"Vital" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... McClurg: "No, he is far from the truth. Upon the vital, the essential point, he is fatally weak. Go back, erring brother—go back into the outer darkness; it is not for you to sit ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... are estimates from the Bureau of the Census based on statistics from population censuses, vital registration systems, or sample surveys pertaining to the recent past, and on assumptions ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... with prayers in passion flowing, Pygmalion embraced the stone, Till from the frozen marble glowing, The light of feeling o'er him shone, So did I clasp with young devotion Bright Nature to a poet's heart; Till breath and warmth and vital motion Seemed through the statue ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... to infanticide and twin-murder we can speak hopefully. It will doubtless take some time to develop in them the spirit of self- sacrifice to the extent of nursing the vital spark for the mere love of God and humanity among the body of the people. The ideals of those emerging from heathenism are almost necessarily low. What the foreigner does is all very well for the foreigner, but the force of habit or something more subtle evidently excuses the ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... the girl before him with new interest. Out of her chatter he had at last garnered one important fact. His mind, trained to seize upon the vital and instantly discard the inconsequential, clutched the bit of information, and turned it over. From the first Carroll had scouted the idea that the dead man's fiancee might have been responsible for his death; but still it was a line of investigation ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... did their work with their might, they exhausted their spiritual resources in sending out armies of ravens with hardly a dove among them, to find and secure a future still submerged in the waves of a friendly deluge. Nor was Hester's own faith in God so vital yet as to propagate itself by division in the minds she came in contact with. She could only be sorry for ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... truer word since you drawed the vital air, Spider Connolly!" nodded Mrs. Trapes, hands on hips and elbows at the "engage." "If Mr. Geoffrey stirs out this day, he's jest gotter trample over my ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... air no more was vital now, But did a mortal poison grow. The lungs, which used to fan the heart, Served only now to fire each part; What should refresh, increased the smart. And now their very breath, The chiefest sign of life, became the cause of death! SPRAT, ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... come and gone. All that now retrained for them was death—destruction, with all things living; and she looked forward to this, as a man watches for the dawn after a sleepless night. Marianne stood aside; she dimly perceived that something vital was going on, that something inevitable had happened which would admit of no interference. Gorgo, as she freed herself from Constantine's embrace, stood strangely solemn and unapproachable. To the simple matron she was an inscrutable riddle to which she could find no clue; but ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... but bracing. Keep the man in the cold water, and see what a poor, shivering mortal he would be; you might almost knock him down with a feather; and add more brandy to the man, and he becomes a lump." Heat and cold, in fact, both operate in the same manner, by exciting the vital powers into action, but to use either to excess as surely debilitates, disorders, and overpowers the system as an abuse of brandy would do. All things that cause action of course must act as stimuli, and whatever rouses the heart and nerves must be proportioned to the degree of power existing ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... other ingenious mental devices, like this of the ether, which seem to me only materialistic efforts to postpone or to dodge the real vital lessons to be read from natural phenomena,—efforts to push the real Cause back one step farther into the shadow,—a last desperate effort, in the face of the constantly accumulating evidence of modern knowledge that the great First Cause is far more ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price
... professional authorities on our side of Whitehall, especially in connection with the General Staff. The most urgently needed alteration to be sought after was the relieving of the First Sea Lord of a multitude of duties which were quite incompatible with his giving full attention to really vital questions in connection with employing the Royal Navy. For years past he had been a sort of Pooh Bah, holding a position in some respects analogous to that occupied by Lord Wolseley and Lord Roberts when they had been nominally "Commander-in-chief" ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... have been a dull house, as Lady Fitzgerald had intimated, had it not been that there was a common subject of such vital interest to the whole party. On that subject they were all intent, and on that subject they talked the whole evening, planning, preparing, and laying out schemes; devising how their money might be made to go furthest; discussing deep questions of political economy, and making, no ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... pliant—that life itself in her was still young. It was there in truth that her Christianity lay; while she imagined it to lie in the assent to certain historical and dogmatic statements. And so strong was this inward and vital faith—so strengthened in fact by mere living—that when she was faced with this second crisis in her life, brought actually to close grips with it, that faith, against all that might have been expected, carried ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... presented to us samples of the best English ever written. If you can find, up in the garret, a worn and frayed old Reader, take it down and turn its pages over. See if anything in these degenerate days compares in vital strength and beauty with the story of the boy that climbed the Natural Bridge, carving his steps in the soft limestone with his pocket knife. You cannot read it without a thrill. The same inspired ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... was the employment of the patients; its vital importance was forcibly felt from the first. Dr. Delarive, who inspected the Retreat in 1798, particularly comments upon this novel feature of a mad-house. He found that an experiment recently made, that of inducing the patients to cultivate the land, giving to each a task proportionate to his ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... hundreds of addresses in behalf of it, and preached many a discourse from my own pulpit. I have always held that every church is as much bound to have a temperance wheel in its machinery as to have a Sabbath school or a missionary organization. It is of vital importance that the young should be saved, and therefore I have urged temperance lessons in the Sunday school and the early adoption of a total abstinence pledge. The temperance reform movement made its greatest progress when churches and Sunday schools laid hold of it ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... blonde hair she possessed the shrewdness to preserve all the alert and youthful grace of those Parisian women who never grow old; who carry within themselves a surprising vital force, an indomitable power of resistance, and who remain for twenty years triumphant and indestructible, careful above all things of their bodies and ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... draught is made upon the nutrient principles of the blood, which must naturally create effects like those arising from the continued discharge of pus from a suppurating surface. In both cases the local disease, when extensive and of long duration, will necessarily occasion an exhaustion of the vital powers, by which that condition of the system ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... power: just one inlet—the Holy Spirit. He is power. He is in every one who opens his door to God. He eagerly enters every open door. He comes in by our invitation and consent. His presence within is the vital thing. ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... I continued. "Mme. d'Epernay is very ill. She was struck by one of those bullets that you fired through the door. Wait!" for he had started. "I think that she will live. The wound cannot have pierced a vital part. But we must be very gentle in moving her. You had better bring the sleigh here, and you and I will lift her into it. And then—I shall ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... nervous energy is expended unnecessarily while waiting. If we are obliged to wait for any length of time, it does not hurry the minutes or bring that for which we wait to keep nervously strained with impatience; and it does use vital force, and so helps greatly toward "Americanitis." The strain which comes from an hour's nervous waiting, when simply to let yourself alone and keep still would answer much better, is often equal to a day's labor. It must ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... stored in the colleges of the land. The teachers are the custodians of knowledge that makes life free and progressive. This book aims to make the college teacher effective in handing down this heritage of knowledge, rich and vital, that will develop in youth the power of right thinking and the courage of right living. Thus College Teaching carries out the ideal of service as expressed in the motto of the World Book Company, "Books that Apply the World's ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... for restocking such land as eventually appears above the waters with the animals most useful to man. Then, too, animals are essential to the life of the earth. Any agricultural chemist would tell you that. They play an indispensable part in the vital cycle of the soil. I must also take certain species of insects and birds. I'll telephone Professor Hergeschmitberger at Berlin to learn precisely what are the capitally important species ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... "liberty of prophesying" was centuries since eloquently vindicated for Englishmen; the liberty of investigating facts is still called in question, under one pretence or another, and to seek out the most vital facts of life is still in ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... upon so many beaches—even if they are but dimly aware of their lack—to find their annual plaything to be not a real annual; an annual thing, indeed, to them, for the arbitrary reason that they go down to it once a year, but not annual in the vital and natural sense of the seasons, not waxing and waning, not bearing, not turning that circle of the seasons whereof no one knows which is the highest point and the secret and the ultimate purpose, not recreated, not new, and not yielding to the child ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... experiences which, in turn, have been told them. In so far as one is interested or concerned in these communications, their matter becomes a part of one's own experience. Active connections with others are such an intimate and vital part of our own concerns that it is impossible to draw sharp lines, such as would enable us to say, "Here my experience ends; there yours begins." In so far as we are partners in common undertakings, the things which others communicate to us as the consequences of their particular ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... would find almost untouched, rough-drawn as it was by our fathers, hundreds, nay, thousands of years ago. Our intelligence, grown so bold and active, has not worked upon this figure, has added no single touch to it. Though we may no longer believe in the tortures of the damned, all the vital cells of the most skeptical among us are still steeped in the appalling mystery of the Hebrew Sheol, the pagan Hades, or the Christian Hell. Though it may no longer be lighted by very definite flames, the gulf still ...
— Death • Maurice Maeterlinck
... cared set her heart to pounding gratefully. She was half tempted to tell about that other, that greater trouble which had stolen in upon her peace of mind and robbed her of her girlhood, but she shrank from baring her wounds—above all, a wound so vital and ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... dine there. And the play was perfectly splendid. What a lot of others there are to see! I don't think we'll let the grass grow under our feet, Marty. And presently we'll have some very proper little dinner parties in this room, won't we? Interesting, vital people, who must all be good-looking and young. It will be a long time before I shall want to see anyone old again. Think what Alice Palgrave will say when she comes back! She'll underline every ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... proceeding is it competent for the Government of the United States to establish any distinction between its citizens founded on differences in religious beliefs. Any benefit or privilege conferred by law or treaty on one must be common to all, and we are not at liberty, on a question of such vital interest and plain constitutional duty, to consider whether the particular case is one in which substantial inconvenience or injustice might ensue. It is enough that an inequality would be sanctioned hostile to the institutions of the United States and inconsistent ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson
... than they knew themselves, was confident that they had ceased to place the watchers about them the moment that he had left them, and now he planned not only to have a little fun at their expense but to teach them a lesson in preparedness, which, by the way, is even a more vital issue in the jungle than in civilized places. That you and I exist today must be due to the preparedness of some shaggy anthropoid of the Oligocene. Of course the apes of Kerchak were always prepared, after their own ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... life, vitality, viability; animation; vital spark, vital flame, soul, spirit. respiration, wind; breath of life, breath of one's nostrils; oxygen, air. [devices to sustain respiration] respirator, artificial respirator, heart and lung machine, iron lung; medical devices &c 662. lifeblood; Archeus^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... fluttering within her, like the flicker of a compass needle when it quivers to the north. If he entered the same room as herself, she was instantly aware of it, even though she might not chance to be looking in his direction at the moment. Indeed, her consciousness of him was so acute, so vital, that she sometimes wondered how it was possible that one person could mean so much to another and yet himself feel no reciprocal interest. And that he did feel none, his unvarying indifference of manner had at ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... technical skill the photographer starts with a "vital idea," he may like the painter convey with his photograph "the moving thrill" which is the final test ...
— Pictorial Photography in America 1922 • Pictorial Photographers of America
... of most of you are the vital facts concerning this man. You know the type of man he was, you have instances of his terrible ruthlessness, you know that he was a blot upon God's earth, a vicious wicked ego, seeking the gratification of that strange blood-lust and pain-lust, which ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... had "supposed" that this representation would have controlled the legislation of the government, and carried against the North every question vital to its interests, would Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, Elbridge Gerry, William Livingston, John Langdon, and Rufus King have been such madmen, as to sign the constitution, and the Northern States such suicides as to ratify it? Every self-preserving instinct ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... circuit connected with the wrists and lower legs of the human body, so that if by accident an active circuit is grounded by the hands and body of the workman wearing it, most of the current will pass through the wire conductors, thus avoiding the vital organs ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... Necessity," (1) he is compelled to add, "the second, or human life, from which Free-will and Self-consciousness emerge." He thus arrives at the union of mind and matter; but still a something is wanted,—some key to the marvels which neither of these conditions of vital being suffices to explain. And at last the grand self-completing Thinker attains to the Third Life of Man ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... era for the commonalty of Scotland. Even the unfavourable description so often quoted of Eneas Silvius, reports the common people as having "abundance of flesh and fish," no small ingredient of wellbeing, and records rather a complete absence of luxuries than that want which reduces the vital strength of a nation. The same authority tells of exportations of "hides, wool, salt fish, and pearls," the latter a curious item, although there were as yet no manufactures, and even such necessaries as horse-shoes and every kind of ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... very well put," said Quinny with a generous wave of his hand. "Why is the Three Musketeers a basic theme? Simply the interpretation of comradeship, the emotion one man feels for another, vital because it is the one peculiarly masculine emotion. Look at Du Maurier and Trilby, Kipling in Soldiers Three—simply the ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... slight, so airy was the touch, that it might have been only the throb of his own pulses, all consciously vital about the wonderful woman-hand that rested in his. If he had claimed it, she might easily have denied it, so ethereal and uncertain was it. Yet he believed in it. He never dreamed that she was exercising her skill upon him. What ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... Divel, to impregnate the Air about us, with such Malignant Salts, as meeting with the Salt of our Microcosm, shall immediately cast us into that Fermentation and Putrefaction, which will utterly dissolve All the Vital Tyes within us; Ev'n as an Aqua Fortis, made with a conjunction of Nitre and Vitriol, Corrodes what it Siezes upon. And when the Divel has raised those Arsenical Fumes, which become Venomous. Quivers full of Terrible Arrows, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... distant. Look at the newest countries. What are their great focal points? Every one of them ports. Melbourne and Sydney; Rio, Buenos Ayres, and Valparaiso; Cape Town, San Francisco, Bombay, Calcutta, Yokohama. Chicago itself, the most vital and the quickest grower among modern towns, owes half its importance to the fact that there water-carriage down the Great Lakes begins; though it owes the other half, I admit, to the converse fact that all the great ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... Thackeray! have made Pera and Scutari, the Bazaars and Baths, the Seraglio and the Golden Horn, as familiar to our ears as Cornhill and Wall street. Besides, Constantinople is not the true Orient, which is to be found rather in Cairo, in Aleppo, and brightest and most vital, in Damascus. Here, we tread European soil; the Franks are fast crowding out the followers of the Prophet, and Stamboul itself, were its mosques and Seraglio removed, would differ little in outward appearance from a third-rate Italian town. The ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... your word," laughed Hanson, and swung up the path, a big, dominant presence, as vital as the morning. "Howdy," he shook hands with Pearl and then turned to the boy, but Hugh drew quickly away from that extended hand, quite as if he ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... unoccupied, Peter proposed at once to continue the march. Harold suggested to him that it would be better to wait until morning, as from their lofty position they would be able to overlook the whole of the enemy's lines of defense and might obtain information of vital importance to the general. Peter saw the advantage of the suggestion. Two of the Indians were placed on watch, and the rest of the party lay down to sleep. At daybreak they saw that the delay had been fully justified, for they had now ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... British Colonies, one great source of our moral strength was, the singleness of our object, and our not allowing any other subject, however important or unexceptionable, to be mixed up with it; that though the aid of our female coadjutors had been of vital importance to the success of the anti-slavery enterprize, yet that their exertions had been uniformly directed by separate committees of their own sex, and that the abolitionists of Europe had no doubt that their united influence was most powerful in this mode of action: that the ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... last, "I have been doing you an injustice. I have come to the conclusion that you are not keeping me in ignorance of the vital facts connected with our visit to America, willfully. At the present moment you know just a little more, but a very ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... she saw her reasons idly spent, And could not move him from his fix'd intent, She flew to rage; for now the snake possess'd Her vital parts, and poison'd all her breast; She raves, she runs with a distracted pace, And fills with horrid howls the public place. And, as young striplings whip the top for sport, On the smooth pavement of an empty court; The ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... directress was coming down upon her spirit, not like rain on the mown grass, but like frost on the spring flowers. The impossibility of piercing the Christian pharisee holding the traditions of the elders, in any vital part—so pachydermatous is he to any spiritual argument—is a sore trial to the old Adam still unslain in lovers of the truth. At the same time nothing gives patience better opportunity for her perfect work. And it is well they cannot be ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... Angers-Fragment, which, for the very reason mentioned, must not be taken as the final form of the text, nor therefore, despite its antiquity, as conclusive against the First Edition where the two differ, is to confirm, so far as it goes, the editing of Ascensius and Pederson. There are no vital differences, and the care of the first editors, as well as the authority of their source, is ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... So vital is the appreciation of this principle to an Empire constituted like our own, that it is worth while to set out the resolution of the Newfoundland Legislature ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... looked like a drinking-horn from his breast and place it upon the floor; and then it seemed to the boy that he untied a thong that was about one of the kid's legs, and the next moment it appeared as if the animal had begun to bleed, its vital juice trickling softly into the horn cup, for it was his first acquaintance with a ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... cross-roads, and in the open fields, blocks of stone hewn into pillars, isolated boulders, or natural rocks, sometimes of meteoric origin, which were recognised by certain mysterious marks to be the house of the god, the Betyli or Beth-els in which he enclosed a part of his intelligence and vital force. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... estimate from the US Bureau of the Census based on statistics from population censuses, vital statistics registration systems, or sample surveys pertaining to the recent past and on assumptions about future trends. The total population presents one overall measure of the potential impact of the country on the world and within its ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... to the mind, but so soon as it takes a distinctive form it becomes either pleasing or displeasing, and is either cast away and forgotten, or retained arid expanded by the Affections, whose office it is to cause Thought to become a vital reality, ready to show itself in the external life so soon as a fitting occasion calls for ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... points so vital as they seem? Let us consider them, and see. My client has denied that he dropped anything into his sister's casket, much less the ring missing from that sister's finger. Dare you, then, convict ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... vital manner," mused the Cardinal, with a feeling of strange personal contrition, as though he were more to blame than any of his compeers—"We have failed to follow the Master's teaching in its true perfection. We have planted in ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... sphere of the intellectuo-constructive imagination. To discover its laws; the cycles in which events return, with the reasons of their return, recognizing them notwithstanding metamorphosis; to perceive the vital motions of this spiritual body of mankind; to learn from its facts the rule of God; to construct from a succession of broken indications a whole accordant with human nature; to approach a scheme of the forces at work, the passions overwhelming or upheaving, the aspirations securely upraising, ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... a mighty beast which is called an elephant. Theodoric, in spite of Fasold's dissuading words, persisted in attacking it, but failed, even with the good sword Ecke-sax, to reach any vital part. Then was he in great danger; nor would the help which Fasold loyally rendered have availed him much, for the huge beast was trampling him under its great forefeet; but the faithful steed Falke again ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... that 'they may all be one,' and also 'that they also may be in us' (Rev. Ver.). And their unity is no mere matter of formal external organisation nor of unanimity of creed, or the like, but it is a deep, vital unity. The pattern of it is the unity of the Father and the Son, and the power that brings it about is the abiding of all believers 'in us.' The result of such a manifestation in the world of a multitude of men, in all of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... process of the forest industry by heart now. It fascinated her. Oh, yes. It was picturesque, it was real, vital. The men on the river driving down to the booms had stirred her greatest admiration. These supermen with their muscles of iron, with the hearts of lions, and the tongues and habits of beasts of the forest. But they were men, wonderful men for all their savage crudity. So, ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... all the vital functions are performed as in the waking state. She is fed with milk, broth and wine, which is given her in a spoon. Her mouth even sometimes opens of itself at the contact of the spoon, and she swallows without the slightest ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... small town some twelve miles from Soroa. "Bring your children," so the letter ran, "I should so love to see them, and stay the night." Liso was greatly annoyed. She had just arranged a meeting with one of her numerous lovers, and this invitation upset everything. However, as it was of vital importance to her to keep in with her aunt, she at once decided to put off her previous engagement and take her children to see their ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... would be a test of the seriousness of his feeling for the other woman: she knew he was going to Clara for something vital, not as a man goes for pleasure to a prostitute, if he told ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... study everything that surrounds, alters, and determines him, for it is at this point that a man's environments and relationships most influence him. As Grohmann said, half a century ago, "If you could find an elixir, which could cause the vital organs to work otherwise, if you could alter the somatic functions of the body, you would be the master of the will.'' Therefore it is never superfluous to study the individual's environmental conditions, surroundings, all his outer ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... sleep, when the brain is inactive, ordinary impressions made upon the skin are unobserved. Fear and grief diminish the impressibility of this tissue, while hope and joy increase it. The quantity and quality of the blood also influence sensation. If this vital fluid becomes impure, or its quantity is diminished, the sensibility of the skin will be impaired thereby. Whatever affects the general health affects the healthy action of this sense. It is also much affected by sudden changes ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... faith hath made shipwreck; but what is that, "The life I live in the flesh," &c. The import of it seems to be this, if not more,—while I have in me a soul animating my body, as the principle of all my vital and natural actions, I have Jesus Christ animating my soul, and by the impulse and communicate virtue and strength of an indwelling Christ, I am made to run the ways of his commandments, wherein I take so great delight, that I am found of no ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... by the great and awful name Of Love, not knowing what love meant. But swift As light floods darkened chamber, when one flings The window wide, so her unconscious soul Was flooded with the strange incoming thought— In that eternal moment—of true love, Love as a vital force within the soul, A strength, a power, an illuming light. And Sanpeur loved her! O immortal crown. She was not conscious of her love for him, Her love for his love ...
— Under King Constantine • Katrina Trask
... his speech to fail began. For from his feet up to his breast was come The cold of death, that had him overnome*. *overcome And yet moreover in his armes two The vital strength is lost, and all ago*. *gone Only the intellect, withoute more, That dwelled in his hearte sick and sore, Gan faile, when the hearte felte death; Dusked* his eyen two, and fail'd his breath. *grew dim But on his lady yet he cast his ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... really he was much consumed with curiosity, for he had seen, behind the driver of the wagon, a face outlined in the shade. He wondered how many "women-folk" the new mover had along, this being ever a vital question at that day. The tall man on the wagon seat turned his face slowly back toward ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... life, of the vital movements of our own time, upon the stage; and we shall get it by degrees. Sentimental melodrama, with its male puppet, who is hero or villain, its female puppet, who is angel or devil, may still continue to flourish among us; for it still satisfies the natural ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... which yields him the means of gratifying every wish; but for every wish thus gratified, the skin shrank somewhat, and at last vanished, having been wished entirely away. Life is a peau d'ane,[TN-74] for every vital act diminishes its force, and when all its force is gone, life is ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... what she had learned from him in those few minutes. He had gone on remorselessly, in his staccato manner, as if addressing a parade, which I knew so well, putting before her the dry yet vital facts of ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... change of attitude, practically involving a French war, is probably to be found in Henry's relations with Spain. It was of vital importance to him to get his dynasty recognised in an emphatic form by foreign Powers. In Spain under its very able rulers he saw the most valuable of allies, and during the first half of 1488 he had made it his primary concern to ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... treatment you have met with in America with all the feelings of friendship. Among your enemies you may depend upon it there are some of the worst kind of men. I cannot help entertaining a violent suspicion that they are the enemies of their country. I am sure that they cannot at present do a more vital injury to the great cause of America than by raising the popular jealousy and clamour against its earliest, most able, and persevering friends. This they are endeavouring to do not only with regard to you but others; and they are masters ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... fire, strength, and action. These attributes seemed to cling about him. There was something vital and compelling in his presence. Worn and spent and drawn as he was from the long ride, he thrilled Madeline with his potential youth and unused vitality and promise of things to be, red-blooded deeds, both of flesh and spirit. In him she ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... sustain the onslaught of an entire army. Would the people, that great revolutionary populace of the faubourgs of Paris, abandon their Representatives? Would they abandon themselves? Or, awakened and enlightened, would they at length arise? A question more and more vital, and which we ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... upon the purely Punchinello aspect of the human figure thus beheld, it had indirectly occurred to Bannadonna to devise some metallic agent, which should strike the hour with its mechanic hand, with even greater precision than the vital one. And, moreover, as the vital watchman on the roof, sallying from his retreat at the given periods, walked to the bell with uplifted mace, to smite it, Bannadonna had resolved that his invention should likewise possess ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... still eddies round its favourite object, and exercises as it were a perpetual tautology 75 of mind in thoughts and words which admit of no adequate substitutes. Like a fish in a globe of glass, it moves restlessly round and round the scanty circumference, which it cannot leave without losing its vital element. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... scientific culture is our demand. No man doubts that chess and the newspaper furnish exercise and growth; but we hold that exercise and growth without qualification are not our desire. We require that the growth shall be of a peculiar kind,—what we call scientific and symmetrical. This is vital. The education of chance would ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... He had been elected to the second place upon the ticket with Mr. Lincoln in 1864, and upon the death of the latter, succeeded to the Presidency. Radical differences with the majority in the Congress, upon questions vital and far-reaching, ultimately culminated in the presentation of articles of impeachment. Partisan feeling was at its height, and the excitement throughout the country intense. The trial was protracted for many weeks without jot or tittle of abatement in the public interest. The chief managers ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... enquired, 'How is it that fire (vital force) in combination with the earthly element (matter), becomes the corporeal tenement (of living creatures), and how doth the vital air (the breath of life) according to the nature of its seat (the muscles and nerves) excite to action ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the only sigh he ever allows to escape him is when he says, "Happy he to whom Heaven has given a piece of bread for which he is not bound to give thanks to any but Heaven itself." Add to all this his vital energy and mental activity, his restless invention and his sanguine temperament, and there will be reason enough to doubt whether his could have been a very unhappy life. He who could take Cervantes' distresses ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... have a way of making themselves felt by a reflex action on the inner nature," and with this axiom in view we feel that cultivation of the Delsartean Art of Expression becomes a vital part of our education to the end that all our emotions and all our tones may become "the outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual nature." This principle may be called the keynote of Delsarteanism, and Edmond Russell, that modern exponent thereof, claims that as these ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... "The Ring and the Book" is unique. Even Goethe's masterpiece had its forerunners, as in Marlowe's "Faustus," and its ambitious offspring, as in Bailey's "Festus." But is it a work of art? Here is the only vital question which ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... vivid and notable work. "The poetry of Robert Browning," says Pater, "is pre-eminently the poetry of situations." He selects a character, no matter how uninteresting in itself, and places it in some situation where its vital essence may become apparent, in some crisis of conflict or opportunity. The choice of good or evil is open to it, and in perhaps a single moment its fate will be decided. When a soul plays dice with the devil there is only a second in which to win ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... intimate, heart-to-heart dialogue carried on in a suitable setting, and with attendant action as briefly indicated; for the discovery awaits each one that speech, independent of the tradition of the stage, has the power of rendering old themes new and vital, as well as suggesting new themes and situations. Indeed, it is in the confidence that others will follow with "read-aloud" plays far more interesting and valuable than the few offered here that I am writing this ...
— Read-Aloud Plays • Horace Holley
... more than seven or eight shillings weekly. But these calculations fail to satisfy me. They leave unsolved the problem of those last seven or eight shillings, on the expenditure of which turns the really vital question which an inquiry like this ought to settle. How do the people make both ends meet? Are the seven shillings as a rule enough for so many purposes? or almost, but not quite enough? or nothing like ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... determination not to sink into paralyzed despair, often broke down when her husband was in town, but she never gave up trying to make it vital to her. ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... signed that of his brother. He had, also, constantly to discriminate between the information that he could publish without violation of confidence and that which he felt he was not at liberty to print. This gave him excellent experience; for the most vital of all essentials in the journalist is the ability unerringly to decide what to print and what to ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... this, born of the spiritual travail of years, what a life it always has for the heart that forms it! It tells not of a persuasion, but of a conviction; a disproof of skepticism through the gathered forces of the soul; a struggle, through epochs of doubt and dismay, into an attitude of positive vital faith. Its process is the only one that gives real right to ultimate peace. In comparison with the method and measure of such a conviction, what matters its specific form? Self-truth is the point,—the fact for starting, the line for guiding; and as for ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... to me of supreme moment. "Amid the fervid movement of society, with its wild theories and crude social reforms, with its righteous fury against oppression and its unconsidered notions of wider freedom and gladder life, it is of vital importance that morality should stand on a foundation unshakable; that so through all political and religious revolutions human life may grow purer and nobler, may rise upwards into settled freedom, and not sink downwards into anarchy. Only utility can afford us a sure basis, ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... a collection of abstruse formulas that you are learning just for the sake of practice. They are used every clear night on board ship, or should be, and are just as vital to know as time ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... posterity, of which each generation in its day is the trustee, then war is not justifiable only; it is imperative. In these days of glorified arbitration it cannot be affirmed too distinctly that bodies of men—nations—have convictions binding on their consciences, as well as interests which are vital in character; and that nations, no more than individuals, may surrender conscience to another's keeping. Still less may they rightfully pre-engage so to do. Nor is this conclusion invalidated by a triumph of the unjust in war. Subjugation to wrong is ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... at the mercy of the employer, but every other starving workman. On the other hand, so few workmen ever informed themselves concerning the employer's perplexities and dangers, they had no broad and vital interest in the business until they all became leagued together, as in co-operation. Then they shared one another's burdens and prosperity. It was not the one great fortune, but the many comfortable incomes. It was the fruit of the ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... since the President of the Republic announced it to Congress in his memorable message of April, 1896, received with general acclamation by the national representatives, and later by the whole country. The integrity of the nations of this continent is of vital interest to all, collectively, and not alone to the country immediately affected. Any attack on this integrity should constitute an offense in the eyes of the other nations of America. Accordingly, one of our great thinkers and statesmen has wisely said: "America for Americans ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... not a trace of the tenement working girl of a week and a day before. Here was beauty in bloom, fresh and alluring from head to narrow, well-booted feet. More than a hint of a fine color sense—that vital quality, if fashion, the conventional, is to be refined and individualized into style, the rare—more than a hint of color sense showed in the harmony of the pearl gray in the big feather, the pearl gray in the collar ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... the Nobility, in annual session at Petrograd, passes resolutions stating that "the vital interests of Russia require full possession of Constantinople, and both shores of the Bosporus and the Dardanelles and the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... where the two great rivers approach each other near Diarbekr to the head of the Persian Gulf. As Germany very well knows, it is intimately concerned with our safe tenure of India, and the hold the Germans hoped to gain over it, and have for ever lost, by their possession of the Bagdad Railway was vital to their dreams of world-conquest. Equally vital to England was it that Germany should never get it. But its importance to us as a land-route to India is by no means the only reason why an English sphere of influence is indicated here: it is the possibilities ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... Worn with effort and struggle—worn above all with hating. Delia looked at it with a sob in her throat. Surely, surely, the great passion, the great uplifting faith they had felt in common, was vital, was true! Only, somehow, after the large dreams and hopes of the early days, to come down to this perpetual campaign of petty law-breaking, and futile outrage, to these odious meetings and shrieking newspapers, was ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... delicate ears; who, to my thinking, comes before the great ones of society much as the son of Imlah came before the throned kings of Judah and Israel; and who speaks truth as deep, with a power as prophet-like and as vital—a mien as dauntless and as daring. Is the satirist of "Vanity Fair" admired in high places? I can not tell; but I think if some of those amongst whom he hurls the Greek-fire of his sarcasm, and over whom he flashes the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... thee. We have the greatest nourisher of thy health, the true opinion of the government of the world, in that thou believest that it is not subject to the events of chance, but to divine reason. Wherefore fear nothing; out of this little sparkle will be enkindled thy vital heat. But because it is not yet time to use more solid remedies, and it is manifest that the nature of minds is such that as often as they cast away true opinions they are possessed with false, out ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... wander, let him breathe The freshness of the valleys; let his blood Struggle with frosty air and winter snows; 175 And let the chartered wind that sweeps the heath Beat his grey locks against his withered face. Reverence the hope whose vital anxiousness Gives the last human interest to his heart. May never HOUSE, misnamed of INDUSTRY, 180 Make him a captive!—for that pent-up din, Those life-consuming sounds that clog the air, Be his the natural silence of old age! Let him be free of mountain solitudes; And have around him, whether ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... especially if connected with words and ideas, have as much effect on me as on most people. I cannot bear a voice that has no more life in it than a pianoforte or bugle-horn. There is in almost all the fine arts a something of soul and spirit, which, like the vital principle in man, defies the research of the most critical anatomist. You feel where it is not, yet you cannot describe what it is you want." Sir Joshua, or some other great painter, was looking at a picture on which much pains had ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... struggles to free herself from by the natural outlet of the skin, for this organ is fitted equally, to excrete and secrete. Fermented and spirituous liquors, strong tea and coffee should be avoided, for they stimulate and exhaust the vital organs, and interrupt the digestive functions, thereby producing irritation of the internal linings of the stomach, with which the skin sympathises. Water, on the other hand, is the most wholesome of all beverages, ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore
... have before described as tall, pale, and sad-eyed,—a moonlight style of person, wanting in all those elements of warm color and physical solidity which give the impression of a real vital human existence. The strongest affection she had ever known had been that which had been excited by the childish beauty and graces of Agnes, and she folded her in her arms and kissed her forehead with a warmth that had in it the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... faithfulness to his love may very well take the place of the Congressional medal which, unfortunately, was lost on the night the soldier was killed. Between the two, there is little doubt that the accolade of fame bestowed in the buffoon's simple melody is more vital and enduring than that accorded by special act of the Congress of the ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... him come to me. My immediate and pressing concern was to repair my canoe that I might get to camp, and I would squander neither movement nor eyesight till that was done. A few moments before it had seemed a vital matter to find what creatures they were that whispered and rustled past me in the grayness. Now ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... fragile now and weak, Was late the seat of vital power, But now, alas! he cannot speak, ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... has a life-history, like every other vital organization. It is gradually built up, increasing in complexity and strength and may continue to grow indefinitely, or may enter upon a period of decline, and may decay slowly or rapidly, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... burn! I burn!" She found that the fire had at last seized upon her vital parts, which made her still cry "I burn!" until death had put an end to her intolerable pains. The effect of that fire was so extraordinary, that in a few moments she was wholly reduced to ashes, as the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... much out of sympathy for the sufferer and his parents, perhaps, as on his personal account. The welfare of Jerry Boyle had become the most important thing in life to him, for his own future hinged on that as its most vital bearing. ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... shots from the blunderbusses of blunderheadedness might not have hit him in a vital place. But he had to stand against a trained and well-directed fire of arms of precision too. He had notoriously threatened the lost young man, and had, according to the showing of his own faithful friend and tutor who strove so hard for ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... filthy pen of mud a foot deep, and of odor rancid, had no terrors for her. With an arm round Glenn's shoulder she watched the rooting and squealing little pigs, and was amused and interested, as if they were far removed from the vital issue of the hour. But all the time as she looked and laughed, and encouraged Glenn to talk, there seemed to be a strange, solemn, oppressive knocking at her heart. Was it ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... interest for us only in their results. After the termination of the Crimean campaign, when Russia was compelled to sue for peace, the Treaty of Paris was concluded, and it contained stipulations of vital consequence to Moldo-Wallachia. ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... taken a period of Indian history of the most vital importance, and he has embroidered on the historical facts a story which of itself is deeply interesting. Young people assuredly will be delighted ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... times, and she showed the distress of her recent trials, in something like a loss of self-control. Her pretty head and slender figure, the flexile white hands clasped together in nervous strain to discuss these so vital matters, and, more than all, the departure from her habitual cool and self-possessed manner, was touching, and appealed powerfully to Jim. He walked up to her, as she stood ready to leave, and laid his hand lightly on ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... said Denman; "but I suppose it is a very vital reason for a woman. Yet, it's too bad. This boat is sure to be captured, and there may be gun fire. It's a bad place for you. But, Florrie—let me tell you. Did you see what came on board from ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... probably unheard of by the women and children. Under such circumstances the railway is everything. It is the first necessity of life, and gives the only hope of wealth. It is the backbone of existence from whence spring, and by which are protected, all the vital organs and functions of the community. It is the right arm of civilization for the people, and the discoverer of the fertility of the land. It is all in all to those people, and to those regions. It has supplied the wants of frontier life with all the substantial comfort of the cities, and ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... all the blanks. The town soon teemed with histories of Laura's origin and secret history, no two versions precisely alike, but all elaborate, exhaustive, mysterious and interesting, and all agreeing in one vital particular-to-wit, that there was a suspicious cloud about her birth, not to say a ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... for a long, hushed moment on the scene, on the now familiar room where so much of joy and grief had happened,—deserted, tranquil, but suddenly, in this new light of emptiness, realized to be how vital a part of the lives of those people who had made the play! It used to seem, indeed, as if the drama had not achieved full reality until the old kitchen had thus had its say, thus ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... work hard at their business and sciences with the view of escaping those questions of greatest import which every moment of loneliness or leisure presses upon them—the questions relating to the wherefore, the whence, and the whither of life. Curiously enough, our scholars never think of the most vital question of all—the wherefore of their work, their haste, and their painful ecstasies. Surely their object is not the earning of bread or the acquiring of posts of honour? No, certainly not. But ye take as much pains as the famishing and breadless; and, with that eagerness and ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... such things do no harm, I hasten, in one sense, at least, to agree. Far from it; they do good. They do good in the most vital matter of modern times; for they prove and print in huge letters the truth which our society must learn or perish. They prove that wealth in society as now constituted does not tend to get into the hands of the thrifty or the capable, but actually ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... that the boat was able to hold on and follow, and in a short time the creature paused and rose for air. Again the men bent to their oars, and the rope was hauled in until they came quite close to the fish. This time a harpoon was thrown, and a deep lance-thrust given which penetrated to the vital parts of its huge carcass, as was evidenced by the blood which it spouted, and the convulsive lashing of its ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... to Shakspeare, for the wonderful variety and vital force of his artistic power. I know no other mind he so nearly resembles. Like Shakspeare, he forces you to accept and to forgive a thousand excesses, and uses his own faults as musicians use discords, only to ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Wilcox's writings have been the inspiration of many young men and women. Her hopeful, practical, masterful views of life give the reader new courage in the very reading and are a wholesome spur to flagging effort. Words of truth so vital that they live in the reader's memory and cause him to think—to his own betterment and the lasting improvement of his own work in the world, in whatever line it lies—flow from this talented ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... of the Congress which affected her interests. Cavour did not let D'Azeglio know of the refusal; it was a case of the "tortuous ways of Count Cavour," of which the Prince Consort complained some years later. Cavour was scrupulous about the principles which he considered vital, but in dealing with men, and especially in dealing with his old colleague, he made more mental reservations than a severe moralist would allow. In the present instance the deception failed, for D'Azeglio, seized at the last moments with suspicions, insisted ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... as in the later conflicts with Holland, while England was still able to live on its own products, the Dutch were in the position in which we are now, for the command of the sea was vital to their daily life. Their whole wealth depended on their great fishing fleets in the North Sea; their Indiamen which brought the produce of the East to Northern Europe through the Straits of Dover; and the carrying trade, in which they were the carriers of the goods ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... man skilled in the sound medical practice that learns its lessons without books—bedside practice. His opinion declared that the child's vital power was seriously lowered. "Some cause is at work here," he said to the mother, "which I don't understand. Can you help me?" Mrs. Linley helped him without hesitation. "My little daughter dearly ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... no! I'll telephone her. Remember, we have a transcontinental telephone service nowadays. She might not realize the vital necessity for speed; she might question her right to come if I tried to cover the situation in a telegram. But, catch her on the 'phone, Mrs. McKaye, and you can talk to her and ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... in invention was backed by great energy and a large fund of common sense—qualities not often found united. These proved of much service to the concern of which he was the head, and indeed constituted the vital force. The firm prospered as it deserved; and they executed orders not only for England, but for most countries in the civilized world. Mr. Nasmyth had the advantage of being trained in a good school—that of Henry Maudslay—where he had not only learnt ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... said; his words were a groan. He was trying to grasp the truth of Margaret's news. Nothing which he had seen in the war brought its waste and sacrifice more vividly before his eyes than the fact that Freddy was dead, the living, vital Freddy, the energetic, brilliant Freddy, whom he always visualized picking up the gleaming gems in the vast Egyptian tomb; he saw the scene ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... living in England knows that antidote save myself—moreover, as the ingredients, one of them in particular, are scarce possible to be come by, I must needs suppose his escape was owing to such a constitution of lungs and vital parts as was never before bound up in ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... that period, and the relations of religion and poetry may now be discussed with no fear of misunderstandings. These relations are close and vital. Poetry is indebted to religion for its largest and loftiest inspirations, and religion is indebted to poetry for its ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... rising from his seat and adopting a tone at once contemptuous and dictatorial. "Do you not know," he continued, "that the Philosopher's Stone was and is but a figure of speech, which stands as some say for the perfect element in nature, or as others say for the vital principle—that vivifying power which evades and ever must evade the search of men? Do you not know that the sages whose speculations took that direction were endangered by accusations of witchcraft; and that it was to evade these and to give their ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... monstrosities and dermoid cysts, for example, we seem to catch forbidden sight of the secret work-room of Nature, and drag out into the light the evidences of her clumsiness, and proofs of her lapses of skill,—evidences and proofs, moreover, that tell us much of the methods and means used by the vital artisan of Life,—the loom, and even the silent weaver at work upon ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... radiated those long lines of light which stretch to-day across a continent and strike the Pacific ocean. This is a simile borrowed from astronomy. To adopt the language of the naturalist, those three little colonies were the puny germs which bore within themselves a vital force vastly more potent and wonderful than that which dwells in the heart of the gourd seed, and the acorn whose nascent swelling energies will lift huge boulders and split the living rock asunder: vastly more potent because it was not the blind motions ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... no throbs of fiery pain, No cold gradations of decay, Death broke at once the vital chain, And freed ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... but to wait. As for Clara's secret, the more he thought about it, the more persuaded he was that it was not connected with Rieseneck, but with some other person. He grew anxious, however, as he watched her, for it was now clear that unless something occurred to revive her vital energy and her spirits, she must soon become an invalid altogether, even if she did not die of her sufferings. More than once, Greifenstein proposed to go away, to travel, to spend the winter in a southern climate, ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... appreciative powers, he ministered to an appetite which seemed unquenchable. It was dusk when he came out, his cheeks burning, his eyes bright. He carried a new music, a whole world of new joys with him, but his most vital sensation was one of glowing and passionate sympathy. They were splendid, these heroes who had seen the truth and had struggled to give life to it with pencil or brush or chisel, that others, too, might see and understand. If only one could do one's ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... not be slow nor timid in asking for the means to carry forward and to make more effective such a work as this. It is not a losing battle we wage. Every heart and life that has come into near and vital contact with the work has been itself quickened and inspired by a service so effective and life-giving. It is the old story ever repeated—"He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless return again, bearing his ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 4, October, 1900 • Various
... average of them, or even in any appreciable number of individuals, yet the predilection for sports in the commonplace industrial classes is of the nature of a reminiscence, more or less diverting as an occasional interest, rather than a vital and permanent interest that counts as a dominant factor in shaping the organic complex of habits of thought into which it enters. As it manifests itself in the sporting life of today, this propensity may not appear to be ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... recognition of sex as well as of hunger; in brief, of physiological instincts and psychological demands. The newer economists are beginning to recognize that their science heretofore failed to take into account the most vital factors in modern industry—it failed to foresee the inevitable consequences of compulsory motherhood; the catastrophic effects of child labor upon racial health; the overwhelming importance of national vitality and well-being; the international ramifications of the population problem; ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... come out alive she felt sure somehow. No other thought was possible. To think that he might be killed in the pride and glory of his youth was nonsense. Her mind refused now to dwell on the idea. She dismissed it with a laugh. He was so vital. He lived to his finger tips. His voice rang with the joy of living. The spirit of eternal youth danced in his blue eyes. He was just twenty-eight years old. He was the father of a darling boy who bore his name and ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... have not control. Where unity of mind among men is lacking, love and peace cannot be present; and where love and faith are not present, only the world and the devil reign. Hence transformation by renewal of the mind is of vital importance. ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... perfectly still while the reading lasted. Once getting up to tend the fire, she went back to a higher chair and sat tense, her hands clasped about her knees. Old Crow seemed to have entered the room, a singularly vital figure with extraordinary things to say. Whether you believed the things or not, you had to listen, Old Crow believed them so tremendously. He was like a shock, an assault from the atmosphere itself. He affected Nan profoundly. Her perched attitude in the chair was, ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... that I'd something to tell you—something different from the—idiocies I tormented you with in Dubuque;—something I felt you were entitled to be told. But I felt—this is what you won't have understood—I felt that I hadn't any right to speak to you at all, about anything vital, about anything that concerned us, until I'd given you some sort of guarantee—until I'd shown you that I was a person it was ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... spite of himself, as he looked at the doctor opposite, the same old indignant, yet none the less vital, sense of subjection in the presence of superiority was over him as in his childhood. He saw again Doctor Seth Prescott as the incarnation of force and power. There was, in truth, something majestic about the man—he was an autocrat in a narrow sphere; but his autocracy ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... a rebirth by which you become a god, and then you will have no need to find out things by talking and discursive reasoning, for everything will be within yourself and you will know all things in a vital way, by an act of simple intuition in the end. 'The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth; so is every one that is born of the Spirit.' If you tie yourself down to logic, you will not ...
— The Gnosis of the Light • F. Lamplugh
... nothing on earth had now any savor or value beyond one or two indispensable affections. "What's good enough for Jacob is good for me," he wrote to Lady Henry, "and if I may offer you some advice, it is that you should not quarrel with Jacob about a matter so vital as his marriage. Into the rights and wrongs of the story you tell me, I really cannot enter; but rather than break with Jacob I would welcome anybody he chose to present to me. And in this case I understand the lady is very clever, distinguished, and of good blood on both sides. Have you ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... her of their battle with this selfish old monster, and that even now he was badly wounded by their arrows, which, however, did not seem to reach any vital spot. She told them that the only place where their weapons could be effectual in killing him was in the top of his skull. That they must first in some way crack it with their magic rabbit sticks, and then they could ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... our neighbours to destroy those creatures, not for any personal injury received, but for prevention.... Serpents, toads, and vipers, &c., are noxious to the body, and poison the sensitive life: these poison the soul, corrupt our posterity, ensnare our children, destroy the vital of our happiness, our future felicity, and contaminate the whole mass.' And he concludes: 'Alas, the Church of England! What with Popery on the one hand, and schismatics on the other, how has she been crucified between ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... that his physician had to be called in during the day. He found him with a good deal of fever, and deemed it necessary to resort to depletion, as well as to the application of other remedies to allay the over-action of his vital system. These prostrated him at once—so much so, that he was unable to sit up. Before night he was so seriously ill that the physician had to be sent for again. The fever had returned with great violence, and the pressure on his brain was so great that ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... I know very well that he stands at the very brink of death, and that his vital machinery is so completely out of order that if he does not change his diet immediately, and give up his gluttonous habits, of which there is but little hope, I regret to say, he will scarcely live another year. ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai |
