"Climax" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... direction of the door, and flickered unsteadily on the bed, I remained unmoved to a certain degree, although passively alive to the significance of the incident. I realized that the ultimate issue was at hand, but either because I was emotionally exhausted, or from some other cause, the pending climax failed to disturb me. ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... contained an immense population, variously estimated, in which were centred whatever wealth or power had craved. This capital had become rapidly ornamented with palaces, and temples, and works of art, with the subjugation of Greece and Asia Minor, although it did not reach the climax of magnificence until the time of Hadrian. In the time of Augustus, the most imposing buildings were the capitol, restored by Sulla and Caesar, whose gilded roof alone cost $15,000,000. The theatre ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... over!" thundered the little man with a voice out of keeping with his slender body. "Don't try it too often! You can't drive over the Law, yet—you haven't quite millions enough for that. Heigh? That so?" he queried, sensible of the anti-climax of asking such a question in that way, but tipsily ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... the exertion, Bobby fell into deep and strength-restoring slumber, and Skipper Ed joined the others to cheer their hearts with the good news that Bobby's illness had passed its climax, and to rejoice with them over ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... to shine as a gallant "in hall or bower," but had he been the climax of knightly qualities, the very impersonation of beauty, grace, and accomplishment, he could not have been better adapted than, in his own estimation, he already was, to please the fancy of a lady. He was blissfully unconscious ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... won't stand for new things. They want the old scenes rehashed. The public don't want to think; it wants to laugh. This story is all right for a book, but won't do for a play. I don't see why you quit a good thing for a risk like this. It is foolish and will lose money," he added, as a climax. ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is never full," saith the Preacher; so all spiritual currents flow together into the vast ocean of a world-literature, never full, never complete, rejoicing in every accession, reaching the climax of its might and majesty on that day when, according to the prophet, "the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... of development in the organ of the mental faculties, forms a fitting climax to the evidence already adduced of the progressive evolution of the general structure of the body, as illustrated by the bony skeleton. We now pass on to another class of facts equally ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... this letter did not go I cannot imagine. I have just found it in Kate's work-basket; and I open it again, to add the grand climax. I have been so very minute in my accounts of Kate's love-affairs, that I feel it would not be fair to slur over mine. So, dear friend, I open my heart to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... (the principal official on the island), one does not find a footman who can shew the way. In Hamburgh I had already noticed the beginnings of this dignified coldness; it increased as I journeyed further north, and at length reached its climax in Iceland. ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... last appreciation of the art of William Morris as it is displayed in this poem, we would call attention to the tremendous battle-piece entitled "Of the Battle in Atli's Hall." It is the climax of this marvelous poem, and in no detail is it inadequate to its place in the work. The poet's constructive power is here demonstrated to be of the highest order, and in the majestic sweep of events ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... in, as she did presently, with four bright-colored Japanese fans which she proceeded to fasten on the bare walls, that seemed to cap the climax. ...
— A Missionary Twig • Emma L. Burnett
... declares that "all arts address themselves to the sensibility and imagination"; and no one thus alive to the appeal of sculpture will marvel that the infuriated mob spared the statues of the Tuileries at the bloody climax of the French Revolution,—that a "love of the antique" knit in bonds of life-long friendship Winckelmann and Cardinal Albani,— that among the most salient of childhood's memories should be Memnon's image and the Colossus of Rhodes,—that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... slowly and softly—"because they probably knew that from the moment I met you, I—But that is a story with a disagreeable climax, Mrs. Barrows, so I shall not tell it. How do ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... this world is arranged! When one trouble comes to a man a second comes along, too, and waits at his door. When I am just about ready to cope with the first, in comes the second and caps the climax. I don't know which way to turn with all my debts; and now this women's quarrel will be laid at ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... recognition was not without effect upon the fortunes of Quintilian, as it placed him in the front rank of the teachers of Rome. This, together with his subject, the teaching and mastery of which were considered by the Romans to be the climax of education, enabled him to wrest supremacy from the Greek teachers who so long had enjoyed a monopoly of teaching ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... not troubled himself about its publication. Having retired to Illinois at first and to the Falklands afterwards, he had no notion of the stir that the work had made, or of the fantastic and baseless climax to which our great poet had brought ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... until the poison of other-worldliness wells up suddenly in him and he is a Christian and a mystic full of echoes of old soul-torturing. In Maragall's most expressive work, a sequence of poems called El Comte Arnau, all this is synthesized. These are from the climax. ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... sister-in-law," rejoined Mrs. Ch'in with a sardonic smile, "you're very simple indeed! When woe has reached its climax, weal supervenes. Prosperity and adversity, from days of yore up to the present time, now pass away, and now again revive, and how can (prosperity) be perpetuated by any human exertion? But if now, we could in the time of good fortune, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... they find or produce in quantities any valuable commodities. They were not even self-supporting. The colony held on because constantly fed with men and provisions by the "Supplies." There was dissatisfaction in London; in James Towne misery and often despair. The climax of disappointment and suffering was reached in the spring of 1610, ever since known as the "Starving Time." In that season of horror, the settlement almost passed out ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... all prophecies to the contrary, two months of unalloyed joy had passed for Ben and Viney, and to-night the climax seemed to have been reached. Ben hurried along, talking to himself as his hoe ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... hen? Why does it waltz? And what is the secret of the prowling peril? Then, even as the Hindu had earlier died so quickly and mysteriously, the boys' old friend disappears. Then comes the final ludicrous climax. ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Crystal Palace and what I subsequently heard on the Continent in the cathedrals, and at the opera, certainly enlarged my appreciation of music. At Rome the Pope's choir and the celebrations in the churches at Christmas and Easter furnished, as it were, a grand climax ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... which, rising higher and higher, and spreading further and further, increased until it reached its climax in a deafening thunderclap which made us tremble and hold our breaths. "The wrath of God"—what poetry there is in that simple ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... "It isn't a story, 'cause there never was a climax as real stories have to have, you know. But I'll tell you how I met Mr. Montresor. I was out with Noddy, one day, and ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... climax, first the one foot and then the other making the broken coral on the floor fly behind like a war-horse pawing the ground, he ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... general ideas as to the method of the government of the world, of which we have already seen something, had formed what he conceived to be a perfectly satisfactory way of accounting for the eighteenth century and its terrific climax. The will of man is left free; he acts contrary to the will of God; and then God exacts the shedding of blood as the penalty. So much for the past. The only hope of the future lay in an immediate return to the system which God himself had ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... seemed to reach a climax one afternoon some days before the end of the year. Without, the wind was blowing and snow was descending; inside, the housework dragged monotonously. The only lively people in the house were the little children. ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... showed the super-Simba. The dispute might in the ordinary course of events have come to shooting; but only after hours of excited wrangling, and as a climax worked up to in a crescendo of emotion. This expeditious nipping in the bud was ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... great object proposed, consists of seven steps:— the investigation of things; the completion of knowledge; the sincerity of the thoughts; the rectifying of the heart; the cultivation of the person; the regulation of the family; and the government of the state. These form the steps of a climax, the end of which is the kingdom tranquillized. Pauthier calls the paragraphs where they occur instances of the sorites, or abridged syllogism. But they elong to rhetoric, and not to logic. 6. In offering some observations on these steps, and the writer's treatment of them, it will be ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... was as if a knife had suddenly pierced her temples. She cried out sharply with the pain of it, staggered, clutched wildly at emptiness, and fell. The contents of her basket scattered around her in spite of her desperate efforts to save them, and this disaster was to Olga the climax of all. She went into a brief ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... results of all this sanitary enthusiasm, that the use of tobacco in Europe probably reached its climax in a century or two, and has since rather diminished than increased, in proportion to the population. It probably appeared in England in 1586, being first used in the Indian fashion, by handing one pipe ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... is that which the Romans call caena dubia; where there is such plenty, yet withal so much diversity, and so good order, that the choice is difficult betwixt one excellency and another; and yet the conclusion, by a due climax, is evermore the best—that is, as a conclusion ought to be, ever the most proper for its place. See, my lord, whether I have not studied your lordship with some application: and since you are so modest that you will not be judge and party, I appeal to the whole ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... rising now and then to some melodramatic climax, then dropping cautiously, rippled on, broken now and again by Sylvie's ejaculations. Behind the door Bella stood like a wooden block, colorless and stolid as though she understood not a syllable of what she heard. But after a rigid hour ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... conclave to which he belonged. Threats and blandishments failed to move the prisoner; he was silent, accepted his doom, and was remanded with two allies,—one of whom purchased a remission by treason to his vows. Such was the climax of two dreary years of imprisonment, aggravated by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... machine, whose works were rusty and almost run down. He could not trouble him with such an absurdity. Then, too, he was too vexed to please the girl so much. He forced himself to drink the tea without a grimace, knowing that Emma's eyes were upon him. But the climax was almost reached. That night when on his return he wished to change his collar before dinner, he found every one with the buttonholes torn. It was skilfully done, so skilfully that no one could have declared positively that it had not been done accidentally ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... "Cobbler" Horn told of the dilapidated condition in which he had found the village, and of the instructions he had given to the agent. At the recital of the latter, Miss Jemima held up her hands in dismay, while the eyes of the secretary glistened with unconcealed delight. But the climax was reached when "Cobbler" Horn spoke of his intentions with regard to the old Hall. Miss Jemima uttered a positive shriek, and shook her head till her straight, ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... reached a climax the thunders of applause were terrific. It was a great speech. When I came out of the hall my face was glowing with excitement and my frame all a-quiver. A friend, with his eyes aglow, asked me what I thought of 'Abe' Lincoln, the rail-splitter. I said, 'He's the greatest ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... began to tell ghost stories. Walter happened to know a few of the rarer sort, and found himself in his element. His art came to help him, and the eyes of the ladies, and he rose to his best. As he was working one of his tales to its climax, Mr. Sefton entered the room, where Walter had been the only gentleman, and took a chair beside Lufa. She ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... tripping along the level hill. All that dream was now over. He did not speak of it—nor I. He seemed contented—or, at least, thoroughly calmed down; except that the sweet composure of his mien had settled into the harder gravity of manhood. The crisis and climax of youth had been gone through—he never could ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... On witnessing this climax, Mr. Kennedy, senior, pulled up, dismounted, and ran—with an expression of some anxiety on his countenance—to the help of his son, while Tom Whyte came out of the stable just in time to receive the "noo 'oss" as he floundered out of ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... a thought to accept the cup-bearer's hospitality. He knew that the expected climax would follow immediately upon the king's perusal of the message, and that the nature of that climax depended upon himself. He needed mental vigor and bodily freshness to make effective the work before him. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... The climax was finally reached in an official protest against the Paris Treaty written by Agoncillo in Paris on the 12th of December, 1898, ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... drunk with becoming decorum. I was about to resume my seat when I saw that Mr. Blake had screwed himself up to a desperate decision, and that the climax of the drama was at hand. He was quite pale, and he stuttered a ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... whole assemblage broke into an uproar of acclamation. Only the Emperor kept his gravity. Leaning heavily on the golden cone at the right of his chair, his chin depressed, his eyes staring, scarcely breathing, he waited, knowing, that having gone so far, there was before the speaker an unavoidable climax; and seeing it in his face, and coming, he presently aroused, and motioned ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... a climax that afternoon. Marjory had driven by herself to the village to get some things that Lisbeth wanted, and also to buy some stamps for her uncle. Peter usually accompanied her on these expeditions, but to-day he was busy in the vine-house, and ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... that they should be there in that out-of-the-way place! In spite of the terrible ordeal through which she had passed and the dramatic climax in which the struggle had just culminated, it still appeared so unreal, so unnatural to her, that she wondered whether she was not still dreaming and must soon awaken to find herself back in the old life again ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... order, the band set up its music stands and instruments on deck amidships; and when the blithe strains resounded through the whole of the Roland, that was the climax of festivity. For half an hour it seemed as if the few clouds floating in the blue sky, the steamer, the people on the steamer, and the ocean had agreed to dance ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... medicine, it is good, and will cure you very soon." I am sure I do not know what they put in tick ointment; nor, for the purpose, did it greatly matter. That night, also, Herbert Spencer reached the climax of his absurdities. The chops he had cooked did not quite suffice for our hunger, so we instructed him to give us some of the leg. By this we meant steak, of course. Herbert Spencer was gone so long a time that finally we went to see what possibly ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... of those mellow, golden days that we New Englanders get in October. The year really begins in March, as every farmer knows, and by the end of September or the beginning of October the season has come to its perfect, ripened climax. There are a few days when the world seems to hang still in a dreaming, sweet hush, at the very fulness of the fruit before the decline sets in. I have no words (like Andrew) to describe it, but every autumn ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... was awarded to this couple by a unanimous vote. The man presented it to his partner with a grandiloquent flourish, and returned thanks in a speech which sent the Northern visitors into spasms of delight at the quaintness of the darky dialect and the darky wit. To cap the climax, the winner danced a buck dance with a skill and agility that brought a shower of complimentary silver, which he gathered up and passed ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... poor, as exemplified in having nothing to put on, nothing to go out in, nothing to dress by, only a nasty box to dress at instead of a commodious dressing-table, and being obliged to take in suspicious lodgers. On the last grievance as her climax, she laid great stress—and might have laid greater, had she known that if Mr Julius Handford had a twin brother upon earth, Mr ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... base for our campaign against Mt. Coropuna, in June, 1911. We learned that the Peruvian "winter" reaches its climax in July or August, and that it would be folly to try to climb Coropuna during the winter snowstorms. On the other hand, the "summer months," beginning with November, are cloudy and likely to add fog and mist to the difficulties of climbing a new ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... left them breathless with astonishment. She had decided to provide two short concerts, one in the afternoon, one in the evening. She would sing two songs; Pixie should do the same. They would all join in appropriate part songs. By way of a climax the last number on the programme should be illustrated by a tableau vivant. She proposed to write special words to a well-known air which, together with the tableau, should illustrate the benefits which the bazaar was destined to provide ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... the climax of their young lives. Whatever lay beyond they could not know. Whatever forces had driven them into this sanctuary they neither of them sought to question. It might be ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... Notwithstanding the fact that the performance is made up of admirable points that might he enumerated and described, the picture is complete as a whole and in its connections. Always before the public; preserving the interest during two acts of the play after a telling climax; sustaining the realities of his character in a scene of old superstition, and in which no one speaks but himself,—the impersonation requires a greater evenness of merit and dramatic effect than any other that could have been chosen. Rip Van Winkle is imbued with the most ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... This was the Climax, the Paradise, of my strange eventful History. Henceforth I have to relate the story of my miserable Fall:—most miserable, yet surely most undeserved! For why should the thirst for knowledge be aroused, only to be disappointed and punished? My volition shrinks from the painful task of recalling ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... must be Martin's—now this—now this ... And on every occasion Maggie's heart rose in her breast, hammered at her eyes, then sank again. Over and over she told to herself every incident of yesterday's meeting. Always it ended in that same wonderful climax when she was caught to his breast and felt his hand at her neck and then his mouth upon hers. She could still feel against her skin the rough warm stuff of his coat and the soft roughness of his ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... always upon obedience to what is conceived of as revealed truth. We have already said that Jesus regarded revelation as organic. In everything organic we find instances of quick crisis following long and slow periods of growth. The crisis or the climax of the sudden flowering-out would never be possible were it not for the antecedent growth. The Hebrew nation, developed through workaday righteousness, manifested wonderful power in sudden crises. The inner forces of moral purpose ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell
... so full of anti-climax,' she concluded. Siegmund smiled softly at her. She had him too much in love to disagree or to examine ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... appearance of the great market. Toward the middle of the day the gaiety reached a climax; the noise became deafening. The fury of the neglected venders, and the anger of the overcharged customers, were beyond description. Thence frequent quarrels, and, as we know, few guardians of the peace to quell the ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... themselves with the subject. The theological god, although for the most part incomprehensible, is the last effort of the human imagination; it is to the god of the savage, what an inhabitant of the city of Sybaris, where effiminacy and luxury reigned, where pomp and pageantry had reached their climax, clothed with a curiously embroidered purple habit of silk, was to a man either quite naked, or simply covered with the skin of a beast perhaps newly slain. It is only in civilized societies, that leisure affords the opportunity of dreaming—that ease procures the facility of reasoning; ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... from without, is a stage on which the actors walk their parts much better than the spectators can. This play is played in every district. Every rustic feels that his house is not like my lord's house; his life like my lord's life; his wife like my lady. The climax of the play is the Queen: nobody supposes that their house is like the court; their life like her life; her orders like their orders. There is in England a certain charmed spectacle which imposes on the many, and guides their fancies ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... listened spell-bound as the sweet singer went on, their interest growing to feverish eagerness until the climax was ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... Tacitus' account (Ann. xv. 67) the climax is curious:— "'Oderam te,' inquit; 'nec quisquam tibi fidelior militum fuit dum amari meruisti: odisse coepi, postquam parricida matris et uxoris, auriga et histrio ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... between the little girl and the small boy. The little girl looked on with alert suspicion from the bed, for she was not yet convalescent enough to be allowed down on the floor. The small boy was busily reciting the phases of the fight, which now approached its climax, and the little girl evidently suspected that her monitor was destined to play ...
— Theodore Roosevelt • Edmund Lester Pearson
... home who had found out that she was on the Riviera. Vanno, misunderstanding her change of expression, said no more, though he had begun his story with the intention of leading up to this. They parted with polite thanks from Mary for his information, thanks which seemed banal, a strange anti-climax coming after the story of the lovers. Yet they went away from one another with an aftermath of their first unreasoning happiness still lingering in their hearts. That night at dinner they bowed to each other slightly; and during the week that followed before Christmas eve, sometimes Vanno almost ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... from his lips, unpremeditated, eloquent, voicing those desires which had grown in the solitude of the manor. Passionately he addressed her, knowing the climax to his difficulties was at hand. Once near her, he could not be at peace without her, he vowed, and this outcome had been inevitable. All this he uttered impetuously, at times incoherently, but as he concluded, she only clasped her hands helplessly, solely conscious of the uproar ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... tough, light-weight skin, which is an essential item of consideration for the necessary large cloaks. Sables, rich and dark, are worn, like the kuni, by any one who can afford them,—court dames, cavaliers, archbishops, and merchants, or their wives and daughters,—while the climax of beauty and luxury is attained in the black fox fur, soft and delicate as feathers, warm as a July day. The silky, curly white Tibetan goat, and the thick, straight white fur of the psetz, make beautiful evening wraps for women, under velvets of delicate hues, and are used by day ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... at the end of nearly four months of protracted negotiations, themselves the climax of an agitation extending over a period of more than five years, made it useless to further pursue a discussion on the lines hitherto followed, and that Her Majesty's Government were now compelled to consider the situation afresh, and to formulate their own ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... reached its climax of animation when Bishopriggs reappeared on the scene of his duties; and the ranks of the company had been recruited, in his absence, by the very person whom it was now his foremost ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... and individual being, created in the eternal Science of being—to be conscious of aught but good. God's image and likeness can never be less than a good man; and for man to be more than God's likeness is impossible. Man is the climax of creation; and God is not without an ever-present witness, testifying of Himself. Matter, or any mode of mortal mind, is neither part nor parcel of divine consciousness and ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... had uttered that half-articulate little sentence his captive was possessed by a sudden conviction of approaching climax. He knew, somewhere deep in the tangled roots of consciousness, that either he or the other must go down that night, that one was destined to win and that the other was destined to lose, that the ancient fight was about to be settled, ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... situation, and imposingly dramatic. Nobody had looked for this. The unexpected had happened. What next? But there can be no next; the play is over; the grand climax is reached; the possibilities are ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the climax. The man flung himself into a chair and buried his face in his hands. The mask had dropped from him. There was no longer any need for pretense. Once more the grief and horror of his disaster broke through his guard and left him helpless. The whole ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... performance of the opera in Rome, introduced a Spanish song. Mme. Patti always kept a ready repertory for the scene, with a song in the vernacular of the people for whom she was singing to bring the enthusiasm to a climax and a finish: "Home, Sweet Home" in New York and London, "Solovei" in St. Petersburg. Usually she began with the bolero from "Les Vepres Siciliennes," or the shadow dance from "Dinorah." Mme. Seinbrich, living in a period when the style of song of ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... glanced, troops of social cavalry cantered and caracolled in morning rides, and the bells of prancing ponies, lashed by delicate hands, jingled in the laughing air. There were stoppages in Bond Street, which seems to cap the climax of civilization, after crowded clubs ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... The violet heat ray leveled full at them, but the commander avoided it with "Port ten, starboard ten! Maintain zigzag course to the tunnel." He understood the enemy's weapons now; he was throbbing with the fierce thrill of action. This duel was to be the climax of their whole adventure. "And, by heaven," he promised, "it's ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... exception, but to which, being an expert, he felt sure that others would take exception. The gentleman was kind enough to insist on submitting his marked copy to me, and my wonderment increased as I turned over the pages, and it reached a climax when I happened upon the following passage, which had been marked to be omitted by the American printer. The passage was: "... in her stage life Evelyn was an agent of the sensual passion, not only with her voice, but in her arms, her neck, and hair, ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... to delay ascending by a natural climax to that final consummation and perfect crown of my felicity—that almighty blessing which ratified their value to all the rest? Wherefore, oh! wherefore do I shrink in miserable weakness from——what? Is it from reviving, from calling up again into fierce and insufferable ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... But the climax of the situation was reached in the realization by all immediately concerned that something saving had to be done at once, or the whole thing would become literal anarchy, with red and howling death rampant over ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... had been a traitor or anything so dreadful. But being a prudent old gentleman he refrained from uttering these words at Podgorica, where the Skup[vs]tina had met; a better plan was to communicate with the Press Association, in the hope that many editors would print his words. If it was a final anti-climax for a mediaeval prince—ah well, what is life but one long anti-climax? He would protest against the constitution of the Skup[vs]tina. He had by no means given his approval to the new election laws; and if, contrary to his own practice, the gendarmes were having ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... in. "You couldn't do that, Mr. Dryfoos, under your system. And if you attempted it, with your conspiracy laws, and that kind of thing, it might bring the climax sooner than you expected. Your commercialized society has built its house on the sands. It will have to go. But I should be sorry if it went before ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... back. You might say they composed the second section. Carriages and automobiles rolling along immediately behind them bore the members of the official board of Emmanuel Chapel in sets of fours, and the chief financial contributors to the revival which this night would reach its climax. Flanking the carriages and following after them marched the living garnerings of the campaign—the converts to date, a veritable Gideon's Band of them, in number amounting to a host, and all afoot as befitting the palmer ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... Browning was a literary artist—that is to say, he was a symbolist. The wealth of Browning's poetry depends on arrangement of language. It is so with all great literature: it is not so much what is said as how it is said, in what way the sentences are formed so that the climax ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... that we were now approaching "the supreme and terrible climax of the War," has spoken of the late Duke of Norfolk as a man "diffident about powers which were in excess of the ordinary." Is not that true of the British race as a whole? Only now, under the stress of a long-drawn-out conflict, is it discovering the variety and strength of its latent forces. ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... their climax in the raids on German industrial centres in 1918, arose from very primitive methods used at the beginning of the war. During the retreat from Mons a few hand grenades were carried experimentally in the pockets ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes
... comprising river, mountain and forest, stands near the great entrance of the world-famous Gardens, and our balcony commands a profound ravine, carved by a clear river, winding away between forests of palm to the dark cone of Mount Salak, the climax of the picture. The artist destined to interpret the soul of Java is yet unborn, or unable to grasp the character of her unique and distinctive scenery, but a village of plaited palm-leaves, accentuating this tropical Eden, brings it down ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... silence for a space after Hilda had spoken. The thoughts her words called up passed rapidly through the minds of her hearers and produced their effect on each. As she had truly said, there was a mysterious resemblance between the climax and the anti-climax of their history. As Rieseneck and Greifenstein had been half-brothers, so were Greif and Rex; as their fathers had loved one woman, so they also both loved Hilda; as the elder pair might have been, but for the woman who wrought their destruction, honourable, ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... distance and concealed ourselves in a deep growth. To the sound of poles and paddles was added the murmuring of guttural voices. Then for a climax a raft struck against the bank and a low voice speaking Shawnee gave some ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... struggling—for such objects you are now called upon to work. By all that this wretched land has yet endured from English misrule,—by the accumulated and aggravated suffering of the last disastrous forty-seven years, with their fell climax in this year of death,—by the myriads of fresh graves, the fearful husbandry of death, that are ridging your fields and even your humble homesteads,—by the holy and most adorable name of the Deity, who chasteneth whom He loveth,—we entreat, we implore, we exhort, we adjure you to stand true ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... The call is heard off All stand waiting in tense expectation. The music plays the Hagen motives, with suggestions of the Siegfried funeral march. Voices are heard in the distance, and at the climax of the music PRINCE HAGEN and his keepers enter. He is small for a man, but larger than any of the Nibelungs; a grim, sinister figure, with black hair, and a glowering look. His hands are chained in front of him, and eight Nibelungs march as a guard. ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair
... drawn her first quarter's allowance. After that, scandalous reports about her began to arrive; then they became more and more frequent; at last a tragicomic story, in which she played a very unenviable part, ran the round of all the journals, and created a great sensation. Affairs had come to a climax. Varvara ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... strictly accurate—she claimed the late Colonel Roseberry as her father. She told a tiresome story about her having been robbed of her papers and her name by an impostor who had personated her. She said the name of the impostor was Mercy Merrick. And she afterward put the climax to it all: she pointed to the lady who is engaged to be my wife, and declared that she was Mercy Merrick. Tell me again, is that ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... in a regular climax from love to military glory; the slave in as direct an anti-climax comes from bread, ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... nobility or the landed gentry of Chelsea or from the purlieus of the Bronx, which is where they apparently belong! I can get that kind myself. I wanted automobiles and broughams and clothes, and I got one sea-going taxi, and the dirty end of the stick! And to cap the climax he strolled in himself with a girl whose face is familiar to everybody who looks at bath tubs in the back of the magazines—Valerie West! And I want to tell you I couldn't look my Shoe-trust tea-pourers in the face; and they're so mad that ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... Maret on 2nd December led him flagrantly to misrepresent that incident, and Lebrun, as we have seen, reported it to the Convention in such a way as to impute to Pitt a discreditable and cowardly intrigue. This is the climax of malice. An envoy and a Minister who scatter such insinuations are the most reckless of firebrands. By this conduct both Lebrun and Chauvelin inflamed the passions of their countrymen. In truth, it was passion, not policy, that made the war. The charges which they brought against England were ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... drove the dives out of business; the Raines law forbade the free lunch. Just at this time Theodore Roosevelt shut the police lodging rooms, and the tramp was literally left out in the cold, cursing reform and its fruits. It was the climax of a campaign a generation old, during which no one had ever been found to say a word in defence of these lodging rooms; yet nothing had availed ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... long way to Tipperary' could be taken as 'Lengthen your Range,'" said one of the Australian officers in his soft drawl; while the exuberance reached its climax when some one suggested that "Waiting for the Robert E. Lee" might be whistled to indicate that the Divisional Commander was expected at ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... hands in the incident that served as a climax to the distribution. He had whispered something to M. Lecompte and the result was that one little duffer, who sat all alone on a big chair, and hugged an enormous rubber boot, waited and waited expectantly to hear the name "Pierre Lafite" ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... open his eyes wide, that he could speak and that he was not as bad as he had been, and she felt considerable inward relief. But nodding her head, she sighed. "If you had long ago listened to the least bit of the advice tendered to you by people things would not have reached this climax to-day," she said. "Not to speak of the pain experienced by our dear ancestor and aunt Wang, the sight of you in this state makes even us ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... heat, gravity, mechanical power, electricity, magnetism, vital force and universal motion, are but one principle variously expressed. This principle we have designated vito-magnetic fluid. But have we reached a climax and an end? No. This vito-magnetic river or current flows on. Its flood is never stayed. But yet we find no accumulation. Light and heat have neither been piled up to the sky, nor have they become annihilated. Their ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... stood silent and awe-stricken amid this manifestation of the insignificance of man, the sun blazed forth from behind a laggard cloud. The effect was theatrical. It was like throwing the limelight on the scene which marks the climax of some tense situation. Instinctively we lifted our arms and ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... was on the fourth day that the climax came,—the climax which has ended by upsetting me so much, and has made everything ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... double-tree, on the right side of the tongue, which was propped up with the neck-yoke. Stewart sat on the tongue, about an arm's length ahead of me, I holding my gun between my knees, with the butt on the ground. Stewart was getting off one of his stories, and, had about reached the climax, when I saw something running low to the ground, in among the stock. Thinking it was an Indian, on all fours, to stampede the animals, I instantly leveled my gun, and, as I was following it to an opening in the herd, ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... conscious of something too, and that there was a degree of confidence she was waiting little by little to arrive at. The day came when the girl caught a glimpse of what was still wanting to make her friend feel strong; which was nothing less than the prospect of being able to announce the climax of sundry private dreams. The associate of the aristocracy had personal calculations—matter for brooding and dreaming, even for peeping out not quite hopelessly from behind the window-curtains of lonely lodgings. If she did the flowers for the ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... revived about 1861. Confidence had increased, loans had been made more freely, and capital had taken up again its search for profitable investment. In the newer regions, where permanent improvements were least numerous, the field for exploitation had been great. The climax of exploitation was reached ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... a climax rapidly, when Wheaton or the panther must finish their hunting on the mountains of the Susquehanna, for if old smooth-bore should flash in the pan, or miss her aim, the die would be cast, as a ...
— A Sketch of the History of Oneonta • Dudley M. Campbell
... change might lead to something better, Cervantes rejoiced. His gallant spirit, ever hopeful, looked for the open door in misfortune. But, alas! his increased sufferings with the Dey reached a climax almost beyond endurance. He made every struggle to escape; but even in the midst of all his own sufferings, he found ways of aiding his fellow-victims and inspiring them with the hopes denied to himself. Roderigo had escaped long before, and from that time was making constant exertion ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... poor soul, spent many hours in tears, her faith and pride in her daughter sustaining her through the hours of preparation. The day of the wedding she dreaded, and she doubted if she would bear up when the climax of the strain came. Firmness prompted by kindness, the wife and mother understood to be necessary in dealing with the irascible head of the family, and she therefore quietly acquiesced in this policy ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... she would stand before him, her body alive with a sexual ardor that seemed to find its satisfaction in the discomfiture of the man, in his apologetic stammers, in her own virtuous words; and reach its climax in the contrite embrace which usually followed and the words, "Forgive me, dearest. I didn't mean.... Oh, will you ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... scarcely fail to have one grand climax. Joanna, the thoughtful, imaginative, true, tender woman—a fair woman besides, with that one little blot which singularly appealed to him with a harsh sweet voice—a sufficiently rare woman, to stand quite distinct from her sisters and companions in the light of the practical, ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... Warrington's cigar was without magic. He was out of sorts. Things had gone wrong at the rehearsal that morning. The star had demanded the removal of certain lines which gave the leading man an opportunity to shine in the climax of the third act. He had labored a whole month over this climax, and he revolted at the thought of changing it to suit the whim of ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... even the renowned Partridge, whose wonderful prognostications set all England agog in 1708, and whose death, at a time when he was still alive and kicking, was so pleasantly and satisfactorily proved by Isaac Bickerstaff. The anti-climax would be too palpable, and they and their ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... good story always has three parts: (1) A Situation; (2) a Climax; (3) a Solution. Do the models possess these elements? If they do, ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... Pinchas, whereof one initial stood for Messiah and the other for Palestine. Yes, he would be their Messiah. But money now-a-days was the sinews of war and the first step to Messiahship was the keeping of the funds. The Redeemer must in the first instance be the treasurer. With this anti-climax Pinchas wound up, his childishness and naivete conquering ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the centuries go on, what they do becomes more and more trivial, and their writing has less significance. Just the opposite happened in Europe. There, there was noteworthy progressive development until the magnificent climax of thirteenth century accomplishment was reached. It is often said that Europe owed much to the Arabs for this, but careful analysis of the factors in that progress shows that very little came from the Arabs that was good, ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... well when the situation was approaching its final climax in Washington. Men and women, both, came to Miss Paul with, "This is terrible! Seven months' sentence is impossible. You must stop! ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... bank, she had called him back and royally permitted him to give her his first and, as it proved, only kiss. But he had not known that, and had rowed elated Oxfordwards between the hayfields, dreaming his ecstasy on into the future—when it had already achieved its climax, and slipped out of his life. Since then it had come to seem very simple and absurd, as do all love affairs, however august, which are lived down—for no love affair was ever outlived. So, because he had been fond of her, he was glad to listen to Strangeways, even when he related ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... some one would motor to Barnstable, Brockton, or wherever it was, recapture Lola, and bring her back, and the events of the past few hours would be only a nightmare. And it would be Bob—he and Bob—who brought about this glorious climax to a day of catastrophes. And if such a result was accomplished had not the owner of Surfside promised that he ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... feud between the uncles and relatives of King Henry, in England, as related in a preceding chapter, had been going on, and was now reaching a climax. The leaders of the two rival parties were, as will be recollected, Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, or Cardinal Beaufort, as he was more commonly called, who had had the personal charge of the king during his minority, on one side, ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... sentence, as the members sprang again upon the chairs and desks, roaring, waving, purple with laughter. The Speaker leaned back exhausted in his chair and let the gavel rest. Spectators, pages, galleries whooped and howled with the members. Finally the climax came. ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... ideas, however inspiriting, are rather heavy diet for the young, immature minds growing quickly tired in the efforts to digest them—Damaris, having reached this happy, if partially erroneous, climax of emancipation, ceased to philosophize either consciously or unconsciously. The russet moorland and spacious landscape shut the door on her, had no more to tell her, no more to say. Or, to be strictly accurate, was it not rather ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet |
