"Pivotal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Douglas vote, but their hope of success hinged upon harmony with the cotton States. A formidable minority favoured the readmission of the seceders and the abandonment of Douglas regardless of their obligation. This was not the policy of Dean Richmond, who was the pivotal personage. His plan included the union of the party by admitting the seceders, and the nomination of Horatio Seymour with the consent of the Northwest, after rendering the selection of Douglas impossible. It was a brilliant programme, but the inexorable ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Though made the pretext for violence, and prominently put forward as the justification of rebellion, it was evidently the weakest point in the rebel cause, and was, therefore, alike from the choice of the rebels as from the necessity of the Government, destined to become the central object and pivotal point of the whole contest. Having once been placed in this position, and fixed in it by the inveterate enmities of prolonged war, it must from that time abide the arbitrament of arms. Two years of fierce and calamitous war seem to have brought ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Polk President in 1844; while Clay and the Whig Party, who confidently expected success, lost the election by reason of the growth of the Antislavery or Liberty party which cast a large vote in New York,—the pivotal State, without whose support in the Electoral College the carrying of the other Northern States went for nought. The Mexican War followed; and in 1846 David Wilmot of Pennsylvania moved an amendment to a bill appropriating $2,000,000 for final negotiations, providing that in all territories ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... into the country, as these people use a number of primitive devices which are undoubtedly survivals of methods of construction once common in the countries from which they came. Vestiges of the use of a pivotal hinge, constructed on a much more massive scale than any of the pueblo examples, were seen at an old fortress-like, stone storehouse of the Mormons, built near the site of Moen-kopi by the ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... the poem Dante himself explains: "The subject of the work literally taken is the state of souls after death; this is the pivotal idea of the poem throughout its entire course. In the allegorical sense the poet treats of the hell of this world through which we are journeying as pilgrims, with the power of meriting and demeriting, ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... Eve was the pivotal center of all the hilarity. She sat on the table and served the punch. Her coat was off, and in her silk blouse and riding breeches she was like a lovely boy. The men crowded around her. Pip, always at her elbow, delivered an admiring ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... eighteenth century, to include the stars, they had not as yet expanded to receive the most patent records that are written everywhere on the surface of the earth. Before Hutton's views could be accepted, his pivotal conception that time is long must be established by convincing proofs. The evidence was being gathered by William Smith, Cuvier, and other devotees of the budding science of paleontology in the last days of the century, but their ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... that one burglar has claimed his discharge from the Army on the ground that he is a pivotal man and that several policemen ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 1, 1919 • Various
... that there is no freedom in the swing. There is only one point which vitally affects the stroke, and the only reason why that should be kept constant is that you are enabled to see your ball clearly. That is the pivotal point marked at the base of the neck, and a line drawn from this point to the ball should be at right angles to ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... themselves, along a dusty roadway, on our way to Caen; we were of no particular importance in the landscape, we and our rickety little phaeton. Yet only a moment before, in the inn court-yard, we had felt ourselves to be the pivotal centre of a world wholly peopled with friends! This is what comes to all men who live under the modern curse—the double curse of restlessness and that itching for novelty, which made the old Greek longing for the unknown ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... morning of Friday, the 23d, a fresh emission of gas was made both upon the Second Brigade, which held the line running northeast, and upon the Third Brigade, which, as has been fully explained, had continued the line up to the pivotal point, as defined above, and had then spread down in a southeasterly direction. It is, perhaps, worth mentioning that two privates of the Forty-eighth Highlanders who found their way into the trenches commanded by Colonel Lipsett, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... could be heard of how the election had gone until the following afternoon, when Gov. Ramsey received a dispatch from New York announcing that that state had given Mr. Lincoln 50,000 majority. As that was the pivotal state the Republicans immediately held a ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... greater goal; how, after training faithfully in secret for a year, hoping sometime to win a game for his Alma Mater, he cheerfully sacrificed his chance to tie the score by a drop-kick, and became the pivotal part of a fake-kick play that won for the ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... lawyer employed in the criminal case that is the pivotal centre of interest in Sidney Luska's (Harry Harland) novel, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... sympathies, and perhaps his opinions, were with the Democratic Party, and there was reason to apprehend that he might incline to act with the Democratic members of the commission. After the passage of the bill Judge Davis was chosen Senator from Illinois, and Judge Strong became a member. Upon the pivotal questions the members acted upon their political opinions, or, most certainly in accordance ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... sense, however, of outward activity and movement, but in the hidden undercurrent of being. "The epochs of our life are not in the visible facts, but in the silent thoughts by the wayside as we walk." This is the motto, drawn from Emerson, which she chooses for her poem of "Epochs," which marks a pivotal moment in her life. Difficult to analyze, difficult above all to convey, if we would not encroach upon the domain of private and personal experience, is the drift of this poem, or rather cycle of poems, that ring throughout with a deeper accent and a more direct ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... River bridge will not soon be forgotten by engineers and men of science. But, while the technical features of the undertaking are familiar to a few, the general public knows little about how the work was actually done; and since the building of the bridge was the pivotal point in Murray O'Neil's career, it may be well to describe in some detail its various phases—the steps which led up to that day when the Salmon burst her bonds and put the result of all his planning and ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... does not coincide with the true north pole or the pivotal point of the earth's rotation, but it is sufficiently near for all practical purposes. Fig. 9 shows the magnetic lines running from the north ...
— Electricity for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... seen the place on the Yadkin where Cornwallis decided not to cross. It was one of the pivotal points of the war, and is ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... of Longfellow, his Hexameter lines are sometimes hard to scan, and often grate harshly on the ear. He is frequently forced to divide a word by the central or pivotal pause of the line, and sometimes to make a pause in the sense where the rhythm forbids it. Take for example some of the opening lines ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... nations, meeting in New York City, agreed to contribute $65 million to the continuing famine relief program in Kampuchea. Due in great part to the generosity of the American people and the leadership exercised in the international arena by the United States, we have played the pivotal role in ameliorating massive suffering ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the repeated warnings of the spinster against any familiarity with the tavern or tavern people, he came in time to reckon the old creaking sign-board of Mr. Boody, and the pump in the inn-yard, as the pivotal points of all the town wickedness, just as the meeting-house was the centre of all the town goodness; and since the great world was very wicked, as he knew from overmuch iteration at home, and since communication with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... the bridegroom found work in a printery at twelve dollars a week, and thus was the pivotal ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... hostile to our campaign said without qualification that the Woman's Party protest was the only factor in the campaign which stemmed the western tide toward Wilson, and which finally made California the pivotal state and left his election ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens |
