"Imminence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... probable that the imminence of a general insurrection among the Southern Slav inhabitants precipitated the resolutions of the [Dual] Monarchy. He still clings to the hope that, after a first success of the Austro-Hungarian arms, but not before this, mediation might be able to ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... letters. Li Koo held the foot of the ladder. Mr. Twist had only remembered the imminence of four o'clock and the German inrush a few minutes before the hour, because of his being so happy; and when he did he flew to charcoal and paper. He got the strip on only just in time. A car drove up as he came down ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... most temporary of expedients, and that the immediate press of affairs once over, her marriage with Philemon was sure to be pushed to a conclusion. Already her mother's discussions of clothes, of linen, and of furniture were constant reminders of its imminence, and the mere fact that the servants of Greenwood and the neighbourhood accepted the matter as settled, made allusions to it too frequent for Janice not to feel that her bondage was inevitable. A dozen times a day the girl would catch her ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... of the new armies in the autumn and winter of 1914 that the invasion of Belgium was the one shocking stroke that rallied the country as one man, and that nothing else in the situation, as it was known, would have done this. The people as a whole did not grasp the imminence of the German menace. Of the torturing pressure on the thin khaki line that barred the pass to the sea we knew nothing. Day by day and night by night we were regaled with stories of 'heavy German losses' and futile tales of the deaths ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan
... the power of her love, that his, which had been put out of mind in the terror of that hour, reawoke and took the colour of her own. He too forgot the imminence of death in the warm presence of his down-trodden passion. She was in his arms as he had taken her during the firing, and he bent his head to look at her. The moonlight played upon her pallid, quivering ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... but few of the pulpit arts of the minister, but he had the soul of a great preacher. His life, to him, was a mission to the unconverted to point out the imminence of death and its meaning. His belief had carried him beyond and above the pleading of the uncertainty of death to arouse fear in the hearts of his congregation. Instead, to him, the great clock of time was actually ticking off an opportunity which the unconverted could not permit to pass. ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... is a worthy and enlightened one," interposed the Mandarin, with dignity. "What you have somewhat incapably overlooked, Ming-shu, is the fact that I never greet this intelligent and painstaking young man without reminding him of the imminence of his fate and of his ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... not informed of the imminence of a battle; but they required no such announcement from their generals. The atmosphere seemed to be surcharged with premonitions of an engagement, and men rubbed sleep out of their eyes and sat erect upon their horses. The blacks even ceased to crack their whips so sharply, and urged the ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... have heard the roar of the guns coming from far out over the waters. Seamen would tell us how they had left London and been engaged ere nightfall, or sailed out of Portsmouth and been yard-arm to yard-arm before they had lost sight of St. Helen's light. It was this imminence of the danger which warmed our hearts to our sailors, and made us talk, round the winter fires, of our little Nelson, and Cuddie Collingwood, and Johnnie Jarvis, and the rest of them, not as being great High Admirals with titles and dignities, but as good friends whom we loved and honoured above ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of Odilon Redon, that remarkable painter of the fantasy of existence, of which he speaks so delicately in letters to friends. His youth was apparently much like mine, not a youth of athleticism so much as a preoccupancy with wonder and the imminence of beauty surrounding ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... greatest possible value to every interest that affects our people. I have never had the slightest misgiving concerning the wisdom or propriety of this arrangement, and am quite willing to answer for my full share of responsibility for its promotion. I believe it averted a disaster the imminence of which was, fortunately, not at the time ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... retaliatory acts in the west and east: "The evidence there found of the extent of the copperhead movement in the upper Mississippi Valley in 1863-1864 is entirely essential to a history of both sides of the great war. It becomes startling to contemplate to what imminence revolution in the States of the north ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... in from Greater Britain from the moment that the imminence of war in South Africa was realised. It was not the first time that our kinsmen had sent their sons for the general service of the Empire. In 1881, within twenty-four hours of the receipt of the news of the action at Laing's Nek, two thousand men of the Australian local forces had volunteered ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... heightens the voltage of spiritual power in the world. The greatest stories of the world are the stories of such comings. Of first importance in the education of children is the institution of an ideal of the imminence of great helpers, the Compassionates. Children become starry-eyed as they listen. I think if we could all shake ourselves clear of the temporal and the unseemly, we should find deep in our hearts, a strange expectancy. A woman said, as we ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... Hugh tried to think of his injury, and to steel himself against his chief. But the roar of battle on the right, and the suspense and imminence of battle on the left, absorbed the attention of even this wounded and angry spirit, as, indeed, they might have absorbed that of any being not more or less than human. A private wrong, insupportable though it might be, seemed so small amid that deadly clamor and awful expectation! Moreover, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... bitter jealousy in which she had desired vengeance on him seemed to have rendered her a murderess. She loved him—loved him with an exceeding passion; and only in this extremity, when it was confronted with the imminence of death, did the fullness and the greatness of that love make their way out of the petulant pride and the wounded vanity which had obscured them. She had been ere now a child and a hero; beneath this blow which struck at ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... Mac and Potts knew. For the first time the Big Chimney men felt a barrier between them and that one who had been the common bond, keeping the incongruous allied and friendly. Only Nig ran in and out, unchilled by the imminence of the Colonel's withdrawal from ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... made the dullest realize that, at the very least, the slave-trade and a struggle for "liberty" were not consistent. Thirdly, the old fear of slave insurrections, which had long played so prominent a part in legislation, now gained new power from the imminence of war and from the well-founded fear that the British might incite servile uprisings. Fourthly, nearly all the American slave markets were, in 1774-1775, overstocked with slaves, and consequently many of the strongest partisans ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... counter-mines. Every fort of prejudice, every citadel of reason rested now upon foundations that quaked, and would fall at the first shock. Doom was about him. As the silence rustles in the deadly hush of the storm that brings winter upon the forest, he waited unconscious as a leaf in the imminence of the autumn moment; and in such a stillness, awaiting a change of soul, he received a letter from Lizzie. It dropped from his hand, and such desire to go as comes on swallow and cuckoo came on him; he struggled for a moment, and was sucked down ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... The imminence and the arrival of this dire birthday, this day of wrath on which the proudest woman will kneel to implacable destiny and beg a reprieve, had induced the reveries natural to it—the self-searching, the exchange of old fallacies for new, the dismayed ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... cheerful spirits. Aramis was astonished at that lightness of character which permitted this serious man to retard with advantage the moment for more important conversation, to which nobody made any allusion, although all three interlocutors felt its imminence. It was very plain, from the embarrassed appearance of Monsieur, how much the conversation of the king and Madame annoyed him. Madame's eyes were almost red: was she going to complain? Was she going to expose a little scandal in open court? The king took her on one side, and in a tone so ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... so often repeated, upon that rising question of the day, the political unity of the empire—a subject which had been advanced at the time into a most significant importance to the Australian colonies by the apparent imminence of war ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... The imminence of the danger indicated by the young Englishman appealed so powerfully to Don Sebastian that he acted upon the suggestion which accompanied it without further delay, excusing himself to George for temporarily withdrawing ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... figure, as unlike Henri as an oak is unlike one of Henri's own tall and swaying poplars. Sara Lee drew a long breath. Here after all were rest and peace; love and gentleness; quiet days and still evenings. No more crowds and wounds and weary men, no more great thunderings of guns, no imminence of ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of it and the second officer were already at the oars and the tiller as the ropes slid in the blocks. The passengers came crowding from their cabins, where they were dressing for dinner, and there were many expressions of surprise and slight terror. Death aboard ship is terrible in its imminence to all. The buoy, with its flaming torch, had drifted far to leeward, and the lookout could do no more than follow its fainting light as the dark of the tropics closed in. An hour the Noa-Noa lay ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... The imminence of the fresh danger made the little party forget their sufferings, and with the quickness of highly disciplined men, they were apt to obey the orders whispered sharply by the midshipman. They fell into line, made ready, and at the command given by their officer, six muskets flashed out, ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... The imminence of working-class action was an ever present and disturbing menace to the capitalists. To give one of many instances of how the workers were beginning to realize the necessity of this action, and how the capitalists met it, let us instance ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... The imminence of the common danger favoured the attempts of the South German States to effect an agreement with the German Protestants, and the efforts of Butzer in that direction. Luther himself acknowledged in a letter to Butzer, how very necessary a union with them was, and what a scandal was caused to ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... incident of our voyage happened when a mother-duck was leading her little fleet of five ducklings across the river, just as our steamer went swaggering by, stirring the quiet stream into great waves that lashed the banks on either side. I saw the imminence of the catastrophe, and hurried to the stern of the boat to witness, since I could not possibly avert it. The poor ducklings had uttered their baby-quacks, and striven with all their tiny might to escape: four of them, I believe, were washed aside and thrown ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... questioning eyes. She wanted to be alone first and face the truth; and this she had done in no spirit of weak self-deception. The shadow of the unknown had fallen upon her, and in its cold gray light the glitter and tinsel of the world had faded, but unselfish human love had grown more luminous. The imminence of death had kindled rather than quenched it. It was seen to be something intrinsically precious, something that might survive even ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... preferred for preserving discipline in fleets and armies;" but it was in truth his own failure to use such timely remedies, owing to the lethargy of increasing years, acting upon a temperament naturally indulgent and unapprehensive, that was largely responsible for disorders of whose imminence he had warning. From the military standpoint, the process of settlement had much the air of opera bouffe,—a consummation probably inevitable when just grievances and undeniable hardships get no attention until the sufferers break through all rules, and seek redress by force. The mutinous seamen ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... when, on their seasonal migration, the Nishinam camp for the night in the grove. They still live, and the war formula for life seems vindicated, despite the imminence of the superior life-makers, the whites, who are flooding into California from north, south, east, and west—the English, the Americans, the Spaniards, and the Russians. The massacre by the white men follows, and Red Cloud, dying, recognizes the white men as ...
— The Acorn-Planter - A California Forest Play (1916) • Jack London
... to nadir with the knowledge that he had failed ... failed the Secret Service and the Corps, failed his father, failed the Guddus, failed himself. Curiously, perhaps, at that moment the thought of failure was far more important to him than the imminence of ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... the several questions involved, the first secretary, who had been sent for, arrived. The minister at once set before him the startling character of the papers on the table, and my story was briefly retold. Upon this there was a long consultation concerning the imminence of the crisis they suggested, and in regard to the necessity of the originals being placed as soon as possible in the hands of Mr. Adams, our able representative at the court of St. James. No one for a moment seemed to consider the documents as other than a lawful ...
— A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell
... considerate and far-sighted of the people; for they well knew that when a foreign power was called in, in such a manner, as a temporary friend and ally, it almost always became, in the end, a permanent master. The mass of the people of the city, however, were so excited by the imminence of the immediate peril, that it was impossible to impress them with any concern for so remote and uncertain a danger, and it was determined that Pyrrhus ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... an illustration of a critical law already noticed, namely the constant tendency of literature to negative as well as to reproduce the life of actuality, and furthermore of the special liability of pastoral to take birth from a desire to escape from the imminence and pressure of surrounding circumstance. Like Reynolds' Aminta, Richard Fanshawe's Pastor fido is better appreciated as a whole than in quotation, though, thanks partly to its own greater maturity of poetic attainment, partly to the less ethereal perfection of the original, ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... grimly with red flashes from his fire. He knew well—none better than he—the savage and implacable sternness of the wild. He knew how dreadful the silent adversary against whom he had been called, all unprepared, to pit his craft. There was no blinking the imminence of his peril. Hitherto he had always managed to work, more or less, with nature, and so had come to regard the elemental forces as friendly. Now they had turned upon him altogether and without warning. His anger rose as he realized that he was at bay. The indomitable ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... answered Marshall; "early in October. Rosy lays great stress on an October wedding—that's the only right sort, it seems." He sighed with a full sense of the imminence of the inevitable. The voice of Bingham came with a slow, deep gravity from the bay-window, and Jane's voice, responding, mingled ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... individual conscience. Already the exploiting class, as it neared the term of its depleted life, was but a mass of purulence. Society was rotten, the state a pious criminal, the old truths tawdry lies. Everywhere the impotence of senility—except in young America. We faced the imminence of a vast breaking-up. The subtlest oligarchy of modern times was about to crumble. The ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... slightly ridiculous person who lately stamped over Oxford Street and stormed the Alhambra Theatre. And in order to help the excellent father of my hero back into your esteem, let me point out that the imminence and the actuality of fatherhood constitute a somewhat disturbing experience, which does not occur to a man ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... absent two minutes, but, inspired by the imminence of the danger, Gypsy darted into the study, and rapidly extracted the balls ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... conflict in industry is the phase that not only looms large in the public mind, but conflict is the public exhibit of the greatest mark of failure in industrial relations. The imminence of conflict is evidence of failure to have discussion or to arrival at mutual agreement. Therefore, under the plan of the Conference that mutual agreement is the best basis for prevention of conflict, the second step in the Conference proposals is that there should ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... know that crises are much more apt to have a definite beginning than a definite end. We can almost always put our finger upon the moment—not, indeed, when the crisis began—but when we clearly realized its presence or its imminence. A chance meeting, the receipt of a letter or a telegram, a particular turn given to a certain conversation, even the mere emergence into consciousness of a previously latent feeling or thought, may mark quite definitely the moment of germination, so to speak, of a given crisis; and it is ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... vein. The constant repetition of such haemorrhage may lead to uterine congestions, or even to amenorrhea, i.e., entire absence of menstruation. But it originates in functional disturbance, in exhaustion of the nervous system by intellectual exertion. On account of the imminence of this danger, the period of real incapacity for mental effort lasts much longer than conscious discomfort is likely to do—lasts, indeed, as long as the physiological afflux of blood to the uterus—which, by the means described, may at ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... "Your imminence," she said, "since you've told us your age, I'll tell you mine. I'm two-and-twenty and I'm mighty tired of standin'. Let's go aft ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith
... a malady unknown to the physicians, Philippe expired," said he, "to the great astonishment of everybody, without either his pulse or his urine revealing the cause of his malady or the imminence ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... nobility. At this very moment the position of affairs presented better prospects than ever. The insurrection of the last winter had evidently failed only through Caesar himself appearing on the scene of action; now he was at a distance, detained on the Po by the imminence of civil war, and the Gallic army, which was collected on the upper Seine, was far separated from its dreaded leader. If a general insurrection now broke out in central Gaul, the Roman army might ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... closely as these terrible threats were made; and Anthony, aware of their scrutiny, braced himself to meet it, and to show no signs of any sinking at heart. And indeed the very imminence of the threatened peril seemed to act as a tonic upon his nerves, and he felt something of the strengthening power which has been promised to those who suffer persecution for conscience' sake; so that ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... views, though they deeply affected my own, I shall speak only very shortly. He was, above all, a devout man. Pure in heart, he earned the promised blessing and saw God throughout his days on earth. The fatherhood of God and the imminence of the Kingdom of Heaven were no empty words for him. But, though he was so single-minded a follower of Christ and His teachings, he was no Pharisee of the New Dispensation; the sacerdotalism of the Christian ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... the command of any one of lower rank than an earl. Wolsey replied that Sandys would be cheaper than an earl,[364] but the command was entrusted to the Earl of Surrey. Henry thought it unsafe, considering the imminence of a breach with France, for English wine ships to resort to Bordeaux; Wolsey thought otherwise, and they disputed the point for a month. Honours were divided; the question was settled for the time by twenty ships sailing while the dispute was in progress.[365] Apparently ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... bringing up of the last reserve engines for the hill battery, the effort to get into communication by telegraph with the mine hospital and Glen Tarn Springs, the feverish haste of the officials in the car to make the new dispositions, all indicated to Gertrude the approach of a crisis—the imminence of a supreme effort to save one life if the endeavor enlisted the men and resources of the whole division. New gangs of shovellers strung on flat-cars were being pushed forward. Down the hill, spent and disabled engines were returning from the front, and while they took sidings, ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... breathless, it was an episode out of a novel! But Goujaud felt too sick, in thinking of the appalling expense, to enjoy his sudden glory. Accustomed to a couple of louis providing meals for three weeks, he was stupefied by the imminence of scattering the sum in a brief half-hour. Even the cab fare weighed upon him; he not infrequently envied ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... (2) The imminence of suppuration or its actual occurrence.—In most cases it sufficed to preserve an expectant attitude, and in the persistence or increase of symptoms, to have recourse to an exploratory puncture as the best means of solution of ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... disturbances in the populous provinces of northern China, where are many of our citizens, and of the imminence of disorder near the capital and toward the seaboard, a guard of marines was landed from the Boston and stationed during last winter in the legation compound at Peking. With the restoration of order ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... storm-tossed passage. One can only imagine the relief and comfort afforded to the ponies, but the dogs are visibly cheered and the human element is full of gaiety. The voyage seems full of promise in spite of the imminence of delay."[51] ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... that she in no way objected to travelling at night time; and so far as the departure from London was concerned, there would be few people about on a Sunday evening, which was another point to be considered. I cordially assented, for now that the imminence of M. Zola's return to Paris had been reported in the newspapers it was certain that delay meant a possibility of demonstrations both for and against him. In spite of his prohibition, many of his friends still wished to greet him like a conquering hero on his arrival ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... are to press upon the attention of the people the imminence of that danger that is threatening us, and that embodies within itself all other perils that hang over the nation. We are threatened to be overwhelmed by a foreign and alien emigration that brings with it the anarchy of atheism and the unAmerican ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... Genghis Khan caused certain rules and regulations, or articles of war, as they might be called, to be drawn up and promulgated to the troops. One of the rules was that no body of troops were ever to retreat without first fighting, whatever the imminence of the danger might be. He also ordered that where a body of men were engaged, if any subordinate division of them, as one company in a regiment, or one regiment in a battalion, should break ranks and fly before the order for a retreat should have been given ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... usually locked the wire door behind her, only leaving it open when she went upstairs to fetch something and meant to return almost immediately. The mere fact of its difficulty increased Raymonde's zest for the adventure. Her wild, harum-scarum spirits welcomed the element of possible danger, and the imminence of discovery added an extra spice. For days she haunted the vicinity of the winding staircase, hiding in bedrooms and watching, in case Miss Gibbs went to her laboratory. Twice she watched the mistress pass through the wire door and lock it safely behind her, quite unaware of the outraged ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... into our boarding house, where, owing to the imminence of my departure, I had been restored to favour. I never did find out where he lived. We took our passage at the steamship office; we went to the variety shows and sang Oh, Susannah! with the rest; we strutted a bit, and were ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... dangers of death, and most of all against those that occur in battle. Now it is evident that in martyrdom man is firmly strengthened in the good of virtue, since he cleaves to faith and justice notwithstanding the threatening danger of death, the imminence of which is moreover due to a kind of particular contest with his persecutors. Hence Cyprian says in a sermon (Ep. ad Mart. et Conf. ii): "The crowd of onlookers wondered to see an unearthly battle, and Christ's servants fighting erect, undaunted ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas |
