"Vital" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hidden in the day. A few works are great which celebrate the charm of actual effort, and the furtherance of Nature for the brave. Homer, Shakspeare, Goethe, need never exaggerate or leave the earth behind: in their experience it carries well the sky. Every vital thought is some pleasure in running, waking, loving, contending, helping,—is valor dealing gayly with the homely old forces and needs. The marrow is sweet for him who can crack it, in the roughest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... and organized, the need of selection from the multitudinous literature of Christianity was felt. Genuine letters had to be distinguished from spurious letters. Accurate knowledge of the life and teachings of Christ had become a vital necessity. The growth of legend and fable, in the Apocryphal Gospels, threatened to swallow up the memory of the real Jesus. A sifting process went on in the churches, by which the unimportant and objectionable ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... for strength on contact with his mother earth. In leaping, neither man nor horse can draw breath while in the air, that is, from the time the feet leave the ground till they again touch it. But quick breathing (the creber anhelitus) is not only a consequence of distress for wind, but it is a vital necessity when distressed for wind. And the impossibility to draw breath when off the ground is the reason of the death of horses in steeple-chasing and hurdle-racing; they die of suffocation. The reason is a sufficient one for the discontinuance ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... case, it is hard to say what the ratio is at night, when a general atmosphere of mystery, uncertainty and fear of surprise envelops the operations, and, of necessity affects the nerves of the men. The vital importance, therefore, of accustoming troops as much as we can in peace to the conditions that will obtain in night fighting, cannot be overestimated. The following outline shows the subjects in which individual and collective instruction and ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... President but stopped here, there might still have rested a saving shadow of suspicion on Konig's Excerpt, That it was not exact, that it might be wrong in some vital point:—"You never showed me the Original, Monsieur!" Unluckily, the Perpetual President did not stop. One cannot well fancy him believing, now or ever, that Konig had forged the Excerpt. Most likely he had the fatal ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... average of ideals and conventional standards of life, Dick Gale was a starved, lonely, suffering, miserable wretch. But in his case the judgment would have hit only externals, would have missed the vital inner truth. For Gale was happy with a kind of strange, wild glory in the privations, the pains, the perils, and the silence and solitude to be endured on this desert land. In the past he had not been of any use to himself or others; and he ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... host of the Irish tales, and have done this with a just reverence for their originals. Being, in nearly every case, Irish themselves, they have tried, with varying success, to make their readers realize the wild scenery of Ireland, her vital union with the sea and the great ocean to the West, those changing dramatic skies, that mystic weather, the wizard woods and streams which form the constant background of these stories; nor have they failed to allure their listeners to breathe the spiritual air of Ireland, to feel its ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... Under such circumstances the railway is everything. It is the first necessity of life, and gives the only hope of wealth. It is the backbone of existence from whence spring, and by which are protected, all the vital organs and functions of the community. It is the right arm of civilization for the people, and the discoverer of the fertility of the land. It is all in all to those people, and to those regions. It has supplied ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... to make a success of this committee. I need hardly tell you how important it is and that upon it depend vital questions of Government policy. I am not going too far in saying that the future of the Government itself depends to a large extent upon the guidance which we shall be able to afford them as the ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... through a horrible mistake. He raged in bitter resentment against his fate, against these men who stood so quietly about him ready to execute it, most of all against the girl who had let him sacrifice himself by concealing the vital fact that her brother had murdered a guard to effect his escape. Fool that he had been, he had stumbled into a trap, and she had let him do it without a word of warning. Wild, chaotic thoughts crowded his ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... indeed to have devoted so many words to a mere matter of name. If a drama is good it signifies but little what we call it, or whether its title be exactly appropriate. In this case, however, we have to do with a vital defect and not merely with a misnomer. A play may be good in different ways; and what the preceding criticism is intended to bring out is the fact that the strength of 'Fiesco', such as it has, does not ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... beautiful Andromeda passage, afford ample indication of how deeply Browning had drunk of that vital stream whose waters are the surest conserver of the ideal loveliness which we all of us, in some degree, cherish ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... is such a part. Not satisfied, it would seem, with body, like Nonentitarians of vulgar mould, he tenants it with Soul or Spirit, or Mind, which Soul, or Spirit, or Mind, according to his own showing, is nothing but body in action; in other terms, organised matter performing vital functions. Idle declamation against 'facts mongers' well becomes such self-stultifying dealers in fiction. Abuse of 'experimentarians' is quite in keeping with the philosophy of those who maintain the reality of mind in face of their own strange statement, that magnetism ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... there can be no doubt but that the people want a League of Nations because it seems to offer the surest guarantee against war. I am convinced that the San Francisco Convention will endorse in its vital principles ...
— The Progressive Democracy of James M. Cox • Charles E. Morris
... despatched Colonel Oglesby with 3,000 men from Commerce to carry out this order. On the 5th, Grant was further advised by telegraph that General Polk, who commanded at Columbus, was sending reinforcements to Price, and that it was of vital importance that this movement should be arrested. General Grant at once sent an additional regiment to Oglesby, with directions to him to turn his course to the river in the direction of New Madrid; requested General C. F. Smith to make a demonstration from Paducah ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force
... that they might set about to help themselves, and be forced to exercise their energy and address. This was the principal design of their hard fare; there was another not inconsiderable, that they might grow taller; for the vital spirits, not being overburdened and oppressed by too great a quantity of nourishment; which necessarily discharges itself into thickness and breadth, do, by their natural lightness, rise; and the body, giving and yielding because ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... among your list of stewards, ONE at least of the representatives of Oldborough has no such scruples. Sir George Gorgon is among you: and though I differ from that honourable Baronet on more than ONE VITAL POINT, I am glad to think that he is with you. A gentleman, a soldier, a man of property in the county, how can he be better employed than in forwarding the county's amusements, and in forwarding ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Mornin' News—generally by a stoker. Naturally, word went round the lower deck an' we had a private over'aul of our little consciences. But, barrin' a shirt which a second- class stoker said 'ad walked into 'is bag from the marines flat by itself, nothin' vital transpired. The owner went about flyin' the signal for 'attend public execution,' so to say, but there was no corpse at the yardarm. 'E lunched on the beach an' 'e returned with 'is regulation harbour-routine face about 3 P. M. Thus Lamson ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... with full purpose of heart,' as the limpet does to the rock. Cling to Jesus Christ, the revelation of God's grace. And how do we cling to Him? What is the cement of souls? Love and trust; and whoever exercises these in reference to Jesus Christ is built into Him, and belongs to Him, and has a vital unity knitting him with that Lord. Cleave to Christ, brother, by faith and love, by communion and prayer, and by practical conformity of life. For remember that the union which is effected by faith can be broken by sin, and that there ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... true virility. Or we may think of the shrunken dark star as the germ-cell, the pollen-grain, of the cosmic organism. Reduced in size, as becomes a germ-cell, to a mere fraction of the nebular body from which it sprang, it yet retains within its seemingly non-vital body all the potentialities of the original organism, and requires only to blend with a fellow-cell to bring a new generation into being. Thus may the cosmic race, whose aggregate census makes up the stellar universe, be perpetuated—individual solar systems, such as ours, being born, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... 1839, had introduced "Fidelio" to New York, and with it made such successful competition with the Italian company of the day that it was performed fourteen times in succession. Mr. Mapleson made a pitiful essay with it in March, 1882, at the Academy, but to recall as vivid and vital a performance as that under discussion one had to go back to the days of Mme. Johannsen and her associates, who gave German opera in 1856. In Dr. Damrosch's performance Marianne Brandt effected her entrance on the American stage, and the memory of her impersonation of the heroine ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... assiduous attention from scientific men, and none has been made the object of more constant or more profound research than the questions of food and food supply. The feeding of animals and men is without question the most pressing and vital ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... anything, it was Protestant before the Reformation, and Catholic after. It is, of course, the same Church. A man may be described as the same man before and after death, and the business of a coroner's jury is to establish the identity; but it does not ignore the vital difference. Even Saul and Paul were the same man. And the identity of the Church before and after the legislation of Henry VIII. covers a considerable number of not unimportant changes. It does not, however, seem strictly accurate to say that Henry either liberated ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... his imagination work. He tried to picture the faces of the mysterious individuals he was determined to track down—but, so far, in vain!... Then with strange, uncanny persistence, one face rose again and again before his mental vision, clear, vital—the face of the enigmatic Thomery, with his silver white hair, his red face, his light blue eyes, that Yankee head of his, well set ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... was held at Alnwick, at which the Scottish nobles, the Earl of Northumberland, and Hotspur were alone present, and here matters of vital interest to ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... sweetest kisses past, we two did share Our peaceful meal:—as an autumnal blossom Which spreads its shrunk leaves in the sunny air, After cold showers, like rainbows woven there, 2825 Thus in her lips and cheeks the vital spirit Mantled, and in her eyes, an atmosphere Of health, and hope; and sorrow languished near it, And fear, and all that dark despondence ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... by marrying a physically perfect woman. After long search, he finds this ideal in Hester, the daughter of a "cracker squatter," of the Ozark Mountains of Missouri. But,—he forgot to take into consideration that very vital emotion, love, which played havoc with ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... familiarly and pleasantly known to magazine readers for the realistic details of Western railroad life, which give them a dashing, vital movement, though they are often highly romantic. The romantic in them, however, seems very human—indeed, there is a ring of true feeling in ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... On such a vital topic sure 'tis odd How much a man can differ from his neighbor: One wishes worship freely giv'n to God, Another wants to make it statute-labor— The broad distinction in a line to draw, As means to lead us to the skies above, You say—Sir Andrew and his love of law, And ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... in a mill; and the less one examined into Evelyn's character the better, he suspected. Yet these were the people with money, and to them rather than to others was given the management of the world. Put among them some one more vital, who cared for life or for beauty, and what an agony, what a waste would they inflict on him if he tried to share with ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... father, nor have I inflicted my unhappiness on you. I have given you large liberty, the best education that you would take, and ample means with which to enjoy yourself. I had expected that in return you would consult my wishes in some vital matters—as vital to your happiness as mine. I never dreamed that such incredible folly as you have mentioned was possible. Your very birthright precluded the idea. You said that you would have to test my love severely. I shall not only have to test your love, but also your reason, your ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... author ought only to commit to the press the first fruits of his field, his best and choicest thoughts. He ought not to take up the pen, till he has brought his mind into a fitting tone, and ought to lay it down, the instant his intellect becomes in any degree clouded, and his vital spirits abate ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... As fresh and vital as the color was the breath of the marsh. There is no bank of violets stealing and giving half so sweet an odor to my nostrils, outraged by a winter of city smells, as the salty, spray-laden breath of the marsh. It seems fairly to line the lungs with ozone. I ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... of a horse is death,' said I, 'if it touches a vital part. I am not, however, of your lordship's opinion with respect to mules: a good ginete may retain his seat on a horse however vicious, but a mule—vaya! when a false mule tira par detras, I do not believe that the Father of the ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... insufficient room which is allowed for the accommodation of our European troops in India. Within the room assigned for the non- commissioned officers and soldiers, they soon exhaust the atmosphere around of its oxygen or vital air, while they expire or exhale carbonic acid, nitrogen and hydrogen gases, which render it altogether unfit to sustain animal life; and death or disease must soon overtake those who inhale ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... a manner of speaking, the iron heel of the all-conquering Fatherland—lay perfidious England. I, as a mere layman, had, of course, not the vaguest idea as to precisely what vital portion of the doomed island was immediately below us. Not so my host, the Captain Sigismund von Muenchhausen, who suddenly snapped together the stethoscope through which he had been gazing and rapped out a monosyllabic ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... I hardly feel it. It isn't anything. It can't be anything. There's nothing vital thereabouts, is ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... but like them; increasing their differences with their antiquity and, at the same time, becoming simpler and simpler; until, finally, the world of life would present nothing but that undifferentiated protoplasmic matter which, so far as our present knowledge goes, is the common foundation of all vital activity. ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... book, to a task, to an awakened imagination. Only those who are in a measure like us can liberate us. That's the key to our friendships, our affections and loves. We seek those who set us free—they have a cup to hold the vital things we have to give—a surface to receive. If they are in a measure our true kin—our dynamics is doubled. That's the secret of affinities, ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... open sea beyond, the wide swelling ocean, the desires and destinies of life all the world over. The sea lay steel-bright beneath the suffused sunlight, and seemed to gaze on the rugged land as on a beloved child instinct with vital power. Cling thou to the mighty one, or thy strength will be ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... firmly, that as the laws of national prosperity get familiar to us, we shall more and more cast our toil into social and communicative systems; and that one of the first means of our doing so, will be the re-establishing guilds of every important trade in a vital, not formal, condition;—that there will be a great council or government house for the members of every trade, built in whatever town of the kingdom occupies itself principally in such trade, with minor council-halls in other cities; and to each council-hall, officers attached, whose ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... old age while they did their work with their might, they exhausted their spiritual resources in sending out armies of ravens with hardly a dove among them, to find and secure a future still submerged in the waves of a friendly deluge. Nor was Hester's own faith in God so vital yet as to propagate itself by division in the minds she came in contact with. She could only be sorry for them and kind ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... more painful as he advanced, and, on examination of the limb by feeling, he found, to his surprise, that he had received a bullet-wound in the thigh. Moreover he discovered that his trousers were wet with blood, and that there was a continuous flow of the vital fluid from the wound. This at once accounted to him for some very unusual feelings of faintness which had come over him, and which he had at first attributed to his frequent and ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... a Governing class and a Teaching class—these two sometimes combined in one, a Pontiff King—there did not society exist without those two vital elements, there will none exist. Whenever there are born Kings of men you had better seek them out and breed them to the work.... The few wise will have to take command of the innumerable foolish, they must be ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... princess exclaimed, "I burn! I burn!" She found that the fire had at last seized upon her vital parts, which made her still cry "I burn!" until death had put an end to her intolerable pains. The effect of that fire was so extraordinary, that in a few moments she was wholly reduced to ashes, as the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... though certain of his understanding and sharing her mood, "that the Pagans said man was made to stand upright so that he might raise his face to heaven and his eyes to the stars. Somehow, it seems those old Pagans had a finer conception of many vital truths than some of ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... person and in mind—he is still a power in any direction wherever he chooses so to be. His broad, projecting brow, his direct and forcible speech and bearing, symbolize his character. They assure you of vital energy, strong, practical comprehension, directness and will. He may have more of the "fortiter in re" than of the "suaviter in modo" but all who know him have faith in his truth, implicit reliance upon the hearty ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... destructive progress, the ravages were tearful. That its roots were striking deep, and penetrating, concealed from view, in many unsuspected directions, there could be no doubt. What appeared on the surface was but a milder form of the disease, compared with its hidden, more vital, ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... partnership of States, of which the formal bond is the Constitution; the vital principle is the enjoyment by each section and community of its rights; and the animating spirit is the mutual respect and good-will of all members of the Union. The Northern people have violated ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... possibility but that of the writer. The old-fashioned arts which used to imply human nature, which used to blossom instinctively, which have given joy and beauty to society, are fading from the face of the earth. Where are the ancient and mediaeval popular games, those charming vital symptoms? The people now read Dickens and Longfellow. Where are the old-fashioned instincts of worship and love, consolation and mourning? The people have since found an antidote for these experiences in Blair and Tupper, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... the beginning, let each class or each pupil have one and the same teacher. This is of almost vital importance. The establishment of a personal relationship and the development of a special personal friendship, are almost indispensable, if we would lead such dark souls into light. General exercises will not do this fast enough to meet the emergency. It needs personal ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 6, June, 1889 • Various
... philanthropy, that vital Christianity, that True and Undefiled Religion before God and the Father, which is to visit the fatherless and widow in their affliction, and to undo the heavy burden, and let the oppressed go free. The posterity ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... said the widow. All this, as I have said, was very nice. It was manifest to her ladyship, from his lordship's way of talking, that no vital injury had as yet been done: he had no cares on his mind, and spoke freely about the property: but nevertheless there were clouds even now, at this period of bliss, which somewhat obscured the brilliancy of Lady Lufton's sky. Why was Ludovic so slow in that affair of Griselda Grantly? ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... By Heav'n, I will! Not one of them but what shall be immortal! Canst thou forgive me all my follies past? I'll henceforth be indeed a father! never, Never more, thus expose, but cherish thee, Dear as the vital warmth that feeds my life: Dear as these eyes, that weep in fondness o'er thee: Peace ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... and Arianism was, at that time, a vital question for Christianity in its entirety, and St. Athanasius was not wrong in attributing to it supreme importance. It may be presumed that the Catholic clergy, the bishop of Rheims, or the bishop of Langres, were no strangers to the repeated praises which turned the thoughts of the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Seceder principle their old friends were becoming Voluntaries. On the breaking out of the controversy, I remembered all this; and, when told by good men of the Established Church that well-nigh all the vital religion of the country was on our side, and that it had left the Voluntary Seceders, though the good men themselves honestly believed what they said, I could not. Further, the heads of a conversation which I had overheard in my cousin the Seceder ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... frowning, for the interview had ruffled her and disturbed that equable frame of mind which is so vital to the preparation of lectures on Theosophy, sat down at the writing-table and began to go through the notes which she had made overnight. She had hardly succeeded in concentrating herself when the door opened to admit the daughter of Erin ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... destruction the torch of life which, thanks to them, now lights the world for us. How small, indeed, seem individual distinctions when we look back on these overwhelming numbers of human beings panting and straining under the pressure of that vital want! And how inessential in the eyes of God must be the small surplus of the individual's merit, swamped as it is in the vast ocean of the common merit of mankind, dumbly and undauntedly doing the fundamental duty, and living the heroic life! ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... Korting has spied the vital spot and illuminated it with the word "Unterhaltungsdrama." That amusement was the sole aim of the comic poets we firmly believe. But if this was so, why arraign them on the charge of trying to convince us that everything ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... own a slave, nor did he approve of slavery, but among his friends and associates there were many who did own them, and many secessionists. It is curious to observe how little a difference of opinion on these points, that had become so vital, was able to put personal enmity among men who were true friends. Of course, among mere acquaintances there were many instances of bitterness and taunting. Through it all, Eads, with his rare tact and his exquisite manners, steered without collision, offending none of those ...
— James B. Eads • Louis How
... anything about the persons now living at the Withers Homestead, or The Poplars, as it was more commonly called of late years, we must take a brief inventory of some of their vital antecedents. It is by no means certain that our individual personality is the single inhabitant of these our corporeal frames. Nay, there is recorded an experience of one of the living persons mentioned in this narrative,—to be given in full in its proper place, which, so far as ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... perfect control what is commonly supposed to be the most powerful and unmanageable of instincts. And this rigid restraint of sex-life to within the limits necessary to provide against extinction is but one (though the most amazing) of many vital economies effected by the race. Every capacity for egoistic pleasure—in the common meaning of the word "egoistic"—has been equally repressed through physiological modification. No indulgence of any natural appetite is possible except to that degree in which such ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... by now my clothing was sadly soiled and stained, even the most famous of the Davidson waistcoats being the worse for the salt-water immersions it had known; and my ancient flannels were corkscrewing about my limbs. But as for Helena, young and vital, she discarded her sweater for breakfast, and appeared as she had before the shipwreck, in lace bridge coat and wearing many gems! L'Olonnois, with the intimacy of kin and the admiration of youth—and with youth's lack of tact—saluted ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... extraneous Austrian Emperor and miserable old chimera of a Pope shall maintain themselves in Italy, or be obliged to decamp from Italy, is not a question in the least vital to Englishmen. But it is a question vital to us that sealed letters in an English post-office be, as we all fancied they were, respected as things sacred; that opening of men's letters, a practice near of ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... locking the door behind him. They crossed quickly through the small building to an open wall portal at the far end. Beyond the portal a large, brightly lit room was visible, comfortably furnished, windowless. Between that room and the shed the portal spanned a distance of seven miles, a vital point in the organization of their escape route. If they were traced this far, the trail would end—temporarily, at least—at ...
— The Other Likeness • James H. Schmitz
... me a fine copy of "Coclusiones siue decisiones antique dnor' de Rota," printed by Gutenberg's partner, Schoeffer, in the year 1477. It is perfect, except in a most vital part, the Colophon, which has been cut out by some barbaric "Collector," and which should read thus: "Pridie nonis Januarii Mcccclxxvij, in Civitate Moguntina, impressorie Petrus Schoyffer de Gernsheym," followed by ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... it that fire (vital force) in combination with the earthly element (matter), becomes the corporeal tenement (of living creatures), and how doth the vital air (the breath of life) according to the nature of its seat (the muscles and nerves) excite to action (the corporeal frame)?' Markandeya ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... one great school-room in which privacy was impossible and after the separate studies were introduced, would wish to record his earnest conviction of the advantage of the present plan of separate studies,—of the vital influence it has on the formation of character, no less than of habits of study in the young. He can well remember how every better impression or graver thought was effaced, often never to return, as the boy came out from the master's room or from reading a letter from home, ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... relighting our lamps, as they were growing dim; these are our feed lamps that are lit every night with candles and placed, one for each gun, about 50 feet in front, and on these lights the sights are trained, so that it is vital to keep them ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... that has been, and has builded noble, goodly life, is truth still, and ever will be. It is not a time for denunciation. The assumptions of the destructive critics are so enormous, so radically revolutionary, so directly aimed at vital truth, that one's heart is stirred. There is danger of yielding to the heat of a righteous indignation. It is not well to lose one's intellectual and moral poise, even in a contest involving the honor of God and the welfare of immortal ...
— The Testimony of the Bible Concerning the Assumptions of Destructive Criticism • S. E. Wishard
... was not irreconcilable with truth; its defects were accidents, excrescences, curable by the application of common-sense and moral seriousness. In the eyes of Luther and Zwingli, the corruption of Rome was vital, organic, incurable. Ecclesiastical Authority was the corner-stone of the Roman system: Colet and More never attacked it; Luther attacked it because it maintained opinions which he held to be fundamentally false; but in England it is possible to doubt whether ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... George Eildon with interest, but not with the vital interest she had felt in him for a time: that had worn away. She had done her best to this end by keeping herself always occupied, and many things had happened in the interval; besides, she had grown a woman, with all the good sense and right feeling belonging to womanhood, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... flush, like a spot of fire, came and went for a time, and at last settled permanently upon her cheek. Her eyes, those glorious orbs, filled with unquenchable love, grew supernaturally large and brilliant with the flames that fed upon her vital forces. Amelie sickened and sank rapidly. The vulture of quick consumption had ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... vital, alive, and out of the horror she had come back. To him? He did not believe that she had come definitely to seek him—he knew her pride too well for that. His mind strove to grasp the reason of her coming, but it eluded him; evaded him at every point. She had not forgotten; if she had, she would ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... the same effect upon his nerves as the sound of the Dorian mood upon the youths whom Pythagoras cured of passion by music. He found in them an anodyne for pain, a restoration from sickness. Like Walt Whitman, who adheres to nature by closer and more vital sympathy than any other poet of the modern world, Alberti felt the charm of excellent old age no less than that of florid youth. 'On old men gifted with a noble presence and hale and vigorous, he gazed again and again, and said that he revered in them the delights ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... lawn; after the lawn, the boulevard. Then the work spread. Streets needed cleaning, unsightly billboards had to be removed, perhaps an adjoining vacant lot had a careless owner whose pride needed pricking. So the need of a civic league grew, and now it has become a vital spark in many cities all over the Union. Minnesota has over thirty civic clubs doing specific work. Is it entirely the work for women? No. Is it entirely the work for men? No. It is a work for both. It is a work that is very ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... descry the hand of God! Who not knowing could read the lily in its bulb, the great oak in the pebble-like acorn? God's beginnings do not look like his endings, but they are like; the oak is in the acorn, though we cannot see it. The ranting preacher, uttering huge untruths, may yet wake vital verities in chaotic minds—convey to a heart some saving fact, rudely wrapped in husks of lies ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... day. She went to Omdurman with the rest of us. And it was the chance of a lifetime, because (through Anthony) Slatin Pasha himself took us to the place of his captivity: Slatin Pasha, slim, soldierly, young, vital and brilliant. It was scarcely possible to believe that this man, who looked no more than thirty-five, and radiated energy, could have passed eleven years in slavery terrible beyond description. He spoke of those experiences almost lightly, ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... to estimate them is to compare them with lectures of a similar kind, — Lowell's Lowell Institute lectures, for instance. Viewed from this standpoint, one cannot but marvel at the carefulness with which Lanier prepared his lectures, and the vital interest he took in work which has been disagreeable to men of similar temperament. Any one who expects to find in them contributions to present day knowledge of the subjects touched upon will be disappointed; but no one can read them without ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... If consistently with these two objects he could avoid a rupture with the pope, he was sincerely anxious to avoid it. He was ready to make great efforts, to risk great sacrifices, to do anything short of surrendering what he considered of vital moment, to remain upon good terms with the See of Rome. If his efforts failed, and a quarrel was inevitable, he desired to secure himself by a close maintenance of the French alliance; and having induced Francis ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... attempt to divide them theoretically reduces the social or political body to a cadaver, valuable for the study of structural anatomy after the method of Herbert Spencer, but throwing little light upon the vital processes. ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... Webster must have been nearly a great man. He was always passed over for the Presidency. That was not so much because of the private failings which marked his robust and generous character, as because in days of artificial party issues, when vital questions are dealt with by mere compromise, high office seems to belong of right to men of less originality. If he was never quite so great as all America took him to be, it was not for want of brains or of honesty, but because his ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... and his day, that is not a bad remark of Cardinal Bellarmine on that psalm,—'the Psalmist's word planted,' says that able churchman, 'implies design, in that the ear was not spontaneously evolved by an act of vital force, but was independently created by God for a certain object, just as a tree, not of indigenous growth, is of set purpose planted in some new place by the hand of man.' The same thing is said in ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... concern in the arrangements and perplexities of Mr. Coleridge at the time of publishing his "Watchman;" for he had a more vital interest involved in the success of that work than he had, individually, in the rise and fall of empires. When he returned from his northern journey laden with subscribers, and with hope ripened into confidence, all that had yet been done was the mere scaffolding; the building was now to be ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... we have done. In such circumstances he might risk his jackal's liberty by sending him on the desperate chance of cashing a cheque, but, knowing the risk, he would never have let him come with information on him. And least of all would he have let him come carrying a vital secret written in that very cypher which he knows I read many weeks ago. And then see how that message, instead of being concealed, was positively brought to your notice! That man Broady Sims is a cunning rascal, and the police know him of old as a skilful swindler and ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... than they knew themselves, was confident that they had ceased to place the watchers about them the moment that he had left them, and now he planned not only to have a little fun at their expense but to teach them a lesson in preparedness, which, by the way, is even a more vital issue in the jungle than in civilized places. That you and I exist today must be due to the preparedness of some shaggy anthropoid of the Oligocene. Of course the apes of Kerchak were always prepared, after their own way—Tarzan had ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... That was condemned as vigorously as the billboard. And today, tell me, anybody, anywhere what is more beautiful in all the world than the dancing lights of Market Street at night. In what a unique and vital way they express the life of the great ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... for the origin of the universe and all its phenomena, physical, vital, and mental, rejects Theism, or the doctrine of a personal God, who is extramundane as well as antemundane, the creator and governor of all things; he rejects Pantheism, which makes the finite the existence-form of the Infinite; he rejects Atheism, which he understands to be the doctrine ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... with that beauty of holiness which only religion confers, thoughtful persons will remain convinced that with them in some form or other is the secret of truth. The body will not thrive on poison, or the soul on falsehood; and as the vital processes of health are too subtle for science to follow; as we choose our food, not by the most careful chemical analysis, but by the experience of its effects upon the system; so when a particular belief is fruitful in nobleness of character, we need ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... received him with the same sweetness and the same indifference as the others. He had not dared to speak to her about me; but he extorted me not to despair. There was nothing in Edmee's condition that time and rest could not triumph over; there was but little fever left; none of her vital organs were really affected; her wounds were almost healed; and it did not seem as if her brain were in such an excited condition that it would be permanently deranged. The weak state of her mind, and the prostration ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... absolutely false, to the extent of even reversing the relative strength of the combatants on Lake Champlain, where the Americans won, although with an inferior force. In the one noteworthy British victory, that of the Shannon, all British authors fail to make any allowance for the vital fact that the Shannon's crew had been drilled for seven years, whereas the Chesapeake had an absolutely new crew, and had been out of port just eight hours; yet such a difference in length of drill is more important than disparity in ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Paris, and was the pupil of her father, Gabriel Vital-Dubray. In 1874 she exhibited at the Salon a marble bust of a "Fellah Girl of Cairo"; in 1875, a silvered bronze bust called the "Study of a Head," in the manner of Florence, sixteenth century; in 1876, "The Daughter of Jephthah Weeping on the Mountain," a plaster statue, a bust in bronze, ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... God," the "Sum of All," the "Creator of Himself," and the "Great One." Hymns extolled him, inscriptions on the monuments, which all could read, spoke of him, the one God, who manifested himself to the world, pervaded the universe, and existed throughout creation not alone as the vital spark animates the human organism, but as himself the sum of creation, the world with its perpetual growth, decay, and renewal, obeying the laws he had himself ordained. His spirit, existing in every form of nature, dwelt also in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... it being talked about in the East as a recent occurrence. It was for us merely one subject of conversation amongst many others of the kind. Men earning their bread in any very specialized occupation will talk shop, not only because it is the most vital interest of their lives but also because they have not much knowledge of other subjects. They have never had the time to get acquainted with them. Life, for most of us, is not so much a hard as an ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... secondly, in regard to the whole community of the society in which he lives, for man is by nature a social animal. With regard to himself man is perfected in the life of the body, in two ways; first, directly (per se), i.e. by acquiring some vital perfection; secondly, indirectly (per accidens), i.e. by the removal of hindrances to life, such as ailments, or the like. Now the life of the body is perfected directly, in three ways. First, by generation whereby a man begins to be and to live: and corresponding to this ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... see him?" said Eleanor. She had once before in her life interfered in her father's affairs, and then not to much advantage. She was older now and felt that she should take no step in a matter so vital to ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... years that of the three thousand thus employed, we have had more than two-thirds of the same, while we have but one-third of the white population of the republic. Again, look at another item, and one, be assured, in which we have a great and vital interest; it is that of revenue, or means of supporting government. From official documents we learn that a fraction over three-fourths of the revenue collected for the support of government has uniformly been raised from the ...
— Narrative of the Life of J.D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky • Jacob D. Green
... economic security. The emotions generated under the conditions of existence-peril seem to make the emotions and motives generative in quiet and peace pale and unequal. It seems impossible to avoid the conclusion that the most vital part of man's inheritance is one which destines him to continue for some myriads of years ever a fighting animal when certain conditions exist in his environment. Though, through education, man be habituated in social and intelligent behavior or, through license, ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... dynasties, so far removed from the associations and interests of the hour, that only a scholar's enthusiasm or ambition could sustain the research or keep alive the enterprise thus voluntarily assumed. It is this objective method and motive that chiefly accounts for the numberless inert and the few vital histories. Like any intellectual task assumed without special fitness therefor or motive thereto,—without a comprehensive grasp of mind that impels to historic exploration,—without a patriotic zeal that warms to national heroism,—without, especially, a love ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... not want to know anything: he was ready to admire anything, or anybody, good or bad, star or gas-jet: everything was the same to him: there were no degrees in his admiration: he admired, admired, admired. It was a vital necessity to him: it hurt him when ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... big problems of the day. As The Inside of the Cup gets down to the essentials in its discussion of religion, so A Far Country deals in a story that is intense and dramatic, with other vital issues confronting the ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... emphasized that the nervous current, once started, always tends to seek outlet in movement. This is an extremely important feature of neural action, and, as will be shown in another chapter, is a vital factor in study. Movement may be started by the stimulation of a sense organ or by an idea. In the latter case it starts from regions in the brain without the immediately preceding stimulation of a sense organ. Howsoever it starts you ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... glory, the nobility of war. Long before Nietzsche wrote and Treitschke taught war as a part of the Prussian creed the teachings of these mad philosophers expressed an indigenous feeling in Germany. It is not some abstract belief to be studied. It is a vital, burning, ever-present question which affects deeply, intimately, every man in this world. For until the Prussians are made weary of this belief and converted to a milder life, there is no woman in any corner of the earth, however remote, who may not have to see her son or husband go ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... clear indeed that, for any great nation that strives to maintain its place, a powerful air fleet has become a necessity; while for Britain, an island no longer from the military point of view, seeing that we must face seriously the question of invasions by air, there is a vital need to strive for command of the air, as we now ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... prayer," said the cure. "Doing one's duty brings a knowledge of the religious principles which are a vital necessity to society." ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... have been worth meeting! So perfectly did she yield her lithe, strong body to every motion of the mare, abrupt or undulant, that neither ever felt a jar, and their movements seemed the outcome of a vital force common to the two. Kirsty never thought whether she was riding well or ill, gracefully or otherwise, but the mare knew that all was right between them. Kirsty never touched the bridle except to moderate the mare's pace when ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... the estate. Such a quiet country home for a country and home-loving Queen and Prince, and for the little children, to whom tranquillity, freedom, the woods, the fields, and the sea-sands were of such vital and lasting ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... not in his own person? What if it were in the person of an old man, very infirm, and over-ripe for the great reaper? It was death—the final earthly end of every living creature—death, the demolition of the human form, the breaking up of the vital functions, the dissolution between soul and body, the one great event that "happeneth to all;" the doom certain, the hour uncertain; coming in infancy, youth, maturity, as often or oftener than in age. These were the thoughts that filled Thurston's mind as he stood ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... moralists to be men of corrupt minds, who concerning the faith hath made shipwreck; but what is that, "The life I live in the flesh," &c. The import of it seems to be this, if not more,—while I have in me a soul animating my body, as the principle of all my vital and natural actions, I have Jesus Christ animating my soul, and by the impulse and communicate virtue and strength of an indwelling Christ, I am made to run the ways of his commandments, wherein I take so great delight, that I am found of no ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... where with much trouble she unfolded his arms from the chest, which she set upon the head of her daughter who was with her. She herself carried Landolfo like a little child to the town, put him on a stove, and chafed and washed him with warm water, by which means the vital heat began to return, and his strength partially revived. In due time she took him from the stove, comforted him with wine and good cordials, and kept him some days till he knew where he was; she then restored him his chest, and told him he might now provide for ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... no sooner reached Forchheim, than it was announced that a general diet would be held there for the discussion of matters of vital importance to the Church and State, with the suggestion that the absence of the king would facilitate their deliberations. The Count Mangold de Veringen was despatched to the Pope, inviting him to sanction the diet by his presence, to aid them by his ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles |
