention the box-borders of the little garden, the yellow leaves as they fluttered down, the dilapidated walls, the gnarled fruit-trees,—picturesque details which were ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... triforium gallery, which encircles the building, and in the two galleries which encircle the central lantern. From the lantern galleries visitors can obtain fine interior views of the building, and comprehend the crucial form of the plan ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... let fall with certain intonations is a serious impediment to conversation. The young gentleman seemed unable at this crucial instant to think of a fitting reply. Finding himself unequal to a response in her own key he ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... closing of the shutter, being moved to present a fresh surface. In connection with this problem it is interesting to note that this question of high speed was apparently regarded by all Edison's predecessors as the crucial point. Ducos, for example, expended a great deal of useless ingenuity in devising a camera by means of which a tape-line film could receive the photographs while being in continuous movement, necessitating the use of a series of moving lenses. ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin |
