"Mainspring" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... man. Ah, me! What a ruin has been wrought! I never saw such a change in any one as Edith exhibits. The very inspiration of her life is gone. The love she bore towards Florence seems to have been almost the mainspring of her existence; for in touching that the whole circle of motion has grown feeble, and will, I fear, soon ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... from Mrs. Garnet's presence, that Virginia was the Mother of Presidents; that the first slaves ever brought to this country came in Yankee ships; that Northern envy of Southern opulence and refinement had been the mainspring of the abolition movement; and—with a smile of almost womanly heroism—that he—or his father at least—had lost all his ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... the same strong mainspring urge and guide Our hearts to meet in love's eternal bond? Linked to thine arm, O Raphael, by thy side Might I aspire to reach to souls beyond Our earth, and bid the bright ambition go To that perfection ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... of the matters extracted from Luigi does not lie on the surface; it will have to be seen through Barto Rizzo's mind. This man regarded himself as the mainspring of the conspiracy; specially its guardian, its wakeful Argus. He had conspired sleeplessly for thirty years; so long, that having no ideal reserve in his nature, conspiracy had become his professional occupation,—the wheel which it was his business to roll. He was above jealousy; he was above ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Depend upon it, Watty, we won't be able to justify ourselves at the judgment day by saying that things were too deep for us, that things seemed to be in such a muddle that it was of no use trying to clear 'em up. Why, what would you say of the mainspring of a watch if it were suddenly to exclaim, 'I'll give up trying! Here am I—so powerful and energetic, and so well able to spin round— checked, and hindered, and harassed by wheels and pinions and levers, ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... until the soul has learnt to transform imprecation into prayer, and the desire for justice into supplication for the guilty. But if, in the presence of crime, we were forced to believe that there will never be either vengeance or pardon, the mainspring of the moral life would be broken, and humanity would at length exclaim, like Brutus in the plains of Philippi:—"Virtue! thou ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... But it was not in her nature to open her heart to any one; her large organ of "secretiveness" was her bane; she knew it and deplored it; it was the origin of that misconception which embittered her whole life, the mainspring of that calumny which made fame a mockery and glory a deceit. But I may say, that, when slander was busiest with her reputation, we had the best means to confute it,—and did. For some years there was not a single week during which, on some day or other, morning ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... No one would stay a week. If I was to go, that 'ouse would run down like a watch with the mainspring out. I'm telling you because you're 'is friend, and you ought to know. If I was to take 'im at 'is word—but there, I wouldn't have the 'eart. 'E and the missus would be like two babes left out in a bundle. I'm just everything. And then 'e goes and ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... prepared to put up with all this discomfort, loss, and privation if thereby their country marches triumphantly out of this great struggle. [Cheers.] We have every reason for confidence; we have none for complacency. Hope is the mainspring of efficiency; ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... "The popular idea that the moral government of the universe is an essential tenet of natural religion simply falls to the ground. Savage animism is almost devoid of that ethical element which, to the educated, modern mind, is the very mainspring of religion." And Hoffding says that, "In the lowest forms of it with which we are acquainted religion cannot be said to have any ethical significance. The gods appear as powers on which man is dependent, but not as patterns of ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... "that there were no duties in the New Testament." Gilbert Tennent brought the very same accusation. "The Moravian notion about the law," he said, "is a mystery of detestable iniquity; and, indeed, this seems to be the mainspring of their unreasonable, anti-evangelical, and licentious religion." But the severest critic of the Brethren was John Wesley. He attacked them in a "Letter to the Moravian Church," and had that letter printed in his Journal. He attacked them again in ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... approached St. Andrew's his determination was as strong as ever, but his resources were exhausted. Double-guarded and without weapons, he found himself helpless. The fevered excitement of the past four days had subsided into a dull apathy of hurt in which his brain was as delicate and alert as the mainspring of a watch. He was resigned to the worst if it came, but was ready, like a panther in a tree, to spring at the slightest false move ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... means a fool, and he had experience in business, but the mainspring of the young fellow was frankness, and in the course of the dinner he told his errand. Mr. Demilt had written to his firm explaining the advantages of starting a straw-board factory in Fairfield. It was too small a thing for the firm to be interested in, but Lettis had a small capital which ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... mainspring of a cowboy's life. Without enthusiasm a cowboy inevitably falls to the inglorious level of a "hired man"; a nice distinction in the social conditions of frontier life. The cowboy is sometimes a good man—not meaning a man of religion—and often ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... children interested? While, as we have seen, the atmosphere or spirit of the classroom supplies the condition necessary to successful work, interest supplies the motive force. For interest is the mainspring of action. A child may politely listen, or from a sense of courtesy or good will sit quietly passive and not disturb others, but this does not meet the requirement. His thought, interest, and enthusiasm must be centered on the matter ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... in truth the mainspring of the coalition. Though among the smallest in extent of the countries arrayed against Louis, they were strongest in the character and purpose of their ruler, the Prince of Orange, and in the wealth which, while supporting the armies of the confederates, also kept the poor and greedy ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... travel in certain places, but he went on just the same to find out for himself. He had a rare faculty of inducing enthusiasm in others, and by reposing complete confidence in the individual, impelled him to do his very best. Thus he became the mainspring for much that was never credited to him, and which was really his in the germ or original idea. Gilbert truly says, "it is not easy to separate the product of his personal work from that which he ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... the examination with the fortitude of an early Christian martyr. In response to inquiries he said he felt as though the mainspring of his ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... for granted that the many-sided effort to grow which is of the essence of the child's nature is the mainspring of, and expresses itself in, certain typical instincts which no one who studies the child with any degree of care can fail to observe; and that by duly cultivating these instincts,—expansive instincts, as one may perhaps call them, since each of them tends to take the child ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... Lavender, "and so that's the way your watch has been gittin' mended all this while? Mainspring broke, as I've heerd say; well, I don't wonder! Gilbert, I guess this much is true. Alf. Barton'd never live so long without that watch, and that half-peck o' seals, if ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... circle with an increased desire to penetrate more deeply into the organisation of the little world about him, to trace the operation of its various parts, and to put his hand on the mainspring about which they revolved; and he wondered whether Gamba, whose connection with the ducal library must give him some insight into the affairs of the court, might not prove as instructive a guide through this labyrinth as through the ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... the water-power interests should be given the people's property freely and forever except that they would like to have it that way. I suspect that the mere wishes of the special interests, although they have been the mainspring of much public action for many years, have begun to lose their compelling power. A good way to begin to regulate corporations would be to stop them from ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot
... one line of labor and association had first placed her, she would have come up into such an atmosphere as was here, ready made for her to breathe and abide in? To help make also; to stand at its practical mainspring, and keep it possible that it ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... and I know, and every other woman knows, that women treat their hair as they treat their watches—to unpardonable abuse. Of course, one's hair isn't dropped on the sidewalk or prodded with stickpins until the mainspring breaks, but it is subjected to even deeper and more trying insults. One night, when the little woman is in a real good, amiable mood, the tresses are carefully taken down, brushed, doctored with a nice "smelly" tonic, patted ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... School was to train its children so as to fit them in some obvious manner for the work of their life. Latin and Greek and Hebrew had become the touchstone of education, primarily because they were the "holy" languages, and after Religion had long ceased to be the mainspring of education, their intrinsic merits fell into the background. Utility became a more pungent argument. Secondly, the Governors decided that the Endowment and Statutes, together with the particulars of the income of the School, should be laid before a competent ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... world who is not eager to learn a secret? To him Jess was a riddle of which he did not know the key. That she was clever and well-informed he soon discovered from her rare remarks; that she could sing like an angel he also knew; but what was the mainspring of her mind—round what axis did it revolve—this was the puzzle. Clearly enough it was not like most women's, least of all like that of happy, healthy, plain-sailing Bessie. So curious did he become to fathom these ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... factories, and populous with laboring men and women, a fit center for such an agitation as was to precede the downfall of the tax on food. In Manchester, too, in the person of a calico-printer named Richard Cobden, the agitation found its mainspring and its clear ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... granted by the Royal Bank of Scotland so early as 1729) had shown not only to be the safest to the bank, but by far the most advantageous to the public. Indeed it is not too much to say, that were those credits prohibited, and no other alteration made in the existing system, the mainspring of the machinery of Scottish banking would be broken, and its general utility impaired. With that point we shall deal more fully when we come to the consideration of the system in detail; at present it is only necessary to remark, that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... rather for knowing, than for understanding or thinking. Some of them will learn to think, doubtless, and even to concentrate, but their eagerness to acquire those accomplishments will not be strong or insistent. Creatures whose mainspring is curiosity will enjoy the accumulating of facts, far more than the pausing at times to reflect on those facts. If they do not reflect on them, of course they'll be slow to find out about the ideas and relationships lying behind them; and they will be curious ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... state of comparative efficiency and of entire subjection to his iron will. Years of quasi-respectability, of financial position, of autocratic power as Vice-Governor had modified the ideas of the old buccaneer, and the co-operative principle which had been the mainspring of action as well as tie which produced unity among the brethren-of-the-coast had ceased to be regarded, so far as he was concerned. He took care, however, to be upon fairly amicable terms with the officers in command and the veterans, though he treated the rest of the riff-raff ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... every sacrifice. Everyone was in uniform; there was scarce a head that was not decorated with the kepi of the National Guard. Business of every sort had come to a sudden standstill, as the hands of a watch cease to move when the mainspring snaps, and at the public meetings, among the soldiers in the guard-room, or where the crowds collected in the streets, there was but one subject of conversation, inflaming the hearts and minds of all—the determination ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... swiftly by and my powerlessness to influence him filled me with self-contempt. Of course, I said to myself, if I knew him better I should be able to help him. Would vanity do anything? It was his mainspring; I could but try. He might be led by the hope of making Englishmen talk of him again, talk of him as one who had dared to escape; wonder what he would do next. I would try, and I did try. But his dejection foiled me: his dislike ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... was already forgotten, the success of yesterday had reconciled at least the privates to the guidance of their new leader; nor was any other issue anticipated than what would have attended the excursion had he still been its mainspring and director. ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... to the gunsmith's, for a new hatchet and to have the mainspring of the rifle replaced. Nobody could afford to have a rifle that couldn't be trusted, least of all a ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... serious attention. It has been asserted that this segregation has impeded advancement, that it has prevented the Indians learning as much from us as they otherwise might, and that it has impeded the mainspring of all advancement—education. Here, I apprehend, the argument against caste, as far as rural populations are concerned, utterly fails, and, in a province contiguous to my own, a most signal instance to the contrary can be pointed to. Few people ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... was working on the various problems of "The Wind Bloweth"—problems of wisdom, of color, of phrasing, and trying to capture the elusive, unbearable ache that is the mainspring of humanity, and doing this through the medium of a race I knew best, a race that affirms the divinity of Jesus and yet believes in the little people of the hills, a race that loves its own land, and yet will wander the wide world over, a race that ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... mainspring of all well-regulated lives was still lacking, and sin soon broke out in unholy indulgence. George Muller was an adept at the ingenuity of vice. What he had left he pawned to get money, and with Beta and two others went on a four days' pleasure-drive, ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... which seldom or never emerges as a mere mentality, an independent thinking and knowing faculty, but always as a personality, always as a complete human entity, never can expound itself, because its operations are synthetic and not analytic, its mainspring is love and not mere knowledge. In his prose essay called "A Backward Glance o'er Travel'd Roads," appended to the final edition of his poems, Whitman has not so much sought to expound himself as to put his reader in possession ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... which makes the ultra-respectable thank God that he is not as other men are!—the fierce emotion which almost touches ecstacy when the wronged individual thinks his enemy will go to hell!—the fine fever which sets father against son, creed against creed, nation against nation!—hate is the chief mainspring of human motives! From hate and envy spring emulation and conquest—and we of the Church encourage the haters to hate on! They make Us!—they emulate each other in the greed of their gifts to us, which give them ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... (ma-gokoro) implanted in you; and then you will never wander from the way.' How this spiritual self- culture may best be obtained, the same great expounder has stated with almost equal brevity: 'Devotion to the memory of ancestors is the mainspring of all virtues. No one who discharges his duty to them will ever be disrespectful to the Gods or to his living parents. Such a man will be faithful to his prince, loyal to his friends, and kind and gentle with his ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... keep before our eyes this mainspring of a Saint's life, that life will be as enigmatical to us as it is to the world. Jesus balked at no test of the love which He bore towards us: nay, He devised tests passing all human imagining. Let Him make trial of our love for Him! We are unhappy till He does! ...
— For Greater Things: The story of Saint Stanislaus Kostka • William T. Kane, S.J.
... me that the argument to the contrary would be untenable. I should like to see the man who would invest his capital in railways—electric telegraphs, steam ships, and in business of any kind, without hope of reward, pooh! it is the mainspring of human action, the incentive to public service, it rests not in this world but follows us to the next, "Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of thy Lord." Ah! but this refers to men, not to children. ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... has been delayed by recent happenings in Russia. Let us rejoice, Romain Rolland, let us rejoice with all our hearts, for Russia is no longer the mainspring of reaction in Europe. Henceforward the Russian people is wedded to liberty, and I trust that this union will give birth to many great souls for the ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... wistfulness. The only thing that the superintendent could do was to give him surreptitiously a prayer-book, bidding him perfect himself in the Catechism in view of future Confirmation. But, as emulation of his fellows and not religious zeal was the mainspring of Paul's enthusiasm, the pious behest was disregarded. Paul dived into the volume occasionally, however, ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... that he had ever dreamt of possessed so many tones in it as hers—even one of pathos, as she lingered over the word "shadow," All his annoyance melted. He only felt he would change the very mainspring of his life if necessary to ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... promise. What I have tried to do, in order to place life before you in a more favourable light, would seem purposeless, if your confidence feels the lack of this talisman to which you attach so great a value. We must not laugh at these little superstitions. They are often the mainspring ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... of Caleb Kimball's illness would be such as fill a nurse's bedside record book. The mainspring of life had been snapped and the machinery refused to move for a long time. When he recovered consciousness his solemn black eyes followed Amanda Dalton's movements as if fascinated, but he spoke no word save a faltering phrase or two at ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... is the mainspring in the whole Of endless Nature's calm rotation; Joy moves the dazzling wheels that roll In the great Timepiece of Creation; Joy breathes on buds, and flowers they are; Joy beckons—suns come forth from heaven; Joy rolls ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... constitutional liberty was at an end, for both generals and demagogues could get such laws passed as they pleased, with sufficient money to bribe those who controlled the elections. It was a time of universal corruption and venality. Money was the mainspring of society. Public virtue had passed away,—all elevated sentiment,—all patriotism,—all self-sacrifice. The people cared but little who ruled, if they were supplied with corn and wine at nominal prices. Patrician nobles had become demagogues, ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... length of locks was going on, and the upper drawer thereof was half open, thus affording me a glimpse of its contents. Among these was my silent watch with its chain of gold, its pencil and seal attached. I wore it usually (though useless now in its silent condition—the mainspring was broken) from habit and for safe keeping, but had laid it there when I staggered to my bed, ill and weak after my ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... The ground or mainspring of conscience is love—love of the well- being or welfare of all sentient beings, or of all beings capable of enjoying happiness. Our conscience goads us to do what love demands as our duty. He who, through ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... escaped from this den of a world, this dungeon with one small window through which, with the death rattle in our throats, we stare vacantly at the blank unmeaning honor of the Universe! Prove to me that the Soul exists —ye gods! Prove it! and if mine can find its way straight to the mainspring of this revolving Creation, it shall cling to the accused wheels and stop them, that they may grind out the tortures of ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... and watching his pleasure. At the end of the year it becomes a part of the decoration of the wall. You perhaps feel that the frame needs retouching, and that is all the impression it makes upon you, except as would an old timepiece with the mainspring gone. The works are exquisite and the enamelling charming, but it has been four o'clock ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... find out if possible, during my stay in the factory, what it is that clogs this mainspring ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... my nerves, I paced the lonely, sequestered halls in the lower regions of the castle. Two or three times I was sure that my watch had stopped, the hands seemed so stationary. The third time I tried to wind it, I broke the mainspring, but as it was nearly one o'clock not much harm ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... parted at our last meeting, after most solemn vows of faith and secrecy, they took me into the secret. This was, however, only to the extent of teaching me the code and method; they still withheld from me rigidly the fact or political secret, or whatever it was that was the mainspring of their ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... facts, but assume a licence to invent motives agreeable to their own folly or caprice. That Sir Edward Stanley made any such vow we cannot imagine, much less would he put it into execution. "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die," was the governing principle of his life, and the mainspring of his actions. It would be a strange anomaly in the records of human opinions to find an edifice reared to perpetuate a belief which the founder thought a delusion, a mere system of priestcraft and superstition. To this prominent feature in his history our attention has been directed, and we ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... better, because he is a loyal follower of Mr. Tylor. And Mr. Tylor says: 'Savage Animism is almost devoid of that ethical element which to the educated modern mind is the very mainspring of practical religion.'[31] 'Yet it keeps the Indians very strictly within their own rights and from offending the rights of others.' Our own religion ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... elsewhere that which she has ceased to possess for him. She whose knowledge of the springs of life is deep enough to enable her to understand this, knows also that hers is the better part, that she represents to her husband the centre and mainspring of his existence, which remains steadfast long after his temporary amorous madnesses have ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... Kiderlen-Waechter, in the Reichstag's confidential committee, to accede to Mr. Chamberlain's proposal, made some time before the incident, for a partition of the Shereefian Empire. But the acquisition of territory does not seem to have been the mainspring of her policy, while from the beginning to the end of the incident, however theatrical and questionable her diplomatic conduct may have been at moments during the negotiations, she was throughout consistent and successful in her demand for economic equality ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... Pizarro is a lifeless body when compared with what it ought to be, if all the high Peruvians at least, are not well performed. In the movement of a watch every small wheel and every little rivet is as necessary to the general effect as the mainspring. So Las Casas, Orozimbo, the blind man, and the blind man's boy, are as necessary not perhaps to the mean progress of the fable (but to that effect, that necromantic influence upon the feelings, that penetrating moral which alone can render a play useful as well as ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... millionth. He's still working hard. He still finds the fear of God useful: he puts it into everybody that goes up against his game. The fear of the Poor-House is with him yet, though he doesn't realize it. It's the mainspring of his religion. There's nothing so mean as fear; and Elias M.'s fear is back of all his meanness, his despotism in business, his tyranny as an employer. I tell you, Boss, if you ever saw a hellion in a cutaway coat, Elias M. Pierce is it, and you're going to smell ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... expressed in such terms as "too good to live." The child A seemed destined for the fate thus suggested. The needs of the body did not greatly concern him, and he seemed equally indifferent to those of the mind; goodness was the mainspring of his being. If society does not note such dispositions, and assume the special protection of such frail lives, children of this type go forward to premature death like angels ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... element enters into most lives! The ambition, the labor, the planning, is for self. If self prospers, what else matters? If self has ease and comfort, what matters it about others? If self is pleased, is not that enough? Self seems to be the mainspring of most lives; is it so in our own? When we come to look back at the last, we shall find no pleasure in viewing our own selfishness or its fruits. We shall not desire to retain it in our memories. We shall see that whatever ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... pleasing subject for contemplation. Perhaps there was a time when Englishmen used to go about the world talking of it; but for some generations back, having settled the fact of their greatness entirely to their satisfaction, they have ceased to put it into words, merely accepting it as the mainspring of their conduct in all relations with other peoples, and without, it is to be feared, much regard for those other peoples' feelings. Americans are still in the boasting stage. Mr. Howells has said that every American when he goes abroad goes not as an individual citizen but as an ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... a third of them as new. Linnaeus, no doubt the first to conceive the pretty idea of making a floral clock, drew up a list of blossoms whose times of opening and closing marked the hours on its face; but even Linnaeus failed to understand that the flight of insects is the mainspring on which flowers depend to set the mechanism going. In spite of its whiteness and fragrance, the water lily requires no help from night-flying insects in getting its pollen transferred; therefore, when the bees and ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... attack had been directed against the worldly hopes of a man, such as all see crushed at some time in life, but now it was his spirit that was aimed at. It was that strong, living soul which was the mainspring of his ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... Maynooth Grant. Mr. Bull has admitted the principle, and his sense of fair play will doubtless lead him to do the right thing, always, of course, under compulsion, which is now usually regarded as the mainspring of that estimable gentleman's supposed ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... "Murder of the Sons of Usnech,"[19] woman plays the principal part. The mainspring of the story is love, and by it the heroes are led to death, a thing not to be found elsewhere in the European literature of the period. Still, those same heroes are not slight, fragile dreamers; if we set aside their love, and only consider their ferocity, they are worthy ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... enabled him to take his degree with an ease and brilliance which very considerably astonished his instructors. By adroitly using his good fortune, SAUNDERS accumulated a pile of most egregious testimonials, and these he regarded as the mainspring of success in life. He had early discovered in himself a singular capacity for drawing salaries, and as he had unbounded conceit and unqualified ignorance, he conceived himself to be fit for any post in life to which a salary is attached. He had also really great gifts ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... before him in apparent vacancy, while the same grim smile still hovered round his thin lips. Something of that irresponsible spirit of adventure which was the mainspring of all Sir Percy Blakeney's actions, must for the moment have pervaded the mind of ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... 10th day of April, 1876, this great magnate died. His business was carried on, for a time, by others, but the mainspring was gone, and in 1882 the great clock stopped. Here is an instance that should convince us of the result of courage, energy, and self-reliance. A. T. Stewart began without a dollar, and succeeded, while they who had the benefit of his experience, the use of his vast wealth, ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... cutting the bit away sideways, of course, just by the said line, and then a small piece more, until I arrive at the end of where the spiral ceases, at its base; but now that the volute is developing, I am enabled to complete the line, which brings the whole to its actual junction with the mainspring of conception. This, in a very great state of roughness, I show at an angle (fig. 23), and I reverse the sides, cutting the other in the same manner. It is necessary to have the wood firmly cramped to the bench on ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... benefit strangers? Or is he one of nature's unfortunates—soft-witted? Thus they argue. They will do acts of spontaneous kindness towards their family, far oftener than is customary with us. But outside that narrow sphere, interesse (Odyssean self-advantage) is the mainspring of their actions. Whence their smooth and glozing manners towards the stranger, and those protestations of undying affection which beguile the unwary—they wish to be forever in your good graces, for sooner or later ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... maintained Capper stoutly. "She'd be to you what the mainspring is to a watch, and glory in it. Haven't you seen such women? I have, scores of 'em, ready made for the purpose. No, you will only go through my treatment with a woman to hold you up. It's a process that needs the utmost vitality, ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... a clock so small that it could be carried in one's pocket—if that pocket was of pretty ample size. It had works of iron, one hand, and no crystal, and was, to be sure, both thick and clumsy, but it boasted one amazing feature. Since it was too small to depend on weights, it contained a coiled mainspring—something entirely new to the clockmaking world. Now this article fashioned by Peter Henlien cannot be termed a watch as we know watches; but still it was the nearest approach to one that had yet been produced. ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... up in the light of expression as free and candid as it was possible for opinion to be in this highly organized oligarchy; and here as elsewhere, Venice, like a faithful mother, watched over the welfare of her sons, though they were grown to man's estate; and since her commerce was, in fact, the mainspring of her wealth and prestige—a very vital part of her—she kept before their eyes on the exterior of this ancient church in the market-place where her merchant-princes daily met, her admonition to uphold them in righteous dealing. One might decipher it wrought into ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... of a world of beauty, Where there is no gloomy night, Where love is the mainspring of duty, And God is the fountain of light. I have read of the flowing river That bursts from beneath the throne, And beautiful flowers that ever Are found on its banks alone. I long—I ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)
... 'tis scarce wonderful that he takes vanity to be the mainspring that moves the human species," said De Malfort, when some one had found fault with the ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... Englishmen have been contemptuously called the shop- keepers of the world) the extension and maintenance of their vast empire is the mainspring which keeps the great machine in movement. And one sees tens of thousands of well-born and delicately-bred men cheerfully entering the many branches of public service where the hope of wealth can never come, ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... a passionate attachment to personal liberty, liberty of thought and action. This ideal force working in the minds of a few, "those worthies which are the soul of that enterprise" (Tenure of Kings), had been the mainspring of the whole revolution. The Levellers, Quakers, Fifth Monarchy men, and the wilder Anabaptist sects, only showed the workings of the same idea in men, whose intellects had not been disciplined by education or experience. ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... capital. In Berlin, Rome, London, it aroused the indignation of those whose sympathy with the spiritual life of their respective nations was still a living force. It would seem, however, to be the natural reaction produced by a tremendous national calamity, under which the mainspring of the collective mind temporarily gives way and the psychical equilibrium is upset. Disillusion, despondency, and contempt for the passions that lately stirred them drive the people to seek relief in the distractions of pleasures, ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... is the mainspring of Maggie's character—the motive for most of her actions? Does Tom seem to you worthy of the intense affection she bestows upon him? Do you think a person with Maggie's nature would be likely to live a ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Dombey and the Chuzzlewits are not mere incidents in the tale, nor are they monstrosities which call forth immediate astonishment and horror. But in each case the ingrained selfishness which spreads misery through a family is the very mainspring of the story; and the dramatic power by which Dickens makes it reveal itself in action has something Shakespearian in it. Here there is still a balance between the different elements, the human interest and the moral lesson, ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... obvious that the very qualities in which the English constitution excels that of the United States are essential to the maintenance by England of the British Empire. Home Rulers, whether they know it or not, touch the mainspring of the British constitution. For from the moment that Great Britain becomes part of a federation, the omnipotence of Parliament is gone. The Federal Congress might be called by the name of the Imperial Parliament. It might possibly be ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... said in a firm voice: "the clock is yours, and the principle of the movement is to be found engraved on a small plate under the mainspring." ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... he inspected the changeling carefully. It was, he thought, the revolver Lane Fleming had kept in the drawer of the gunroom desk. There was no obstruction in the two-inch barrel, the weapon had not been either fired or cleaned recently, the firing-pin had not been shortened, the mainspring showed the proper amount of tension, and the mechanism functioned as it should. There was a chance that somebody had made up five special hand-loads for him, using nitroglycerin instead of powder, but that didn't seem ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... to forget that, seeing that Dick's love for him was his safeguard from all evil, and his love for Dick was the mainspring of his life. But—though his development was stunted and imperfect—there were certain facts of existence which he was beginning slowly but surely to grasp. And one of these—before but dimly suspected—he had realized fully to-night, a fact beyond all questioning ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... to feel frightened, and to think that perhaps, after all, she had better have left it alone. Her mother came into the room and said, "What are you doing, Bessie? You must have broken the mainspring ...
— The Nursery, March 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various
... prevail. It is a new type, not to be confounded with that of Henry VIII, Philip II, or Lewis XIV, and better adapted to a more rational and economic age. Government so understood is the intellectual guide of the nation, the promoter of wealth, the teacher of knowledge, the guardian of morality, the mainspring of the ascending movement of man. That is the tremendous power, supported by millions of bayonets, which grew up in the days of which I have been speaking at Petersburg, and was developed, by much abler minds, chiefly at Berlin; and it is the greatest danger that remains to be encountered ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... confusing when he says in a recent essay that "life does not exert force—not even the most microscopical force—and certainly does not supply energy." Sir Oliver is thinking of life as a distinct entity—something apart from the matter which it animates. But even in this case can we not say that the mainspring of the energy of living bodies is the life ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... see all this, can we avoid judging and forming our opinions upon two grand points: first, that no man would proceed in that universal patronage of guilt, unless he was guilty himself; next, that, by a universal connivance for fourteen years, he is himself the cause and mainspring of all the evils, calamities, extortion, and bribery, that have prevailed and ravaged that country for so long a time? There is, indeed, no doubt either of his guilt, or of the consequences of it, by which he has extinguished the last expiring hope and glimpse that remained of procuring ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... fact, runs through them. They are so many different expressions, answering to so many different observations taken at different angles, of one and the same persisting estimate of human nature. 'Self-love is the mainspring and motive of every thing we do, or say, or feel, or think:' that is the total result of ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... things struck me as being foolish. They talk as if these games and these sports were a solemn affair, a moral or religious question; they said the virtues and the prowess of the English race were founded on these things. They said that competition was the mainspring of life; they seemed to think exercise was the goal of existence. A man whom I saw there and who, I learnt, had been chosen to teach the young on account of his wisdom, told me that competition trained the ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... such curative resources as those latent in a single ray of hope? The mainspring of life is in the heart. Joy is the vital air of the soul, and grief is a kind ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... wound been in the centre, I should have witnessed an occurrence which, although I have seen it many times, still arouses my liveliest emotion and surprise. This is the sudden paralysis of the warrior's savage harpoons. No machinery stops more abruptly when the mainspring breaks. As a rule, the inertia of the predatory legs attacks the others in the course of a day or two; and the palsied one dies in less than a week. But the present sting is not in the exact centre. ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... Matadi. We remained here for a day and a half because the Minister of the Colonies was to go back on "The Anversville." I was glad of the opportunity for it enabled me to see this town, which is the mainspring of the colonial administration. The palace of the Governor-General stands on a commanding hill and is a pretentious establishment. The original capital of the Congo was Vivi, established by Stanley at a point not far from Matadi. It was abandoned some ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... a people, that every person in their midst should be given a fair, sporting chance in life. 'A fair thing!' In three words one has the national ideal, and who shall say that it is not an admirable one, remembering that its foundation and mainspring are kindness, and if not justice, ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... this view of society, in which you are about to seek a place in keeping with your intellect and your faculties, you must set before you as a generating principle and mainspring, this maxim: never permit yourself to act against either your own conscience or the public conscience. Though my entreaty may seem to you superfluous, yet I entreat, yes, your Henriette implores you to ponder the ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... and the many centuries of cold weather, and life on this planet became so difficult that man was obliged to think three times as hard as ever before if he wished to survive. Since, however, that "wish to survive" was (and is) the mainspring which keeps every living being going full tilt to the last gasp of its breath, the brain of glacial man was set to work in all earnestness. Not only did these hardy people manage to exist through the long cold spells which killed many ferocious animals, but when the earth became warm and comfortable ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... striking an illustration. Reader, look well to the mainspring, and see also that the wheels are not clogged. We ought to be living epistles, known and read ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... DRAWING OF THE HOPKINS WATCH. The mainspring barrel E, of a very large diameter in proportion to the diameter of the watch, occupies nearly the full diameter of the movement. The spring itself, narrower and much longer than usual, is made ...
— The Auburndale Watch Company - First American Attempt Toward the Dollar Watch • Edwin A. Battison
... never been seriously challenged. It found that the long series of crimes of which it recorded the genesis and growth had been "directed towards one and the same objective, the overthrow by force of British rule in India," and nothing revealed more clearly the mainspring of the movement than the statistics given as to age, caste, and occupation of persons who had been actually convicted of revolutionary crimes or killed whilst committing them. The large majority were between 16 and 25 years of age; most of them students and teachers; all ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... the animals. Cows and pigs, horses, goats, sheep and rabbits abandoned by the husbandman, startled, puzzled; the clock with the broken mainspring running backward. The small game: deer, antlered, striped, and spotted; wildsheep, ovis poli, TeddyRooseveltshot and Audubonprinted, mountaingoats leaping in terror to hazardous safety on babel's top, upward to the pinpoint where no angels dance. ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... to make certain declarations, which were fraudulent and misleading, so that it was difficult not to blunder in the replies, which were directed by Father Verart, the mainspring of all these plots. They made the prebends take an oath; the latter consented to this, and submitted to everything, in order to extricate themselves from so much annoyance and to be free from enemies ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... it is not the individual that is drawn, but the type. Where the individual alone is real, the type is a myth of the imagination—a pure invention. And invention is the mainspring of the theatre, which rests purely upon illusion, and does not please us unless it begins by ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Immortals of the French Academy • David Widger
... echo of those which formed the mainspring of the Admiral's life. His face lit up, and ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... started or transmitted, our ignorance of nature and of past time reduces us to silence or to wild conjectures. Something—let us call it matter—must always have existed, and some of its parts, under pressure of the others, must have got tied up into knots, like the mainspring of a watch, in such a violent and unhappy manner that when the pressure is relaxed they fly open as fast as they can, and unravel themselves with a vast sense of relief. Hence the longing to satisfy latent passions, ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... life, was to show the deepness of his character. Not a muscle of Hafner's face quivered. It was a question, perhaps, of rendering a service to a woman in danger, whom he loved with all the feeling of which he was capable. That woman was the mainspring of his social position in Rome. She was still more. A plan for Fanny's marriage, as yet secret, but on the point of being consummated, depended upon Madame Steno. But he felt it impossible to attempt to render her any service before having spent half an hour in the rooms of the Palais Castagna, ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... not give it to Freddy, for he is a man, and I should be breaking the mainspring of his life. But I will give half my money to Ethel, provided that you will consent to let ...
— The Naturewoman • Upton Sinclair
... domination that had marked their fallen idols, the Stuarts; and they now joined hands with the discontented Whigs in opposition to Pitt. The horrors of war, the blessings of peace, the weight of taxation, the growth of the national debt, were the rallying cries of the new party; but the mainspring of their zeal was hostility to the great Minister. Even his own colleagues chafed under his spirit of mastery; the chiefs of the Opposition longed to inherit his power; and the King had begun to hate ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... Handel by his music, and the noblest painters by their art? True; but in all these cases, I take it, love of fame and that most potent and, at the same time, unpractical form of it, the lust after fame beyond the grave, was the mainspring of the action, the money being but a concomitant accident. Money is like the wind that bloweth whithersoever it listeth, sometimes it chooses to attach itself to high feats of literature and art and music, but more commonly it prefers lower company ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... grandmother, for long and long, not only head dry-nurse to one of the noblest families in all England, but bona fide twenty-two stone avoirdupois—so that it was once proposed, by the undertaker, to bury her at twice! As to this nonpareil of lovely flesh and blood, her name was Lucy Mainspring, the daughter of a horologer, sir,—a watchmaker—vulgo so called—and though fattish, she was very fair—fair! by Jupiter, (craving your honour's pardon for swearing,) she fairly made me give all other thoughts the cut, and twisted the passions of my heart with the red-hot torturing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... careers of certain among these remarkable personages, it will be seen that the mainspring of their political zeal was either the fierce excitement of an overmastering passion, an irresistible proclivity to gallantry, or an absorbing ambition, rather than any patriotic motive. This may go far to explain the singular sagacity, finesse, and energy ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... General Wolzogen, Wintzingerode (whom Napoleon had referred to as a renegade French subject), Michaud, Toll, Count Stein who was not a military man at all, and Pfuel himself, who, as Prince Andrew had heard, was the mainspring of the whole affair. Prince Andrew had an opportunity of getting a good look at him, for Pfuel arrived soon after himself and, in passing through to the drawing room, stopped a minute to speak ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... excited indignation in England; and discussions arose conducted with a bitterness not often paralleled. The Gordon case was the chief topic of controversy. Governor Eyre had arrested Gordon, whom he considered to be the mainspring of the insurrection, and sent him to the district in which martial law had been proclaimed. There he was tried by a court-martial ordered by General Nelson, and speedily hanged. The controversy which followed is a curious illustration of the modes of reasoning ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... hope, however faint it might prove, served to reanimate Graham; and with that hope his heart, as if a load had been lifted from its mainspring, returned instinctively to the thought of Isaura. Whatever seemed to promise an early discharge of the commission connected with the discovery of Louise Duval seemed to bring Isaura nearer to him, or at least to excuse ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and love of justice swept over him. No record could be kept of what he said; there could have been no thought of using his eloquence to enlist popular support or improve a Parliamentary position, for we were alone. And so I came to see that the mainspring of all his actions was the intense desire to help those who could not help themselves—to defend ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... boys' play, the whole series of games in the open air, and learned to recognise their mighty power to awake and to strengthen the intelligence and the soul as well as the body. In these games and what was connected with them I detected the mainspring of the moral strength which animated the pupils and the young people in the institution. The games, as I am now fervently assured, formed a mental bath of extraordinary strengthening-power;[71] and although the ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... allowed. But there are incidents which cannot be altered; as they would draw after them other alterations; and compel the artist, who had simply undertaken to "clean the works" of the watch, absolutely to put in a new "mainspring."—English Translator.] ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... system of absolute power, did not suffer himself, by any show of affection from his people, to be diverted from his design of rendering his government independent of them. To this design we must look as the mainspring of all his actions at this period; for with regard to the Roman Catholic religion, it is by no means certain that he yet thought of obtaining for it anything more than a complete toleration. With this view, therefore, he could not take a more judicious resolution than that which he had declared ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... Vaux, "take it less violently—you will be heard without doors, where such speeches are but too current already among the common soldiery, and engender discord and contention in the Christian host. Bethink you that your illness mars the mainspring of their enterprise; a mangonel will work without screw and lever better than the Christian host without ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... sham this time. Utterly worn out by the excitement of the past hours, Vince and Mike were both off—fast in the heavy, dreamless, restful slumber of sixteen—the sleep in which Nature winds up a boy's mainspring terse and tight, and makes him ready to go on, rested and fresh, for the work of ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... become wealthy while in the services by making wise investments, through writings, by skill at invention, or through some other means. But he is the exception. The majority have no such prospect. Indeed, if love of money were the mainspring of all American action, the officer corps long since would have disintegrated. But it is well said that the only truly happy people on earth are those who are indifferent to money because they have some positive purpose ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... service to the country, sir, and worse to all within this house," exclaimed the overseer. "That man is the mainspring of the rebellion. Had I killed him, the blacks in this neighbourhood, without a leader, would have taken to flight, and we should ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... a tragedy of republicanism. In Schiller's play, however, the conflict is not of that character. At heart Fiesco is never a republican, though he sometimes takes his mouth full of fine republican phrases. His mainspring of action is not the welfare of Genoa, but his own aggrandizement. Old Andrea, whose power he plots to overthrow and whose magnanimity puts him to shame, is actually a better man than he. If he has a measure of our ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... schools for the sons of noblemen in which he will forget it," said the friar bitterly; "where they teach disloyalty to princes and unmake men to make machines—and the mainspring is at Rome. Gentle women are won to believe in them by the subtle polish of those who uphold them, and the marvelous learning by which their teachers fit themselves for office. And among them are men noble of character and true of conscience—but ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... who have springs in their feet and arms like whips. Altogether Arthurs' varsity is a strangely assorted, a wonderfully chosen group of players. We might liken them to the mechanism of a fine watch, with Ward as the mainspring, and the others with big or little parts to perform, but each dependent upon the ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... one thing," said Griggs at last. "You make a spiritual engine of mankind, and you forget the mainspring of the world. You leave love out ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... afflicts so many men. It seemed as if he had saved it all for that final summing-up which was to be delivered by his pen instead of his lips. He had become articulate only at the last. It must have taken him weeks upon weeks to write it all down, this autobiography which had been the mainspring of his son's actions for nearly two years. There was wind and sun in it, and blue sky and the gray Gulf heaving; somber colors, passion and grief, an ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... The mainspring of all progress, individual and social, is the desire to fulfill in character all one has planned in thought. Man's life is one long pursuit of the visions of possible excellence which disquiet, rebuke and tempt him upward. "As to other points," said John Milton, "what God may ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Douglas, called the Little Giant on account of his intellect, was a type of man of which our race has had some notable examples, although they are not characteristic. Capable of sacrifice to their country, personal ambition is, nevertheless, the mainspring of their actions. They must either be before the public, or else unhappy. This trait gives them a large theatrical strain, and sometimes brands them as adventurers. Their ability saves them ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the chief value of Congressional debate is to arouse and inform public opinion. He regards the will of the people as the real source of governmental policy. Yet he is very impatient of those theories of the rights of man which found favor in France in the eighteenth century and have been the mainspring of democratic movements on the Continent of Europe. He regards political liberty, as we know it in this country, as a peculiar possession of the English race to which, in all that ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... love it all!" said Norah, her eyes tender at the thought of the old woman who had been nurse and mother, and mainspring of the Billabong house, since Norah's own mother had laid her baby in her kind arms and closed tired eyes so many years ago. "Wouldn't she love fixing the house! And how she'd hate cooking with coal instead of wood! Only ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... prudent as he would otherwise have been. We are all apt to require too much of the poor debtor, and to have too little sympathy with him. Let the hope of improving your own condition—which is the mainspring of all your business operations—be taken away, and instead, let there be only the desire to pay off old debts through great labour and self-denial, that must continue for years, and imagine how differently you would think and feel from what you do now. ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur
... interloper, presented themselves before him with the regularity of a perfectly comprehended system. In my contemplation, he stood as the ideal of his class. He was, indeed, the Custom-House in himself; or, at all events, the mainspring that kept its variously revolving wheels in motion; for, in an institution like this, where its officers are appointed to subserve their own profit and convenience, and seldom with a leading reference to their fitness for the duty to be performed, they must perforce seek elsewhere ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... mere increase of wages is but one element of this improvement. The very mainspring of the prosperity of the great masses of the British working classes is to be found in their increased sobriety, and in the habits of thrift and providence that have followed the spread of education. The statistics of the Friendly Societies, the Industrial and ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... Janet's pretenses, and "buy" was so exactly the word to use with these people to whom money was the paramount consideration, the thought behind every other thought, the feeling behind every other feeling, the mainspring of their lives, the mainstay of all the fictions ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... with which he had taken the coal from the altar, the prophet yet escaped unscathed, but he learned the lesson, that it was his duty to defend Israel, not traduce him. Thenceforth the championship of his people was the mainspring of the prophet's activity, and he was rewarded by having more revelations concerning Israel and the other nations vouchsafed him than any other prophet before or after him. Moreover God designated Isaiah to be "the prophet of ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... Great love and reverence towards God was the foundation of this pure faith, which accompanied her from youth to extreme old age, indeed to her last moments, which gave her strength to endure many sorrows, and was the mainspring of that extreme humility which was so remarkable a ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... a worthless element in life when idle, but when otherwise, is it not the mainspring of the watch? Think of the manifold results of "mere curiosity," when rightly persevered in! But then we change the name—it becomes insight—research—it becomes a power which can climb the dizziest height, and dive the deepest depths, to bring to ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... reached a climax in September, when a public service was held in Trinity Church, and Mr. Field, the hero of the hour, as head and mainspring of the expedition, received an ovation in the Crystal Palace at New York. The mayor presented him with a golden casket as a souvenir of 'the grandest enterprise of our day and generation.' The band played 'God save the ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro |
