"Crucial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... named Jones, and Cohen were imprisoned. Some where $269,000 was missing. Nobody knew anything about it. The books having to do with the transaction had mysteriously disappeared. Two days later an Irishman found them floating in the bay, and brought them to the court. But the crucial pages were missing. And then suddenly, while both Judge Hazen and Judge Park were out of town, application was made to the Supreme Court—of which Judge Terry was head—for the release of Jones and Cohen. ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... this autumn of 1917 was extremely interested in certain crucial experiments he was making with spiculum in sponge-cells; with scleroblasts, "mason-cells," osteoblasts, and "consciousness" in bone-cells. Most of the glass jars in which these experiments were going ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... armament—at any rate I was warned to watch out for "swinging lines in the haze, like straight strings of pink stars" and later told to aim at the sources of such lines. And naturally I guessed that the steel cubes must be some crucial weapon for Atla-Hi, or ammunition for a weapon, or parts for some essential instrument like a giant computer, but the voice ignored my questions on that point and didn't fall into the couple of crude conversational traps I tried to set. ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... retrospective consideration. Unlike the laws of perspective, distance gives it greater size. So it was with Gorham's supreme and final demonstration of his strength. To Covington, who, true to his promise of the night before, was present at this crucial meeting of the Board of Directors, and marvelled that his chief demanded of him only a statement regarding the real purchaser of the stock, this dissolution of the Consolidated Companies appeared as ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... "It's my little cousin, overcome with emotion. She's been counting the hours till you came—been hearing of you from me and others for a good while; and hasn't been able to talk or think of anything else. She's only fifteen, and the crucial moment is too much for her—the Great Harkless has arrived, and ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... him a look of meanness and of paltriness. And when the mean-looking elderly man bullied or ordered the boy about, Arthur was furious. Moreover, Morel's manners got worse and worse, his habits somewhat disgusting. When the children were growing up and in the crucial stage of adolescence, the father was like some ugly irritant to their souls. His manners in the house were the same as he used among the ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... her has broken me. Oh, don't think,' he went on quickly, 'that I am broken in love. I never loved her very much, it was just a passing passion, but she killed my self-confidence. After then, whenever I came to a crucial moment in my affairs, when the big manner, the big certainty was absolutely necessary for me to carry my way, whenever I was most confident of myself and my ability and my scheme, a vision of this damned girl rose and I felt that momentary weakening, that memory of defeat, which made all ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... no doubt, still a few days later, at an hour that has never ceased to recur to me all my life as crucial, as supremely determinant. The travelling-carriage had stopped at a village on the way from Lyons to Geneva, between which places there was then no railway; a village now nameless to me and which was not yet Nantua, in the Jura, where we were to spend the night. I was stretched ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... institution in their favor; but the campaign was conducted with such little skill that in the end they were utterly beaten. Far from being able to advance the policy of national consolidation, they were unable even to preserve existing national institutions, and their conspicuous failure in this crucial instance was due to their inability to keep public opinion convinced of the truth that the Bank was really organized and maintained in the national interest. Their policy of protection met in the long ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... reforms in their government. They were required to repeal such statutes as were contrary to the laws of England, to take the oath of allegiance, and to administer justice in the king's name. And then followed two propositions that were crucial: "And since the principle and foundation of that charter was and is the freedom of liberty of conscience, wee do hereby charge and require you that that freedom and liberty be duely admitted," especially in favor of those "that desire to use the Book ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... significant had not Sir Charles been then engrossed with his personal concerns. Not until the last days of August was he 'sufficiently recovered from the blow to be able to take some interest in politics'; and then it was merely to take an interest, not to take a part. Yet already the crucial question for Liberal policy had begun to ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... mentioned with it (p. 63) the closely similar text of the well-known Professor Nestle, but as I have not gone through the laborious task of comparing the text, verse by verse, with that of the Revisers, I speak only in reference to our own country. I have compared the two texts in several crucial and important passages—such for example as St. John i. 18—and have found them identical. Bishop Westcott, I know, a short time before his lamented death, expressed to the Committee of the Bible Society ...
— Addresses on the Revised Version of Holy Scripture • C. J. Ellicott
... helpless and the poor. Is it any wonder, therefore, that we have victims, when the only voice that comes to them from the great world beyond is a tissue of false promises and fraudulent pretensions? The law is a cumbersome vehicle to move. It cannot be driven by inspiration—no matter how crucial the incentive may be that creates the inspiration,—it moves only by the potential force of a great conviction, the voice of the people. It seems a pity to waste time in the education of all the people before their voice shall ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... rebated cross, gammadion, fylfot, saltire, swastika, cross bottony. Associated Words: crucify, crucifixion, crucifier, cruciform, crucial, cruciate, crucigerous, crucifer, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... enhanced by the dramatic form of the activity and the artistic quality of the product. This is also the condition for creative activity. Some writers apparently now see in this need of making the activity of all those who work more creative, more free and more joyous the crucial problem of education and of social adjustment. This is Russell's constant theme. Helen Marot in "Creative Industry" says that our problem is to develop an industrial system that shall stimulate and satisfy the native impulse for creative production. It is difficult ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... love her? She was coming to the crucial years. She was very fond and sincere now, but she had cause to be grateful. She knew so little of the world, she had a winsome charm that was unfolding every day, she would be attractive to others. Jane was her fervent admirer, Bridget adored her, the babies ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... contribution to the celebration of the copartnership, which Fulkerson could not be prevented from dedicating with a little dinner, the story of Fulkerson's magnanimous behavior in regard to Dryfoos at that crucial moment when it was a question whether he should give up Dryfoos or give up March. Fulkerson winced at it; but Mrs. March told her husband that now, whatever happened, she should never have any misgivings of Fulkerson again; and she asked him if he did not think he ought ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... arsenical paste is worse than useless for animals, causing them to "sweat" at once in certain places, and preventing your pulling them about, as you must do if modelling; again, if used for fur, you seldom or never can relax by that crucial test of a good preservative, ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... full of wilder sounds, and in the house the furniture and the boards creaked and sprung between the yawling of the wind among the chimneys, the rattle of the thunder and the pelting of the rain. It was a time to quicken the steadiest pulse, and when the crucial moment came, when a pebble suddenly rang against the pane with a sound that the tense waiting magnified into a shivering crash, Hollyer leapt from the bed on ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... was a guard of five Union soldiers. Lyman called a halt; and there, in the deep gloom of the overhanging branches, he began to whisper a plan of assault upon that house, which made the gloom more depressing than it was before. It was a crucial moment; we realised, with a cold suddenness, that here was no jest—we were standing face to face with actual war. We were equal to the occasion. In our response there was no hesitation, no indecision: we said that if Lyman ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... choosing? Why had he attacked works that only an army like his would have made an effort to take, when he could have flanked the enemy and forced him to fight him on his own terms? Why had the Government—as was alleged—allowed the crucial test of liberty—the crisis campaign of the war—to be undertaken without proper transportation and ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... any chance of that?" asked Nick, looking as though he half felt like begging Herb to take him aboard at the crucial time, only that he hated ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... the time he could spare from the requirements of earning a living. Although there were many trials ahead for the firm of Boulton and Watt in further developing and perfecting the steam engine, the crucial problem of leakage of steam past the piston in the cylinder had now been solved by Wilkinson's new boring mill, which was the first large machine tool capable of boring a cylinder both ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... he sat by the open window and thought calmly of what was before him. Von Koren would most likely kill him. The man's clear, cold theory of life justified the destruction of the rotten and the useless; if it changed at the crucial moment, it would be the hatred and the repugnance that Laevsky inspired in him that would save him. If he missed his aim or, in mockery of his hated opponent, only wounded him, or fired in the air, what could he do ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... landmarks cannot affect our comprehensive estimate of the mise-en-scene. Enough has been said, we believe, in our discussion of the criticism and acting and in our analysis of his dramatic values, to show that the aberrations of Plautus' commentators have been due to their failure to reach the crucial point: the absolute license with which his plays were acted and intended to be acted is at once the explanation of their absurdities and deficiencies. This was true in a far less degree of Terence, who dealt in plots ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... come to that business with a certain pre-occupation. Each will be thinking of his country as one thinks of a patient of doubtful patience and temper who is coming-to out of the drugged stupor of a crucial, ill-conceived, and unnecessary operation ... Each will be thinking of Labour, wounded and perplexed, returning to the disorganised or nationalised factories from which Capital has gone a-fighting, and to which it may ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... as the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. You will soon be saying that the hedonist begs the question, for even supposing that man does pursue these ends, the crucial problem of why he thinks one course rather than another likely to produce pleasure, is untouched. Does the guidance of man's conscience explain? How then does he happen to have the particular conscience which he has? The theory of economic self-interest? But how do men come to ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... have wavered had I not been seeing Tavistock every day. He continued to wear his devil-may-care air; but I observed that he was aging swiftly—and I knew what that meant. Fighting all day to prevent breaks in the crucial stocks; planning most of the night how to prevent breaks the next day; watching the reserve resources of "The Seven" melt away. Those reserves were vast; also, "The Seven" controlled the United States Treasury, and were using its resources as their own; they were buying securities that would ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... line as these words were spoken, and in two minutes we got the word to go, and the great Modena car rushed away like some giant bird upon the wing. This was the crucial stage of that famous race, when we had to climb the Arlberg Mountains and drop down to Innsbruck. It was the day which saw Edge the proud winner of the Gordon Bennett Cup, and the morning upon which Jarrott broke up his bedroom furniture to stiffen the ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... blind leap at the bluff and landed in a crevice. Holding on with one hand, he held the swamped canoe with the other till Antonsen dragged himself out of the water. Then they pulled the canoe out and rested. A fresh start at this crucial point took them by. They landed on the bank above and plunged immediately ashore and into ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... the hall. The crucial moment had arrived, and her heart palpitated with nervous apprehension. Before Iredale could reply the door was flung open, and Hervey stood in their midst. Instantly every eye was turned upon him. He stood for a moment and looked round. There was a slight unsteadiness in ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... heavy tables. I thought perhaps the pencil would save them trouble. Will they move this round table up to this little one?' I had, be it observed, when alone, moved and changed the relative positions of both tables; and had determined to make this my crucial test. To my astonishment, Mrs. - replied that she could not say whether they would or not. She would ask them. She did so, and the spirits ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... holds true as to ringworm also, occurs in sharply-defined, circumscribed patches, and lupus erythematosus has a peculiar violaceous tint and an elevated and marginate border. A microscopic examination of the epidermic scrapings would be of crucial value in ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... was again amusing herself with the glasses, and, as the two arbiters of her destiny passed her line of vision, she laughed aloud at their swiftly diminishing forms. Impelled by a curious feeling that the child must take some serious part in this crucial moment of her destiny, Blythe quietly took the glasses from her and said, as she had done each night when she put her little charge ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... obtained successes of no military value. In Europe the plan adopted by the English government left its naval force hopelessly inferior in numbers year after year; yet the operations planned by the allies seem in no case seriously to have contemplated the destruction of that force. In the crucial instance, when Derby's squadron of thirty sail-of-the-line was hemmed in the open roadstead of Torbay by the allied forty-nine, the conclusion of the council of war not to fight only epitomized the character of the action ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... cannot be 'snubbed' cavalierly by the professed teachers of religion. The tendency of modern thought, a wave of which has reached us, is undoubtedly in the direction of bringing all subjects, however sacred, to the crucial test of argument, fact and experience, and our religious guides must not think they will prevail by the exhibit of mere contemptuous indifference to the free thought that prevails around them. If our great theological schools and seats of learning are to prove themselves equal ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... a virtue pushed to the confines of vice, in the man's blind unintentional neglect of the woman for whom he would wring the last blood-drop out of his heart, you have the nucleus of more than half the pitiful domestic tragedies of India. It is the crucial moment, the genesis of a hundred unsuspected possibilities, this first divergence of the man and woman, along separate paths of interest. Love may be strong enough to stand the strain, but it will be love debarred from that intimate fusion of heart and brain ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... huge bird of prey he ran swiftly back across the flags and disappeared behind the mass of stones, and Cuxson, not daring to move for fear of tightening the thongs, sat almost numb with anxiety as he wondered if his luck would hold at the crucial moment. ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... insane Lieutenant-general of the forces; it would be ill-natured to say that visions of lost railroad commissionerships, lost consulships, lost postmasterships, —yes, of lost senatorships, were in these loyal heads at this crucial time. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... class? They would do so only if the faculties which a capable physician must possess are found among mankind in a limited degree. And mechanics, in turn, would receive wages higher than those of day laborers only if it proved that but a limited number possessed the qualities needed. On this crucial point, to repeat, we are unable to pronounce with certainty. What are the relative effects of nature and of nurture in bringing about the phenomena of social stratification, we ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... The crucial feature in the approaching action was that the Essex was armed almost entirely with carronades, and her principal enemy with long guns. The carronade, now a wholly obsolete arm, was a short cannon, made extremely light in proportion to the weight of the ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... appeared and courteously invited me to enter. She is the care-taker of the mansion, bears an aristocratic old Virginia name, and is wrapped around with that air of gloomily garnered memories characteristic of women who were in the heart of the crucial period of our history. I am not surprised when she tells me that she watched the battle of Fredericksburg from her window as she lay ill in her room, and that she witnessed the burning of Richmond after the surrender. I recognize the fact that life has been a harder ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... postponing children to this age except failure to find the right mate earlier in life. People who have their first child when over thirty-five are themselves over fifty when the child goes through adolescence—an age which may make it difficult to help the child meet its crucial problems in the tone of one good friend to another. If you cannot have your children before thirty-five, you must make every effort to remain young enough for spiritual companionship with them. The best age for parenthood is to be determined, not in ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... "The crucial point in the Roman position is their doctrine of intention," said Mr. Ogilvie. "It always seems to me that this doctrine is a particularly dangerous one for them to play with and one that may recoil at any moment upon their own heads. ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... the rights of the Society; the Anarchist saw the rights of the Individual. How therefore were these to be reconciled? The Church stepped in at that crucial point and answered, By the Family—whether domestic or Religious. For in the Family you have both claims recognized: there is authority and yet there is liberty. For the union of the Family lies in Love; and Love is the only reconciliation of ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... is why I was anxious—why I sent for you. Even Tom admits that they who are not won over are destroyed. This speech is a crucial event. You know how rigidly they rule the House and gag men like you. It is they, and they alone, who have given you ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London
... vague in all its details, as yet. But it seemed feasible, and I thought it would sound plausible to De Boer. I would watch my chance and explain it to him. Then I realized how much aid Jetta would be. She would agree with my plan, and help me convince him. And when the crucial time came, though I would be a captive, watched by Gutierrez, bound and gagged, perhaps—Jetta would be at liberty. De Boer and Gutierrez would not be on ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... consciousness that was irretrievable, came over him. He rose awkwardly and went to the window. She rose also, but more leisurely and easily, moved one of the books on the table, smoothed out her skirts, and changed her seat to a little sofa. It is the woman who always comes out of these crucial moments unruffled. ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... recalled Some of the forces to the city's aid From the besieged halls. Nor Caesar gave To sleep its season; swifter than all else To seize the crucial moment of the war. Quick in the darkest watches of the night He leaped upon his ships, and Pharos (25) seized, Gate of the main; an island in the days Of Proteus seer, now bordering the walls Of Alexander's city. Thus he gained A double vantage, for his foes ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... visitors on the triforium gallery, which encircles the building, and in the two galleries which encircle the central lantern. From the lantern galleries visitors can obtain fine interior views of the building, and comprehend the crucial form of the plan ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... enough to enter the contest single-handed. It was a stretch of a hundred miles to the Recorder's office, and it was planned that the two favorites should have four relays of dogs stationed along the trail. Naturally, the last relay was to be the crucial one, and for these twenty-five miles their respective partisans strove to obtain the strongest possible animals. So bitter did the factions wax, and so high did they bid, that dogs brought stiffer prices than ever before in the annals of the country. And, as it chanced, this scramble ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... was rendered still more crucial on May 5 by the placing of the two poles upright in opposite corners of the large cage. For a few minutes after he entered the cage, Julius did not see them, and his time was spent pulling and gnawing at the box. Then he discovered one of the poles, seized it, and pushed it into the box. He tried ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... by which to live. We don't have to talk late into the night about which form of government is better. We don't have to wrest justice from the kings. We only have to summon it from within ourselves. We must act on what we know. I take as my guide the hope of a saint: In crucial things, unity; in important things, diversity; in ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... assurance. The inventor was plainly nervous as the crucial moment of the test approached. He went here and there upon the barbette, testing the various levers and ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... one charge him with weakness? Think of the tragedy of a whole life compressed in that one crucial hour! ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... shock was sufficient to drive the normal consciousness from its seat and permit the subliminal self to take control. In other words, it practically put him back in the identical mental mood of the afternoon of January 9th, and that was the crucial point of the whole ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... Lincoln's foreign policy; and because of it, his friends in England eventually forced the Government to play into his hands, and so frustrated Napoleon's scheme for intervention. Consequently Lincoln was able to maintain the blockade by means of which the South was strangled. Thus, at bottom, the crucial matter ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... primitive peoples. Collins's Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland and Gray's Bard show the literary world prepared to put itself to school to Celtic tradition. Macpherson supplied it with a body of poetry which exactly fulfilled its expectations. The crucial date in his history is his meeting in 1759 with John Home, the author of the once famous tragedy of Douglas. In the summer of that year Home was drinking the waters at Moffat, and among the visitors assembled there found Thomas ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... investigate a certain yacht which is moored in the East River. That yacht is there for a purpose—you remember his reference to the payment of supplies for a two-month cruise. My amateurish vanity leads me to a hope that I can capture him just at the crucial moment when he thinks he is successful ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... Maximilian, like a lawyer who has reached his crucial question, for he was a trained attorney, "would you recognize your aunt's ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... and Jake unwittingly volunteered. They welcomed him with a bloodthirsty roar. They called him vigorous shipyard names and struck at him. He backed off. They followed. He made a crucial mistake; he whirled and ran. They ran after him. Some of them threw hammers and bolts. Some of these struck him as he fled. Workmen ahead of him were roused by the noise and headed ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... an invaluable opportunity, with so great a power in action, to make trial of motion without contact, the presence of two persons only, the daylight, the place, the size and weight of the table, making the experiment a crucial one. Accordingly we stood upright, he on one side of the table, I on the other side of it. We stood two feet from it, and held our hands eight inches above it. In one minute it rocked violently. Then it ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... blindly through fire and water and opposing violence, and nothing can stop them—unless, sometimes, a grain of sand. For his blind purpose (and clearly the thought of Mrs Anthony was at the bottom of it) Mr Powell had plenty of time. What checked him at the crucial moment was the familiar, harmless aspect of common things, the steady light, the open book on the table, the solitude, the peace, the home-like effect of the place. He held the glass in his hand; all he had to do was to vanish back beyond the curtains, flee with it ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... of the performance at a Chinese theater, where there is much more true pantomime than in the European, without a general notion of the subject as conveyed from time to time by an interpreter. A crucial test on this subject was made at the representation at Washington, in April, 1881, of Frou-Frou by Sarah Bernhardt and the excellent French company supporting her. Several persons of special intelligence ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... said, "what you think. I'm a fine specimen of a man to send on a hunt like that. A weak-kneed mollycoddle who passes into a state of coma at the crucial moment. But—I'm going to give ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... her escape his vengeance. For all his bulk, he was amazingly nimble and was at her heels again in a second. Though she might have outstripped him in the open, he would probably have caught her in the hampering thicket; but at this crucial moment there came a bellow and a crashing of branches close behind him, and he whirled about just in time to receive the raging charge of old "Spotty," who ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... be a political gathering at the Gap. A Senator was trying to lift himself by his own boot-straps into the Governor's chair. He was going to make a speech, there would be a big and unruly crowd, and it would be a crucial day for the Guard. So, next morning, I suggested to the tutor that it would be unwise for him to begin work with his pupils that day, for the reason that he was likely to be greatly interrupted and often. He ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... "unhappy divisions". Still, we wish to be perfectly just, so, in illustration of our contention, we will select, not one of those innumerable minor points which it would be easy to bring forward, but some really crucial point of doctrine, the importance of which no man in his senses will have the hardihood to deny. Let us say, for instance, the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist. Can we conceive anything that a devout ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... quite clear as to the real question involved, for it is a crucial one. I refer to the complete disturbance arising through this change in the family organisation in the relationships between the two sexes. A wife was no longer the husband's property. Her position was unchanged ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... ignore her remark. "Afterwards, it's not at all clear. The fates don't say whether you will settle down to married life and have four children or whether you will try to go on the cinema and have none. They are only specific about this one rather crucial incident." ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... nations of the world—is enacted into law, the Government will find itself crippled in respect of taxable resources during the second year of the war; the very year which, if the war does last beyond the present one, will presumably be the crucial period. ...
— War Taxation - Some Comments and Letters • Otto H. Kahn
... under the stress of great excitement. So far everything had gone well; the prisoner had made no attempt at escape, and apparently did not mean to play a double game. But the crucial hour had come, and with it darkness and the mysterious depths of the forest with their weird sounds and sudden flashes of ghostly lights. They naturally wrought on the nerves of men like Heron, whose conscience might have been dormant, ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... examine those three letters, and compare them with this note that I wrote in Mr. Barlow's office. You see that the paper is of the same make, with the same water-mark, but that is of no great significance. What is of crucial importance is this: You see, in each of these letters, two tiny indentations near the bottom corner. Somebody has used compasses or drawing-pins over the packet of notepaper, and the points have made little indentations, which have marked several of the sheets. Now, ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... which made a villain of him reminded him that to argue thus was to argue upon supposition, that it would be perilous to trust such an assumption; that if, after all, Sir Oliver should fail him in the crucial test, then ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... mother's nearest friend, it is natural you should turn to me in your crucial hour of pain. And in reply to your questions regarding the truth of this anonymous assertion, I will tell ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the proceedings of the Royal Society, asserts that certain "black vibrios" are capable of resisting the action of fluids at a temperature as high as 300A deg. F, although exposed therein for half an hour or more. But none of these crucial tests, however diverse in experimental results, really touch the all-important question in controversy. They all relate either to living organisms, or to the seeds and spores of vegetation, not to living indestructible "germs"—invisible ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... I'm through for this year," she said. "And I've got to-day and to-morrow to explore it." She wondered at her indifference—at her strange lack of excitement at this, the crucial moment of her long quest, even as she had wondered at her absence of fear, believing as she did, that Bethune was still in the hills. The feeling inspired by the outlaw had been a feeling of rage, rather than terror, and had rapidly crystallized in her outraged mind into an abysmal soul-hate. ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... Just at this crucial moment, in the midst of the lull which followed the triumphal yell, there was the loud trampling of hoofs upon the hard road in front, the shouting of a war-cry—"France! France!"—seemed to cut through the darkness, and with a rush a single horseman looking like ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... the question of the connection with 'The Parliament of Bees', is also addressed by Julia Gasper. The crucial evidence here relates to instances where details, meaningful only in the context of NSS, have become embedded in the text of 'The Parliament of Bees'. The most significant example of this occurs in Scene 1, Line 29 of 'The Parliament of Bees' where a character asks 'Is Master Bee at leisure ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... keels were laid.[400] This suggestion appears to have been acted upon; for in the following March it was reported that there were building at St. John's a brig to carry twenty guns, a schooner of eighteen, and twelve 2-gun galleys. However, the Americans also were by this time building, and at the crucial moment came out a very little ahead ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... services rendered or valour displayed at the battle of Largs, which was fought in 1263, to say nothing of the now admittedly impossible date and signatures written on the face of the document itself; and Sir William Fraser having, by the logic of facts, been forced to give up that crucial point, should in consistency have at the same time given up Colin Fitzgerald. And in reality he practically did so, for having stated that the later reputed charters of 1360 and 1380 are not now known to exist, he adds, ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... moral eminence, passed through a crucial ordeal, and it is to be greatly wondered at that the Negro woman emerged with even the crudest type ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... instance, and let this be the crucial test of the doctrine. Say that the Book of Job throughout was dictated by an infallible intelligence. Then re-peruse the book, and still, as you proceed, try to apply the tenet; try if you can even attach any sense or semblance of meaning to the speeches which you are ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... intimacy and animation of their talk. And he could recall what Sir James had not seen—the strangeness of Alicia's manner, and the peremptoriness with which she had endeavored to carry him home with her. Had she—after hearing the story—tried to interrupt or postpone the crucial scene with Diana? That seemed to him the probable explanation, and the idea roused in him a hot and impotent anger. What ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the 88 ranch-house, did not smoke. He did not feel like it. He did not feel like doing anything but facing Lanpher. What he would be moved to do while facing Lanpher he was not sure. Time enough to cross that bridge when the crucial moment should arrive. He knew what he wanted to do, but he knew, too, that he could not do it unless Lanpher made the first break. Otherwise it would be murder, and Racey ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... more, high and must go deep. It is better to lob out and run your opponent back, thus tiring him, than to lob short and give him confidence by an easy kill. The value of a lob is mainly one of upsetting your opponent, and its effects are very apparent if you unexpectedly bring off one at the crucial ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... of the noble and steadfast old Friend, could hardly fail to be known as a friend of the slave. Like her father she was ready to labor, and sacrifice and suffer in his cause, and had already made this apparent, had borne persecution, the crucial test of principle, before the war which gave to the world the prominent idea of freedom for all, and thus wiped the darkest stain from our starry banner, ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... made up my mind to try and clear up one point—that serious, crucial point which had for days so ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... in the old days when Miss Prime's discipline would have turned all within him to hardness and bitterness Eliphalet Hodges stood between him and despair, so now in this crucial time Elizabeth was a softening ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... will yield no spiritual fruit. Accuracy in knowledge of Greek, careful balancing of aspects of truth, large knowledge of the doctrinal verities of the New Testament, are all essential and valuable; but unless they are permeated by a spirit of devotion they will fail at the crucial point. Pectus facit theologum—it is the heart that makes the theologian; and a theology which does not spring from spiritual experience is doomed to decay, to deadness, and therefore ...
— The Prayers of St. Paul • W. H. Griffith Thomas
... confirmed by his confession. Now, the question I have to ask of the man who takes his stand on the passage I have quoted from the Gospel is: "What would have been your duty if you had been walking through that wood and come upon the girl struggling with the man who killed her?" This is a crucial instance which, I submit, utterly destroys the doctrine that the use of violence is in itself wrong. The right or wrong is not in the employment of force but simply in the purpose for which it is used. ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... no means the last or most crucial stage of our twentieth-century Revolution has now been completed; the old Constitution, which was perhaps the most adaptable and convenient system of government that the world has ever known, is definitely at ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... the big-throated chimney stirred the log embers on the hearth, and the girl jumped to her feet, closing the book with an impatient snap. She knew her mother's voice would follow. It was hard to leave her heroine at the crucial moment of receiving an explanation from a presumed faithless lover, just to climb a hill and take in a lot of soulless washing, but such are the infelicities of stolen romance reading. She threw the clothes-basket over her head like a hood, the handle resting across her bosom and shoulders, and ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... The crucial moment was upon me. To escape the challenge of Mrs. Fontage's brilliant composure I turned once more to the picture. If my courage needed reinforcement, the picture amply furnished it. Looking at that lamentable canvas seemed the surest ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... El Kab. Yet Amelineau's association of the Libyan pottery with inscriptions of an archaic style, which would most naturally be dated long before the IVth dynasty, made our later dating of the pottery improbable, and necessitated a re-examination of the evidence. The crucial case at Ballas was the secondary burial of a Libyan found in one of a group of stairway mastabas. The mastabas were believed to be of the IVth dynasty, because the fragments of pottery and of alabaster bowls found ...
— El Kab • J.E. Quibell
... must give up one or the other of these principles, he first proposed to sacrifice his own theory to the authority of the old system,—a memorable example of resolute candor. But, after indefatigably subjecting it to crucial experiment, he found that it was the old hypothesis, and not the new one, that had to be sacrificed.[1] If the orbit was not a circle, what, then, was it? By a happy stroke of philosophical genius he lit on the ellipse. On bringing his hypothesis to the test of observation, he found ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... he had done this, "rebuking and restraining the prior right of my friend, Jack Redmond." Redmond had not long to wait, however. Another vacancy occurred in another Wexford seat, the ancient borough of New Ross, and he was returned without opposition at a crucial ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... but his Introductions, Notes, and Appendices also set forth his mature ideas about the Homeric problem in general. He has altered some of his opinions since the publication of his Companion to the Iliad(1892), but the main lines of his old system are, except on one crucial point, unchanged. His theory we shall try to state and criticise; in general outline it is the current theory of separatist critics, and it may fairly be treated as a good ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... returned to Johnstown for a crucial, and as it turned out, a final series of experiments by him with a rotative [Bessemer converter] made abroad and imported for his purpose. This converter embodied in its materials and construction several of Mr. Bessemer's patented factors, of which, up to the close ...
— The Beginnings of Cheap Steel • Philip W. Bishop
... of personality, of eyes, hair, mouth, laugh, tricks of speech and gesture, that were all so solely and profoundly her own, and yet so mysteriously independent of what she might do, say, think, in crucial circumstances. He remembered her once saying to him: "After all, you were right when you wanted me to be your mistress," and the indignant stare of incredulity with which he had answered her. Yet in these hours it was the palpable ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... his own speed, so he steps aside and lets that body pass on, as though he moved in obedience to some order. The bystander would ask the question, "How did he know such a dangerous body was approaching?" He finds on the most crucial examination, that the sense of hearing is wholly without reason. The same is true with all the five senses pertaining to man, beast, or bird. This being the condition of the five physical senses, we are forced by reason to conclude ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... of our generation. What attitude shall the Christian Church take toward this challenging endeavour to save society? How shall she regard this passionate belief in the possibility of social betterment and this enthusiastic determination to achieve it? The question is one of crucial importance and the Church is far from united on its answer. Some Christians claim the whole movement as the child of the Church, born of her spirit and expressing her central purpose; others disclaim the whole movement ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... one of those crucial experiences of life, which, more than the turning of the earth upon its axis, serve to age a human being. For perhaps the first time in the brief span of his remembrance, he had scrutinized himself ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... very substantial services to his party, Douglas had sooner or later to face his constituents with an answer to the crucial question, "What have you done for us?" It is a hard, brutal question, which has blighted many a promising career in American politics. The interest which Douglas exhibited in the Western Harbors bill was due, in part at least, ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... reproached? We must brave the charge, then; for the facts seem to furnish evidence of a kind so rarely obtainable, that to omit them from this chapter in school life would be hardly excusable. An experiment so crucial as that to which we were submitted does not occur ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... the crucial experiment is made, and a pair of birds raised from the egg without ever seeing a nest are shown to be capable of making one exactly of the parental type, I do not think we are justified in calling in the aid of an unknown and mysterious faculty to do that which is so strictly analogous to ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... say, that shrimp," returned my lord; "although really it is scarce a fitting mode of expression for one of the senators of the College of Justice. We were hearing the parties in a long, crucial case, before the fifteen; Creech was moving at some length for an infeftment; when I saw Glenkindie lean forward to Hermiston with his hand over his mouth and make him a secret communication. No one could have guessed ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... radiating from the wound. There may be severe pain at the back of the head and in the neck. Difficulty in swallowing soon becomes a marked symptom. The speech assumes a sobbing tone, and occasionally the expression of the face is wild and haggard. As regards the crucial diagnostic test of a glass of water, the following account of a patient's attempt to drink is given by Curtis and quoted by Warren: "A glass of water was offered the patient, which he refused to take, saying that he could not stand so much as that, but would take it from ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... hat with his right hand and scratched his head deliberately and deliberatively with his left, 'humming' and 'hawing' over this crucial question. ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... stage, indeed, we reach a crucial point, though it has usually been overlooked, in the lives of boys and girls, more especially those whose heredity may have been a little tainted or their upbringing a little twisted. For it is here that the transformation of energy and the resulting ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... wheel hard-over and kept anxious track of the changing direction of the wind on his face and of the heave of the vessel. This was the crucial moment. In performing the evolution she would have to pass broadside to the surge before she could get before it. The wind was blowing directly on his right cheek, when he felt the Sophie Sutherland ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... testing their wings for several days, clinging to the sides of the nest and beating the wings rapidly. And now comes the crucial moment of letting go and attempting actual flight. Several of them have already done it, and I see them resting on the dead limbs of a plum-tree across the road. But more are to follow, and parental anxiety is still rife. I shall be sorry ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... in crucial hours, may depend the peace of the old, the fortune of the middle-aged, the hopefulness of the young. In such an hour we do not wish to be dismissed as were the women of Socrates's family, who had had no part in the bright life of the Athens of which he was taking leave. ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... said, the centre of social activity elsewhere than in careful and rational examination of social conditions, and careful and rational effort to modify them. It substituted a retrograde aspiration for direction, and emotion for the discovery of law. It overlooked the crucial difficulty—namely, how to summon new force, without destroying the sound parts of a structure which it has taken many generations to erect. Its method was geometric instead of being historic, and hence its "desperate absurdity." Its whole theory was constructed ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... than your puny plans; and I am how-things-turn-out and I am different from your little dreams, and I am the flight of time and the end of beauty and unfulfilled desire; all the accidents and imperceptions and the little minutes that shape the crucial hours are mine. I am the exception that proves no rules, the limits of your control, the condiment in ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... well understand that the Phoenicians were thoroughly satisfied with the position which they occupied under the earlier Persian kings, and strove zealously to maintain and extend the empire to which they owed so much. Their fidelity was put to a crucial test after they had been subjects of Darius Hystaspis for a little more than twenty years, and had had about fourteen or fifteen years' experience of the advantages of his governmental system. Aristagoras of Miletus, finding himself in a ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... to his wife how surprising it was that it had not landed him in the hottest of hot water, and how puzzled he was to account for what seemed to have been its effect. Then she confessed to him what had happened on that crucial night, how she had taken the body away and hung it in front of the other house, and what she partly knew and partly guessed about the results of the affair. At once he realized that her instant and audacious retaliation ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... In studying these crucial periods in the history of European architecture it is possible to trace a gradual growth or unfolding as of a plant. It is a fact fairly well established that the Greeks derived their architecture and ornament ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... but I think things have to be soaked in by cumulative impressions to get the feel of the thing and the background. When they told me first that this was a great psychological moment, that everything was critical and crucial, I didn't know what they meant, and I could hardly put it in words now, any more than they did, but I know inside of me. There are few external signs of a change, but Japan is nearly in the condition she was in during the first years of contact and opening up ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... latest example I have selected, it is a crucial one. The Letters of Malachi Malagrowther come from a man who is not often rated high as a political thinker, even by those who sympathise with his political views. But here as elsewhere the politician, no less than ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... and imposing oftentimes discloses its poor efficiency only after from four to six months of use. This is due to the fact that from time immemorial women have ordained a period devoted to housecleaning twice a year. And it is at this crucial time that they discover if the routine care of rugs and carpets by their vacuum cleaner has accomplished a work satisfactory to them. This conclusion is well borne out by a conversation we had with a large dealer in vacuum cleaners ...
— The Consumer Viewpoint • Mildred Maddocks
... thought at that critical and crucial moment we cannot tell, but the professor's thoughts were swift, varied, tremendous— almost sublime, and once or ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne |
