"Imminence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... knowledge of his actual condition. The poor old sovereign was apparently inspired by the full conviction that the prolongation of his life was of the utmost importance to the welfare of his people, and it may be fully believed that his unwillingness to admit the imminence of danger to his life came from an honest sort of public purpose. He gave his attention to the business of the State almost to the very last. All the time those who were immediately around the sinking sovereign knew quite well that the end was close at hand, ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... herself knew that it was at best the 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 ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... obliterated in a darkness that was the border of death. She realised how all her life she had been drawing nearer and nearer to this brink, where there was no beyond, from which one had to leap like Sappho into the unknown. The knowledge of the imminence of death was like a drug. Darkly, without thinking at all, she knew that she was near to death. She had travelled all her life along the line of fulfilment, and it was nearly concluded. She knew all she had to know, she had experienced ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... they bring him in guilty, that's another thing!" But, now that they had, he was beset by exactly the same old arguments and feelings, the same instincts of loyalty and protection towards Laurence and himself, intensified by the fearful imminence of the danger. And yet, here was this man about to be hung for a thing he had not done! Nothing could get over that! But then he was such a worthless vagabond, a ghoul who had robbed a dead body. If ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... ordained them for the people, taking the greatest care that they should be obeyed willingly and not through fear, being specially induced to adopt this course by the obstinate nature of the Jews, who would not have submitted to be ruled solely by constraint; and also by the imminence of war, for it is always better to inspire soldiers with a thirst for glory than to terrify them with threats; each man will then strive to distinguish himself by valour and courage, instead of merely trying to escape punishment. (55) Moses, therefore, by his virtue and ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza
... The imminence of the peril inspired the Uzcoques with unwonted courage and energy. Jurissa Caiduch himself, forgetting any cause of dislike he might have to Dansowich, joined heart and hand in the plans formed by the pirates for the deliverance of their leader. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... all 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 ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... destroying a great portion of the works of the besiegers, and under the command of the faithful Rumitalca hastened on eagerly in the hope of cutting off Valens, who had not yet quitted the suburb of Chalcedon. And they would have succeeded in their attempt if he had not learnt the imminence of his danger from some rumour, and eluded the enemy who were pressing on his track, by departing with all speed by a road lying between the lake Sunon and the winding course of the river Gallus. And through this circumstance Bithynia also fell ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... fright by the imminence of his peril, Tom raised his rifle, only to have it knocked from his hands by a swing of one of the ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... on a dead officer speak of the imminence of a military and economic hemming-in of Germany. They discuss the possibility of Germany finding herself after the war with "empty hands and pockets turned inside out." There is no longer any question of imposing the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... father's religious 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 Churches was as hateful to him as the sacerdotalism of the Jews ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... left the rider sitting motionless, and forgot him at once in his own preoccupation. He hastened upon his journey to the shops with the list, not in his pocket, but held firmly, like a plank in the imminence of shipwreck. The Nellies and Susies pervaded his mind, and he struggled with the presentiment that in a day or two he would recall some omitted and wretchedly important child. Quick hoof-beats made him look up, and Mr. McLean passed like a wind. The Governor absently watched him go, and ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... turned and sprang away with the agility of a wildcat; but if his snowshoes had turned and hindered him for one half second, he would have been struck down and trodden to a jelly in the smother of snow. Seeing the imminence of his peril, the other woodsmen threw up their rifles; but Uncle Adam, though extremely busy for the moment, saw them out of the corner of his eye as he ran, and angrily ordered them not to shoot. He knew what he was about, and ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... prevailed until she actually heard Sir Lucien's voice in the corridor. She had resolutely refrained from looking at the little jewelled casket, engraved "From Lucy to Rita," which lay in her make-up box upon the table. But the imminence of an ordeal which she dreaded intensely weakened her resolution. She swiftly dipped a little nail-file into the white powder which the box contained, and when Pyne came in she ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... had a wistful, hungry expression. The cheeks were hollow, and the skin seemed stretched a trifle tightly across the cheek-bones. His pale blue eyes were troubled. There was that in them that showed the haunting imminence of something terrible. Doubt was in them, and anxiety and foreboding. The thin lips were thinner than they were made to be, and they seemed to ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... great a stir in the world. Its unexpectedness enhanced its effect, even in the United States, for the public had not been sufficiently aware of the shaping of this international episode to be psychologically prepared for the imminence of war. Unlike most Anglo-American diplomacy, this had been a long-range negotiation, with notes exchanged between the home offices instead of personal conferences. People blenched at the thought of war; stocks fell; the attention ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... at nine o'clock that night. The imminence of his interview with Marie hung over him like a cloud. He ate a hurried supper, and calling up the Doctors' Club by telephone found Peter's address in the Siebensternstrasse. He had no idea, of course, that Marie was there. He wanted to see Peter to learn where Marie had ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... 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 ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... twisting his trunk round the top of the young tree, bent it down across the loins of the tiger, thus forcing the tortured animal to quit his hold, and affording Slingsby an opportunity of crawling beyond the reach of its teeth and claws. Forgetting my own fears in the imminence of my friend's danger, I only waited till I could get a shot at the tiger without running the risk of hurting Slingsby, and then fired both barrels at his head, and was lucky enough to wound it mortally. The other sportsmen coming ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... other members of the cat tribe. In fact, he had just been disturbed by coming across the unexpected telegram, wherein Simmonds assured his lordship that the rejuvenated car would arrive at the College Green Hotel, Bristol, on Friday evening. At the very moment that he realized the imminence of Cynthia's disappearance into the void it was doubly disconcerting to be hailed by a woman who knew his world so intimately that it would be folly to smile vacantly ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... representative institutions, under which law a kind of conscription was established for a while. Let me say at once that it met with the most intense opposition. The Abati were agriculturalists who loathed military service. From their childhood they had heard of the imminence of invasion, but no actual invasion had ever yet taken place. The Fung were always without, and they were always within, an inland isle, the wall of rock that they thought impassable being their sea which protected them ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... High Commissioner on this account. This arose at a much later period; and arose, not on the general question of policy, but on the question of the necessity of military precautions in view of the imminence of war. ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... a dismal and a dreadful sight, That desert in its cold, uncanny light; No soul but I alone to mark the fear And imminence of ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... 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 tender that ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... ones, by capable operative and administrative men inspired by the belief in a common theory of social order, will come about—peacefully and gradually as a process of change, or violently as a revolution—but inevitably as the outcome either of the imminence or else of the ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... now, slowly but steadily, in big heavy drops, and the darkest clouds were lowering, apparently right above her head; but the flying girl paid no attention to these evidences of the imminence of her storm. She held the Letter pressed close against her as if to protect it and made straight for Miss Asenath's ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... Pershing was quickly sent out to capture the offenders. Against the protests of President Carranza, American forces penetrated deeply into Mexico without effecting the object of the undertaking. This operation lasted until January, 1917, when the imminence of war with Germany led to the withdrawal of the American soldiers. Friendly relations were resumed with the Mexican government and the policy ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... 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 ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley |
