"Crucial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of brothers who have played, the list seems endless. The first to come to mind are Laurie Bliss of the Yale teams of '90, '91 and '92 and "Pop" Bliss of the '92 team, principally, I think, because of Laurie's wonderful end running behind interference and because "Pop" Bliss, at a crucial moment in a Harvard-Yale game deliberately disobeyed the signal to plunge through centre on Harvard's 2-yard line and ingeniously ran around the end for a touchdown. Tommy Baker and ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... he became witness to the crucial episode of the evening. An oily Teutonic voice spoke just ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... called to the circumstance, that such a phenomenon requires separate treatment. Words so omitted labour prima facie under a disadvantage which is all their own. My meaning will be best illustrated if I may be allowed to adduce and briefly discuss a few examples. And I will begin with a crucial case;—the most conspicuous doubtless within the whole compass of the New Testament. I mean the last twelve verses of St. Mark's Gospel; which verses are either bracketed off, or else entirely severed ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... misfortune to be pressed, and in the interval between his appeal and the order for his release his ship, as already hinted, had perhaps put half the circumference of the globe between him and home; or when the crucial moment arrived, and he was summoned before his commander to learn the gratifying Admiralty decision, he made his salute in batches of two, three or even four men, each of whom protested vehemently that he was the original and only person to whom the order applied. ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... the worker can be made to approach, and 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 to the laborer. For the amount of profits is ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... carried out an assignment for the Star, and telephoned my story in so as to be sure of being with Craig at the crucial moment. For I was thoroughly curious about his next move in the game. I found him still in his laboratory attaching two coils of thin wire to the connections on the outside of a queer-looking ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... opinion from her 'creation' of the new part of distinctly higher scope in Mr. Gilbert's one act drama, 'Comedy and Tragedy,' produced for the first time on Saturday night. Though passing in a single scene, this piece furnishes a more crucial test of Miss Anderson's powers than any of her previous assumptions in this country. Unfortunately it also assigns limits to those powers which few actresses of the second or even third rank need despair of attaining. Such ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... angles to the apparent axes of elevation, would be the one to examine. If you go to the head of Glen Roy, attend to the apparent shelf above the highest one in Glen Roy, lying on the south side of Loch Spey, and therefore beyond the watershed of Glen Roy. It would be a crucial case. I was too unwell on that day to examine it carefully, and I had no levelling instruments. Do these fragments coincide in level with Glen ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Lynn Canal are of historical importance, as the question of the true location of the first and the commercial importance to Canada or to the United States of the possession of the second, were the crucial contentions in the disputes over the Alaska-Canadian boundary. At the head of Lynn Canal, the only place on the whole extent of the south-eastern Alaskan coast where a clear-cut waterparting is ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Of such, no records are kept in the book of time. Should anybody compile a history of lost opportunities, it might easily require a bigger volume, than that needed for the story of opportunities taken at the crucial moment. ...
— Bremen Cotton Exchange - 1872/1922 • Andreas Wilhelm Cramer
... true," Porter said with prim severity. "There was malfunction of crucial units under stress. But another phase was not made public. The astronaut's mission—one of them, at least—was to hunt outer space for foreign bodies of ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... An even more crucial question, and one bristling with difficulties, arose with regard to Church property. Upon none had the sufferings of the time fallen with more severity than on the Church and her clergy. She had shared the tribulations of the Royal Martyr, ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... at the crucial time is not usually a genius; he does not possess any more talent than others, but he has learned that results can only be produced by untiring concentrated effort. That "miracles," in business do not just "happen." He knows that the only ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... Then two short pulls signalled that Boris had read his note and would follow his instructions. He gave three sharp tugs, and then settled down to wait, with beating heart, for now the crucial test was coming. The other sentry was about to appear. If he noticed the thin string, by any chance, the whole scheme would be spoiled and Fred, in all probability, would be caught and treated as ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine
... problem of African slavery was the incidental issue of Free Trade and Protection,—apparently only economical and industrial in character, but in reality fundamentally crucial. And behind this lay the constitutional question, involving as it did not only the conflicting theories of a strict or liberal construction of the fundamental law, but nationality also,—the right of a Sovereign State to withdraw from the ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams
... concerns. Not until the last days of August was he 'sufficiently recovered from the blow to be able to take some interest in politics'; and then it was merely to take an interest, not to take a part. Yet already the crucial question for Liberal policy ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... wonderful how such a man, cold, Philistine and even mean in certain ways, towers into a sublimity unknown (to me, at least), in fiction when he forgives, and yet knows that he cannot forgive with dignity. There is something crucial, and something triumphant, not beyond the power, but hitherto beyond the imagination of men in this effect, which is not solicited, not forced, not in the least romantic, but comes naturally, almost inevitably, from the make ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... him with the back of his hand, using all his strength, skinning his knuckles so that the blood dripped from them, unnoticed. He waved both arms continually, bending his body almost double and straightening up again, in crucial efforts for emphasis. All the old jingo platitudes that he had learned from campaign speakers throughout his life, the nonsense and brag and blat, the cheap phrases, all the empty balderdash of the platform, rushed to his ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... Thou hast conquered," were the words that came to her when the crucial test had been passed, and she had parted with ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... 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 forget, ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... recent oceanographic research has shown that the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC), an ocean current that flows from west to east around Antarctica, plays a crucial role in global ocean circulation. The region where the cold waters of the ACC meet and mingle with the warmer waters of the north defines a distinct border - the Antarctic Convergence - which fluctuates with the seasons, ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... colossal effort of blowing up the dark red, floppy India rubber until it got brighter and brighter and more and more transparent, though it always stayed opaque enough to hold the promise of still greater bigness. And then the crucial moment when ambition demanded an extra puff and a catastrophe became ever ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... patella and tuberosity of the tibia. The flap is then dissected back, the ligaments divided, when by extreme flexion of the limb the articular surface of the tibia and femur are thoroughly exposed. The crucial ligaments must then be divided cautiously, and the articular portion of the femur cleaned anteriorly by the knife, posteriorly by the operator's finger, so far as possible to avoid injury of the artery. The whole articular surface of the femur must then be removed ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... while the capture of Vicksburg and its consequences gave them the Mississippi, the first attempt to invade from that side under Rosecrans had suffered defeat in the bloody battle of the Chickamauga. Sherman and Thomas resolved to reverse this unfavourable decision and attacked at the same crucial point. An action lasting four days and full of picturesque episodes gave them the victory which was the starting-point of all that followed. To that action belongs the strange fight of Look Out Mountain ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... officers dashed along the line, urging the men forward. Horses fell with the men. I saw a dozen riderless horses dashing madly through the lines, adding a new terror. Another horse was obviously running away with his officer rider. The crucial period for the section of the charge on which I had riveted my attention probably lasted less than a minute. To my throbbing brain it seemed an hour. Then, with the withering fire raking them even as they ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... that I make myself the mouthpiece of all present in offering to the venerable founder of the institution, which now commences its beneficent career, our congratulations on the completion of his work; and in expressing the conviction that the remotest posterity will point to it as a crucial instance of the wisdom which natural piety leads all men to ascribe to ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... man returned to the request, and his master yielded. Both fasted from one week's end to the other and purified themselves, and then went through all the ceremony of summoning the Archangel of the Law, but at the crucial moment of the invocation Rabbi Israel cried out, "We have made a slip. The Angel of Fire is coming instead. He will burn up the town. Run and tell the people to quit their dwellings and snatch up ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... regret our misplaced confidence in our agent. That should satisfy you, Mrs. Crosse. And now that you admit SOME liability, that is a great step in advance. We have no desire to be unreasonable, but as long as no liability was admitted, we had no course open to us but litigation. We now come to the crucial point, which is, how much liability should fall upon you. My own idea is, that each should pay their own costs, and that you should, in addition, ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... his hat with his right hand and scratched his head deliberately and deliberatively with his left, 'humming' and 'hawing' over this crucial question. ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... ultimate foreseen rout, Insensate taxed; of his impenitent will, Servant and sycophant: without ally, In Python's coils, the Master Craftsman still; The smiter, panther springer, trapper sly, The deadly wrestler at the crucial bout, The penetrant, the tonant, tower of towers, Striking from black disaster starry showers. Her supreme player of man's primaeval game, He won his harnessed victim's rapturous shout, When every move was mortal to her frame, Her prayer to life that stricken he might lie, She to exchange ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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, ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... and crucial moments," said Cleggett soberly, pulling off his shirt again and picking up a sword, "we may dispense with the minor ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... public schools are at times reproached? We must brave the charge, then; for the facts seem to furnish evidence of a kind so rarely obtainable, that to omit them from this chapter in school life would be hardly excusable. An experiment so crucial as that to which we were submitted does not occur once in ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... of wind down the big-throated chimney stirred the log embers on the hearth, and the girl jumped to her feet, closing the book with an impatient snap. She knew her mother's voice would follow. It was hard to leave her heroine at the crucial moment of receiving an explanation from a presumed faithless lover, just to climb a hill and take in a lot of soulless washing, but such are the infelicities of stolen romance reading. She threw the clothes-basket over her head like a hood, the handle resting across her bosom and shoulders, ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... our combined fighting forces. We have been in constant communication with our fighting Allies, Russian and Chinese, who are prosecuting the war with relentless determination and with conspicuous success on far distant fronts. And Mr. Churchill and I are here together in Washington at this crucial moment. ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... by that, no doubt, still a few days later, at an hour that has never ceased to recur to me all my life as crucial, as supremely determinant. The travelling-carriage had stopped at a village on the way from Lyons to Geneva, between which places there was then no railway; a village now nameless to me and which was not yet Nantua, in the Jura, where we were to ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... movements; but so incapable did he feel of further effort that lie remained sitting, with his eyes shut. A new sound roused him: she was shivering, and with such violence that the bedstead was shaken. After a crucial struggle with himself, he rose, and crossed the room. She was lying outside the bedclothes. He pulled off an eider-down quilt, and spread it over her. As he did this, his arms were round her, all the beloved body was in his grasp. When he had finished, he did not remove them, but, kneeling down ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... the ice of Caina, the region where traitors are immersed up to their heads, Dante hits his foot violently against the face of Bocca degli Abati who betrayed the Florentines at the crucial battle of Montaperti. "Weeping it cried out to me: 'Why tramplest thou on me? If thou comest not to increase the vengeance for Montaperti, why dost thou molest me?' I said: 'What art thou who thus reproachest others?' ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... to invent a system by which to live. We don't have to talk late into the night about which form of government is better. We don't have to wrest justice from the kings. We only have to summon it from within ourselves. We must act on what we know. I take as my guide the hope of a saint: In crucial things, unity; in important things, diversity; in all ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... "Just at the crucial moment, Terry met an old friend who offered him a political job, organising republican workingmen's clubs, and Terry accepted it. No one can understand how bitter this was to Terry. To work for a political organisation was to him great degradation. He did it for my sake, for the thirty-five ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... accounts with Messr. Cook and Sons, or Signora Vedova Paolini, my esteemed landlady. A writer who is worth anything accumulates more than he gives off, and never lives up to his income. His difficulty is the old one of digestion, Italian Art being as crucial for the modern as Italian cookery. Crucial indeed! for diverse are the ways of the Hyperboreans cheek by jowl with asciutta and Tuscan tablewine, as any osteria will convince you. To one man the oil is a delight: he will soak himself in it till his thought ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... promising than ever. A temperance wave has been sweeping some portions of the South. Our students are thoroughly indoctrinated in the principles of total abstinence. They make the best advocates of the cause that can be had for many localities. It is a crucial period. The time to do this work is now—now, while the great questions at issue are being agitated and settled. We ought to have means for extending our efforts to the utmost ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 01, January, 1884 • Various
... with it only to be the sport of the next. That men are slow to recognize genuine merit when it appears in their own age, also proves that they do not understand or enjoy or really value the long-acknowledged works of genius, which they honor only on the score of authority. The crucial test is the fact that bad work—Fichte's philosophy, for example—if it wins any reputation, also maintains it for one or two generations; and only when its public is very large ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... The crucial moment had arrived. Jenks pressed the trigger, and the Dyak hurtled through the air, falling headlong out ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... an anti-Trinitarian sense, showing how they were compatible with the Catholic Faith, and citing and dwelling upon other expressions which were totally incompatible with any other belief. He showed that the crucial test of orthodoxy, the one single term at which Arians and semi-Arians scrupled—that is, the Homoousion or Consubstantiality of the Son with the Father—was actually in use before the Nicene Council, and that it was thoroughly in accordance with the teaching of the ante-Nicene Fathers. ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... completely instrumental than nutrition is, since it serves a soul as yet non-existent, while nutrition is useful to a soul that already has some actuality. Reproduction initiates life and remains at life's core, a function without which no other, in the end, would be possible. It is more central, crucial, and representative than nutrition, which is in a way peripheral only; it is a more typical and rudimentary act, marking the ideal's first victory over the universal flux, before any higher function than reproduction itself has accrued to the animal. To ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... could, the mother severely and the father ironically, as something too silly, and they tried not to let it weigh with them in making up their mind, but to consider only Clementina's best good, and not even to regard her pleasure. Her mother put before her the most crucial questions she could think of, in her letter, and then gave her full leave from her father as well as herself to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... one of the great moments in the history of the Nation. The past year was perhaps the most crucial for modern civilization; the coming year will be filled with violent conflicts— yet with high promise of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the forest. From the foot of the tree the bohunks read crucial drama in Koppy's manner. . ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... The crucial moment came when the leading warriors of the Sioux' long column were level with the rear ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... his way to report to his chief; and just what would be forthcoming he did not know. But if too much objection were raised and affairs got to a crucial stage, he had nothing to fear. He had learned a certain lesson—an avenue to triumph. It was strange that he had ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... which reason also golden crowns were fashioned on the Ark in which the Torah was kept, on the altar on which the priests offered sacrifices, and on the table that symbolized the kingdom. But the highest of all is the crown of a good name, which a man earns through good deeds, for the crucial test is not the study of the Torah, but the life conforming to it. For this reason also there was a sin offering among the offerings, corresponding to the crown of good deeds, for these alone can serve as an expiation. The two oxen indicate the two Torot that God gave His people, the ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... their name and address first whenever possible. If we have to send the same child from the room frequently, a letter is sent to the parent stating the reason. (b) This has worked well with but three exceptions in four years. The crucial point is to find the name of the child. (c) We have never suspended a child for more than two months unless he were arrested for misbehavior. (d) An apology to the librarian and good behavior ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... slipped under the broken limb. Then there was a certain amount of trimming and measuring required over the splints before the young surgeon was satisfied, a sensation of shrinking keeping him from beginning what was another crucial task. Fortunately the fractures were simple, and he had no very great difficulty in bringing the broken bones into their proper positions, after which he bandaged and applied the splints, making all fast, a low moan from time to time being all ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... the history of human society, we observe, unless the divine power of the gospel supplies the sole preserving and regenerating element, a universal law of decay in human affairs. Innumerable times, and at the most crucial moments of human history, not the fittest but the unfittest survived. Dr. A. L. Graebner said: "The principle of the 'survival of the fittest' is so far from accounting for the phenomena of history, that the principle itself is flatly ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... he had charted a path to the crucial point avoiding all light plants, Shann was ready to move. The Terran pressed his hand on Taggi's head in the one imperative command the wolverine was apt to obey—the order ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... is it—from heaven or of men? Such was the nature of the question addressed by our Saviour to the men of his time, concerning the baptism of John. It is the crucial question by which to test every system that comes to us in the garb of religion: Is it from heaven or of men? And if a true answer to the question can be found, it must determine our attitude toward it; for if it is from heaven, it challenges at once our acceptance and ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... them anew, as often as they returned baffled and discouraged, with his own perennial enthusiasm. Between 1435 and 1460, famous captains in his service—Gil Eannes, Denis Diaz, the Venetian Cadamosto—made those crucial voyages round the Point of Bojador, past the desert to Cape Verde, and beyond as far as Sierra Leone. After 1443 the labors of the Navigator were no longer thought to be wasted; for when the rich traffic in slaves and gold was opened up to Portugal, the ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... a passion to which she could no longer blind herself; the fiery breath, with all its fierceness, was blowing down upon her. Now came the crucial-test. ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... vastly more serious matter, which was, we may say at once, the crucial ordeal of his life, the same invincible truthfulness, the same innate goodness, the same horror of doing a wrong, are combined with an exquisite sensibility and a capacity for suffering which mark him as a man "picked ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... operation to place the heaviest artillery in position close behind the infantry fighting line, not only owing to the mobility afforded by motor traction but also because the old dread of losing the guns before they could be got away no longer exists. The crucial necessity for the effective employment of heavy artillery is observation, and this is provided by the balloon and the aeroplane, which, by means of wireless telegraphy, can keep the batteries instantly informed of the accuracy of ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... guidance; the other was by young Buckley; the third K. was working on himself. Braithwaite, Fitz and I were in the room; no one else except Callwell who popped in and out. The instructions went over most of the ground of yesterday's debate and were too vague. When I asked the crucial question:—the enemy's strength? K. thought I had better be prepared for 40,000. How many guns? No one knows. Who was in command? Djavad Pasha, it is believed. But, K. says, I may take it that the Kilid Bahr Plateau has been entrenched and is sufficiently held. South ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... 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 and none ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... substantial 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 at least, to his desire to propitiate ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... 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, it was our army that was doing the driving. Our ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... process, nasal bones, eye, chin, jaws, wisdom teeth, hair, humerus, pelvis, the heart-line across the hand, calf, tibia, heel, colour, and even smell—all these external signs, as well as many more, have been thought, separately or together, to afford the crucial test of a man's pedigree. Clearly I cannot here cross-examine the entire crowd of claimants, were I even competent to do so. I shall, therefore, say a few words about two, and two only, ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... of 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 a ...
— An Essay on the Application of the Lunar Caustic in the Cure of Certain Wounds and Ulcers • John Higginbottom
... 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 ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... mineral resources 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
... eminently plain and practical, if not an all too obvious one. It is this: if all your preparation and confidence fails you at the crucial moment, and memory plays the part of traitor in some particular, if, in short, you blunder on a detail of the story, NEVER ADMIT IT. If it was an unimportant detail which you misstated, pass right on, accepting whatever you ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... or lost in a single instant at a crucial moment when some one fails to make good, or who, usually in the case of a pitcher, lets up on his speed or accuracy just at the critical time. The National Championship of 1908 was decided in favour of Chicago because one of New York's players in the deciding game ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... peoples. Collins's Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland and Gray's Bard show the literary world prepared to put itself to school to Celtic tradition. Macpherson supplied it with a body of poetry which exactly fulfilled its expectations. The crucial date in his history is his meeting in 1759 with John Home, the author of the once famous tragedy of Douglas. In the summer of that year Home was drinking the waters at Moffat, and among the visitors assembled there found Thomas Graham, afterwards Lord Lynedoch, then a boy of ten, ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... which he was engrossed in the last illness of his wife. Danton's name was dragged into the affair probably by mistake for Dannon (see Belloc, "Danton," 200). Lastly, as Maret left London on 19th December, and did not return until 30th January, he did not see Pitt at the crucial time of the trial. And would Pitt have made so damaging a remark to a Frenchman? Is it ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... question I have to ask of the man who takes his stand on the passage I have quoted from the Gospel is: "What would have been your duty if you had been walking through that wood and come upon the girl struggling with the man who killed her?" This is a crucial instance which, I submit, utterly destroys the doctrine that the use of violence is in itself wrong. The right or wrong is not in the employment of force but simply in the purpose for which it is used. What the case establishes, I think, is that to use ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... education, this lesson was to be crucial; it would decide the law of life. All these gentlemen were superlatively honorable; if one could not believe them, Truth in politics might be ignored as a delusion. Therefore the student felt compelled to ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... 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 who ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... 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 meantime, ...
— Time and Time Again • Henry Beam Piper
... said, "what 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 give you ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... Each of the 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 ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... 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 a grab ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... thoroughly by a cross (crucial) cut, like this (x). The cut must reach through the mass to sound tissue beneath and beyond it. Then scrape out all the dead tissue. Dress with iodoform or sterile gauze. An antiseptic like listerine, glyco-thymoline, etc., can be used to wet the gauze, ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... was the crucial point—the Brethren were able to show, by the written evidence of local residents, that wherever they went they made honest, industrious citizens. They had settled down in Pennsylvania; they had done good work at Bethlehem, Nazareth, ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... few and no entangling acquaintances, nor did he impart to any one the secret of his fortune, loyally reserving it for his partner's first knowledge. To a man of his natural frankness and simplicity this was a great trial, and was, perhaps, a crucial test of his devotion. When he gave up his rooms at the Oriental—as not necessary after his partner's absence—he sent a letter, with his humble address, to the mysterious lock-box of his partner without fear or false shame. ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... That was the crucial moment of his marvelous life. After that all his dreams fused and became one. He felt as if from soft metal he had changed into hard metal. And, moreover, the stimulus of love seemed to induce a vast intellectual growth; things that had been difficult of comprehension ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... shock, but with a kind of recognising thrill in contact at last with the necessity for action, decision, a climax of high heart-beats. She saw with surprise that she had lived with her passion these weeks and months half consciously expecting that a crucial moment would dissolve it, like a person aware that he dreams and will presently awake. She had not faced till now any exigency of her case. But the crucial moment had leapt upon her, pointing out the subjection of her life, and she, undefended, sought ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... and Maupassant's The Piece of String this simplicity is equal to that of the anecdote, but in no case can an anecdote possess the dramatic possibilities of these simple short-stories; for a short-story must always have that tensity of emotion that comes only in the crucial tests of life. ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... Now the crucial time arrived. For one by one the guests had gone, till only she and Joe and Nourse remained with Sally and her husband. The moment for springing the great idea had come at last. Nourse was to do the talking. ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... 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. ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... testing their wings for several days, clinging to the sides of the nest and beating the wings rapidly. And now comes the crucial moment of letting go and attempting actual flight. Several of them have already done it, and I see them resting on the dead limbs of a plum-tree across the road. But more are to follow, and parental anxiety is still rife. I shall be sorry when the spacious hayloft becomes silent. That ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... had been so certain that it did not come from any one in the room, and he had never found any somnambulist who had so instantly grasped his most secret thoughts, without the slightest assistance or leading word from himself. Yet at the crucial test—the question of a certainty in the future, this one had stopped short as all stopped, or failed in their predictions of what was to come. He had been startled and almost frightened. Like many Southern Italians, he was at once credulous and sceptical—a superstitious ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... with someone at the pool, and that the someone could not have been his son, for his son was away, and he did not know when he would return. The second is that the murdered man was heard to cry 'Cooee!' before he knew that his son had returned. Those are the crucial points upon which the case depends. And now let us talk about George Meredith, if you please, and we shall leave all minor ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... days when Miss Prime's discipline would have turned all within him to hardness and bitterness Eliphalet Hodges stood between him and despair, so now in this crucial time Elizabeth was a softening ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... assistance, for every one who clung to the worship of the old gods was to assemble in the sanctuary of Isis; and the more brilliant and splendid the ceremony could be made the more would that enthusiasm be fired which, only too soon, would be put to crucial proof. On quitting the temple the crowd of worshippers, all in holiday garb, were to pass in front of the Prefect's residence, and if only they could effect this great march through the city in the right ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... crucial moment and she looked at him with dumb appeal in her fine eyes. Then, seeing nothing in his face to reassure her, she dropped her gaze. Her chest heaved with ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... 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
... the security of Baghdad—is crucial to security in Iraq more generally. A capital city of more than 6 million, Baghdad contains some 25 percent of the country's population. It is the largest Sunni and Shia city in Iraq. It has high concentrations of both Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias. ...
— The Iraq Study Group Report • United States Institute for Peace
... the starting line as these words were spoken, and in two minutes we got the word to go, and the great Modena car rushed away like some giant bird upon the wing. This was the crucial stage of that famous race, when we had to climb the Arlberg Mountains and drop down to Innsbruck. It was the day which saw Edge the proud winner of the Gordon Bennett Cup, and the morning upon which Jarrott broke up his bedroom furniture ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... morning. A storm was raging without, while within, thousands in the great hall were impatiently and loudly demanding an immediate vote. More than one of the chief orators of the party,—men well known to the country—had in vain attempted to be heard. Chaos seemed to have come again at the crucial moment that McKenzie, standing upon his chair in the centre of the vast enclosure, began: "If I speak longer than two minutes, I hope that some honest half-drowned Democrat will suspend my carcass from one of the cross-beams of ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... Sunday morning only amounted to the fact that he had an opportunity shared by a great number of other persons of committing the murder. The evidence of his agitation and demeanour at the time of his arrest must be accepted with caution. The evidence of the blood spots was of crucial importance; there was nothing save this to connect him directly with the crime. The jury must be satisfied that the blood on the clothes corresponded with the blood marks which, in all probability, would be found on the person who committed the ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... was face to face with a question which, as lawyers say, required that the answer should be either "yes" or "no." Still, he made one more attempt to avert the crucial inquiry. ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... table and the chairs to the wall, there's a good lad, and we shall get the stiffness out of this rope." Chris cleared the room. "And pull the curtains, my boy," added his master, "for one never knows but that Amos or Becky Boozer might pass by at the crucial moment. What they do not know," murmured the magician, "is best ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... speak of woman's tenderness, but there is no tenderness like that of a man for the woman he loves when she is tired or troubled, and the man who has learned simply to love a woman at crucial moments, and to postpone the inevitable idiotic questioning till a more auspicious time, has in his hands ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... now, he realized dimly, at the crucial point of his existence: with Meta Beggs, in that world of which Paris was the prefigurement, he might still wring from life a measure of the sharp pleasures of tempestuous youth and manhood; he might still dance to the piping of the senses. With Lettice in Greenstream he would rapidly sink ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... found. This is because he does not make it a rule to check up his guesses as to meaning, by specific investigations of the settings-of-ideas, by auscultating the so-called "fringe of thought," or by laying out crucial tests for his own hypothesis in the given case. Such methods, which belong no less to general psychopathology than to the reconstitutive method, do not leave one free to argue from analogy; a privilege which most psycho-analysts ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... Melanthius got out of the hall remains a puzzle. Cowper assumes a second postern, but there is no evidence for this, and l. 139 ff. (l. 126 ff. in the Greek) suggest rather strongly that there was only one. Unfortunately, the crucial word rhoges which occurs in the line describing Melanthius' exit is not found elsewhere. "He went up," the poet says, "through the rhoges of the hall." Merry suggests that "he scrambled up to the loopholes that were ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... sat watching the crowd for a time, and then went to his room to read himself to sleep. One of the two crucial days of suspense was outworn, but there was another coming; and after he had read for an hour he went to bed, resolutely determined to get the rest necessary to carry him through the dreaded Saturday. Sleep came quickly ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... crucial occasion. In Rochester, a young man, Ira Stout, had been condemned to be hung for murder. A number of persons strongly opposed to capital punishment believed this a suitable time to make a demonstration. It was not that they doubted the guilt of Stout, but they were opposed to the ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... strained to the utmost; every nerve was on the quiver; so that not one of the four felt that he could trust himself to shoot when the crucial moment came. ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... 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 ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... pushed to the confines of vice, in the man's blind unintentional neglect of the woman for whom he would wring the last blood-drop out of his heart, you have the nucleus of more than half the pitiful domestic tragedies of India. It is the crucial moment, the genesis of a hundred unsuspected possibilities, this first divergence of the man and woman, along separate paths of interest. Love may be strong enough to stand the strain, but it will ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... right in the middle of such important and crucial problems as foreign policy, atomic disarmament, racketeering, integration and a dozen and one other problems, NICAP began to bedevil every senator and representative who was polite enough ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... the gallant chief who led Those others, how he fell; When our men the captive guns Set free they loved so well, And embraced them as live things, by loss endear'd:— Nor, when the crucial stroke On their last asylum broke, And e'en those hearts of oak Might ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... crucial experiment is made, and a pair of birds raised from the egg without ever seeing a nest are shown to be capable of making one exactly of the parental type, I do not think we are justified in calling in the aid of an ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... invite the proper people to meet each other, to seat them so that they can have an agreeable conversation, that is the trying and crucial test. Little dinners are social; little dinners are informal; little dinners make people friends. And we do not mean little in regard to numbers or to the amount of good food; we mean ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... thought at that critical and crucial moment we cannot tell, but the professor's thoughts were swift, varied, tremendous—almost sublime, and once or ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... one charge him with weakness? Think of the tragedy of a whole life compressed in that one crucial hour! ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... generous, devoted as he was, the son of the wild Jacksons and the facile Jenkins might have been led far astray. By one of those partialities that fill men at once with gratitude and wonder his choosing was directed well. Or are we to say that, by a man's choice in marriage, as by a crucial merit, he deserves his fortune? One thing at least reason may discern: that a man but partly chooses, he also partly forms, his helpmate; and he must in part deserve her, or the treasure is but won for a moment ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... twisted the only remaining crown-lock of his gray-black hair, and slowly drew his thin lips from his big sallow teeth, and as slowly returned them to place. "Obviously," he said at length, "the doctor is the crucial witness. We must see to it that"—a significant grin—"that the other side does not attach him. We must anticipate them by attaching him to us. I'll see what can be done—legitimately, you understand. Perhaps ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... that Marlanx deemed it necessary—even imperative—to the welfare of the movement, that John Tullis should be disposed of summarily before the crucial chapter in their operations. Truxton heard the Committee discussing the fiasco that attended his first attempt to draw the brainy, influential American out of the arena. It was clear that Marlanx suspected ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... which such services are required at a meal so simple. It is only after this meal is concluded, that the ladies sit down to their own equally frugal fare. We were curious to know if they indulge in tea, considering this as a sort of crucial test of their self-denying principles. We were informed that the article is not bought for them, on account of its being so expensive. Used tea-leaves are obtained from the tables of certain families of rank, and are found to be of service for the comfort of the more infirm ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... must possess are found among mankind in a limited degree. And mechanics, in turn, would receive wages higher than those of day laborers only if it proved that but a limited number possessed the qualities needed. On this crucial point, to repeat, we are unable to pronounce with certainty. What are the relative effects of nature and of nurture in bringing about the phenomena of ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... with an income ample for the modest requirements of himself and Mary. On the subject of his retirement he wrote some touching letters to friends such as Wordsworth and Bernard Barton, and also in his accustomed manner made the crucial event the subject of a delightful "Elia" essay. He had before expatiated on the excellent position of the authors who were not "authors for bread"—men who like himself were employed in business during the day and had to dally with literature in off hours. Certainly Lamb's ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... the Indians must be kept Christians, educated and civilized. Here is the crucial point. In reading criticisms upon the Mission system of dealing with the Indians, one constantly meets with such passages as the following: "The fatal defect of this whole Spanish system was that no effort was made ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... Cursory Observations was 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 in 1770 made his story of discovering ancient manuscripts ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone
... out true Conservatism, and to reconcile the workmen with the real aristocracy, than any politician for the last twenty years has done. The truth is, we are in a critical situation here in England. Not in one of danger—which is the vulgar material notion of a crisis, but at the crucial point, the point of departure of principles and parties which will hereafter become great and powerful. Old Whiggery is dead, old true blue Toryism of the Robert Inglis school is dead too-and in my eyes a great loss. But as live dogs are better than dead lions, let us see what ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... snowy evening, his attention was attracted by a piece of paper which the wind had blown against the wall. It proved to be a fifty-dollar bill; and after advertising for the owner for four days, he stealthily moved to Cincinnati in order "to take that money out of danger." Now comes the second crucial ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... 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 forced by reason to conclude there ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... mate. It is this which lies at the root of most of her little vanities and weaknesses—and of all the big sacrifices of which she is capable as well. So she may be forgiven the former, and trusted to fall short but rarely of the latter when the crucial test comes. ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... Group Two had given a good deal of thought to the clothing Barrent would wear upon debarkation. Those first minutes on Earth might be crucial. No cunning could help him if his clothing was obviously strange, outlandish, alien. Typical Earth clothing was the answer; but the Group wasn't sure what the citizens of Earth wore. One part of the Group had wanted Barrent to dress in their reconstructed approximation ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... accomplishment. Cater's cooperation, about which he had been so slow, would infuse new blood into the business. It was maddening at times to have so many good uses for money, and to be unable to command it at the crucial moment. He had approached Eugene Larue on that past Sunday afternoon, only to find him cautiously negative where once ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... to them I called aloud to their leader, when the whole party halted and turned toward us. The crucial test had come. Could we but deceive these men the rest would be ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs |
