"Vital" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... subject, and the enlightened sympathies of the age. Unwearied and patient in research, discriminating and judicious in the choice of authorities, and possessed of all the qualities required to fuse into a vital unity the narrative thus carefully gleaned, Bancroft has written the most accurate and philosophical account that has been given of ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... Meantime, the whale rose to the surface to spout. The change in his course enabled another boat to come up, and we lay on our oars, in order that Mr. D——, (the other mate) might lance him.—He struck him in a vital part the first dart, as was evident from the whale's furious dying struggles; but in order to make sure, we hauled up and lanced the back of his head. Foaming and breaching, he plunged from wave to wave, flinging high in the air torrents of blood and spray. The sea around was ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... Howells added that the best touches in it were those which made one acquainted with the writer's brother; that is to say, Mark Twain, and that these would prove valuable material hereafter—a true prophecy, for Mark Twain's early biography would have lacked most of its vital incident, and at least half of its background, without those faithful chapters, fortunately preserved. Had Onion continued, as he began, the work might have proved an important contribution to literature, but he went trailing off into by-paths of theology and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of talk as streamed through the Marshall house required contributions from many diverging rivers. Sylvia was entirely used to this phenomenon and, although it occasionally annoyed her that good attention was wasted on projects so much less vital than those of the children, she bore it no grudge. But on the rare occasions when Aunt Victoria was with them, there was a different and ominous note to the talk which made Sylvia acutely uneasy, although she was quite unable to follow what was said. This uncomfortable ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... of doubt even in the thick of his loyalty to his wife and child when this question had tormented him. Miasmatic moments that come to firm men also, and make them dizzy with the thought of the mere waywardness of life. Had he been any better or wiser than Roper Ellwell? When the test of a vital passion had come he had acted like any other inconsiderate, purposeless young man, like any one with a ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... News—generally by a stoker. Naturally, word went round the lower deck an' we had a private over'aul of our little consciences. But, barrin' a shirt which a second- class stoker said 'ad walked into 'is bag from the marines flat by itself, nothin' vital transpired. The owner went about flyin' the signal for 'attend public execution,' so to say, but there was no corpse at the yardarm. 'E lunched on the beach an' 'e returned with 'is regulation harbour-routine face about 3 P. M. Thus Lamson lost ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... then open earth Her mouth, and hide me in her deepest gulfs! But him, the hero of the golden locks 215 Thus cheer'd. My brother, fear not, nor infect With fear the Grecians; the sharp-pointed reed Hath touch'd no vital part. The broider'd zone, The hauberk, and the tough interior quilt, Work of the armorer, its force repress'd. 220 Him answer'd Agamemnon, King of men. So be it brother! but the hand of one Skilful to heal shall visit and ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... the naturalistic drama of Hauptmann. By employing the real speech of man, by emphasising being rather than action, by creating the very atmosphere and gesture of life, it succeeds in presenting characters whose vital truth achieves the intellectual beauty and moral ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... of single combats between foes armed with the same weapons; the lancers alone seem to have charged in line behind their huge bucklers. As a rule, the wounds were trifling, and the great skill with which the shields were used made the risk of injury to any vital part very slight. Sometimes, however, a lance might be driven home into a man's chest, or a vigorously wielded sword or club might fracture a combatant's skull and stretch him unconscious on the ground. With the exception ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Otho, Ajut, Accursus, and Vital, their superior, having left Italy for Morocco, after having received their Father's blessing, as has already been noticed, arrived shortly after in the kingdom of Arragon. There Vital was detained ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... present situation, because there resided in him a fiery temper and a capacity for passionate extremes, and those years in the King's uniform, whatever else they may have done for him, had placed upon his headlong impulses manifold checks, taught him the vital necessity of restraint, the value ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... their heroic devotion to a magnificent cause but a lonely death when they had brought the "master" to the sea. When their stomachs, pinched by hunger; when their limbs, stiff from travel; when their eyes, dim with the mists of death; when every vital force was slain by an heroic ambition to serve the great Stanley; when the fires of endeavor were burnt to feeble embers,—then, and only then, would these faithful Negroes fail in the fulfilment of their mission, so full of peril, and yet so grateful to them, because ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... tragic fact that these two documents, so vital to Kidd, were discovered only lately in the Public Records Office—too late, by some 200 years, to ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... drama is vital and throbbing. As the saddest object to contemplate is a play where the essentials are wrong, so in this court the fundamentals of the law are the cause of making it ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... without saying that there has been present with me, all the way through the preparation of this book, a vivid sense of the utter powerlessness of all system, however wisely it may have been framed, which has not in the application of it that Spirit of Life who alone imparts the vital force without which no extensive or ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... New Brighton, New York, $19,000; at the small town of Rockport, Massachusetts, about $4,000; and at Nahant, $2,000. In all these are eighty buildings, worth more than $3,000,000, while as many more have land or building-funds. Third, how blessedly this sets forth the vital unity of Christ's church, "that they may all be one," and also distinguishes them from all other religious bodies. "Come out from among them ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... during which no one could obtain a hearing, calm was restored for a few moments, and Delbred proposed that the oath made to the constitution of the year III. should be renewed. As no one opposed this motion, which at such a juncture was of vital importance, the oath was taken with an enthusiasm and unanimity which was dangerous to ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... The Montenegrians had there a post of about twenty men, but they were overpowered, several killed, and the rest sent captive to Scutari. Not satisfied with this, he fortified Lessandro in such a manner that no Montenegrian could fish in the lake with any kind of pleasure or comfort. This was a vital blow. Visions of the market of Cattaro rose before the eyes of the nation. Peace with Osman Pasha was concluded at any sacrifice, and the Vladika instantly hastened to concentrate his energies toward the recovery of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... revolution of labor throughout whole States. It is hoped that the already deeply afflicted people of those States may be somewhat more ready to give up the cause of their affliction, if, to this extent, this vital matter be left to themselves; while no power of the National Executive to prevent an abuse is abridged ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... child's nature, and therefore had the deepest reverence for it, wrote as follows: "Where we behold children we suspect there are princes, but as to the kings, where are they?" Not only life's tragic elements diminish and dam up its vital energies. Equally destructive is a parent's want of reverence for the sources of life which meet them in a new being. Fathers and mothers must bow their heads in the dust before the exalted nature of the child. Until they see that the word "child" is only another expression for the ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key
... John M. Hurd's was something,—comparatively a more vital factor to Wilkinson, who lived in a cheap boarding house, than to its other partakers,—and Isabel Hurd ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... path, The loving friend of mortals deemed: When he, who, fleeing from the impious strife Of cities filled with mutiny and shame, In depths of woods remote, The rough trees clasping to his breast, The vital flame seemed in their veins to feel, The breathing leaves of Daphne, or of Phyllis sad; And seemed the sisters' tears to see, still shed For him who, smitten by the lightning's blast, Into the swift ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... assertion of a principle which should be for all time decisive against all sorts and forms of "re-presentation" of the Lord our Sacrifice. He has "offered" Himself once and for ever, and is now, on our behalf, not in the Presence only but upon the Throne. Yet more urgent, more vital, if possible, is the affirmation here of the need and of the virtue of His vicarious death. The chapter puts His blood-shedding before us in a way as remote as possible from a mere example, or from a suffering meant to do its work mainly by a mysterious impartation to us of the power to suffer. ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... Leppie had brought on by eating unripe fruit; the fact that another of Sarah's teeth had dropped out without extraneous aid. It was all very well for a week or two, but, at the idea of shutting herself wholly up with such mopokes, of cutting herself off from her present vital interests, Laura hastily reconsidered her decision to leave school. No: badly as she had suffered at her companions' hands, much as she dreaded returning, it was at school she belonged. All her heart was there: in the doings of her equals, the things that really mattered—who would be promoted, ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... this time more piteously than before. The baron, deeply touched, and willing by any means to alleviate her distress, at last divulged the vital secret which he had held from ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... District-cum-Metropolitan system, run it with one station well-underground in the middle of Exhibition Road, whence an easy ascent to the Imperial Exhibition, when passengers would come up to "carp the vital airs," then right away again, branching off left and right, thus bringing the mild Southerners into rapid, easy communication, at all reasonable hours, and at reasonable prices, with the rugged denizens of the Northern districts, East and West. If Kensington Gardens ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... The seventh article makes the eternity of the State and the security of the Imperial house depend upon wise administration by well-selected officials, but says nothing of hereditary rights. How is such a vital omission to be interpreted, except on the supposition that Shotoku, who had witnessed the worst abuses incidental to the hereditary system of the uji, intended by this code to enter a solemn ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... him, that his inheritance is not swept away by freshets. We are growing rapidly, in America, in the understanding of this subject, beginning to comprehend the necessity of giving the land that bears crops the equivalent of that which is taken from it, that the vital capital of future generations may not be dissipated and the people grow ever poor and ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... of vital importance, you say, that we should really know what the enemy is doing beyond the Tchernaya. I am quite ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... her rightly," said the Professor, "she is addressing you as the 'light of her eyes and the vital ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... considerations, therefore, as our previous discussions have left some vital questions untouched, and as our past experience seems to have proved that we cannot, with mutual profit, compare our opinions upon these subjects orally, I have decided to embody my sentiments on the general points of difference between us in the form of a letter. Knowing my personal regard ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... concern in the arrangements and perplexities of Mr. Coleridge at the time of publishing his "Watchman;" for he had a more vital interest involved in the success of that work than he had, individually, in the rise and fall of empires. When he returned from his northern journey laden with subscribers, and with hope ripened into confidence, all that had yet been done ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... of the intrinsic importance of the matter, as because Maxwell was indispensable to the Cabinet, and it was known that neither Maxwell nor his close friend and henchman, Dowson, the Home Secretary, would accept defeat on any of the really vital ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the War Office, and applications to the Colonial Office, by Sir Alexander Cochrane for De Berenger; and after they had called witness after witness to give this confirmation upon this insignificant and trifling point, they leave him without confirmation upon that important, that vital part of this case to my Lord Cochrane, videlicet: the dress which Mr. De Berenger wore at the time he came to that house, and had with him that interview. Lord Cochrane puts him on a grey military great coat, a green uniform, and a fur cap. I have proved, that the uniform he wore was red. ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... thought of his nation, but, above all, as a marvelous creator of fictional characters. He had revealed Spain to herself in nineteen novels of manners, and evoked her recent past in twenty historical novels. He had proved, in short, that in his own sphere he was one of the great vital forces ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... They would no longer accentuate their ugliness with that unlovely honesty of the feminist which has been quite as distressing as the impossible Victorian lack of honesty and everlasting concealment of vital things. They would no longer be feminists or ladies, but gentlewomen who sew their own seam, who neither struggle unseen nor flaunt their emotions in the ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... brutalities are practised by their own superior government. But it is something, certainly, to have gained a permanent Court of Arbitration for the trial of disputed points between nations. The points are at present minor, it is true. Questions affecting honour, vital interests, and independence are expressly excluded. But the habit of referring any question at all to arbitration is a gain, if only we could trust the members of the Court. So long as those members are ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... story, in which is pictured a clergyman in touch with society people, stage favorites, simple village folk, powerful financiers and others, each presenting vital problems to this man "in holy orders"—problems that we are ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... depends on her efficiency in playing the game. The patrol system is an essential feature in Scouting. When this is lost sight of and the attitude of a teacher is adopted, making the troop a class, the vital spirit or meaning of Scouting is missed entirely. Although a powerful personality always can succeed with young people, in individual instances, it would be impossible to get enough of these people to make any impression upon the thousands ...
— The Girl Scouts Their History and Practice • Anonymous
... point were clear, to himself. For slavery to exist in a country where free government was put on trial was a tangible lie, that had worked a moral divorce between North and South. Slavery was the vital breath of the South; if she chose to go out and keep it, had not freemen the right to choose their own government? To bring her back by carnage was simply the old game of regal tyranny on republican cards. So his head settled it: as for his heart,—his neighbors' houses were in ashes, burned ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... at the core of all such things there should be a moral. So we pow-wowed for an hour and more over the threadbare old theme and the most I could get out of Gershom was that the lady in The Old-fashioned Gown reminded him of me, only I was more vital. But all that talk about landscape and composition and line and tone made me momentarily homesick for a glimpse of Old Lyme again, before I go ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... clergy. But still the large aspect of the matter is always, among Protestants, that formalism, respectability, orthodoxy, caution, and propriety, live by the slow stream that encircles the lowland abbey or cathedral; and that enthusiasm, poverty, vital faith, and audacity of conduct, characterize the pastor dwelling by the torrent side. In like manner, taking the large aspects of Romanism, we see that its worst corruptions, its cunning, its worldliness, and its permission of crime, are traceable for the ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... immediately. I want it for Laurie. He has got into trouble and requires it; so don't keep me waiting a single minute if you can help it. I am so sorry you are out; but will you bring it to me the instant you return home? It is of the most vital importance. I am in dreadful trouble, and nothing else will save Laurie. Yours in great haste, ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... government wholly at the source, you inevitably make all the vital decisions invisible. For since there is no instinct which automatically makes political decisions that produce a good life, the men who actually exercise power not only fail to express the will of the people, because on most questions no will exists, but they ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... had closed about her. He was holding her in a vital clasp. But his restless look did not dwell upon her. It seemed rather to ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... fashion—that they should, I say, have been in the habit of deliberately crushing that part of the body which should be specially left free, contracting and displacing their lungs, their heart, and all the most vital and important organs, and entailing thereby disease, not only on themselves but on their children after them; that for forty years past physicians should have been telling them of the folly of what they have been doing; and that they should as yet, in the great majority of ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... of life began to stir in that full bosom, to which again a vital warmth had on this day of days crept ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... and Pope's poems. Zoe told me that she had read these books, part of them over and over, and that she had had a teacher the year before who had helped her to understand them. I began to delimn Zoe as a girl of intelligence. Of vital spirits she had an abundance.... The night was very warm and of wonderful stillness, no breeze. We heard the cry of what Zoe called "varmints" in the woods. A night bird was singing. She told me it was the whippoorwill. I never had heard a more thrillingly melancholy note. Once Zoe ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... No vital detail had escaped her penetrating probe; she proved herself past mistress in the art of cross-examination, and found in Sally ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... till victory is won. Day by day the pressure of public opinion must increase, till the impression made on Parliament by resolutions and petitions shall be overwhelming. The struggle against the 'Trade' and its Government backers is hard, but we must fight straight on, for the issue is of vital importance and we should be ready to make a determined and triumphant resistance to the Prime Minister's sinister and unashamed attempt to sell our immemorial rights to England's most dangerous foe, that gigantic Drink Trade, which ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... events of the day—the brocaded and hooped Court dress for the morning mass, the negligee to be worn during leisure hours in her own living rooms, and the gown to be donned for evening festivities. These vital matters determined, the Queen proceeded with her bath and her breakfast of chocolate and rolls. She was accustomed then to return to bed, and, with her tapestry-work in hand, receive various persons attached ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... length hit upon a plan which I thought might serve to render our visit to Cumana unnecessary, at least so far as the spars were concerned. I knew that a quick passage was regarded by the authorities as of the most vital importance, for my friend the second lieutenant had told me so; I therefore awaited my opportunity, and, taking advantage of a moment when Don Felix and several of his officers were chatting with me, I suddenly changed the topic of conversation ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... mountain and cape and sea-front, its parade of corporeal and egotistic pleasures, its primordial and undisguised appeal to the carnival spirit, its frank, exotic festivity, its volatile and almost too vital atmosphere, and, above all, its glowing and over-odorous gardens and flowerbeds, its overcrowded and grimly Dionysian Promenade, its murmurous and alluring restaurants on steep little boulevards—it was all ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... 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 ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... part of the reconstruction policy of Sumner and Grant never took effect. Mr. Sumner deemed this matter vital to success. He told me about a week before his death that when the resolution declaring the provision for public education at the National charge an essential part of the reconstruction policy, was defeated in the Senate by a tie vote, he was so overcome by his feelings ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... incline dead Christians to become fruitful. A third one is to lead people from the study of human theory and science to the real exercise of faith and devotion. A fourth reason is to show what that true Christian life is which harmonizes with vital faith—and what that is which Paul meant when he said, 'I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... and free from adhesions. The liver was very small, in its colour natural, firm in its texture, and every way free from the smallest appearance of disorganization. The stomach, as well as the spleen and other abdominal contents, was alike free from the traces of disease. Indeed all the vital parts were so perfectly healthy in their appearance, and so small, that they resembled more those of a youth, than of a man who had attained his forty-seventh year; which state of the body, associated with habits of life favourable to health, gives every reason to believe that HIS LORDSHIP ...
— The Death of Lord Nelson • William Beatty
... boosting borrowing. Reducing the government budget deficit is a major goal of the LAHUD government. The stalled peace process and ongoing violence in southern Lebanon could lead to wider hostilities that would disrupt vital capital inflows. Furthermore, the gap between rich and poor has widened in the 1990's, resulting in grassroots dissatisfaction over the skewed distribution of the reconstruction's benefits and leading the government to shift its focus from rebuilding ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... was effective beyond a few thousand miles range at most—and the dark star could span millions. If the invader passed on, its havoc would be only a trifle smaller, for it had already destroyed two members of the solar system and was now striking at its most vital part. Without the sun, life would die, but even with the sun the planets must rearrange themselves because ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei
... without fear of persecution. Unitarians and Roman Catholics, as well as Jews, were expressly excluded from the benefits of the act. The passage of this measure did much to remove religion from English politics as a vital issue. ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... in accounting for the origin of the universe and all its phenomena, physical, vital, and mental, rejects Theism, or the doctrine of a personal God, who is extramundane as well as antemundane, the creator and governor of all things; he rejects Pantheism, which makes the finite the existence-form of the Infinite; ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... the vital wind, flowing melodiously through the trees—a clean, aromatic, refreshing wind, filling the sickened world with ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... one of the garages in Guildford. You really must stay, Charles. There's lots we have to talk over—a lot of things that are of vital consequence to us both." ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... told; that is the teller's part: how it is received, or what effect it has, is the receiver's.... I think to suspect a person of wrongdoing more painful than to know that they have done wrong. In the first place, uncertainty upon the character of those we love—the most vital thing in life to us, except our own character—is the worst of all uncertainties. Your trust is shaken, your faith destroyed; belief, that soul of love, is disturbed, and, in addition to all this, as long as any element of uncertainty remains ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... me, as if daring me to advance, and then he would run on again for a hundred yards or more, when he would stop as before. I at one time got a little nearer, so bringing my rifle to my shoulder, I fired. I hit him, but in no vital or painful part, for he continued his course as before. I loaded rapidly, and on I went. The lake some way on before me ran up into a deep gulf. The bull, as I fancied, not observing this, steered for the intervening point of land. I thought, therefore, that ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... as essential to any clear comprehension of social principles and problems. By an odd coincidence, it was at Ardverikie likewise that, after years of laborious thought as to political questions which must soon, as I then foresaw, become for politicians the most vital questions of all, I received an invitation to address, with regard to these very questions, a public far wider than that of ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... regards feudalism, one vital feature of it—the holding of land by a military tenure, or on condition of military service—was reduced to a system by the conquest. But William took care not to be overshadowed or endangered by his great vassals. He levied taxes on all, and maintained the place of lord of all his ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... debauchees, whether they stop short at vice or roll down the descent into crime, have no foresight of the future. Present sensation is too strong for them; its image abolishes all other images, and absorbs all the vital forces of the temperament and the soul. An old dying mother, children perishing of hunger, a despairing wife; have these pictures of their deeds ever arrested drunkards, gamblers, or profligates? No more have the tragic phantoms of the tribunal, the ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... heiress had wished for a train-bearer, one would instantly have been found. She was a queen, obsequiously flattered. Flattery never emanates from noble souls; it is the gift of little minds, who thus still further belittle themselves to worm their way into the vital being of the persons around whom they crawl. Flattery means self-interest. So the people who, night after night, assembled in Mademoiselle Grandet's house (they called her Mademoiselle de Froidfond) outdid each other in expressions of admiration. This concert ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... he said, laying his hand on her shoulder, "don't try too hard! Read your books, study languages, take an interest in the vital questions of the day—but don't lose your tenderness, your sympathy, your freshness of heart. Grow up if you will, but don't grow too fast! And in cultivating your soul, don't forget that a woman's heart is her sweetest, ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... whose aesthetic nature had early responded with a vital impulse to Gothic architecture and the pomp and mystery of priestly ceremonial, felt in Bruges that the spirit of the Chapel of the Sacred Blood must be introduced into the Church of England "to save our country from lapsing into heathenism." What, I wonder, is his definition ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... unguarded threshold the mischief-making questioner has crossed. The more unsuspecting, the more frank, the more courageous, the more social is the subject of his vivisection, the more easily does he get at his vital secrets, if he has any to be extracted. No man is safe if the hearsay reports of his conversation are to be given to the public without his own careful revision. When we remember that a proof-text bearing on the mighty question of ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... which has not gone unremarked. Certainly he hasn't enough to let it harden his heart. As I am beginning to think about things now it seems to me uncle might stand for more vital things than he does, but for all that I believe he can love God the more for ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... his understanding and sharing her mood, "that the Pagans said man was made to stand upright so that he might raise his face to heaven and his eyes to the stars. Somehow, it seems those old Pagans had a finer conception of many vital truths than some of ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... Stanbury went down, almost trembling as she went. The matter to her was one of vital importance. She was going to change the whole tenour of her life for the sake,—as she told herself,—of doing her duty by a relative whom she did not even know. But we may fairly suppose that there had in truth been a feeling beyond that, which taught her to desire ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... day we began to discover the women who were living on homesteads and who, in their own way, played so vital a part in developing the West. One of our nearest neighbors—by straining our eyes we could see her little shack perched up against the horizon—put on her starched calico dress and gingham apron and came right over to call. The Widow ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... Miss Gunn," replied Dr. Eben, "not immediately; perhaps not for some months: but there seems to be a general failure of all the vital forces. I cannot rouse her, ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... pericarp in the polishing of rice. Our milling of flour is, in a minor degree, analogous. To be brief, the disease arises from the lack in diet of certain substances or bodies which modern scientists call vitamines. Small quantities of these vital principles are absolutely essential to normal growth and health and even to life itself. They are nitrogenous compounds and their absence gives rise to a class of serious disorders in which the muscles surrender ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... species, race, or individual being prepotent over the other in impressing it character on its crossed offspring, but to such rules as that the father influences the external characters and the mother the internal or vital organs. But the great diversity of the rules given by various authors almost proves their falseness. Dr. Prosper Lucas has fully discussed this point, and has shown[153] that none of the rules (and I could add others to those quoted by him) apply to all animals. Similar rules ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... honest criticism. And, in recounting the sufferings Negro troops endured as prisoners of war in the hands of the Rebels, I have avoided any spirit of bitterness. A great deal of the material on the war I purchased from the MS. library of Mr. Thomas S. Townsend of New-York City. The questions of vital, prison, labor, educational, and financial statistics cannot fail to interest intelligent people of all races and parties. These statistics are full of comfort and assurance to the Negro as ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... reached the cantonments. The gate of the Commissariat fort had been fired, but the enemy had not effected an entrance, yet Warren and his people had evacuated the fort through a hole cut in its wall. Thus, with scarcely a struggle to save it, was this vital fort allowed to fall into the enemy's hands, and thenceforward our unfortunate people were to be reduced to precarious and scanty sources for ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... God coming up the stairs, and I've neglected to look up the Future Periphrastic Conjugation and that ticklish difference between the Gerund and the Gerundive, which is vital. ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... themselves, their ideas of enjoyment consisting in lying face downward resting upon their crossed arms, which formed a pillow for their chins, and kicking the turf with their toes. Then, as if moved by the same spirit, they leaped to their feet with all a boy's energy and vital force. ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... been able to complete the communicating shaft it was not now of vital importance should the Dyaks penetrate to the interior. Yet he thanked the good luck that had showered such a heap of rubbish over the spot containing his chief stores and covering the vein of gold. Wild as these fellows were, they well knew the value of the precious metal, and if by chance they ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... deeply. Even at this moment of vital happiness, her thoughts rested on her sister. She remembered what Hester's anticipations had been, in prospect of having Edward for the guide of ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... a smile often accompanies what is called "the white voice." This is a voice production where a head resonance alone is employed, without sufficient of the apoggio or enough of the mouth resonance to give the tone a vital quality. This "white voice" should be thoroughly understood and is one of the many shades of tone a singer can use at times, just as the impressionist uses various unusual colors to produce ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... the same ground as Voltaire and the old English deists. And when we have said this, we have sufficiently defined his position, for the tenets of the deists are at the present day pretty well known, and are, moreover, of very little vital importance, having long since been supplanted by a more just and comprehensive philosophy. Reimarus accepted neither miracles nor revelation; but in accordance with the rudimentary state of criticism ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... this system the word was not magna loquimur, as upon railways, but vivimus. Yes, "magna vivimus"; we do not make verbal ostentation of our grandeurs, we realise our grandeurs in act, and in the very experience of life. The vital experience of the glad animal sensibilities made doubts impossible on the question of our speed; we heard our speed, we saw it, we felt it as a thrilling; and this speed was not the product of blind insensate agencies, that had no sympathy to give, but was incarnated ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... travelling show. This at once suggests comparison with M. Edmond de Goncourt's Les Freres Zemganno; or rather a contrast: for the two stories, conceived in very similar surroundings, differ in at least two vital respects. ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... for the time the squire's mind was full of outside interests, and when Antony discussed a subject so vital to himself, he was resolved his father should be in a position to feel its importance, and give it his undivided attention. Personally he had no ill-feeling toward Ben Craven, but he was annoyed at the intrusion of so vulgar ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... soldier would not last a year. The result of trying to make the Church of England reflect the notions of the average churchgoer has reduced it to a cipher except for the purposes of a petulantly irreligious social and political club. Democracy as to the thing to be done may be inevitable (hence the vital need for a democracy of supermen); but democracy as to the way to do it is like letting the passengers drive the train: it can only end in collision and wreck. As a matter of act, we obtain reforms (such ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... description of the supposed alterations made in them. He reported in substance that the original record had been so tampered with that it was impossible to decide whether the observations as published were genuine or not. The vital figures, those which told the times when Venus entered upon the sun, had been erased, and rewritten with blacker ink. This might well have been done after the party returned to Copenhagen. The case ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... grave, middle-aged person, who, without having studied at the college, or truckled to the pedantry of a diploma, hath employed a great portion of his valuable time in experimental processes upon the bodies of unfortunate fellow-creatures, in whom the vital spark, to mere vulgar thinking, would seem extinct, and lost for ever. He omitteth no occasion of obtruding his services, from a case of common surfeit-suffocation to the ignobler obstructions, sometimes induced by a too wilful application of the plant Cannabis outwardly. But though he declineth ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... instruction to-day comes largely from the direct or indirect taxation of the wealth of the State. Being now conceived of as essential to the welfare and progress of the State, the State yearly confiscates a portion of every man's property and uses it to maintain a service deemed vital to ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... and consistent element, in the very logical and consistent creed we call Mahometanism, is the element that we call Vandalism. Since such few and obvious things alone are vital, and since a half-artistic half-antiquarian affection is not one of these things, and cannot be called obvious, it is largely left out. It is very difficult to say in a few well-chosen words exactly what is now the use of the Pyramids. Therefore Saladin, the great Saracen warrior, simply stripped ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... the Established Church always pays homage to it because it is RESPECTABLE, and sneers at Dissent. Another reason why Milton does not take his proper place is that his theme is a theology which for most people is no longer vital. A religious poem if it is to be deeply felt must embody a living faith. The great poems of antiquity are precious to us in proportion to our acceptance, now, as fact, of what they tell us about heaven and earth. There are only a few persons at present who perceive that in substance the account ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... Spider, since the Tarantula and the Garden Spider call for two thrusts. And the prentice Scolia, who used at first to sting under the throat, had the skill, at her first attempt, to begin by disarming her adversary and then to go quite low down, almost to the end of the thorax, to strike the vital point. I am utterly incredulous as to her success. I see her eaten up if her lancet swerves and hits the wrong spot. Let us look impossibility boldly in the face and admit that she succeeds. I then see the ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... and adopted symbols in order to express what they came to believe. All their rites, their vocations, their pleasures were born, practiced and enjoyed under the arching skies, and were permeated, as by a vital spirit, with an unquestioning consciousness of oneness ...
— Indian Games and Dances with Native Songs • Alice C. Fletcher
... figure and felt its pulse, and put his ear down to its heart. It, which has already in my telling ceased to be he, drew its breath in those long suspirations which seemed to search each more profoundly than the last the lurking life, drawing it from the vital recesses and expelling ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... evidence which confirms the substantial truth of Christianity. And even if they establish real contradictions, they still amount, for reasons we are about to state, to dust in the balance, unless they establish contradictions not in immaterial but in vital points. The objections must be such as, if proved, leave the whole fabric of evidence in ruins. For, secondly, we are fully disposed to concede to the objector that there are, in the books of Scripture, not only apparent but real discrepancies,—a ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... nods and blinks and by the substitution of capital letters for surnames; a practice likely to lead to much confusion and scandal when the names of several friends begin with the same letter. Others improve the family orthography to an extent they little dream of by spelling certain vital words instead of pronouncing them, some children profiting so much by this form of vicarious instruction that they have been known to close a most interesting conversation by thoughtlessly correcting their parents ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... a perfect uproar of applause, and drank water. In spite of the applause he was haunted by a sense of incompleteness. There was something he had left out of his speech, something he had particularly wanted to say. It seemed to him more vital, more important, than ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... a great stride forward. This instrument was an arrangement of strings on a box. Here we have the principle of the sounding-board,—a thing of vital moment to the piano, and one upon which the utmost care is bestowed by all the great makers. Whoever first thought of stretching strings on a box may also be said to have half invented the guitar and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... of 1812, England has been preparing, in the event of another war, to strike at this, our vital point. In 1814 the Duke of Wellington declared "that a naval superiority on the Lakes is a sine qua non of success in war on the frontier of Canada." Years before, William Hall, Governor of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... make bold to predict for the English language, is a real gain, apart from all patriotic bias. The English language is incomparably richer, more fluid, and more vital than the German language. Where the German has but one way of saying a thing, we have two or three, each with its distinctions and its subtleties of usage. Our capital wealth is greater, and so are our powers of borrowing. English sprang from the old Teutonic stock, and we can still coin new words, ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... annum is required to warrant the risk, such refinement would be absurd. On the other hand, in a Witwatersrand gold mine, in gold and tin gravels, or in massive copper mines such as Bingham and Lake Superior, where at least some sort of life can be approximated, it becomes a most vital element in valuation. ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... 'Peeps' series of attractive books ... has been added this dainty volume on Poland by Monica M. Gardner, well known as the author of Adam Mickiewicz and Poland: a Study in National Idealism. That the war must have a vital effect on the destiny of Poland is universally acknowledged, and now is the time to study the characteristics of the Poles. ... The chapter devoted to Polish National Customs is quite fascinating, and 'A Day in Cracow' presents vivid glimpses of the chief city of 'Austrian' Poland. ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... powers. Living Nature appears limitless, for life processes have been going on in the world through countless centuries with seemingly unimpaired vigour. At the very bottom we find this never-ending exhibition of vital power dependent upon certain activities of micro-organisms. So thoroughly is this true that, as we shall find after a short consideration, the continuance of life upon the surface of the world would be impossible ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn
... People have a perfect right to organize on the basis of their particular beliefs, and to keep out of their organization those persons who do not happen to agree with them. But, and here is a most important consideration, if these beliefs seem to us who are outside to be vital; if they appear to concern us, to touch our well-being, our future hopes, then we certainly have a right to study those beliefs, to criticise them, to put them to the test to see whether they are well founded, whether they have any adequate basis ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... a very marked contrast between the death of Adonais (Keats) as a mortal man succumbing to 'the common fate,' and the immortality of his spirit as a vital immaterial essence surviving the death of the body: he uses terms such as might be adopted by any believer in the doctrine of 'the immortality of the soul,' in the ordinary sense of that phrase. It would not however be safe ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... and suggestions of history. The West has taken strength, thought, training, selected aptitudes out of the old treasures of the East,—as if out of a new Orient; while the East has itself been kept fresh, vital, alert, originative by the West, her blood quickened all the while, her youth through every age renewed. Who can say in a word, in a sentence, in a volume, what destinies have been variously wrought, with what new examples of growth and energy, ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... who would know these things with a vital knowledge—a conviction which would remain unshaken were the whole world in arms for wrong—it is before all things necessary to strengthen the inner monitions by the companionship of these noble souls. And If a poet, by strong concentration ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... me," said the pope, breathing more freely; "it seems as if it communicated to my lungs a renewed vital power and caused the blood to flow more rapidly in my veins. Lorenzo, this is a singularly fortunate day for me, and I will make the most of it. Come, we will ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... again. He was gazing in at himself and laughing at the conceits he knew were real, and strong, and vital. ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... to ensure the apostolic doctrine. The conflicts within the sphere of the rule of faith, the struggles with the so-called Montanism, but finally and above all, the existing situation of the Church in the third century with regard to the world within her pale, made the question of organisation the vital one for her. Tertullian and Origen already found themselves face to face with episcopal claims of which they highly disapproved and which, in their own way, they endeavoured to oppose. It was again the Roman bishop[169] who first ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... its colonial and commercial interests, but which have hitherto been in an unaccountable manner neglected, even by those whose interests and fortunes were entirely wound up in the changes connected with these vital subjects. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... suggestion of cant. There was an impression of candor and enthusiasm in everything he said, so that words which might on the lips of another sound conventional or meaningless became on his spontaneous and vital. "He is too modest and self-forgetful to wish for the honor," his friends commented now; "but he is too conscientious not to put aside his personal preferences for the good of the church. He may shrink from the high places, but he is the ideal man for them." ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates |
