"Crucial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... scepticism and the cynicism of certain writers, whose pessimism is due to a lack of foresight, and despite the fact that she is being constantly accused of having in the past ignominiously failed at the crucial moment in endeavors towards minor reforms, I am one of those who believe that in China we shall see arising a Government whose power will be paramount in the East, and upon the integrity of whose people will depend the peace of Europe. It is much to say. We shall ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... Piping Tree she had yielded herself to an emotion against which she ought to have struggled to the end. Simple as the incident of the ride had appeared to her in the morning, she saw now that it was, in reality, one of those crucial decisions, in which the will, like a spirited horse, had broken control and swerved suddenly into a diverging road in spite of the pull of ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... course be the crudest of mistakes. But when an idea persists through many poems written at various times and seasons, when it appears and reappears under various clothings of circumstance, when it is employed as if it had a crucial value, when it becomes a test or touchstone of character, we cannot doubt that it is an intimate possession of the writer's mind. Such an idea is not a mere playmate but rather a confidant. When, again, after a tangle of casuistic reasoning or an embroilment of contending ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... consciousness that He is the light, and enmity to Him darkness. Mark, too, His meek submission, as bowing His head to let the black flood flow over Him. Note that Christ brands enmity to Him as the high-water mark of sin, the crucial instance of man's darkness, the worst thing ever done. Mark the assurance that animated Him, that the eclipse was but for an 'hour.' The victory of the darkness was brief, and it led to the eternal triumph of the Light. By dying He is the death of death. This Jonah inflicts deadly wounds ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... forwards again to this supreme moment, with all that life's harsh experiences had done for it, with the education that misery and misdoing give. Revolutions are often the work of instants, not years, and the crucial test and problem by which Grassette was now faced had lifted him into a new atmosphere, with a new capacity alive in him. A moment ago his eyes had been bloodshot and swimming with hatred and passion; now they grew, almost suddenly, hard and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... characteristics. The prophecy which is applied to Jesus might equally be applied to every human being: He trod the wine-press alone. In all its deepest experiences the soul is solitary. Craving companionship, in the very times when it seeks it most it finds it denied. Every crucial choice must at last be individual. When sorrows are multiplied there are in them deeps into which no friendly eye can look. When the hour of death comes, even though friends crowd the rooms, not one of them can ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... into the old manner so well known to his companion as his office style. Piece by piece, he drew from Amidon his story. He dropped back to previous parts of the narrative, and elicited repetitions. He slurred over crucial points as if he did not see their bearing, and then artfully assumed minute variations of the tale, but ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... Some of the forces to the city's aid From the besieged halls. Nor Caesar gave To sleep its season; swifter than all else To seize the crucial moment of the war. Quick in the darkest watches of the night He leaped upon his ships, and Pharos (25) seized, Gate of the main; an island in the days Of Proteus seer, now bordering the walls Of Alexander's ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... profoundly wrong, in so thinking, for the Kruman yearns after, and duns for, as many things for his body as the lamented Faustus did for his soul, and away among the apes this interesting creature would have to go, at once, if the wanting of little were a crucial test for the determination of the family termed by the scientific world the Hominidae. Later, when I got to know the Krumen well, I learnt that they desired not only the vast majority of the articles that they saw, but did more—obtained them- -at all events some of them, without asking me ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... and now he was engaged in describing to every village and to all the country side the prowess of the gentleman in the distinguished-looking khaki clothes. It was the general absurdity of this advance to the frontier and the fighting, to the crucial place where he was resolved to make an attempt to rescue his sweetheart ; it was this ridiculous aspect that caused to come to Coleman a premonition of failure. No knight ever went out to recover a lost love in such a diligence and with such a devil-dog, tinkling his little bells and yelping ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... maintain a certain numerical equality with our opponents. On the contrary, we must strive to call up the entire forces of the nation, and prepare and arm for the great decision which impends. We must try also to gain a certain superiority over our opponents in the crucial points, so that we may hold some winning trumps in our hand in a contest unequal from the very first. We must bear these two points in mind when preparing for war. Only by continually realizing the duties ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... was, crucial though many of the problems he had to solve undoubtedly were, yet the statement may be accepted as approximately true that the last three or four years of Lorenzo's life were spent amid profound peace—at least as far as Florence was concerned. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... have wavered had I not been seeing Tavistock every day. He continued to wear his devil-may-care air; but I observed that he was aging swiftly—and I knew what that meant. Fighting all day to prevent breaks in the crucial stocks; planning most of the night how to prevent breaks the next day; watching the reserve resources of "The Seven" melt away. Those reserves were vast; also, "The Seven" controlled the United States Treasury, and were using ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... strove to find justification for a pursuit which his human instinct told him had no justification. His reason was fully adequate, but something else failed at the crucial point. He felt definitely uncomfortable and wished that Ralph might have avoided the subject. It was none of his business, anyway. But then, ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... ringworm also, occurs in sharply-defined, circumscribed patches, and lupus erythematosus has a peculiar violaceous tint and an elevated and marginate border. A microscopic examination of the epidermic scrapings would be of crucial value in differentiating ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... were laid.[400] This suggestion appears to have been acted upon; for in the following March it was reported that there were building at St. John's a brig to carry twenty guns, a schooner of eighteen, and twelve 2-gun galleys. However, the Americans also were by this time building, and at the crucial moment came out a very little ahead in point ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... wife how surprising it was that it had not landed him in the hottest of hot water, and how puzzled he was to account for what seemed to have been its effect. Then she confessed to him what had happened on that crucial night, how she had taken the body away and hung it in front of the other house, and what she partly knew and partly guessed about the results of the affair. At once he realized that her instant and audacious retaliation was what had made possible his success and ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... noble and steadfast old Friend, could hardly fail to be known as a friend of the slave. Like her father she was ready to labor, and sacrifice and suffer in his cause, and had already made this apparent, had borne persecution, the crucial test of principle, before the war which gave to the world the prominent idea of freedom for all, and thus wiped the darkest stain from ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... pains us to say such things, but, speaking as we do in the public interests (I plagiarise from Barker's famous epigram), we shall not shrink because of the distress we may cause to any individual, even the most exalted. At this crucial moment of our country, the voice of the People demands with a single tongue, 'Where is the King?' What is he doing while his subjects tear each other in pieces in the streets of a great city? Are his amusements and his dissipations ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... of the German Admiralty for the new program. Admiral von Tirpitz struggled for it. I insisted that fundamental modification was essential if better relations were to ensue. The tone was friendly, but I felt that I was up against the crucial part of my task. The admiral wanted us to enter into some understanding about our own shipbuilding. He thought the Two-Power standard a hard one for Germany, and, indeed, Germany could not make any ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... within an ace of having to leave the boat-hook behind, for he declined to try another bath—this time in his clothes. Just, however, at the crucial moment the bark of the willow gave way, the hook descended with a splash, and Dexter breathed more freely, and sat there with the boat-hook across his knees looking first to right and then to left in search of danger, but seeing nothing but the low-wooded banks of the stream, which ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... cousin, overcome with emotion. She's been counting the hours till you came—been hearing of you from me and others for a good while; and hasn't been able to talk or think of anything else. She's only fifteen, and the crucial moment is too much for her—the Great Harkless has arrived, and ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... over him. He rose awkwardly and went to the window. She rose also, but more leisurely and easily, moved one of the books on the table, smoothed out her skirts, and changed her seat to a little sofa. It is the woman who always comes out of these crucial moments unruffled. ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... Still, the crucial stage of the first action was not over. The Sheikh Ed Din had driven the Egyptian cavalry and Camel Corps from Um Mutragan, inflicting loss upon them and getting temporary possession of several guns of the horse battery. He was following them ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... the expert Squash Tennis players for more and more speed and a higher pressurized ball, a novice quickly became discouraged with his initial efforts at playing the game. For many crucial years, therefore, the game was not adopted by new players and there was no broad base of tyros. Plainly and simply the avid duffers, which every sport must have if it is to survive and retain its popularity, took up a less frustrating, ...
— Squash Tennis • Richard C. Squires
... Gloucester to hasten to London without delay. I have conferred with the Lords Howard, Hastings, and Stanley, and we are of the one mind that he must be Lord Protector. Tell him we pledge to him our whole support if he will give us his countenance in this crucial struggle ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... But when the crucial moment comes—when the die is to be cast and the promise asked and given that will bind the two lives together, halt for a moment until one asks and the ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... start building 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 ...
— Time and Time Again • Henry Beam Piper
... range of heights.[EN131] I would also suggest that the best proof of how empirical is the actual identification, will be found in the fact that the Jews—except only the Rev. Jos. Wolff (1821)—have never visited, nor made pilgrimages to, what ought to be one of their holiest of holy places. This crucial point has been utterly neglected by the officers of the Ordnance Survey of Sinai. It is evident that Jebel Serbal dates only from the early days of Koptic Christianity; that Jebel Mus, its Greek rival, rose ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... peculiar smile would creep across the big fellow's face when he caught Jack's eye. He was depending on this comrade to extricate him from the pit which his own carelessness had dug for his feet. And Bob was finding how good it was at such a crucial time in his life to have a reliable friend upon whom to lean. Again and again he doubtless told himself how lucky he was ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... the 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 a ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... or the penalties; but practically a reversion to the pre-latitudinarian line of demarcation between heresy and orthodoxy. All or very nearly all of the martyrs of the Marian persecution would have been sent to the stake under Henry for making the same profession of faith. The crucial question was acceptance of Transubstantiation, for the denial of which several victims had perished within the last twenty years, whose doom both Cranmer and Latimer had at the time held to be justified. But in the interval, the conditions had changed. A large proportion of ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... other English poets, seems to have had the power of seizing upon a character at a crucial hour in life and laying bare all the impulses that impel one to high achievement or great self-sacrifice. He seems always to have worked at the highest emotional stress, so that his words are surcharged ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... young lumberman from the upper Columbia, had been sent down with a special word from the manager commending him as a tried hand, equal to any post or service. The ditch superintendent was looking for such a man. He gave him those five crucial miles between the head-gates and Glenn's Ferry, the notorious beat that had sifted Finlayson's force without yet finding a man who could keep the banks. Some said it was the Arc-light saloon at Glenn's Ferry; some said it was the ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... undeveloped 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 staff many of whom have left the country. ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... in some ways, crucial. I have spoken with Jesuits and Plymouth Brethren, mathematicians and poets, dogmatic republicans and dear old gentlemen in bird's-eye neckcloths; and each understood the word "facts" in an occult sense of his own. Try as I might, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thankful to be alone. She knew the crucial moment of her life had passed, and she was glad that she had not fallen below her own ideals. It had been a wonderful experience; and in spite of the tears on her cheeks she was not sorry to have known it. Two facts, ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... moment to steady her voice, for a sudden desperate sense of loneliness and self-pity had overpowered her as she looked into the sea of faces turned to hers and saw—with the intense spiritual insight granted to the few in crucial moments—the conflicting emotions with which they ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... towers and spires of old Bannister were limned against the sky-line. Across the campus, on Bannister Field, the goal-posts, skeleton-like, kept their lonely vigil. On that field, in less than a week, the Gold and Green must face the crucial test—against Ballard's championship eleven, in the Biggest Game; and now, almost on the eve of battle, the shackles had been knocked from him; he was free of the great burden, free to serve his Alma Mater, ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... stone of moral eminence, passed through a crucial ordeal, and it is to be greatly wondered at that the Negro woman emerged with even the crudest ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... great national humiliation, the upper classes awoke from their optimistic resignation. They had borne patiently the oppression of a semi-military administration, and for this! The system of Nicholas had been put to a crucial test, and found wanting. The policy which had sacrificed all to increase the military power of the Empire was seen to be a fatal error, and the worthlessness of the drill-sergeant regime was proved by bitter experience. Those administrative fetters which had for more ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... impossible, I told myself, that I had met the man before. His remarkable and uncommon cast of features had no niche in my recollection, and yet I knew that in some crucial moment I had looked into ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... shaped all his insolent and yet skilful mixture of threats and promises so as to demonstrate the vanity of trust in Egypt or in Jehovah, or in any but 'the great king.' Isaiah had been labouring to lift his countrymen to the height of reliance on Jehovah alone, and now the crucial test of the truth of his contention had come. On the one hand were Sennacherib and his host, flushed with victory, and sure of crushing this puny kinglet Hezekiah and his obstinate little city, perched on its ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... we reach a crucial point, though it has usually been overlooked, in the lives of boys and girls, more especially those whose heredity may have been a little tainted or their upbringing a little twisted. For it is here that the transformation of energy and the resulting possibilities of conflict ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... 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 ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... systematized into the theory of reflex actions, and with which I have attempted to associate this act of reflex vision. My sixth experiment, however, in the communication referred to, appears to me to be a crucial one, proving the correctness of my explanation, and I am not aware that ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... he 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
... and with their work illuminated always by the highest intelligence, they moved surely from stage to stage; and at last, when they fitted a motor to their machine, such was their knowledge of the air, and of the control of their craft when in flight, that they were able to make this crucial step, from a glider to a machine driven by power, without any breakage of their ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... abound; and I noticed that numerous insects had been entrapped by the leaves. I carried home some plants, and on giving them insects saw the movements of the tentacles, and this made me think it probable that the insects were caught for some special purpose. Fortunately a crucial test occurred to me, that of placing a large number of leaves in various nitrogenous and non-nitrogenous fluids of equal density; and as soon as I found that the former alone excited energetic movements, it was obvious that here was a fine ...
— The Autobiography of Charles Darwin - From The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin • Charles Darwin
... was a question of history or of cosmogony, or whether he was handling a test-tube or a blow-pipe; what he was about I did not feel sure; but I took it for granted that it was some crucial question or other he was at work on, some point bearing on the thought of the time. For the Master, I have observed, is pretty sagacious in striking for the points where his work will be like to tell. We all know that class of scientific laborers to whom all facts ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... on the instant that he was making a grave mistake. This reference to her past as a mistress was crucial. On the instant she straightened up, and her eyes filled with a great pain. "So that's the way you talk to me, is it?" she asked. "I knew it! I knew it! ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... this chapter, which describes the crucial scene between Mathilda and her father, is the result of much revision from F of F—A. Some of the revisions are in S-R fr. In general the text of Mathilda is improved in style. Mary adds concrete, specific words and phrases; e.g., at the end of the first paragraph of Mathilda's speech, ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... worry. Roused in the earliest dawn by McNeil, they both crawled down to the water's edge and struggled to bind stubbornly resisting saplings together with cords twisted from bark. They reinforced them at crucial points with some strings torn from their kilts, and strips of rabbit hide saved from their kills of the past few days. They worked with hunger gnawing at them, having no time now to hunt. When the sun was well westward they had a clumsy craft which floated sluggishly. ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... when the victorious rangers had returned to Plattsburg it was a town of glad, thankful hearts, and human love ran strong. The thrilling stories of the day were told, the crucial moment, the providential way in which at every hopeless pass, some easy, natural miracle took place to fight their battle and back their country's cause. The harrying of the flying rear-guard, the ambuscade over the hill, the ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... small amount of water upon roasts gives better control by checking the roast at the proper point—the crucial time of its greatest heat; also, it swells and brightens the coffee, and tends to close the outer pores. While the addition of water is open to abuse, few roasters have soaked their coffees enough to offset the natural shrinkage as much as three or four ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... this were the crucial moment in a campaign and you saw that votes for a suffrage amendment were in the balance, you would give of the best that you have, with all the fervency of your heart. But campaigns are not won in a day. They are won ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Look Forward and Back at the Woman's Journal, the Organ of the - Woman's Movement • Agnes E. Ryan
... year, which many an intending missionary before Patteson has found a crucial test which he has not taken into his calculations. The soreness of the wrench from home is still fresh, and there is no settled or regular work to occupy the mind, while the hardships are exactly of the kind that have not been anticipated, ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as I heard it last time I played at Trent Bridge; it was never in the papers, I believe," said Raffles gravely. "You may remember the tremendous excitement over the Test Matches out in Australia at the time: it seems that the result of the crucial game was expected on the condemned man's last day on earth, and he couldn't rest until he knew it. We pulled it off, if you recollect, and he said it ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... my ancient scientific reading, and I used it now to control some slight emotional weakness, and to explain it to myself. Half-starved, nay more than half-starved, as I was, such weakness was likely; I was amenable to suggestion. I asked myself a dozen crucial questions, and was bitterly amused to know how the preacher would evade answering them if put to him. Such a creature could not succeed, as all great teachers have done, in subduing the intellect by the force of his own ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... 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 ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... them answered. A queer, speculative look crept into Moira's eyes and Cumshaw paled a little beneath his tan. It was the crucial moment of the expedition, and the mere adoption of my suggestion meant that in the next few minutes we would be face to face with either failure or success—none of us knew which. While we were in ignorance there was ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... book, made substantially the same answer. "Mrs. Henderson's work is very interesting, but at my time of life it is not advisable to change life-long habits. I eat flesh moderately, and never drink much wine." They both seemed to overlook the crucial problem as to whether or not animal food contains hurtful poison. If it does, it should not be eaten at all. We never hear of sensible people taking arsenic, strychnine, or other poisons, in moderation, but many foolish women, I believe, take arsenic to pale their complexions, while ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... him, than to lob short and give him confidence by an easy kill. The value of a lob is mainly one of upsetting your opponent, and its effects are very apparent if you unexpectedly bring off one at the crucial period of ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... yet she did it—was, in a manner, surprised into doing it. For the young woman who has not loved, it is easy to doubt the existence of the seventh Heaven, or at least to reckon without its possibilities. At the very crucial moment the clear-sighted inner self was assuring her that this cold-eyed young man, who walked in the paths of righteousness because he found them easier and pleasanter than the way of the transgressor, was at best only a mildly exciting apotheosis of the ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... of calling them was soon suspended, and never has been renewed. The only public office of consequence held by them was bestowed by the Republicans but a year or two ago, when Miss Reel was made State Superintendent of Schools. In our late crucial election, Wyoming and its woman suffrage gave their voices for Populism and Free Coinage. The scale hung in the balance. Why, if woman is a greater political power for good than man, did she not turn it for the principles which the State had held were best? ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... normal consciousness from its seat and permit the subliminal self to take control. In other words, it practically put him back in the identical mental mood of the afternoon of January 9th, and that was the crucial point of the ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... important item of diocesan and divine service, "Hymns, Ancient and Modern," be it well known, has stood the crucial test of a number of years; while its mechanical characteristics have been demonstrated all the way along the metronome number of decades it has served to mollify and assuage the griefs and passions, and ...
— Original Letters and Biographic Epitomes • J. Atwood.Slater
... comprehensive estimate of the mise-en-scene. Enough has been said, we believe, in our discussion of the criticism and acting and in our analysis of his dramatic values, to show that the aberrations of Plautus' commentators have been due to their failure to reach the crucial point: the absolute license with which his plays were acted and intended to be acted is at once the explanation of their absurdities and deficiencies. This was true in a far less degree of Terence, who dealt in plots more stataria and less motoria.[190] Though using the same store of models, ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... cowardly. And don't mind our evading the subject—we always do that on principle, but please don't be scared, or at least don't show it, whatever you may feel. If there is one thing a woman dislikes more than another it is a man who shows cowardice at the crucial point ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... the least detail is of importance and that we are nearly attaining our object. But we must hurry. This is a crucial moment." ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... 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; ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... wonder why I am moved to say all this? It is, I think, because of your saying "the article sent to St. Nicholas was the best you would be able to do for years to come" and I saw you were going to make it a crucial test of your ability. That is, forgive me, nothing but nonsense. Whatever the article may be, you may write one infinitely superior to it next week or month. Just in proportion as you feel more deeply, or notice more ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... fortitude to his aid; he fell back upon his clear conscience and comported himself with dignity, showing all reasonable courtesy to his successor and only perhaps seeming a little deficient in filial piety in presenting so striking a contrast to the shameful conduct of his father in a like crucial hour. His retirement brought to a close a list of Presidents who deserved to be called statesmen in the highest sense of that term, honorable men, pure patriots, and, with perhaps one exception, all of the first order of ability in public affairs. It is necessary to come far ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... nudging him. It was Johnson's finger diverted his eyes to the crucial place in the prayer-book to ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... McPherson for a week's absence, and meant in the evening to explain to Brace and Lynda the reason for his journey. He was going to start South on the morrow, whether a letter came or not. He had steeled himself for the crucial hour with his friends; had already, in his imagination, bidden farewell to the relations that had held them close through the past years. He believed, because he was capable of paying this heavy price for his love, that no further proof would ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... asked. They had only tried to get even—for the sake of their honour. All this showed a most unsatisfactory spirit from the Government point of view, and it was evident that the brigade could not leave the valley until the tribesmen adopted a more submissive attitude. The matter reverted to the crucial point. Would they give up their rifles or not? To this they replied evasively, that they would consult their fellow-tribesmen and return an answer on the next day. This practically amounted to a refusal, and as no reply was received on the 27th, the ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... things in this good world. Lemon, in fact, has always disagreed with me, as Professor Allen or Sir Robert Sawyer will be able to assure you; so your valuable experiment can be put, in my case, to a crucial test.—Very faithfully yours, ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... mistake might be fatal. After a time the 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 their ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... replied Drillford. "I should say that whatever he is now, he has been a gentleman. He was extremely nervous and so on while we were questioning him about the ring, but when it came to the crucial point, and I charged him and warned him, he turned strangely cool. I'll tell you what he said, in his exact words. 'I'm absolutely innocent of that!' he said. 'But I can see that I've placed myself in a very strange position.' And after that he would say no more—he hasn't ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... emerged from one of those crucial experiences of life, which, more than the turning of the earth upon its axis, serve to age a human being. For perhaps the first time in the brief span of his remembrance, he had scrutinized himself in the pitiless light of an intelligence higher than his own everyday consciousness; ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... to its inadequacy that Mr. Gosse's treatment of Browne as an artist in language is the least satisfactory part of his book: for it is difficult not to think that upon this crucial point Mr. Gosse has for once been deserted by his sympathy and his acumen. In spite of what appears to be a genuine delight in Browne's most splendid and characteristic passages, Mr. Gosse cannot help protesting somewhat acrimoniously against that ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... 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
... 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 to educate the Indians, or teach them ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... religions of the Rose and Grape Have bound us in to their sad Paradise: We dream in crucial symbols, nor escape The cypress-garden where the slain god lies. Daughters of lamentation round the Cross Where Beauty suffers garlanded with thorn, Remembrancers through all the Night of Loss, We bear the spikenard of the ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... On these crucial points the evidence at our disposal is far from complete, and we can do little more than offer suggestions towards the ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... The crucial test was essayed on August 5th, 1908. Accompanied by twelve observers the vessel ascended and travelled without incident for eight hours. Then a slight mishap demanded attention, but was speedily repaired, and was ignored officially as ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... family and friends. And the supreme tragedy of the hour for them was not her approaching dissolution, but it was that one who had testified so often and so victoriously of her faith had lost it at the crucial moment. ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... the nerves, when you are suffering the agonies of snow-blindness, sore feet, and the pangs of hunger, you are not, to put it mildly, at your best as a member of the social order. They sometimes said things they were ashamed to remember, but both men grew carefuller at crucial moments, and the talkative one more silent ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... the 7th of March speech, he was inconsistent with his past, such inconsistency must appear, if at all, in his general tone in regard to slavery, in his views as to the policy of compromise, and in his attitude toward the extension of slavery, the really crucial question ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... place, was known as the best goal-keeper on record, a reputation which no boy could have gained without promptness and courage. He was also one of the best swimmers in the school, his weakness of ankle being no drawback here, and in his last half passed the crucial test of that day, by swimming from Swift's (the bathing-place of the sixth) to the mill on the Leicester road, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... a sense of routine which kept me from going mad. I had drilled myself in preparation for the crucial moment, and blind training saved me. Recognizing the bubbling evil as no substance reachable by matter or material chemistry, and therefore ignoring the flame-thrower which loomed on my left, I threw on the current of the Crookes tube apparatus, ...
— The Shunned House • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... the precedent of the simple Action Film tiny wax models of the figures, toned and costumed to the heart's delight, would tell the high points of the story. Let them represent, perhaps, seven crucial situations from the proposed photoplay. Let them be designed as uniquely in their dresses as are the Russian dancers' dresses, by Leon Bakst. Then to alternate with these, seven little paintings of ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... 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
... impromptu solo with trills and embellishments, was taken in hand by the enraptured organist who had played there for thirty years, and developed into a great composer. Omitting a mass of other absurdities scattered through the book, I will criticise this crucial point. There are no organs or organists in Russia; there are no pews, or aisles, or galleries for the choir, and there are never any trills or embellishments in the church music. A boy could skate to church in New York more readily than in ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... irony, as when commending Claudius for "clemency," in allowing a man,—whom he has sentenced to execution, to choose his own mode of death. His close, dry way, too, of saying things savours of harshness, and differs widely from the Greek severeness of manner observable in Tacitus. The crucial test is to be found in a few trifling matters of style. So far from displaying the same care as Tacitus to avoid a discordant jingle of three like endings, he will write bad Latin to get at the intolerable recurrence. Rather than have a similar ending to three words Tacitus will ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... often a failure to distinguish between the possible inheritance of a particular modification, and the possible inheritance of indirect results of that modification, or of changes correlated with it. This is a nice but crucial point on which most popular writers are confused. Let us examine it through a hypothetical case. A woman, not herself strong, bears a child that is weak. The woman then goes in for athletics, in order better ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... '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 a piece as this, it will be seen, makes the highest ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... should resist invasion, would be protected, and this word they thought must be kept at all hazards. It made no difference that, aside from her great navy, England was utterly unprepared for the war. Like the decision which Belgium had had to make the day before, this was a crucial step for the British to take, but to their everlasting honor they did not hesitate. In the case of Germany's declaration of war the German laws say that no war can be declared by the Kaiser alone unless it is a defensive war. Therefore, as one American ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet
... every face looked encouragement; but at the crucial moment he always held back. So much was at stake, and it was so essential that his first choice should be decisive. He dreaded stupidity, timidity, intolerance. The imaginative eye, the furrowed brow, were what he sought. He must reveal himself ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... This was always the crucial moment with my Klootchman, when her voice lowers, and she asks if you know things. You must be diplomatic, and never question her in turn. If you do her lips will close ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... only George's wife to her, while George was flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone, soul of her soul. Though her choice was not deliberate, though it was unconscious and instinctive—nevertheless, she had chosen. At the crucial moment instinct had risen superior to reason, and she had chosen, not with her judgment, but with every quivering nerve and fibre of her being. Gabriella was right, but George was her son; and had it been possible to secure George's happiness by sacrificing the right ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... from either cathead to within a couple of feet of the water. A lookout was stationed on the bowsprit end, another in the crosstrees; and the whole ship's company crowded forward, scouting for enemies or friends. It was now the crucial moment of our enterprise; we were now risking liberty and credit; and that for a sum so small to a man in my bankrupt situation, that I could have laughed aloud in bitterness. But the piece had been arranged, and we must play ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... all theories of myth or parable in the scriptural account, and accept the record as it stands; and with equal assurance may we affirm that the temptations were real, and that the trials to which our Lord was put constituted an actual and crucial test. To believe otherwise, one must regard the scriptures as ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... the evidence before the magistrates with great care, and I have just talked over the crucial points with Aldous, who followed everything to-day, as you know, and seems to have taken special note of Mr. ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... motive than that of establishing its authenticity. If this man had procured the death of him whose portrait he studied thus, his power over himself was indeed wonderful. But—was not the experiment a crucial one for him? To betray his trouble would be to avow all? How ardently I longed to place my hand upon his heart at that moment ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... from the front line to the middle line, but from the middle line itself to the base line. Leibniz, for example, writes with perfect seriousness and decency about the Christian scheme of redemption, but it hardly looks like being for him a crucial deliverance from perdition. It is not the intervention of Mercy, by which alone He possesses himself of [10] us: it is one of the ways in which supreme Benevolence carries out a cosmic policy; and God's ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... upon the campaign in North America. No wonder the President accepted Castlereagh's offer with alacrity. To the three commissioners sent to Russia, he added Henry Clay and Jonathan Russell and bade them Godspeed while he nerved himself to meet the crucial year ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... species must be chiefly considered, as they have had time to be modified by the conditions. If you can give me the facts, or your general impression from your study of these floras, I shall be much obliged. I see, of course, many other objections to Geddes's theory, but this seems to offer a crucial test.—Believe me yours ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... rebated cross, gammadion, fylfot, saltire, swastika, cross bottony. Associated Words: crucify, crucifixion, crucifier, cruciform, crucial, cruciate, crucigerous, crucifer, vexillum, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... latest example I have selected, it is a crucial one. The Letters of Malachi Malagrowther come from a man who is not often rated high as a political thinker, even by those who sympathise with his political views. But here as elsewhere the politician, no less than the ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... the crucial part of the whole party was the eats and he lingered near them like a faithful sentinel. The artistic quality of these saved them from devastation. Those pyramids of luscious beauty could not be denied by human hands without showing the indubitable signs of vandalism. ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... his greatest crisis of responsibility, and his face puckered up as he glanced at his men and grasped the fact that they were looking to him to lead. They were ready enough to obey his orders, but not to give him the advice which he needed at such a crucial time. ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... was grave enough, but it brought a good hope that the crucial moment might be postponed until many of the men would be too far gone in liquor to take any active part. Lidgerwood took the precautions made advisable by Tryon's threat to steal an engine, sending word to Benson to double his guards on the locomotives in the yard, and to Dawson to block the ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... 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, ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... 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
... Mr. Hannaway Wells put in, with a very non-committal air, "will probably be America. She will bring her full strength into the struggle just at the crucial moment. She will probably do what we farther north have as yet failed to do: she will pierce the line and place the German armies in ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... And he could recall what Sir James had not seen—the strangeness of Alicia's manner, and the peremptoriness with which she had endeavored to carry him home with her. Had she—after hearing the story—tried to interrupt or postpone the crucial scene with Diana? That seemed to him the probable explanation, and the idea roused in him a hot and impotent anger. What business ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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, ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... 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
... of the words and a sudden movement from Hilton woke her to alarm. David had turned to the window, and she felt that he had heard and understood. The silence pressed on her like a dead weight. For Hilton, this was the crucial moment of his ordeal. He had understood only too clearly, and this second proof of the harm a petty sin could radiate struck through him the same fiery repulsion which had stung him to revolt when he quitted Marston's rooms. ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... have been but brief and such a step would have been equivalent to abandoning the political arena. Only a very strong arm could save him, and with consummate insight he may have appreciated the Tokugawa chief's unreadiness to precipitate a crucial struggle ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... station which the totality of its experiences through many lives entitles it. There is but one law, but one method that abides. It is the spiritual law of evolution; everyone is held by it; all who seem exempt today from its influence upon their lives, have already passed the crucial tests, or are traveling forward ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... inciting "Ulster" to bloodshed in the next. This is not hypocrisy, it is genius. It is also, by the way, the genesis of the Irish Question. If anyone is disposed to underrate the mad passions of which race hatred can slip the leash, let him recall the crucial examples which we have had in our own time. We have in our own time seen Great Britain inflamed by two frenzies—against France, and against the Boer Republics. In the history of public opinion there are no two chapters more discreditable. In the days of Fashoda ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... fling them into the scale. The hitherto timorous light troops and armor bearers rush up to do what they can. Individual bravery and valor count now to the uttermost. Little by little the contest turns against one side or the other. The crucial moment comes. The losing party begins to fear itself about to be surrounded. Vain are the last exhortations of the officers to rally them. "Every man for himself!" rings the cry; and with one mad impulse the defeated hoplites rush off the field in a rout. Since they ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... have gone through a crisis as Paul did, been convicted of sin in some striking manner, and have descended into the depths of humiliation and despair, and then, when all seemed lost, have heard the voice of forgiveness and acceptance and felt indeed that you were now a child of God. This crucial experience the candidate for church membership was called on to relate before the elders of the church, and if the story rang true, he or she was in due time enrolled in the company of the elect few. No doubt about its being a real ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... positively reels before the story that is here revealed; we, who are feebly accustomed to regard the course of recorded history as the crucial and critical period of the life of the world, must be sobered by the reflection that the whole of the known history of the human race is not the thousandth, not the ten-thousandth part of the history of the planet. What does this vast and incredible panorama mean ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... they carried him home and nursed him; but his face grew so thin and his manner so morose that by and by all began to suspect that the true Rickard was gone and a changeling put in his place. Rickard, with all his accomplishments, was no musician; and so, in order to put the matter to a crucial test, a bagpipe was left in the room by the side of his bed. The trick succeeded. One hot summer's day, when all were supposed to be in the field making hay, some members of the family secreted in a clothes-press saw the bedroom door open a little way, and a ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... Osiris and Horus, Dr. Alan Gardiner (in a criticism of Sir James Frazer's "The Golden Bough: Adonis, Attis, Osiris; Studies in the History of Oriental Religion," Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. II, 1915, p. 122) insists upon the crucial fact that Osiris was primarily a king, and that "it is always as a dead king," "the role of the living king being invariably played by ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... about and not give way until the crucial moment. You must have had a bad time of it, my poor Mazeroux, for of course you agreed ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... "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. ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... 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
... its nature largely restricted to the use of symbolism and having at its disposal a vast store of images endlessly susceptible to influences which combine and alter their form, we reach the crucial question, what initiates the dream? This is by no means a mere purposeless thronging of visual images as occasionally happens in the period preceding sleep when faces, forms and scenes flit aimlessly before the mind's eye, some bare replicas of stimulations ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... 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 ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton |
