"Psychological moment" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is too late," he said, gayly. "The psychological moment is long gone by. We shall both end old bachelors, my good Varhely, and spend our evenings playing checkers, that mimic ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... up the stairs ... you were the only person who went up just at that one psychological moment! He had his pocketbook with him when he came in—he told ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... splash of a canoe, dropped into the water, was exquisite torture. The dip of paddles set him well-nigh beside himself. Then, a few moments later, when the light craft slithered on the mud of the shallows, just beyond the hiding-place, he felt the psychological moment had come. Out he sprang at his victim, who was still ankle deep ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... between utterance and silence his world of inner forces just then knew, combined to make the invitation irresistible. Moreover, he had wanted to tell it all these days. Stahl was already half convinced. Stahl would surely understand and help him. It was the psychological moment for confession. The two men rose in the same moment, Stahl to lock the cabin doors against interruption, O'Malley to set their chairs more closely side by side so ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... to-night," went on the other, "and able to get out of the way, so I'm going to get in close as possible and watch you. I've tried to do so before, but somehow I'm always side-tracked just at the psychological moment." The quizzical voice became serious, the flippant manner vanished. "Honestly, Darley, I can't understand you any more than you can me. You said a bit ago you wondered where I would end. I have the same ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... psychological moment had not yet come, and I subdued the momentary impulse and proceeded with my scrutiny of the people about me. The jury looked tired, with the exception of one especially alert little man who drank in even the most uninteresting ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... times some of our patients can be found fasting; but they do not begin until the right physiological and psychological moment has arrived, until the fast is indicated. When the organism, or rather the individual cell, is ready to begin the work of elimination, then assimilation should cease for the time being, because it interferes with the excretory processes going on in ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... eighth birthday approached. All this while Thomas Lincoln had somehow kept his family in food, but never had he money in his pocket. His successive farms, bought on credit, were never paid for. An incurable vagrant, he came at last to the psychological moment when he could no longer impose himself on his community. He must take to the road in a hazard of new fortune. Indiana appeared to him the land of promise. Most of his property—such as it was—except his carpenter's tools, he traded for whisky, four hundred gallons. ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... England has treated her poets than America has treated hers! What convenient little plums, as De Quincey somewhat wistfully remarked, were always being found for Wordsworth just at the psychological moment; and they were not withheld, moreover, until he was full of years and honors. Indeed, we owe this poet to the poet-by-proxy of whom ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... seemed assured, and it is amazing to think what an influence has been exerted upon the destinies of the human race by the instinctive fear of crossing the narrow boundary between right and wrong. The time occupied in such reflection is often only infinitesimal. It has been called the psychological moment, and if the definition means that it is the instant during which the soul suggests, it is a true one. It is then that our natural repulsion for evil asserts itself; it is then that the consequences of what we are about to do rise clearly ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... months later. We had been on safari for several weeks and had returned to Nairobi for two or three days. It was the "psychological moment" for something new in the way of food. The stage was all set for it, and it came in the form of a pudding that would have delighted all the gastronomes and epicures of history. We called it the Newland-Tarlton pudding, ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... and Juliet type would very soon end in barbarism and misery. But it is a fact that in every man (not in every woman) there lives a lover; a lover who is called out in all his potentialities often by the most insignificant little things—as long as they come at the psychological moment: the glimpse of a face at an unusual angle, an evanescent attitude, the curve of a cheek often looked at before, perhaps, but then, at the moment, charged with astonishing significance. These are great mysteries, of course. ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... her for a while, but nothing further of an intimate nature passed between them. She felt that he had gained his objective and would say no more. The truce between them was to be observed until the psychological moment arrived to break it, and that moment would occur some time on Christmas Eve in ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... terrific row with me one day, my father was brought into it, and I stood up against them both. The upshot was that when the interview was over I went out of the house boiling with indignation and for the time utterly reckless. Chance caught the psychological moment and threw me in the way of Archie Jolliffe. He saw something was wrong and pressed me to tell him what had happened. He was so chivalrous and sympathetic that I was led in my turbulent state of mind to become confidential, the more so when he told me he ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... to her loom," Justin continued, "with a different look on her face. The lines were smoothed out from her forehead. Neither of them had seemed to notice that I was there. It was a psychological moment when the doctor had to speak, and it was wonderful to hear him ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... would never get drunk again; but he also knew that, after what had happened that morning, Vane's determination to give her up would be tenfold strengthened, and that, when once he had definitely done so, the psychological moment would have arrived for him to begin his own suit—at first, of course, from a deferential distance, from which he might hope to approach her heart through the avenue of her ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... The psychological moment of incipient life, the instant marked by the infusion of soul into body, may furnish a problem of speculation for the savant; but even when certitude ends and doubt begins, the law of God fails not to protect. No man who doubts seriously that the act he is about to ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... to a newspaper editor the prospect of combining the authority of a nationally known and reputable astronomer with a work designed to satisfy a reading public's waiting appetite for the unusual—in short, presenting legitimatized sensationalism at the psychological moment—this must have had irresistible appeal. That Edison's Conquest of Mars was written on editorial commission, perhaps as fast as it appeared, seems, ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... man charged by his wife with desertion. For a time it looked as tho it were a cinch for the prosecution, but at the psychological moment the attorney called the defendant to the stand. "Take off that bandage," he cried, and the man did it, exposing a black eye. "Your honor," said the attorney, "our defense is that this man is not ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... supreme, the psychological moment! The duet continued, but Maxine heard no further words. They echoed and re-echoed in her brain, they obsessed her, lifting her to ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... seemed to him the part of wisdom, in this crisis, to feign ignorance, and he blandly suggested, on the return of the two from the fallen poplar, that they should ride to Joines' store in the evening, there, over the telephone, to dispatch a telegram to Zeke in New York. It was the psychological moment for success. There was not even a flicker of resentment aroused. Uncle Dick remembered that the Quaker school-teacher spy had been saved by Zeke from Dan Hodges. In his new mood, that fact was enough to overcome all rancor against the lad. Moreover, he realized the tragedy of Plutina's ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... immense desires—to be famous and to be loved. Madame Hanska had intellect, literary appreciation, imagination, and a great capacity for affection. She came into Balzac's life at the psychological moment, and he reached out and clung to her as a drowning man clings to a spar. And to the end of his life, let it be said, never did Balzac waver ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... emphasised the difference between Jim and his greatest pal. Thorpe mastered the colt which had thrown Jim; Thorpe, when fresh meat was wanted, killed handsomely the fat buck missed by the over-eager James; Thorpe made a pretty profit over a hog deal at the psychological moment when poor Misterton allowed three Poland-China sows to escape through an ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... thought it the psychological moment to spring a request he had been entertaining in his heart for some time. "Will you let me take Pepper to camp? Lots of the boys have dogs but none of them ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... hinted to Skinner that the firm was slow to show its appreciation of his indispensable qualities; but on such occasions Skinner had urged that the psychological moment had not yet arrived, that the wave of prosperity that was spreading over the country had not up to the moment engulfed his particular firm. But one evening, he ill-advisedly admitted that the waves of the aforesaid prosperity ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... again!! I am stabbed in the neck. I am bringing up the rear and getting more than my share. There is no retreat, and the plunging horses ahead, on a precarious trail, promise little safety. My horse overruns Charmian's horse, and that sensitive creature, fresh-stung at the psychological moment, planks one of his hoofs into my horse and the other hoof into me. I thank my stars that he is not steel-shod, and half-arise from the saddle at the impact of another flaming dagger. I am certainly getting more than my share, and so is my poor horse, whose pain ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... days, returned to New York, to try to obtain the recall of this decision but was unsuccessful. Afterwards the board informed "General" Jones that they would go together to the White House but all had separated, the psychological moment had passed and the message ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... English country road," thought I, "a sociably inclined, happy-go-lucky, out-for-pleasure English country road, one might expect something of it. On an English country road this would be the psychological moment for the appearance of a blond god, in gray tweed. What a delightful time of it Richard Le Gallienne's hero had on his quest! He could not stroll down the most innocent looking lane, he might not ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... cases. Her own intuition is seldom at fault. Even at the eleventh hour she may save the situation by a timely jest, a kindly bit of inconsequence, a sudden humorous inspiration—not at his expense, of course—and the man who is not a fool will see that it is not the psychological moment. Above all she must avoid being alone with him. Let her keep a child at her side, pay attention to the greatest bore, listen with grateful patience to the most prosy person she knows, rather than leave the ground clear for him. She should not go for moonlight strolls, nor to look ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... enough to know that the German Crown Prince had laid careful plans for an attack on Verdun. They had taken their information to the French commanding officer in Marseilles. The latter had been somewhat skeptical, but Colonel Derevaux, an old friend of the boys, had arrived at the psychological moment and ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes
... a woman, and she is older than her years. Look at them now. He wants to talk seriously, and she is teasing him all the time. She has the instinct of her sex. She will conceal what she feels until the—psychological moment. But she does feel—she begins to understand. I am sure ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... it returned to that mysterious northern base whence it seems to dominate the seas. Because of the potentiality of these hidden warships, thousands of vessels have traversed the ocean, freighted with countless tons of cargoes and millions of men for the Allies. Even at that psychological moment when the first hundred thousand were being transported to France, Germany refrained from a naval attack which might have turned the whole land campaign ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... started, we busily followed it up, and soon all the wives were sighing in unison more heavily than ever. I shall always remember what happened at that psychological moment. A strip of red-lined native writing-paper was placed in somebody's hands with a long list of the different detachments which had just passed in through the Main Gate. At last the guards had arrived. Speedily we became ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... hovered on the lips of Komatsu when he appeared to receive his orders. Even old O'Haru was secretly immensely pleased about something, but they all had evidently agreed among themselves to keep the great news secret until the psychological moment had arrived when the ladies of the house and Mr. Campbell had assembled on the piazza ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... heretofore set forth, which contemplated the death of Rice. Of course Patrick wanted Rice to die. If Patrick was not implicated in the killing, what motive had Jones to commit the deed? Why did Rice die at the precise psychological moment which would enable Patrick to prevent two hundred and fifty thousand dollars on deposit being diverted to Texas? And finally, why did Patrick prepare a forged cremation letter for the destruction of the body? If the conspiracy ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... been something in the old woman's expression as she watched Captain Muller slowly tearing the paper that sent a thrill of excitement through Mr. Snyder. Something seemed to warn him of the approach of a psychological moment. ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... garment was held aloft. At that psychological moment an elderly man of buxom build, benevolent in mien, and with smooth, long hair that had an upward rolling tendency at the ends, looked in the shop as he was passing. He halted, hesitated, and then entered. Of him, however, Amarilly ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... done. We had simply to hold off the Turks and make shift as best we could, meanwhile collecting materials and making preparations for a definite offensive when the psychological moment arrived. ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... processes of Sir WILLIAM BYLES are normally so mysterious that his suggestion that, with the Americans coming in and the Germans making off, this was the psychological moment for the British Government to initiate proposals for peace, did not strike the House at large as specially absurd. It was, however, both surprised and delighted when Mr. SWIFT MACNEILL interposed with an inquiry ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 25, 1917 • Various
... valley of new marvels. The summer day was graying to its twilight, and a light haze was stealing out of the wooded ravines and across from the river. From the tall chimneys of a rolling-mill a dense column of smoke was ascending, and at the psychological moment the slag flare from an iron-furnace changed the overhanging cloud into ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... is the result of the ideals really," Coombe said further. "And it will come to pass at the exact psychological moment. If they had come in at the beginning they would have faced the first full force of the monstrous tidal wave of the colossal German belief in its own omnipotence—and they would have faced it unawakened, ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Mrs. Jarley. The audience finally understood that they would represent wax figures of noted characters, would stand still and let Mrs. Jarley talk about them—without the satisfaction of talking back—and that they would be wound up at the psychological moment, when they would be expected to go through a certain set of motions alleged to portray the last conscious acts of the characters ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... seriously speculating as to the collapse of Austria-Hungary), joined hands with the Magyar extremists, whose political monopoly was threatened by the advancing Slavonic tide, and with the inner ring of Prussian diplomacy, which believed the psychological moment to have arrived for measuring swords with Russia. The murder served as an admirable pretext to veil grossly aggressive tactics. It was hoped that Russia might be manoeuvred into a position where autocracy would rather abandon the Slav cause than seem to condone assassination; ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... came from Jimmie Dale's lips. It was just like fiction, just precisely time enough to have accomplished what he had come for before he was interrupted, not a second more or less, the villain foiled at the psychological moment! The key was rattling in the front door now—they were in the hall—he could hear Stangeist's voice—there came a dull glow from the hallway, following the click of an electric-light switch. The outer door of the safe swung shut, the bolts slid into place, ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... from the sky at the psychological moment. For two straight hours that afternoon he had been sitting at his desk grappling with the problem, which they, in their broken English, were so ably handling. Should he swallow a great deal of pride, ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... the lookout for some new amusement. Dream books had begun to pall. We no longer wrote in them very regularly, and our dreams were not what they used to be before the mischance of the cucumber. So the Story Girl's suggestion came pat to the psychological moment. ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... exactly correct psychological moment; after holding out long enough to put you both under obligation to her. There would have, also, been certain strings attached. Her plan was, after switching ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... minister in the neighbourhood of Loch Awe. "A clergyman of my acquaintance was stationed in a poor parish near my own, and he called on the local laird for financial aid to help on some of the church schemes. This laird was a well-known philanthropist, but the call was made at the wrong psychological moment, for he chanced on this particular day to be in a very bad humour. He listened to the minister with great impatience, and at last, bounding to his feet and pointing to the door, he shouted: 'Silver and gold have I none, but such as ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... foolish of me, I think now. If I had stuck and got acquainted with somebody, and taken in all the good music, the theaters, and the giddy cafes I wouldn't have got home and blundered into Cariboo Meadows at the psychological moment to make a different kind of fool of myself. Well, the longer we live the more we learn. Day after to-morrow you'll be in Bella Coola. The cannery steamships carry passengers on a fairly regular schedule to Vancouver. How does that ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... in the police court, sometimes to his Pa back home, and sometimes the whole college took a hand in looking over his examination papers. He used to pass medium fair in Horace; sub-passable in Trig., and extraordinary mediocre in Polikon. But his marks in Imagination, the Psychological Moment and Dodging Consequences were plus perfect, extra ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... life at a psychological moment. From his youth, his longing was "to be famous and to be loved." Having found the emptiness of a life of fame alone, having apparently grown weary of the poor Duchesse d'Abrantes, about to cease his intimacy with Madame de Berny, having been rejected by Mademoiselle de Trumilly, ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... encouraged as well as those for boys. All the aspects of rural life can thus be made most enjoyable. It is often well to introduce and cultivate one game at a time, letting it run its course, something like a fever, and then, at the psychological moment, introduce and try out another. To introduce too many at one time would not afford an opportunity for children to experience the rise and fall of a wave of enthusiasm on any one, and this is quite important. Usually some direction should be given ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... leopard, however, appeared to be fully aware of its enemy's intention, and also of how to frustrate it; for it remained patiently crouching until the gorilla was in the very act of pulling itself together for a leap, and then, at the psychological moment, sprang high into the air, leaping clear and clean over the gorilla's head, and landing a yard or so in his rear; then, before the huge creature had time to recover from his astonishment at such extraordinary tactics, the leopard again gathered itself together for ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... management of each was so dexterous that diplomacy often made war superfluous, and made it successful. Lewis was not a born soldier like Swedish Charles and the great Frederic. He never exercised an actual command. He would appear at sieges when the psychological moment came, and ride ceremoniously under fire, with his Jesuit confessor close at hand. His fame was so large a part of the political capital of France, that a pretence was made of believing in his generalship, ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... no imagination. They are blinded by an idiotic vanity. What they want just now is a jolly good scare. This is the psychological moment to set your friends to work. I have had you called here to develop to you ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... remember that it is easy enough to smile when it is somebody else who has the pain. I venture to say that a smile given at the wrong moment is far more dangerous to human happiness than the lack of a smile at any given psychological moment. There is a time and a place for all things, ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... Warmelo then took the envelope, opened it with the penholder again, and, producing the hot iron which she had been keeping in readiness for the psychological moment, she ironed out the flattened sheet and revealed to the astonished gaze of her daughter ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt |
