"Momentous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 1812, declaring war against Great Britain. Before sundown the express couriers were dashing swiftly on their several courses, some toward reluctant New England, some toward Pennsylvania and New York, some southward, some westward. To Phillips it fell to carry the momentous news to his own Tennessee country and thence down the Mississippi to New Orleans. That the task was undertaken with all due energy is sufficiently attested in a letter written by a Baptist clergyman at Lexington, North Carolina, to a friend, ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... in my words the looming of a momentous sensation. No! They do not tell my own impressions as an individual. They convey truthfully the voice of the people through the lips of a man who does not serve other interests. They only anticipate, I believe, what you shall hear from our legislative representation, ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... act in the great drama of empire; another French and Indian War beneath the banners of England; a successful Revolution, of which some of the most momentous events occurred within your limits; a union of States; a Constitution of Federal Government; your population carried to the St. Lawrence and the great Lakes, and their waters poured into the Hudson; your territory covered with a net-work of canals and railroads, filled with life ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett
... war that followed belong to the general history of Europe; but the tsar's attitude throughout is personal to himself, though pregnant with issues momentous for the world. In opposing Napoleon, "the oppressor of Europe and the disturber of the world's peace,'' Alexander in fact already believed himself to be fulfilling a divine mission. In his instructions to Novosiltsov, his special envoy ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... men, in moments of excitement rush on to such results, little do they think of the momentous consequences that may follow. Suppose the South in her anger unites with Texas, and forms a Southern slave-holding republic, under all the exasperating influences that such an avulsion will excite? What will ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... long enough to catch a deep breath after her momentous interview with John Markham in Washington Square and then plunged into the busy throng with De Folligny after. She had heard with some interest the reports of Hermia Challoner's engagement to Mr. Morehouse, but it had ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... warriors lay a long time by the camp-fire, which was replenished several times, while the Shawanoe read from his Bible and discoursed of the momentous truths contained therein, and the listener questioned and answered, and appropriated the revelations thus made to him. Deerfoot, the Shawanoe, sowed good seed on that evening a long time ago; but the full fruitage thereof ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... then, is the will or desire. This realisation of the momentous quality of the will is the secret of every religious mystic, the hunger of the soul, as Law calls it, is the first necessity, and all else will follow.[37] It is the seed of everything that can grow in ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... singers, and they pronounced it unsingable. They begged him to make changes, but Beethoven was adamant. The rehearsals became a grievous labor to all concerned. The production was set down for November 20, but when the momentous day came, it found Vienna occupied by the French troops, Bonaparte at Schonbrunn and the capital deserted by the Emperor, the nobility, and most of the wealthy patrons of art. The performance was a failure. Besides the French occupation, two things were recognized as militating ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... themselves into a decline, and are driven off in a hearse with white plumes upon it. Would you not suppose these persons had been whispered, by the Master of the Ceremonies, the promise of some momentous destiny? and that this lukewarm bullet on which they play their farces was the bull's-eye and centrepoint of all the universe? And yet it is not so. The ends for which they give away their priceless youth, ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of life. By a free act of faith the scattered and imperfect fragments must be built into a purposive unity. The poisonous feeling of futility, will then be lost; each task, no matter how petty or ineffectual, will become momentous as contributing something toward the realization of a good beyond our little existence; and we, however lowly, will find ourselves sublime as instruments of destiny. There is nothing vain to him who believes. And if the believer cannot build a meaning into history and ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... leagues from the capital, to scramble about the clay floor of an unwholesome cottage, in company perhaps with some half-dozen atomies like himself, as strange to each other as they were to their own parents, to pass those famous mois de nourrice which form so important and momentous a period in the lives of most French people. Madame Panpan was however in no way responsible for this state of things; the system was there, not only recognised, but encouraged; become indeed a part of the social habits of the ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... after graduating, off to South Africa, whereas if his choice lay in the electrical field he may never get any farther from home than the nearest electrical manufacturing plant in his town or state—and remain there for the duration of his life. This making of a choice is a momentous thing in a prospective engineer's life. It should be approached with all caution, and with due regard for the nature of the life he would lead after graduating from school. If he have a penchant for outdoor life, then the choice, in a ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton
... to the Improvement of Offspring: including important Directions to Lovers and the Married, concerning the strongest Ties, and most sacred and momentous Relations of Life. By O. S. ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... to speak of the old arbor that two summers later was the scene of the most momentous act of my childhood. It backed against the surrounding wall, and its lattice-work was overspread with muscadine vines that the ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... that decisive point, in a duel of the kind, when neither antagonist can find a word more to say. Lady Markland was very pale. She had been brought in a moment from her ease and quiet, when she expected no harm, to what might be the most momentous decision. She was still feeble, her nerves strained and weak from the long tension at which they had been held. She had clasped her hands together, and the fingers quivered. Her eyes seemed to grow larger and more luminous as she looked at him. "Theo," ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... Freedmen's Burow here) read to the crowd the news uv the canin wich Rosso, wich is uv Kentucky, give Grinnell. It sent a thrill uv joy through the State, wich ain't done thrillin yet. Bustin out into nine harty cheers, we to-wunst organized a meetin for the purpose uv expressin our feelins on the momentous occasion. The bell wuz rung, the people gathered together, and I wuz elected Chairman (they alluz elect me to preside becoz I'm bald-hedded; they think bald heads and dignity is inseparable), and Deekin Pogram Secretary, with 36 Vice-Presidents—one for each State. I made a short ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... can recollect, is the substance of what passed at the castle on this momentous day. Our situation was extremely doubtful, and the noise and horrid riots were at times so boisterous, that frequently we could not, though so near them, distinguish a word the King and Queen said; and yet, whenever the leaders of these ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 7 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... was adopted by the Council. There was some division of opinion; but the king overruled it, and the queen, who was present, showed, without speaking, that she was there to support the measure. By this momentous act Lewis XVI., without being conscious of its significance, went over to the democracy. He said, in plain terms, to the French people: "Afford me the aid I require, so far as we have a common interest, and for that definite ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... of those letters was there that which might be called a momentous fact, but which Angela took as easily as if it had been a mere detail, to be dismissed from her thoughts when the letter had been ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... the action state of general European conflict, the third German blunder, perhaps the most momentous, and certainly the most extraordinary: that by which Germany secured the hitherto exceedingly uncertain intervention of ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... hardly twenty-eight years old when he set out for Rome, to lay himself at the feet of the great Pope Innocent the Third, and to ask from him some formal recognition. The pontiff, so the story goes, was walking in the garden of the Lateran when the momentous meeting took place. Startled by the sudden apparition of an emaciated young man, bareheaded, shoeless, half-clad, but—for all his gentleness—a beggar who would take no denial, Innocent hesitated. It was but for a brief hour, the next ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... perhaps to such impressible spirits, even a passing word, unskilfully and feebly spoken, might by God's blessing do good; and yielding to the impulse of the moment, instead of declaiming the verses from Comus, I began to speak to them in their own language, of those great truths, the most momentous for civilised or savage man to know, and the most deeply interesting to every thoughtful mind, of whatever degree of culture—truths so simple, that even these untutored children of nature could receive, and be made happy ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... the dignity of his office—was presented with a uniform; and at the same time opportunity was taken to uniform the town's crier, Jack Moore, who kept the "Dusty Miller," at Damside. The question of suitable headgear was a momentous and difficult one, but eventually a helmet was selected for the pinder, with a cocked hat for the town's crier. "Bawk" did not live long to enjoy his uniform. He died in May, 1875, and was followed to the grave by his wife a few ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... for pressing such a request pertinaciously upon Mr. Peterborough in particular, his fixed eye, yet cordial deferential manner, and the stretch of his forefinger, and argumentative turn of the head—indicative of an armed disputant fully on the alert, and as if it were of profound and momentous importance that he should thoroughly defeat and convince his man—overwhelmed us. Mr. Peterborough, not being supple in French, fell back upon his English with a flickering smile of protestation; but even in his native tongue he could make no head against the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... unstinted devotion and sacrifices of all the nationalities and parties of his vast empire. It is our firm conviction that the sad tale of reaction and oppression is at an end in Russia, and that our country will issue from this momentous crisis with the insight and strength required for the constructive and progressive statesmanship of which it ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... series of great anxieties, unheard of dangers, and unparalleled escapes, I had, at length, on the nineteenth day of my departure from Rotterdam, arrived in safety at the conclusion of a voyage undoubtedly the most extraordinary, and the most momentous, ever accomplished, undertaken, or conceived by any denizen of earth. But my adventures yet remain to be related. And indeed your Excellencies may well imagine that, after a residence of five years upon a planet not only deeply interesting in its own peculiar character, but rendered ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... hopes and fears, My deep solicitudes, and silent tears. Under some neighbouring sod, my bones will lie, And wait the summons from the flaming sky: When ocean, trembling in its briny bed, And earth, upheaving, shall restore her dead. Roused by the voice, that heaven and earth shall shake, At that momentous period, I must wake, Among my fellow clay unknown before,— Must wake with horror, or with joy adore. Oh, wondrous scene! most awful! most august! Th' event is certain, and the purpose just. The Judge's eye will pierce the inmost soul, Each hidden record of the past unroll; No word, ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... through his bull-dog persistence that the elder Vanderlyn had won the wealth which son and wife were spending now, since he had passed on to a shore where wealth of gold may not be freighted. That same bull-dog persistence had the son applied to the momentous problem which confronted him. Not only had he won his difficult mother over to a friendly interest in the lovely German girl who had so utterly enthralled him, but he had made her eager to keep track of her, see more of her. ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... animation and excitement upon that momentous day when the duke and duchess, with their numerous retinue, were expected at Fuerstenstein; even the old forest, which had been witness to so many magnificent hunts in its time, put on its warmest ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... to be comfortable, if it does not inconvenience anyone else, is not laziness. Why, what is comfort?" The skipper began to wax philosophical at this point, and took the pipe from his mouth as he gravely propounded the momentous question. "What is comfort? If I go out to camp in the woods, and after turning in find a sharp stump sticking into my ribs on one side, and a pine root driving in the small of my back on the other ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... on his momentous voyage, another expedition under Vasco da Gama set out from the Tagus to make the voyage to India by the way of the Cape of ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... the hill was reached from the Frisbie mansion would be an ideal place for an airdrome. Even Jimmy knew enough about airdromes to recognize that. He waited a moment at the table to take in fully the momentous fact that their own little town was to be a center of activity ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... an opportunity for a fresh appeal to the country on the specific issue of second chamber reform; (8) the elections of December, 1910, and the assembling of the new parliament in January, 1911; and (9) the re-introduction and the final enactment, in the summer of 1911, of the Government's momentous Parliament Bill. At the December elections the contending forces were so solidly entrenched that the party quotas in the House of Commons remained all but unchanged. Following the elections they stood as follows: Liberals, 272; Unionists, 272; Nationalists, 76; ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... cried Gomez Arias, "it is of momentous importance that you should not be seen in this city by any of our mutual relations and friends. My peace of mind, my future prospects, nay, my very honor, require this sacrifice from your friendship. I have ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... for long afterwards. And, indeed, the making of it good (of it, and of the immense results that hung by it) was the main business of this young King's Life henceforth; and cost him Labors like those of Hercules, and was in the highest degree momentous to existing and not yet existing millions of mankind,—to the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... some one in the vast congregation to rise and say, "I do." There was no answer. It seemed to Von Barwig that the minister was looking directly at him, and not only looking at him, but tacitly asking a reply. Once more in compelling tones came the momentous question, "Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?" Von Barwig was now quite positive that the clergyman was addressing himself directly to him, and he felt that the moment had come to declare the ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... went into the cabin and prepared her own meal. About dark Kells strode in, and it took but a glance for Joan to see that matters had not gone to his liking. The man seemed to be burning inwardly. Sight of Joan absolutely surprised him. Evidently in the fever of this momentous hour he had forgotten his prisoner. Then, whatever his obsession, he looked like a man whose eyes were gladdened at sight of her and who was sorry to behold her there. He apologized that her supper had not been provided for her and explained that he had forgotten. ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... horse's feet he says: "Bur-raa (brother), Afghanistan." "Khylie koob, Afghanistan inja-koob, hoob, sowari." (Very good, I understand, we are entering Afghanistan; all right, ride on.) "Sowari neis," replies the khan; and he tries hard to impress upon me that our crossing the Afghan frontier is a momentous occasion, and not to be lightly regarded. Several times during the day has my delectable escort endeavored to fathom the extent of my courage by impressing upon me the danger to be apprehended in Afghanistan by a Ferenghi. Not less than half ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... seek out strange women, and he had no hope of meeting the girl of the mountain-side again. He was content to have her remain a poem—a song of the sunset—a picture seen only for a moment, yet whose impression outlasts iron. Everything in nature had converged to make her momentous. His long stay among the ugly, dusky women of the desert, his exultant joy in the mountain sunset, and his abounding health (which filled his heart with the buoyancy of a boy)—all these causes combined to revive emotions which his absorption in scientific investigation ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... account of America. I have also tried to avoid, so far as possible, describing well-known scenery, or in other ways going over the tracks of my predecessors. The phenomena of the United States are so momentous in themselves that the observation of them from any new standpoint cannot be wholly destitute of value; while they change so rapidly that he would be unobservant indeed who could not find something ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... present, so easy a task as might be supposed: for Mowbray was ambitious of that character of ton and elegance, which masculine faculties alone are seldom capable of attaining on such momentous occasions. The more solid materials of a collation were indeed to be obtained for money from the next market-town, and were purchased accordingly; but he felt it was likely to present the vulgar plenty of a farmer's feast, instead of the elegant entertainment, which might be ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... the people in San Antonio were asleep when the dripping figure of a half unconscious boy on a great horse galloped toward them in that momentous dawn. He was without hat or serape. He was bareheaded and his rifle was gone. He was shouting "Up! Up! Santa Anna and the Mexican army are at hand!" But his voice was so choked and hoarse that he could not be ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... a Russian lieutenant-general, and exercised an almost unlimited power in Servia; the revolution, after a struggle of eight years, appeared to be successful, but the momentous events then passing in Europe, completely altered the aspect of affairs. Russia in 1812, on the approach of the countless legions of Napoleon, precipitately concluded the treaty of Bucharest, the eighth article of which formally assured ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... speculative consistency, and not in obedience of life, to perplex and terrify us. What are we? what is anything? If it be not divine, what is it then? If created—out of what is it created? and how created—and why? These questions, and others far more momentous which we do not enter upon here, may be asked and cannot be answered; but we cannot any the more consent to Spinoza on the ground that he alone consistently provides an answer; because, as we have said again and again, we do not care to have them answered at all. Conscience is the ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... Church holds it, no fitter expounders than such a preacher? Are these its stays, props, and pillars—teachers to guide, enlighten, and instruct people as cultivated and intelligent as the people of this country on the most momentous of all subjects? Are these the sort of adversaries to oppose to men like Channing? As for not going to church because of bad or foolish sermons, that is quite another matter, though I not unfrequently hear that reason assigned for staying ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... shall be kept vivid and clear in the minds of the rising generation, to cultivate a correct idea of the necessity of personal valor and of military preparation and capacity, as well as impress a serious idea of the momentous importance of political issues. Captain Glazier's volume is excellently fitted to ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... the dance had come, than which Wellington could produce no more momentous occasion. For days the students had been decorating Old Warburton Hall, stripping their own rooms to the point of desolation to pile their banners, their flags, and even their mandolins around the big hall, in artistic and effective settings from ceiling to the smallest nook around the chimney ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... ideas were not diffuse enough; or rather, he appeared to lack fluency to make a long, and what is called an elaborate argument upon any matter, however grave or momentous. In a cause in which he was employed as associate counsel with General Hamilton, an incident occurred, in relation to Chief Justice Yates, not unworthy recording. It speaks a language that cannot he misunderstood, and is demonstrative of the influence which he had over the feelings as well ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... the annual written examinations, momentous occasions, that were crowned with success so far as the majority of the pupils were concerned. The ordeal of examinations closed with the public oral ones on Friday morning. On the afternoon of the same day occurred the exhibition ...
— American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 9, September, 1896 • Various
... infusing these elements into JANE AUSTEN'S staid and reticent romances, points out that her vocabulary was extraordinarily limited. Her abstinence from decorative epithets led to results that are bald and unconvincing. One may look in vain in her pages for such words as "arresting," "vital," "momentous" or "sinister." She never uses "glimpse," "sense" or "voice" as verbs. We look forward with eager anticipation to the results of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... not only in the mutual exercise, of Christian charity, but also to enter, into the fraternal bonds, of church communion. The greatest part, of the reformed doctors, seemed disposed, to acknowledge, that the errors of the Lutherans, were not, of a momentous nature, nor of a pernicious tendency; and that the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, had not undergone, any remarkable alteration, in that communion; and thus, on their side, an important step, was made, towards peace, and union, between the two churches. But the greatest ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... my promise. 'Tis true the story you wished me to give you is more easily communicated by the pen than by the lips. I admit your claim to be acquainted with all the incidents of my life, be they momentous or trivial. I have often told you that the retrospect is very mournful; but that ought not to prevent me from making it, when so useful a purpose as that of thoroughly disclosing to you the character of one, on whom your future happiness is to depend, will be affected by it. I am ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... measuring the height and depth of great subjects; able to unravel mysteries; to walk through the universe; to soar up into the infinity of God's attributes,—hovering perpetually over a new style of mantilla! I have known men, reckless as to their character, and regardless of interests momentous and eternal, exasperated by the shape ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... for when he had fallen the issues of the fight were still undecided. "The French, sir. They give way everywhere." "Thank God! I die in peace," replied the English hero. At a time when the momentous results of this battle had set the whole of Great Britain afire with enthusiasm it is easy to understand the popularity of a picture such as this. It was sold in 1791 for oe28, and now belongs to the Duke of Westminster. ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... that an innumerable multitude of persons, many of them distinguished for the highest intellectual powers, and proving by their lives and their deaths that they are ready to make every sacrifice for the sake of religion, should suffer themselves to be imposed upon in so momentous a subject, should willingly accept as true a series of absurd fabrications, whose falsehood they might detect by the exercise of any ordinary acuteness, and should risk their reputation with the world ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... her hands over her face, giving way to that heavy down-sinking of the heart which most persons have experienced, when the image of hope itself seems ponderously moulded of lead, on the eve of an enterprise at once doubtful and momentous. She was suddenly startled by the tinkling alarum—high, sharp, and irregular—of a little bell. The maiden lady arose upon her feet, as pale as a ghost at cock-crow; for she was an enslaved spirit, and this the talisman to which she owed obedience. ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Mrs. Burke," Maxwell replied, "and I sha'n't forget your promise—when the time comes for me to take the momentous step. But I think it would be the wisest thing for me to keep my heart free for a while; or at any rate, not to ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... and desolation of an animal that knows only suffering, of the incomplete soul that knows pain but knows not hope; that can find no refuge from the facts of life in the illusory conviction of its dignity, of an exalted destiny beyond; in the heavenly consolation of a belief in the momentous origin ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... interval that day that Stone and Robinson, discussing the subject of cricket over a bun and ginger-beer at the school shop, came to a momentous decision, to wit, that they were fed up with Adair administration and meant to strike. The immediate cause of revolt was early-morning fielding-practice, that searching test of cricket keenness. Mike himself, to whom cricket was the great and ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... open everything, promised, and then Irving was asked if he could find men to carry the job into execution. New York in those days was well supplied with such artists, but the right men to carry out so momentous an operation had to be sought. The difficulty, however, was not great, and Irving promptly assured the honorable president that he might confidently count on the right men at the ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... to do with the momentous occasion which had brought him to Berkeley Square? He was almost beginning to be sore at heart because she had not thrown herself into his arms. There was no repetition of that "But you do love me?" which ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... look like, whether she'd possibly know him from his picture. In the picture, which hung over her mother's bureau at home, he seemed very young and hollow-cheeked and rather pitiful, with only a well-developed mouth and all ill-fitting probationer's gown to show that he had already made a momentous decision about his life. Of course he had been only nineteen then and now he was thirty-six—didn't look like that at all; in recent snap-shots he was much broader and his hair had grown a little thin—but the impression of her brother she had always retained ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... representatives of virtuous females were hired, all dressed in white—sweet emblem of their purity! Perhaps England was never nearer the brink of engulphing ruin. The high Tory aristocracy almost stood alone at this momentous period. The public sentiment took but one tone at the theatres; and 'GOD save the QUEEN' was continually called for. At Covent-Garden and Drury-Lane an occasional struggle was made against the popular cry, but it was speedily drowned in clamor. The trial commenced, and an unfortunate ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... of appreciation of the momentous nature of the present struggle in which Great Britain is engaged and with no selfish desire to gain undue commercial advantage that this Government is reluctantly forced to the conclusion that the present policy of his Majesty's Government toward neutral ships ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... these pioneers a debt of respect and gratitude. The world was better that they lived in it. Freedom found in them devoted loyalty to her cause. They both loved Kansas, and their lives were inseparably associated with the stirring events of the most momentous years of her history. They served her well. Brave and strong and useful, they fought a good fight and kept the faith. ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... Parson Tombs, with a momentous air. "And I'll come. I may be a little late in gett'n' there, faw I've got to hitch up aft' a while and take Mother Tombs to spend the day, both of us, with our daughters, Mrs. Hamlet and Lazarus Graves. I don't reckon anybody else has noticed it but them, but, John, my son, Mother Tombs an' ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... history has not carried him to the opposite extreme, but it has made him seek sources of interest, where alone the serious student of human affairs would care to find them, in the magnitude of events, the changes of the fortunes of states, and the derivation of momentous consequences from long chains of ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 9: The Expansion of England • John Morley
... volumes of his "Port Royal" and in the later "Portraits." It was facilitated by the waning power displayed in the productions of some with whom he had been closely associated. It was suddenly completed by an event of which the momentous and wide-spread consequences are still ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... sense of trust and reliance. He thanked her for coming, handed her into the carriage, looked after her goods, and seated himself beside her in so completely his ordinary fashion of taking care of her, that she forgot all her intentions of rendering their meeting momentous. Her first inquiry was for his health, but he put it aside with something about feeling very well now, and he looked so healthy, only perhaps a little more hearty and burly, that she did not think ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... well to say here, that no moment from the day of secession to the day the first gun was fired at Sumter, had been allowed to pass without overtures being made to the government at Washington for a peaceful solution of the momentous question. Every effort that tact or diplomacy could invent was resorted to, to have an amicable adjustment. Commissioners had been sent to Washington, asking, urging, and almost begging to be allowed to leave the Union, now odious ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... strength in disputing my faith, but in making sure his own progress on the way to freedom and sonship. Only to the child of God is true judgment possible. Were it otherwise, what would it avail to prove this one or that right or wrong? Right opinion on questions the most momentous will deliver no man. Cure for any ill in me or about me there is none, but to become the son of God I was born to be. Until such I am, until Christ is born in me, until I am revealed a son of God, pain and trouble will endure—and God grant they may! Call this presumption, and ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... a log under a palm-tree in Batavia, on that momentous morning of the 27th, was a sailor who had been left behind sick by Captain Roy when he went on his rather Quixotic trip to the Keeling Islands. He was a somewhat delicate son of the sea. Want of self-restraint ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... seas which resulted from Prince Henry's activities is one of the most momentous events in human history. Its effect was, sooner or later, to unite the scattered families of mankind, to make the problems of all the concern of all: to make the world one place. Prince Henry and his ...
— Progress and History • Various
... for maintaining the alliance which he had inaugurated. They could not neglect such doughty auxiliaries in the memorable war which they waged against cruelty, ignorance, and irreligion, and in their less momentous skirmishes with the votaries of the stage, the racecourse, and the card-table. Without the aid of nonconformist sympathy, and money, and oratory, and organisation, their operations would have been doomed to certain failure. ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... between royal lovers. Over the next six years, readers would enjoy the adventures of this youth and his three famous friends, Porthos, Athos, and Aramis, as their exploits unraveled behind the scenes of some of the most momentous events in French ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the silver-tongued orator wrathfully. He was not accustomed to chatter-boxes arguing with him like this. He would probably have said something momentous and crushing, but at ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... touring-car was waiting, with two others, and for an instant Blount hesitated, half inclined to ask his father's chauffeur, to drive him down-town. On such inconsequent pivots fate, or accident, twirls the most momentous affairs of life. If Blount had taken the car he would have been driven directly to the hotel. As it was, he walked, and in passing the Temple Court Building he remembered that he had not seen his mail since ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... sides and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions as to terms of intercourse are again upon you.... In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors.... I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... admiralty to decide what action should be taken, whenever any new situation is reported. This factor is most important; because in naval and military operations, even in time of peace, but especially in war, events follow each other so rapidly, and momentous crises develop so suddenly, that the demand for action that shall be both wise and instantaneous is imperative. The chess-player can linger long over his decisions, because his opponent cannot make his next move meanwhile; but in warfare no such ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... its wisdom present us Each morning with gems of this kind, Such matters must strike as momentous The news-editorial mind; 'Tis time this delusion was done with, High time that some voice made it clear We don't want those fountains to run ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... maintained the same tactical reserve on the subject, alike in their writings and their speeches. The Liberal Press of the period may be searched in vain for any clear indication that the electors were about to be asked to decide once more this momentous constitutional question. Such mention of it as was occasionally to be found in ministerial speeches seemed designed to convey the idea that, while the door leading to Home Rule was still formally open, there was no immediate prospect of its being brought into use. The Prime Minister in particular ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... in silence. They were little more than a day's journey from Rome. Civita Castellana lay between; yet perhaps a wheel might not be got at Civita Castellana. In that case a return to Rome was inevitable. What a momentous thought! Back to Rome! Ever since he left he had felt a profound melancholy. The feeling of homesickness was on him. He had amused himself with keeping his eyes shut and fancying that he was moving to Rome instead of from it. He had repented leaving ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... to the sepulchres of the kings that the most momentous discoveries of recent years have been made at Thebes, and at Sakkara, Abusir, Dashur, and Lisht, as at Abydos. For this reason we deal in succession with the finds in the necropoles of Abydos, Memphis, and Thebes respectively. And with the sepulchres of the "Old Kingdom," in the Memphite ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... Hamilton; men of great practical sense and magnanimity, like Washington and Franklin; and they also included and needed to include the representatives of various local and national interests. They had been schooled by the training of many momentous years, and the emergency brought out the strongest traits of the men and ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... well to briefly recall the circumstances under which this momentous battle was fought. One after another the English had been compelled to surrender to the victorious armies of Charles VII. their fortresses in Poitou, Angoumois, Guyenne and Gascony; so that of their immense province of ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... War of sixty years ago, though waged between four European nations—Great Britain, France, Turkey, and Russia—cost Great Britain much less in money than the Boer War; the issues so far as this country was concerned were not so momentous; and industry and commerce, though important, were not then nearly so highly developed and complicated as they are now. The Napoleonic wars, though comparable to the present war in fundamental importance, ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... to go back a little in order to property properly to appreciate the momentous importance of the arrival of this man at this juncture. He was destined to play a large part in Herbert's future; the manner of their ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 7, 1914 • Various
... which are not cloistered the scene is far less impressive. What we were going to see included the most solemn forms ever used. This time the whole service took place behind the grating: there were no "bridesmaids" now, no shadow of worldly pomp was borrowed to enhance the last and momentous consecration of religion. The novice knelt between the superior and the mistress of novices, each bearing a lighted taper. The white veil was taken from her head, and a black one, previously blessed with holy ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... kindness; that had spared her childhood the painful but most necessary lesson of submission and self-command. From the same indulgence it followed that she had only been accustomed to form and to express her wishes, leaving to others the task of fulfilling them; and thus, at the most momentous period of her life, she was alike destitute of presence of mind, and of ability to form for herself any reasonable or ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... might easily lose himself there on a dark night. But Kamaiakan knew where he was going, and the way thither. He now stalked along more swiftly, taking one turn after another, brushing aside the low-hanging boughs, and passing the loveliest flowers without a glance. He was as one preoccupied with momentous business. Presently he arrived at a small open space, remote and secluded. It was completely surrounded by tall shrubbery. In the centre was a basin of stone, evidently very ancient, filled to the brim with the clear ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... divines in general, both Churchmen and Dissenting, with a pretext for treating his doctrine with silent contempt. Had he followed the example of his own Ben Ezra, and argued temperately and learnedly, the controversy must have forced the momentous question on our Clergy:—Are Christians bound to believe whatever an Apostle believed,—and in the same way and sense? I think Saint Paul himself lived to doubt the solidity of his own literal interpretation ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... used to say, 'as soon as a man comes to understand that GOD IS LOVE, he is infallibly converted.' Mrs. Florence L. Barclay wrote a book to show how Rodney Steele made that momentous and transfiguring discovery. Rodney Steele—the hero of The Wall of Partition—was a great traveler and a brilliant author. He had wandered through India, Africa, Australia, Egypt, China and Japan, and had ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... Grille, Sir ALFRED MONO informed the House, would only cost a matter of five pounds. All the same I think there was some disappointment in certain quarters, including the gilded cage itself, that this momentous question should be disposed of without debate. Several sparkling orations, teeming with wit and persiflage, were nipped in the bud. A score of ungallant fellows, including several whom I should have diagnosed as ladies' men, opposed the removal, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug. 22, 1917 • Various
... toil of their recent travels had put both young men into the pink of condition; it was, therefore, not long before they reached the spot where Dick had made his momentous find. Arrived there, Earle's first act was to subject each of the crystals lying in the exposed "pocket" to a careful examination. There were fifty-four in all, of varying sizes; and when Earle had pronounced each of them to be a genuine emerald—and most ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... science. Columbus made known America in 1492; the Portuguese rounded the Cape in 1497; Copernicus explained the solar system in 1507. It is not necessary to add anything to this plain statement, for, in contact with facts of such momentous import, to avoid what seems like commonplace reflection would be difficult. Yet it is only when we contrast the ten centuries which preceded these dates with the four centuries which have ensued that we can estimate the magnitude of that Renaissance movement by means of which ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... was just where Tilly could not make up her mind: should she take him, or should she not? For two whole days she sat about debating the question; and Polly listened to her with all the sympathy and interest so momentous ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... friend vouchsafed her only a spiteful glance in return for this proof of confidence. She was thinking of her own beauteous Lucinda, and mentally declared that her daughter should outshine Melinda Brown on that momentous occasion, if the worthy contractor had to go ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... demonstrate themselves. In twelve months the dams were full, the wells sending up their far-fetched priceless water, the wire fences erected, the shepherds gone, and 17,000 sheep cropping the herbage of Anabanco. Tuesday was the day fixed for the actual commencement of the momentous, almost solemn transaction—the pastoral Hegira, so to speak, as the time of most station events is calculated with reference to it, as happening before or after shearing. But before the first shot is fired which tells of the battle begun, what raids and skirmishes, what reconnoitring ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood
... sudden spring, began to sing, and hid herself like a bird frightened out of a thicket. My last words were altogether out of place. I had no suspicion then how momentous they were, but afterwards I had occasion to ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... our world, for we are in a world of alternate probability, in another dimension of time; a world parallel to and coexistent with but separate from our own, in which history has been completely altered by a single momentous event." He shifted back to his ...
— Crossroads of Destiny • Henry Beam Piper
... December, 1886 devoted some space to the fancy shirt fronts of Lowenthal, the unsavoury cigars of Winawer, the distinguished friends of one of the writers, the Foreign secretary, denial that Zukertort came over in two ships, and other less momentous matters, so we may assume that the authors who greatly control the destinies of chess could even, themselves, at times appreciate ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... was the scene of most momentous deliberations. Barnave, Talleyrand, Lameth, Dupont, Boissy d'Anglas, Portalis, Chenier, Roederer, and Benjamin Constant, discussed at the place of familiar meeting many a half-formed decree, and many important state ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various
... Frontenac, the most remarkable man who ever represented the crown of France in the New World. From strangely unpromising beginnings, he grew with every emergency, and rose equal to every crisis. His whole career was one of conflict, sometimes petty and personal, sometimes of momentous consequence, involving the question of national ascendancy on this continent. Now that this question is put at rest for ever, it is hard to conceive, the anxiety which it wakened in our forefathers. But ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... felt, as he said, like "shaking hands with himself," the reaction had been so great, and Bob's news so satisfactory. It might be looked at as an omen of good luck for the momentous occasion. Surely a day that had opened in such a glorious manner for Big Bob, and the team in general, could not have bitterness and gall in store for those gallant Chester fellows who expected to improve upon their work ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... gradual assimilation. There is a class of good women who have no right to marry perfectly good men, because they have the power of saving those who would go to ruin but for the guiding providence of a good wife. I have known many such cases. It is the most momentous question a woman is ever called upon to decide, whether the faults of the man she loves are beyond remedy and will drag her down, or whether she is competent to be his earthly redeemer and lift ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... to have been adopted in a meeting of Senators held on the evening of the 5th of January,[110] have been magnified, by the representations of artful commentators on the events of the period, into something vastly momentous. ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... mercantile and financial business. Great and audacious as Gould's thefts were later, they could not be put on the same indescribably low plane as those committed during the Civil War by men most of whom succeeded in becoming noted for their fine respectability and "solid fortunes." So many momentous events were taking place during the Civil War, that amid all the preparations, the battles and excitement, those frauds did not arouse that general gravity of public attention which, at any other time, would have inevitably resulted. Consequently, the men who perpetrated them contrived ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... 1467, about ten years after the foundation of Kunwald, there met at Lhota a Synod of the Brethren to settle the momentous question {1467.}, "Is it God's will that we separate entirely from the power of the Papacy, and hence from its priesthood? Is it God's will that we institute, according to the model of the Primitive Church, a ministerial order of our own?" ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... trace the reasonings which in one and the other have conducted to these two opinions, and endeavour to discover what we ought to think on a question of such momentous interest. Let us analyse the ideas and feelings which constitute the contending beliefs, and watchfully establish a discrimination between words and thoughts. Let us bring the question to the test of experience and fact; and ask ourselves, considering our nature in its entire ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... of the Dreyfus case in seven volumes is accepted as an authoritative however partisan report of one of the momentous crises in the French Republic. He also has written on alcoholism and election reforms, and he has been for many years a Member of the Chamber of Deputies, standing ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... for an instant, and then, as one who makes a momentous decision, spoke firmly, though her lips quivered as she gave utterance ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... that the maintenance of peace never can or may be the goal of a policy. The policy of a great State has positive aims. It will endeavour to attain this by pacific measures so long as that is possible and profitable. It must not only be conscious that in momentous questions which influence definitely the entire development of a nation, the appeal to arms is a sacred right of the State, but it must keep this conviction fresh in the national consciousness. The inevitableness, the idealism, and the blessing of war, as an indispensable and stimulating law ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... ploughman or Cornish miner who had taken arms to defend his wife and children against Tourville, could be certain that he should not be hanged. How abject too, how spiteful, must be the nature of a man who, engaged in the most momentous of all undertakings, and aspiring to the noblest of all prizes, could not refrain from proclaiming that he thirsted for the blood of a multitude of poor fishermen, because, more than three years before, they had pulled him about and called ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of Britain, with no mention of the intervening sea, so these German bards link together the days of Chivalry and the old barbarian life which Tacitus paints for us in the "Germania", without apparently any consciousness of the momentous deed which the German warriors had in the meanwhile performed, full of significance for all succeeding generations of men, the overthrow of the Empire ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... imagine the manner in which man unwittingly took one of his momentous and unprecedented first steps in civilization. Some restless primeval savage might find himself scraping the bark off a stick with the edge of a stone or shell and finally cutting into the wood and bringing the thing to a point. He might then ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... friends of God and the ardent lovers of things spiritual have deeply pondered these momentous truths. They have realized that our days here, though few and fast-flying, are really to determine our lot and condition throughout the eternal years. They have known that the passing present is the price of the lasting future; that this is the seeding ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... people and of a revived national spirit. The vista that now opens to us is wider and more glorious than ever before. Gratification and amazement struggle for supremacy as we contemplate the population, wealth, and moral strength of our country. A trust momentous in its influence upon our people and upon the world is for a brief time committed to us, and we must not be faithless to its first condition—the defense of the free and equal influence of the people in the choice of public officers and in ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... literary skill, and no one who does not possess some, at least, of these gifts in an unusual measure is likely to attain a permanent place among the great masters of history. It is a misfortune when some stirring and momentous period falls into the hands of the mere compiler, for he occupies the ground and a really great writer will hesitate to appropriate and plagiarise the materials his predecessor has collected. There are books of great research and erudition which one would have wished to have been all re-written ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... in that Office but seven Years; so that it may happen as soon as he has obtained a perfect Knowledge and Acquaintance with the Persons and Affairs belonging to the College, his Term is expired: Besides their Business in other momentous Affairs at Home may divert them, and the Distance of the Country may prevent them from obtaining true Notions, and exact Accounts of the Nature of the Colony and the College; so that for these Reasons, they can't do for ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... was probably the most momentous time of the six days and nights of fighting. Then the Germans concentrated on the Yser Canal, over which there was but one bridge, a murderous barrage fire which would have effectively hindered the bringing up of reinforcements or guns, even ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat |
