"Centring" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... however, put aside this argument—of the many already existing external interests—and combat this allegation, that an immense navy would be needed, by recurring to the true military conception of defence already developed. The subject will thus tend to unity of treatment, centring round that word "defence." Effective defence does not consist primarily in power to protect, but in power to injure. A man's defence against a snake, if cornered—if he must have to do with it—is not to protect himself, but to kill the snake. If a snake got into the room, as often happens ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... due to his own agency; how much is independent of him and would have happened had he stayed on his own side of the water. By and by a further and unexpected development presents the singular fact that he himself is the heir to whatever claims there are, whether of property or rank,—all centring in him as the representative of the eldest brother. On this discovery there ensues a tragedy in the death of the present possessor of the estate, who has staked everything upon the issue; and Middleton, standing amid the ruin and desolation of which he has been the innocent cause, resigns all the ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... has been the author's desire to make the story of the events concrete, dramatic, and lifelike by centring them about leaders, heroes, and other representative men, in such a way as to appeal to the imagination and to influence the ideals of the child. In so doing, he has made no attempt to write organized history—tracing out its intricate relations of cause and effect. At the same time, however, ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... it was he refused to state. We asked if he would report on the success or failure, and he answered that we would all see whether it was a success or failure for ourselves. So there was a good deal of interest centring around the meal, an interest not altogether called forth by ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... rather wide, well formed and well closed, carrying a question and an assertion in its finely finished curves; the lower lip a little prominent, the chin shapely and firm, as becomes the corner-stone of the countenance. His expression was calm, sedate, kindly, with that look of refinement, centring about the lips, which is rarely found in the male New Englander, unless the family features have been for two or three cultivated generations the battlefield and the playground of varied thoughts and complex emotions as well as the sensuous and nutritive ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Alma; whatever the right name for his complex of feelings—interest, regard, admiration, sexual attachment—assuredly it must be another word than that sacred to the memory of his parents, to the desires and hopes centring in his child. For all that, he had no sense of a hopeless discord in his wedded life; he suffered from no disillusion, with its attendant bitterness. From this he was saved by the fact, easy at length to recognise, that in wooing Alma he had obeyed no dictate ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... valuable aid at once in taste and execution, the adornment prospered greatly, and when Mr. Franklin came in, his surprise and delight were excited by the beauty which had grown up in his absence. The long, drooping, massive wreaths of evergreen at the east end, centring in the crown and letters; the spiral festoons round the pillars; the sprays in every niche; the tower of holly over the font—all were more beautiful, both together and singly, than he had even imagined, and he was profuse in ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fellow in Shaftesbury Avenue?" demanded Thompson, his thoughts centring round the incident ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins |
