"Climax" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... began to assemble its recollections of the events prior to the dramatic climax, it was surprising how little that was authentic could be recalled. Probably a score of people noted casually the three strangers. Houck was recognized by three or four, Bandy Walker by at least one. The six-foot youngster with them was known by ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... only recovers its appeal, but rises up before him in mute intolerable reproach; and Mildred has scarcely breathed her last in his arms when Tresham succumbs to the poison he has taken in remorse for his hasty act. It is unlucky that this tragic climax, finely conceived as it is, is marred by the unconscious burlesque of his "Ah,—I had forgotten: I am dying." In such things one feels Browning's want of the unerring sureness of a great dramatist at ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... stood talking to a group of peasants, telling them the usual story, and at the climax the watch was of course brought out. As it was being passed from one to the other (he holding the chain) there fell upon all a solemn hush. In the meantime Elof had come into the shop, but as every one's attention was riveted upon the watch, no ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... Stephenson. Ben now began to interfere with every one on the floor, choosing out Tom and Susie for special attention. It was quite evident to Douglas that all tried to keep out of his way, but the more they tried the more Ben was determined to produce a quarrel. The climax was reached when, coming near a young couple, he deliberately surged against them and sent the girl reeling against the ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... that can be inflicted, rather than abandon His mission; but they were more. They were not merely the penalty which He had to pay for faithfulness to His work; they were themselves the crown and climax of His work. The Son of Man came, indeed, 'not to be ministered to but to minister,' but that, taken alone, is but a maimed view of what He came for, and we must whole-heartedly go on to say as He said, 'and to give His life a ransom ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... on with the girls, now, on their side of the brook. It would be an anti-climax to catch any more turtles ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... bring about. Throughout the time of my growth my dear parent alternated between periods of high exultation and of keen torture. As time passed he became more and more completely absorbed in me. When my climax came into sight he fell to working upon me with exceeding fury, and in the construction of my climax it was plain that he wrestled with much agony—an agony, however, which seemed to be a kind of strange, ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... this satisfactory climax, the worthy colonel shifted his cap to the extreme side of his head, and walked jauntily along with his knees performing a variety of ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... to-night in Uncle Ben's place. No servant was allowed to work when ill—no matter how light the tasks to which he was assigned. Sam was but twenty years old and he had been given the honor of superintending the arrangements for the dance. And, climax of all, he had been made leader of the music with the sole right to call the dances, although he played only the triangle in the orchestra. He ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... who had nothing? and nobody was bound to give them anything, as they had certain wages from their employers—then what a scene would ensue! Truly the brutality and rapacious insolence of English coachmen had reached a climax; it was time that these fellows should be disenchanted, and the time—thank Heaven!—was not far distant. Let the craven dastards who used to curry favour with them, and applaud their brutality, lament their loss now that they and their vehicles have disappeared ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... new troubles, fatigue upon the road under the strong hand of the Bohemian, the night he had passed in the dungeon of Spychow, the uncertainty of his fate, and above all, that unheard-of and almost superhuman deed, had quite terrified him. All this had brought him to a climax. There were moments when his mind became so stupefied that he entirely lost his judgment and he did not know what he was doing. Then the fever awoke him and, at the same time awoke within him a certain dull feeling of despair, destruction, and perdition,—a feeling that all hope was already gone, ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... a little quiet and fresh air to get over this climax of my troubles—out of one living, and not into another; and that with a wife, six children, and three servants, with very little to live on. Here was a state of things! I had plenty to occupy my thoughts and prayers. I feared ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... gave back those dismal sounds; another minute and he was gone, and the crushing of branches and the rush of many feet on the high bank above, was followed by the prolonged cry of some poor fugitive animal,—a doe, or fawn, perhaps,—in the very climax of mortal agony; and then the lonely recesses of the forest took up that fearful death-cry, the far-off shores of the lake and the distant islands prolonged it, and the terrified children clung ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... comprehensive glance of Nature's grandest wonder known to man, in its climax of sublimity, we took a ride back through Prospect Park, across the New Suspension Bridge, below the American Fall, to the Canadian shore. This splendid drive was continued through the Queen Victoria Niagara Falls Park, opened to the public ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... loftier ranges. Now this progressive motion is something that no accidental play of the atoms will account for. For chance builds no such rational structures. Chance writes no such intelligent dramas, with orderly beginning, crescendo, and climax. Or if some day, chance builds a structure with some show of order in it, to-morrow it pulls it down. It does not move ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... astonishment reached its climax when I found Mr. Mivart citing Father Suarez as his chief witness in favour of the scientific freedom enjoyed by Catholics—the popular repute of that learned theologian and subtle casuist not being such as to make his ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... familiar among the anecdotes of the Revolution, and which may be here recalled as a reminiscence not only of his own consummate mastery of the situation, but of a most dramatic scene in an epoch-making debate. Reaching the climax of a passage of fearful invective, on the injustice and the impolicy of the Stamp Act, he said in tones of thrilling solemnity, "Caesar had his Brutus; Charles the First, his Cromwell; and George the Third ['Treason,' shouted the speaker. 'Treason,' 'treason,' rose from all sides of ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... were times that tried loyalty hard. Mr. John, indeed, gave news, of his brother Sir Thomas, and said how he did; and read a letter, too, from Italy, from his younger brother Nicholas, who was fled abroad after a year's prison at Oxford; but the climax of the talk came when dinner was over, and the muscadel, with the mould-jellies, had been put upon the tables. It was at this moment that Mr. John nodded to his son, who went to the door, to see the servants out, and stood by it to see that none listened. Then his father struck his ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... submitted, but even port was powerless to keep me well at Oxford. I always felt "seedy"; and the nervous worry inseparable from a time of spiritual storm and stress (for four of my most intimate friends seceded to Rome) told upon me more than I knew. An accidental chill brought things to a climax, and during the Christmas vacation of 1874 I was laid low by a sharp attack of myelitis, mistaken at the time for rheumatic fever. I heard the last stroke of midnight, December 31, in a paroxysm of pain which, for years after, I never could recall without feeling sick. I lost ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... indulgences, belonged. Already other doctrines of the Pope's authority, of his power over the salvation of the human soul, and the infallibility of his decisions, had been asserted with ever-increasing boldness. The mediaeval writings of Thomas Aquinas had conspicuously tended to this result. And a climax had just been reached at a so-called General Council, which met at Rome shortly after Luther's visit there, and continued ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... crowning touch, a climax long imagined, plotted and hilariously enjoyed in prospect, he next produced, before the bewildered eyes of Snorky Green, what in school-day parlance is known as a Trophy of Trophies; an incredible, amazing, inexplicable thing, a tasseled, beribboned, pink and white bed cap! Snorky made a feeble ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... was apparently complete, yet it was evident that the orator was restraining himself for a more effective climax. Clearing his throat again and stepping before the impatient but still mystified file of passengers, he reviewed them gravely. Then in a perfectly pitched tone of mingled pain ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... off quietly, and Rupert stood higher and higher in the liking of the worthy couple with whom he lived; the climax being reached when, in midwinter, a party of marauders—for at that time the wars of France and the distress of the people had filled the country with bands of men who set the laws at defiance—five in number, came to ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... concerning Bishop Hall, whom from my first perusal of his works I have always considered as one of the blots (alas! there are too many) of the biography of the Church of England; a self-conceited, coarse-minded, persecuting, vulgar priest, and (by way of 'anti-climax') one of the first corrupters of and epigrammatizers of our English prose style. It is not true, that Sir Thomas Brown was the prototype of Dr. Johnson, who imitated him only as far as Sir T. B. resembles the majority of his predecessors; that is, in the pedantic preference ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... proves nothing; or rather, proves our case. For what is bombast but a force of expression too great for the magnitude of the ideas embodied? All that may rightly be inferred is, that only in very rare cases, and then only to produce a climax, should all the conditions of ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... France and England in 1790, he purchased a tiny craft at Smyrna, picked up in that port a mixed crew, and hurried to join Lord Hood, who was then holding Toulon. When the British abandoned the port—and it is curious to recollect that the duel between Sidney Smith and Napoleon, which reached its climax at Acre, began here—Sidney Smith volunteered to burn the French fleet, a task which he performed with an audacity and skill worthy of Nelson, and for which ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... This was the Climax, the Paradise, of my strange eventful History. Henceforth I have to relate the story of my miserable Fall:—most miserable, yet surely most undeserved! For why should the thirst for knowledge be aroused, only to be disappointed and punished? My volition shrinks from the painful task of recalling ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... Lehr was dated June 14th, 1918, when the big German drive was about at its climax. According to news reports from the front Lehr had a period of intense activity up to July 15th, when he was reported missing. "Bud" was regarded as one of the most adept of ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... local schemes, he had laboured assiduously for the good of the town, he had attained the acme of his local popularity, he was admired even by his opponents, and an imposing memorial was erected in his honour. After this, anything that might have happened would have been in the nature of an anti-climax so far as his local ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... how it attained this distinction, such as it was. It came by the constant concentration of power. Power in few hands is the secret of its display and glory. And thus that form of civilization attained its very climax in the moment of the greatest unity of the Roman Empire. When the Empire nestled into rest, after the convulsions in which it was born; when a generation had passed away of those who had been Roman citizens; when a generation ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... come to a climax in July, when Babington had been urged to obtain from Mary such definite approbation of his plans as might satisfy his confederates, and had in consequence written the letter and obtained the answer, copies of which had been read to him at his private ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... busy with the beating of war-drums and the preparation of pageants, that sagacious ruler had secured the loyalty of the Baggara tribe, to a section of which he belonged, and of a considerable force of black riflemen. At length matters reached climax. Both parties prepared for war. Abdullah drew up his array without the city, and challenged his rivals to the utmost proof. The combined forces of the ousted Khalifas were the more numerous. But the fierce Baggara waved their swords, and ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... learned from the papers that Mr. Grey, of English Parliamentary fame, had arrived in New York on an indefinite visit. As no cause was assigned for the visit beyond a natural desire on the part of this eminent statesman to see this great country, Mr. Fairbrother's fears reached a sudden climax, and he saw himself ruined and for ever disgraced if the diamond now so unhappily out of his hands should fall under the eyes of its owner, whose seeming quiet under its loss had not for a moment deceived him. Waiting only long enough to make sure that the distinguished foreigner ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... recitation and thereby spoiling the effect of the rhythm, or of trusting to his artistic temperament and going on as if nothing was happening. I did the latter, and went on unmoved by the exploding shells. I thought the Major would see that the climax of the poem had not yet been reached and was worth waiting for. I was mistaken. He became more and more restless, till at last he said, (p. 196) "Excuse me, Canon, but I think I must be hurrying on." He left me standing in ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... verses in this graceful poem, and each one was hailed with enthusiastic applause. The "Humming-Bird" was triumphant, and when her song was concluded she executed a startling pas-seul full of quaint and astonishing surprises, reaching her superbest climax, when she backed off the stage on one portly leg,—kicking the other in regular time to the orchestra. Lady Winsleigh laughed, and leaning towards Thelma, who still sat in her retired corner, said with a ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... The organic matter created there increases nutrient availability and accelerates the breakdown of rock particles, further increasing the creation of organic matter. Soil humus steadily increases. Eventually a climax is sustained where there is as much humus in the soil ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... head spoke with the force of a logical climax. "He'd done rented a house down below though, an' was a-fixin' ter move. He staid one day too late. ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... deep waters, being, as the reader knows, the first and most remarkable instance of such recoveries. After the rest of the company had exhausted their marvellous relations, the following tale was told as the climax of all such wonderful narratives; and it was admitted on all hands that the force of surprise could no further go. We shall endeavour to versify it, a la Patmore, conceiving that its issue is very similar to that of his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... demonstrations and for the display of flags and banners bearing mottoes, "For Queen and Empire," "Welcome, Brother Colonists," and the like; and by the time the Canadians had landed patriotic feeling had reached its climax. Then public enthusiasm literally seemed to burst all bounds. The streets, windows, verandahs, roofs, were packed with an excited, surging, shouting, cheering throng, and the air was thick with hats, ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... own situation had not improved—in fact, it had grown steadily worse. Only one payment of interest had been made on the mortgage and the owner was already threatening foreclosure proceedings. Pawson's intervention alone had staved off the fatal climax by promising the holder to keep the loan alive by the collection of some old debts—borrowed money and the like—due St. George for years and which his good nature had allowed to run on indefinitely until some of them were practically outlawed. Indeed it was only through resources ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... speech that here follows. A resolution was before the convention "that the colony be immediately put in a state of defence." Speaking to that resolution, Henry thrilled the delegates with his review of British mistreatment and his climax of "give me liberty or give ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... the climax! Averil just held her tongue; but she rushed to her own room, and wept bitterly and angrily. Sick of her after all her devotion! Leonard, the being she loved best in ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... curious thing to see, in the heart of the great man's admiring circle, at the climax of his most successful party of the year. It did not last long. The two struggling figures broke away from each other, and the boy staggered backward and stood with the revolver still in his hand. He was a little sobered by the struggle, and a little weakened by it, pale and dangerous, with ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... in all things—competent in her criticism of a book, and more than competent in all that pertained to the niceties of house management. Her dinner-parties, of which each was built up from foundation to climax with the most delicate skill and unity of plan; her pretty dresses, in which she trailed about her soft-coloured rooms; her energy, her kindliness, and even the evident but quite innocent pursuit of social perfection in which she delighted—all made her popular; ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of these alarms that had haunted her so long, and that the arrival and presence of Sanderson seemed to have brought to the very edge of a climax she could not even dare to think about. They gave it form; they brought it closer; they sent her thoughts to her Deity in a wild, deep prayer for help and guidance. For here was a direct, unconscious betrayal of a world of inner purposes and ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... Texas Panhandle to the Canadian River. He began by raiding Moore's ranch, and killing a cowboy, and he and his band of desperadoes, which he calls his 'Braves,' have robbed and plundered and burned and murdered at their own sweet will, till the climax was capped last night by the holding up of the northbound express on the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific, shortly after leaving Chickasha and crossing the Washita. Between Chickasha and Minco is a twenty-mile stretch of desolate ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... evil determinations. For more than a week, Doederlein waged perpetual war with his pride. And then? Daniel did not allow himself to be seen; he received no news of any kind from Dorothea; and, climax of it all, Herr Weisskopf notified him that his note for one thousand marks, with interest, was due. Doederlein saw that there was nothing to be done about it all except to recognise the denouement as a fact ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... these Tracts went farther than people were, as yet, able to follow, they were "strong meat for babes," and the publication of Tract XC., by Newman, on the Thirty-nine Articles, brought things to a climax, and on 15 March, the Vice-Chancellor and the Heads of Houses met to censure the publication; they came to the resolution: "That modes of interpretation, such as are suggested in the said Tract, evading ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... Then the climax was reached. A scream sounded from above, then silence, then a confused rush of feet. The figure of Luigi filled the opening of the low window, and those nearest surged in to help and see. He was dragged through, head first, and set on his feet. The fire-engine raved and jangled in Clerkenwell ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... of those pushing people in Bond Street." And then as for the crushing climax of his policy: "As a Mantovano ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... grave should be opened. This drove me to the verge of distraction. On top of this I was accused of employing toothless and incompetent old relatives to prepare the food for the foundling' hospital when I warden. I was wavering—wavering. And at last, as a due and fitting climax to the shameless persecution that party rancor had inflicted upon me, nine little toddling children, of all shades of color and degrees of raggedness, were taught to rush onto the platform at a public meeting, and clasp me around the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the climax. Again in Terence's fevered imagination the smith's son arises, wielding his brawny brown arm like a sledge-hammer, as he noisily lays down the laws of extermination: he can see himself, too, joining in the fray, and defying the ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... finally she had proved him to his own face to be a coward. Over the recollection of that scene he could only gnash his teeth in fruitless rage. The more he thought of that interview, the more bitter grew his mortification; and at length he resolved to force matters to a climax at once by coming to a distinct and final ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... want of the aliment of words; certainly, hers could not reach an intellect like his, and she would only soothe and amuse him. Dr. May, mind-curer as well as body-curer, would soon be here, to put the climax to the general joy and watch his ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... court: and Wilson told the Sheriff to take the jury to a grocery, that he might treat them, and invited every body that chose to go. The house was soon filled to overflowing. The rejoicing was kept up till near supper time: but to cap the climax, soon after supper was over, a majority of the jury, together with many others, went to the rooms that had been occupied several days by the friend and relation of the murdered Anthony, and commenced a scene of the most ridiculous ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... discovery of the South Sea, the renowned Francisco Pizarro. It was an expedition full of romantic adventure, replete with peril and suffering, crowded with bold ventures and daring deeds. But we must pass over all the earlier of these and come at once to the climax of the whole striking enterprise, the story of the seizure of the Inca of Peru in the midst of his army and the tale ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint." I never thought what that meant until one morning in college chapel our president turned to us and said: "Most of you think that is an anti-climax," and we would say: "Why, of course, for a man cannot fly like the eagle. He can walk down hill, what is the use talking about that walking down hill." The old man shook his head and said: "No, no. Anybody can fly like an eagle in his imagination; when we ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... another direction, and at their head rode—Morton! He gnashed his teeth in fury. He had been led into a trap and betrayed. The procession passing had been his—all his. He heard them cheering, and then, oh! climax of infidelity, he saw his own orator go past in a carriage, bowing ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... short distance and concealed ourselves in a deep growth. To the sound of poles and paddles was added the murmuring of guttural voices. Then for a climax a raft struck against the bank and a low voice speaking Shawnee gave some ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... dream of the race, a dream beyond all measure this time, a fourth and monstrous Rome, whose suburbs would invade continents in order that liberated humanity, united in one family, might find sufficient lodging! This was the climax. Never could more extravagant proof be given of the blood of pride and sovereignty which had scorched the veins of that race ever since Augustus had bequeathed it the inheritance of his absolute empire, with the furious instinct that the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... passed no less than the almost incredible time of over three weeks without moving as many miles from the spot where the wind had deserted us, Mendouca's temper growing steadily worse every day, until at length he became absolutely unbearable, and I spoke to him as little as possible. And the climax was reached when one day the steward, who had been sent down into the hold to overhaul the stores, came on deck with a face as long as the main-bowline, and reported that there was only food and water enough in the ship to last ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... the conditions in the capital itself. The struggles between cliques came to a climax. On the death of Shen Tsung (or Wan-li; 1573-1619), he was succeeded by his son, who died scarcely a month later, and then by his sixteen-year-old grandson. The grandson had been from his earliest youth under the influence of a eunuch, Wei Chung-hsien, ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... the whole Union in as energetic a manner as the authority of the State governments extends over the several States. To be fearful of investing Congress, constituted as that body is with ample authorities for national purposes, appears to me the very climax of popular absurdity and madness. Could Congress exert them for the detriment of the people, without injuring themselves in an equal or greater proportion? Are not their interests inseparably connected with those of their constituents? By the rotation of appointment, must they not mingle ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... looked like black dots. The noise did not cease but swelled up and recommenced in the recesses of faraway avenues and among the people encamped under the trees, till it spread on and on and attained its climax in the imperial stand, where the empress herself had applauded. "Nana! Nana! Nana!" The cry rose heavenward in the glorious sunlight, whose golden rain beat fiercely on the dizzy ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... out to see the comet, which then reached its climax of lustre. It was like a lofty plume of fire, and grew very brilliant as the ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... as a climax to the quick and unexpected succession of events of the past few days, it was no ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... of a forest, swayed by strong compelling winds, the people rocked in excitement, tiptoed and craned eager necks, as they watched the magnificent struggle that was drawing to a climax in the stretch. Inch by inch the brave son of Hanover was creeping up on Lauzanne. How loosely the big Chestnut galloped—rolling like a drunken man in the hour of his distress. Close pressed to his neck, ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... ticklish times. The big Earp-Clanton feud was nearing its climax. The members of the latter faction—several of whom were wanted on Federal warrants which charged them with stage-robbery—were keeping pretty well holed up, as the saying is, and it was not unlikely that if any of them were in the ranch-house at the time, the visitor who ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... this title as a mistake by an editor is groundless; for though the following lines are addressed to the land or people as a whole, their climax is upon the fate of the royal house, the choice of ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... Laws passed the House of Lords, the ministry was defeated in the Commons. The moment of his fall, when Disraeli and the Protectionists were loudest in their exultation, was the moment of his triumph. It is the climax of his career. In the long debate on Repeal he had refused to notice personal attacks: he now rose superior to all personal rancour. In defeat he bore himself with dignity, and in his last speech as minister he praised Cobden in very generous terms, giving him the chief ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... desert: so were our horses, which were nearly done up. Our bones ached from the Mexican saddles; and, to complete our misery, the two rangers began to turn restive and talk of returning with the horses. At this, the climax of our misfortunes, I luckily hit upon a Mexican, who gave us intelligence of our carriage; and with renewed spirits, but very groggy horses, we ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... things? The screams grew more and more appalling. He sprang up and went to the door, and listened there. He thought he heard steps outside, and knocked. "What is that screaming?" he cried out. But no one answered. The shrieks reached a climax of anguish, and suddenly stopped. Death-like stillness fell again upon the prison. Axel spent what was left of the ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... present Administration, this gradual deterioration in the animus of the Federal Government had culminated in a condition so disgraceful and shameful, that it is enough to dye the cheek of any honest man with red, only to think of it. It was time, if ever, for the climax to be put upon it all, and now it will be a thing to give endless thanks for, if enough virtue and manliness and true patriotism are left in the loyal States to bring the nation, under God, safely through the troubles and disasters ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... when you come at last, we treat you like an anti-climax. You see, we let ourselves go, once for all, over the Armistice, and, though there will be plenty of celebrations for you, we shan't forget ourselves again. There will be bands, of course, and bunting, and we shall read the directions in the papers, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... said Thorndyke, "you had better take Miss Bellingham out into the gallery, where there is more air. This has been a tremendous climax to all the trials that she has borne so bravely. Go out with Berkeley," he added gently, laying his hand on her shoulder, "and sit down while we develop the other negatives. You mustn't break down now, you know, when the storm ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... etc., are in the foreground, then come the hills and if there be a mountain range it is in the background. If the mountain range were in the foreground it would obscure everything else. So in making a song. If it tells a story and reaches a climax the climax should come near the end of the song. When the singer has carried his audience with him up to a great emotional height then all it needs is to be brought back safely and quickly to earth and ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... The climax was reached on August 9, 1911, when the bill, having passed through the Commons, was brought up to the House of Lords for their decision. The peers by this time were torn between two impulses. One, the most natural, was to defy Mr. Asquith and Lloyd George and all their ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... stood, looking at her helplessly, while the slapped cheek grew red and red. Priss burst into tears, stamped her foot, called him names she did not mean, and as a climax, darted into her own cabin, and swung the door, and ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams
... it grows across the hand and attacks the Line of Life, it foreshadows the development of illness or germ of disease, which, at the date of its coming in contact with the Line of Life, will reach the climax ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... covering the same ground and terminating at the same point will bring the subject of the Last Reformation to a grand climax. I have shown that the religious powers described in Revelation 13 as two beasts were also termed Babylon. We shall now give a more particular description of this antitype of the Old Testament Babylon. The Euphratean ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith
... evidently thinking there must be a climax yet to come. "Is that all? But Heaven preserve us, man, what is it all about? No; the so-called poetry you young writers are dishing out ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... Sunday had gone into history. It takes a long perspective and no very vivid acquaintance with revolution to be melodramatic about it. So much is left out of history and biography which would spoil the effect. The anti-climax is almost always omitted. ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... The climax of the service came with the singing of "When I survey the wondrous Cross." The physical effect of it on Hilda was nearly overwhelming. The terrible and sublime words seemed to surge upon her charged with all the multitudinous significance of the crowd. She was profoundly stirred, ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... course I've no particular right to be informed, being only his father, but—er—about how much longer should you say that affair would run before it comes to some sort of climax? In other words, how is ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... have had a distressing time. These affairs always mount up to a climax, unless people are very well bred. We saw it coming. Naturally we did not expect such a transformation of brides: who could? If I had laid myself down on my back to think, I should have had it. I am unerring when I set to speculating on my back. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... paroxysms possessed him he would arrange bedroom chairs in rude resemblance of a motor-car and would crouch on the foremost of them, bent forward and staring fixedly ahead, making uncouth and ghastly noises, till the climax was reached, when, turning a complete somersault, he would lie prostrate amidst the ruins of the chairs, apparently completely satisfied for the moment. As time passed, however, these painful seizures grew gradually less frequent, and his friends strove to divert his mind into ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... exercise the reader's sympathies for him; but these feelings would have languished from weariness, however intensely the sequel might have been wrought, had attention been claimed for a solitary wanderer to the end of the journey. Here then the history, which had probably reached its climax in the preceding scenes, revives, by taking a new form, and exciting a fresh interest, rather doubled than divided, though two have thenceforward to share it instead of one. Besides, the individual experience of one man, however varied, would not have been sufficient ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... into the Mediterranean and that the battle of the Marne turned the fortunes of France from disaster to expansion. But the rest of the settlement is still vague and uncertain, and German imperialism, at least, is already working hard and intelligently for a favorable situation at the climax, a situation that will enable this militarist empire to emerge still strong, still capable of recuperation and of a renewal at no very remote date of the struggle for European predominance. This is ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... closing the procession came Pablo, wearing his rain-coat, with his revolver strapped outside of it, and riding El Sabio with a dignity that would have done honor to the Viceroy himself. Pablo certainly was in the nature of an anti-climax; but I would not have told him so for the world. Fray Antonio wore the habit of his Order, this privilege having been specially granted to him by the Governor of the State as a safeguard for all his expeditions among the Indians. It was understood, indeed, that ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... should say to enable a poor devil like me to live a week. But this is not all. For spring or June brides of the "swell London sassiety set," fine white silk stockings cost $22.50 a pair must go with a wedding gown and trousseau equally as extravagant, the climax of fashion's freakish ways being the rose-made garter worn over said stockings. Parisian society which smells to heaven in fashionable odors has now originated garters made of primroses, harebells, narcissus, violets and lillies, the same being ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... message now in brutal frankness. Yet in the height of his fiercest invective he never seemed to strengthen himself or call on his resources. In its climax he was careless, conscious of power, and contemptuous of results, as though as a gambler he had staked and lost all and in the moment of losing suddenly become the master of those who ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... which would live forever in the memories of them all; but Doctor Craig, perceiving with trained eyes the signs of growing fatigue in his frail friend after the unwonted strain of the day and its necessarily emotional climax, had gently but firmly insisted on withdrawing at an early hour. Georgiana had remained with her father, herself content to have the strange and wonderful day end in the old, simple, and natural way in which her days had ended for so long. She had felt, as she performed ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... found it so totally distasteful that he is wisely returning to an earlier love. As soon as he gets out of the army he and I are going to collaborate on a play. Of course I have technic at my finger-tips. Construction, dramatic suspense, climax are second nature to me. But I confess I have a fatal handicap, one that has doubtless cost me my place at the head of American dramatists to-day. I have never been able to achieve colloquial dialogue! My style is too finished, you understand, my diction too perfect. Manager after manager has been ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... she had drifted from bad to worse, until that mad marriage to Jim Denton capped the climax of ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... vivid and impressive as a vision of the Host in a jewelled monstrance. Every accessory was gorgeous, the high room, the colour of the robes, the chains and crosses, and as the eye moved along to its climax it was met by a piece of dead white—as if glory was exhausted and declared itself impotent to tell the supreme secret. Scarlet and purple and gold were well enough for those who stood on the steps of the throne—they needed ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... account of Job's own conviction, the passage contradicts the burden of the whole poem. Passing it by, therefore, and going to what immediately follows, we arrive at what, in a human sense, is the final climax— Job's victory and triumph. He had appealed to God, and God had not appeared; he had doubted and fought against his doubts, and, at last, had crushed them down. He, too, had been taught to look for God in outward judgments; ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... smashed.—Our author is not here guilty of an anti-climax. The mere English reader, from a similarity of sound between the words kilt and killed, might be induced to suppose that their meanings are similar, yet they are not by any means in Ireland synonymous terms. Thus ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... depths. It is so essentially rich that it turns every language into which it is translated into a classic. At one moment it is plain narration; at another, it is all drama and tragedy, in which cataclysmic climax crashes ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... the postscript seemed worst of all. Here the writer had overdone herself, or himself, and by dragging in the housekeeper, Mrs. Dunbar, and holding her up for the same extravagant admiration, a climax of ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... replenish our stock of water, which I made in desperation during the night of the fourth day of our investment, showed that our enemies were not only still present, but as watchful and pertinacious as ever. And that night, or rather in the early hours of the following morning, came the climax, when the wily foe made a last desperate attempt to rush our defences and overpower us by force ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... two men, of whom one had always hitherto been the conqueror in every such passage of arms. It was probably this long habit of prevailing that made the proud Earl so obstinate, since to submit in words had never heretofore been difficult to him. At last the dispute came to a climax, in the distinct refusal of Douglas to give up his traitor-allies. "He said he myt not nor wald not," says a brief contemporary record. "Then the King said, 'False traitor, if you will not, I sall,' and stert sodunly till him with ane knyf." "And they said," ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... the tears she shed, she arrived at that supreme disdain, that climax of suffering, where the excess of pain seems a satire, where chagrin, exceeding the utmost limits of human strength, exceeds its sensibility as well, and the stricken heart, which no longer feels the blows, says to the ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... Some people say the service of man is the service of God. Yes, when it is service of man, done for God's sake, it is so, and only then. The old motto, 'Work is worship,' may preach a great truth or a most dangerous error. But there is no possibility of error or danger in maintaining this: that the climax and crown of all worship, whether for us footsore servants upon earth, or for these winged attendants on the throne of the King in the heavens, is activity in obedience. And that is what is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... the climax, as if the popular mind were not already in a sufficiently exalted frame, came 'The Great Revival,' touching this ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy |
