"Vital" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 had never know what it meant ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... huddled, black and motionless, in the stern. He felt to the innermost fibre of him that this something was a woman too—this woman Molly. But the conviction seized him with a force that was beyond surprise. And all the vital heat in him fled to his heart, leaving him ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... I could picture to you how he said this. Simple as it now reads, he made it vital with meaning. The insolent boast was uttered with such a swagger that my face instantly flushed, and ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... time all intention of opposing the new government, and carrying himself free from every appearance of a factious spirit. He remarked:—"I retired from office because, from the first moment of my public life, I have taken an active and decided part on a great and vital question, that of the extension of political privileges to the Roman Catholics. For eighteen years I have constantly offered an uncompromising, but, I hope, a temperate, fair, and constitutional resistance ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... which it can revolve, is like a star that has fallen out of its orbit. With a great affection or a great aim gone, the practical life may go on loosely, indifferently, mechanically, but it takes no grip on outer things, it has no vital interest, it ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... college of Vendome in 1810, lived under close paternal discipline for three years. The tyranny by which the old man of seventy oppressed his heir influenced, necessarily, a heart and a character which were not yet formed. Paul, the son, without lacking the physical courage which is vital in the air of Gascony, dared not struggle against his father, and consequently lost that faculty of resistance which begets moral courage. His thwarted feelings were driven to the depths of his heart, where they remained without expression; later, when he felt them to be out of harmony ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... things, his championship of the weak, and the revolt against the cagings and cruelties of life, whether to men or birds or beasts, that springs out of him as if against his will; because, having spoken of him as one with a vital philosophy or faith, I don't wish to draw red herrings across the main trail of his worth to the world. His work is a vision of natural beauty and of human life as it might be, quickened and sweetened by the sun and the ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... shapeless form was taken down, that it was no longer tenanted by the immortal spirit—that the vital spark was extinct." ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... religions pass imperceptibly from the stage of custom to that of statute, and in many religions both elements are so largely present that it is difficult to strike the balance between them. We are led to the conclusion that the real difference between the earlier and the later religions is a more vital one than any of these classifications would indicate. The authority and the positive character of the later systems is a symptom of the change which has produced them, but the change itself lies deeper. The higher form of religion is due to a great step which ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... he wished, as he and his friends had spent large sums of money to assist them to go. And now a glance at the morning papers confirmed his midnight bulletins. Indiana, where he had made the strongest efforts because the control of its statute book was vital to him, had gone his way barely but, apparently, securely; Scarborough was beaten for governor by twenty-five hundred. Presently he had Culver in to begin the day's business. The first paper Culver handed ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... frequent giddiness in the head, and swimming of the eyes, the certain recurrence of perspiration between the periods of 3 to 5 and 5 to 7, and the sensation of being seated on board ship. The obstruction of the spleen by the liver should naturally create distaste for liquid or food, debility of the vital energies and prostration of the four limbs. From my diagnosis of these pulses, there should exist these various symptoms, before (the pulses and the symptoms can be said) to harmonise. But should perchance ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... of prayer rested mightily on every one of us present at that very important business meeting, yet I doubt if any member realized its vital importance more than I myself. Like David of old, I inquired of the Lord as to whether to continue with them or start anew? The token asked was a unanimous reelection to the office he had called me to fill. It was by ballot, and was unanimous. I was satisfied, and for another year ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... in living tissue depends upon an inherent power possessed by vital cells of reacting to the irritation caused by injury or disease. The cells of the damaged tissues, under the influence of this irritation, undergo certain proliferative changes, which are designed to restore the normal structure and configuration of the part. ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... uprising of the townspeople against their lord. None can resent the frankness and apparent brutality of the scenes through which the hero and his companions of both sexes are made to pass, and many will yield ungrudging praise to the author's vital handling of the truth. In the characters are mirrored the life of the Italy of their day. The book will confirm Mr. Maugham's reputation as ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... quills of a porcupine are so peculiarly made that when once they are driven into the flesh, instead of working their way out, they go deeper and deeper, often boring right into the vital parts of an animal, and ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... I will take especial care that you shall be placed in some position after death where the revivifying moonbeams may not touch you, so that this shall truly be your end, and you shall rot away, leaving no trace behind of your existence, sufficient to contain the vital principle." ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... converts, though caste is professedly abandoned, it clings with vital tenacity and almost unconquerable persistence to their sense of the fitness of things. Their deepest prejudices and unconscious tendencies, even against their intellectual convictions and sincere professions, ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... drawn and brandished in anger were sufficient," said Dwining, "to consume the vital powers of your chirurgeon. But who then," he added in a tone partly insinuating, partly jeering—"who would then relieve the fiery and scorching pain which my patron now suffers, and which renders him exasperated ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... there was an enemy in the field who was even more dreaded. But as soon as this enemy had been beaten out of sight it could not act at all. This had been because it did not represent the American people, but only the American states. The vital force which moved it was not the resistless force of a whole people, but only a shadowy semblance of force, derived from a theoretical consent of thirteen corporate bodies, which in their corporate capacity could never ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... even for the women, contradictory as this may seem. By eleven o'clock Courtlandt had finished the reading of his mail, and was now ready to hunt for the little lady of the Taverne Royale. It was necessary to find her. The whereabouts of Flora Desimone was of vital importance. If she had not yet arrived, the presence of her friend presaged her ultimate arrival. The duke was a negligible quantity. It would have surprised Courtlandt could he have foreseen the drawing together of the ends of the circle and the relative concernment of ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... got a soul, but the trouble is,' he says, 'I've got a lot of other vital organs, too. When I ponder,' he says, 'and remember how many times I've got up from the table and gone away leaving bones and potato peels and clam shells and lobster claws on the plate—when I think,' he says, 'of them old care-free, prodigal ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... religious character is not its main object, that of piety and benevolence is as truly a part of it, as is its fragrance a part of the rose. We should love to give it to some of our friends whose Christianity may be vital, but which does not make them lovely—who may show some of its fruits, but who hardly cultivate what may be called the leaves and flowers of a holy character. If the sternness and want of sympathy of Aunt ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... relating to the boundary line between English and American territory west of the Rocky Mountains. Twenty-five years earlier the same question had arisen, and had been settled on the footing of joint occupancy. The increased importance of the Pacific slope made the matter more vital, involving as it did the ownership of Vancouver Island and the mouth of the Columbia River; President Polk unequivocally claimed the whole, and said he would not shrink from upholding America's interests; the British Government ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... material on which to feed itself, the fiery demon drooped its shining crest, brandished its arms with lessening vigor, and seemed to writhe convulsively, as thrust after thrust from the silver spears of its assailants reached a vital spot. Finally, after hurling one last shower of firebrands, it sank back into darkness, and its hereditary enemy rushed in to drown each lingering spark ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... that has for a time put off its robe of flesh, opens out a subject of paramount interest. Thus it is that on every plane Christ is the Fulfilling of the Law, and that "Salvation" is not a silly shiboleth but the logical and vital process of our advance into the unfoldment of the next stage of the limitless capacities of our being. Of these things I hope to write in another volume, should it be permitted to me, and in the meanwhile I would commend the present abstract statement of principles to the reader's attention in ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... let us notice And here observe that And if I know anything of And if it is further asked why And I sometimes imagine that And I wish also to say that And, in fact, it is And it is certainly true And it may be admitted that And just here we touch the vital point in And let me here again refer to And now it begins to be apparent And now we are naturally brought on to And now we are told And pursuing the subject And so again in this day And so, in like manner And strange to say And such, I say, is And ...
— Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study • Compiled by Grenville Kleiser
... with great diffidence, because it is so unusual to approve a measure—as I most heartily do this, even if no further legislation is attainable at this time—and to announce the fact by message. But I do so because I feel that it is a subject of such vital importance to the whole country that it should receive the attention of and be discussed by Congress and the people through the press, and in every way, to the end that the best and most satisfactory course may be reached of executing what I deem most beneficial legislation ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... forms is termed sublimation, a term, originally used for the process of raising by heat a solid substance to the state of vapour, which was applied even by such early writers as Drayton and Davies in a metaphorical and spiritual sense.[7] In the sexual sphere sublimation is of vital importance because it comes into question throughout the whole of life, and our relation to it must intimately affect our conception of morality. The element of athletic asceticism which is a part of all virility, and is found even—indeed often in a high degree—among ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... remark that poetry is "the art of substituting shadows, and of lending existence to nothing," has yet a vital suggestion, reminding one of Shakespeare's graphic touch ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... concerned to suggest here is that the distinction between prose and poetry (using prose to mean artistically wrought language) will not survive investigation. The popular instinct has long ago seen that the vital thing is the matter—that it is profanity to call that "poetry" which is only verse; it remains to be recognised that even the distinction of form rests only on the non-recognition of the rhythm of "prose,"—a ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... tickle delicate ears; who, to my thinking, comes before the great ones of society much as the son of Imlah came before the throned kings of Judah and Israel; and who speaks truth as deep, with a power as prophet-like and as vital—a mien as dauntless and as daring. Is the satirist of "Vanity Fair" admired in high places? I can not tell; but I think if some of those amongst whom he hurls the Greek-fire of his sarcasm, and over whom he flashes the levin-brand of his denunciation, were to ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... some time produced no sensible effect, the embers were, in all probability, kept glowing, and the vital power revived, for, after a considerable pause, respiration was gradually renewed at long intervals, a languid motion was perceived at the heart, a few feeble and irregular pulsations were felt at the wrist, the clay-coloured livery of death began to ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... knowledge is not held as a trust for men, if any one of these things is regarded as a possession of our own, it must perish." In a real desire, then, to "make their own little education of use to such persons as had less," and, in so doing, to establish a vital and effective relation between themselves and the men of the working-classes below them, they looked round for opportunities to work in the education of men. Anybody who remembers "Amyas Leigh" will remember how earnestly Charles Kingsley there presses the theory that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... watched by the people and is well known. During his service in that capacity he gave to municipal affairs the same careful study that he had devoted to business matters when in private life. He served upon important committees, and all the great questions of vital interest to the welfare of Boston which have come up of late years, in which he had also been interested while in private life, received his official attention and prompt action. Notable among these were good pay ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... United States. It appears in his "Topographical Description," and mention is made of the connection of the Wabash by a portage with the waters of Lake Erie; the value of the fur trade at Ouiatenon and Vincennes, and many other points of vital interest. ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... there was in atmospheric air not only a quality friendly to the vital spirit, but also a quality inimical to it, which conjecture he drew from observation of the various phenomena accompanying the support and the extinction of flame; and he says that if we could find out why flame is extinguished by absence of the air, we might then know the nature of that ...
— Fathers of Biology • Charles McRae
... to hear that all is over," wrote the father to his daughter; "in fact, I doubt whether he can live till morning, though M'Vicar declares that nothing vital has been touched. Be it as it may, the boy has been in all respects, even more than I dared to wish, and the comfort he has been ever since he came out to me has been unspeakable. We must not grudge him such ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Indians standing up in their stirrups and gazing in the same direction. They knew perfectly well what it was, but they were trying to ascertain a point of vital importance to us all. The prairie was on fire! Of that there was no doubt; but, in order to give themselves the best chance of saving their lives, it was necessary to settle, before galloping ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... size and limited natural resources, Liechtenstein has developed into a prosperous, highly industrialized, free-enterprise economy with a vital service sector and living standards on par with the urban areas of its large European neighbors. Low business taxes - the maximum tax rate is 18% - and easy incorporation rules have induced about 25,000 holding or so-called letter box companies to establish nominal ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... charm that first impressed him; so much more than pretty, though her face attracted him at first; so much more than magnetic, though she drew him to her at their first meeting with bonds as delicate as they were strong. These were tangible, vital, legitimate qualities—but were they all? Could lips part so, could eyes shine so, could voice tremble so, if there were not something underneath; a good heart, fidelity, warmth ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... situation which would have roused the spirit in most men. And suddenly, recalling that thrilling hour in the white strip of sand and all that had happened since, it flashed upon David that St. Pierre was using his wife as the vital moving force in a game of his own—that under the masquerade of his apparent faith and bigness of character he was sacrificing her to achieve a certain mysterious something it the scheme of his ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... snarling, tearing, and trying to force its way through the tangled side of the big stable. But to do this alone, it seemed to him, would only result in irritating the beast and make it more furious at his efforts to drive the sharp blade into a vital part. ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... time he was helped out by his extraordinary vital powers, his ability to work all night like a horse week after week; go to bed at dawn and sleep till afternoon; then drive a staff of secretaries frantic with ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... firmly, "I quite appreciate your viewpoint, but I have been trying for days to get such an appointment with you on a matter of vital concern and I have been put off every time by what I can only describe as redtape. I am sorry to say so, General Thario, but ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... class—and something elemental in her, some urge of primitive womanhood, grappled her to that memory and, all against her will, caused her to live and re-live those moments, time and time again, as the most strange and vital of her life. ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... necessity is as vital and even more pressing than the Panama Canal. It is worthy of the great Republic and of the great engineer—an achievement if successful which would twin with Panama and make Colonel Goethals immortal and our country's beneficence and enterprise ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... fact that they are so poorly developed, or quite absent, in the females of so many animals. With female deer the development during each recurrent season of great branching horns, and with female elephants the development of immense tusks, would be a great waste of vital power, supposing that they were of no use to the females. Consequently, they would have tended to be eliminated in the female through natural selection; that is, if the successive variations were limited in their transmission to the female sex, for otherwise the weapons ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... into a viscid fluid, which circulates under the bark: this is called cambium. When it is too abundant it is effused, part of its water evaporates, and it becomes gum. If the vital circle is not interrupted, the fluid traverses the branches, and the peduncle arrives in the ovary, and constitutes the pericarp. In this passage it is partly modified: it appropriates to itself the oxygen of its water of composition; hence the malic, citric, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various
... and, moreover, the close family relationship between us and the Prince of Holland would add to the danger should Holland, at present our ally, fall out with France. Thus the possession of Bouillon's dukedom, or at any rate its military occupation for a time, is a consideration of vital importance to the kingdom. Such, you see, is the situation. Were I not an officer in the French army doubtless my feelings would be on the side of my brother. As it is, I am a faithful servant of the king and his minister, ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... necessity. But when judges are forbidden by statute to charge the jury with respect to matters of fact, and when the court in banc will never hear a case calling for inferences of fact, it becomes of vital importance to understand that, when standards of conduct are left to the jury, it is a temporary surrender of a judicial function which may be resumed at any moment in any case when the court feels ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... first years, by the ceaseless diligence and care of my father, been exercised to the tongues, and some sciences as my age could suffer, by sundry masters and teachers, it was found that whether aught was imposed upon me by them, or betaken to of my own choice, the style by certain vital signs it had, was likely to live; but much latelier, in the private academies of Italy, perceiving that some trifles which I had in memory, composed at under twenty or thereabout, met with acceptance above what ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... with the second mate, a tall, thin man whom he called Stubbs. Then the two, standing together near the mast, watched the ship for a while and Robert, a little distance away, watched them. He was now keenly alive to his own fate. Young and vital, he did not want to die. He had never known a time when he was more anxious to live. He was not going to be sold into slavery on a West India plantation. Fortune had saved him from that fate, and it ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... should the old chief lose his life Reginald would be deprived of the only clue which might lead to its elucidation. He determined, therefore, to take the first favourable opportunity of telling the rajah who he was, and entreating him to give him the information that was of such vital importance to his future interests. Reginald had been led to believe that the rajah would be very unwilling to enter on the subject, and he had therefore hesitated to introduce it, till he felt more sure than ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... eighties presented new obstacles in its doubtful rainfall and its experimental farmers. It contained as well the conditions that had always prevailed along the edge of settlement. Transportation was vital to its life,—as vital as it had been in the Granger States,—yet was nearly as unregulated. The Interstate Commerce Law of 1887 had little noticeable immediate effect. Discrimination, unreasonable rates, and ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... certainty. These assertions give us on the one hand the fullest possible assurance that He is Man, Man in nature, in circumstances and experience, and particularly in the sphere of relation to God the Father. But they also assure us, in precisely the same tone, and in a way which is equally vital to the argument in hand, that He is as genuinely Divine as He is genuinely Human. Did He "come to be in Bondservant's Form"? And does the word Form, morphe, there, unless the glowing argument is to run as cold as ice, mean, ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... dog; let man go free, And let not hemp his windpipe suffocate. But Exeter hath given the doom of death For pax of little price. Therefore, go speak; the Duke will hear thy voice; And let not Bardolph's vital thread be cut With edge of penny cord ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... map but left it lying on the ground, still Frank realized that the Portuguese had not actually needed the document to aid Muley-Hassan to find the cache. The Arab was no doubt familiar with the location anyway, but to head off all danger of the boys getting there first, it was vital to stop Diego at all costs. In a few bounds Frank reached the little indentation in the bank where the ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... you still mourn bitterly over the shame to yourself and the annoyance to others caused by the indulgence of your ill-temper. You are also painfully alive to the doubts which your conduct excites in the mind of your more worldly associates as to the reality of a vital and transforming efficacy in religion. You feel that you are not only disobeying God yourself, but that you are providing others with excuses for disobeying him, and with examples of disobedience. You mourn over these considerations ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... not admissible. Indeed the want of a code, suited to the Aborigines, is now so strongly felt, and of such vital importance to the welfare and existence of the natives, that I earnestly trust that this important subject may be brought under the early consideration and notice ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... indiscernible. Is it then to be outlined? In practically combining outline with accomplished light and shade there are cases of this kind in which the outline may with advantage, or even must for truth of effect, be omitted. But the facts of the solid form are of so vital importance, and the perfect command of them so necessary to the dignity and intelligibility of the work, that the greatest artists, even for their finished drawings, like to limit every solid form by a fine line, whether its contour be visible ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin
... separate, classify, arrange or name these, as that war of terms may be postponed to another occasion. Neither does it matter what relation each of these men has to the various "elements" of the Kosmos of which he forms a part. This knowledge, though of vital importance in other respects, need not be explained or discussed now. Nor does it much more concern us that the Scientists deny the existence of such an arrangement, because their instruments are inadequate to make their senses perceive ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... coming, and he makes the most of his brief season. All is life, movement, freedom, joy. Not on the very Alps, where their black needles seem to dart into the blue depths, or snow-fields to mingle with the clouds, is the immediate, vital sympathy of Earth with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... Vital spark of heavenly flame! Quit, O quit this mortal frame! Trembling, hoping, lingering, flying, O, the pain, the bliss of dying! Cease, fond nature, cease thy strife, And let me ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... in her hands, and dashed it into the face of the unconscious man. It had no effect. "Can he be dead?" she asked herself in horror. He was as pale as his bronzed features could become, and her woman's soul was touched that one who looked so strong, who had been so vital a moment before, should now lie there in pathetic and appealing helplessness. Was that fine, manly face the visage of one of the terrible, bloodthirsty, unscrupulous Yankees? Even as she ran to Aun' Jinkey's cottage for help the thought crossed her mind that the world was not what it had ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... get even, but he had with him an adviser who used the most persuasive arguments to induce him to take Saul's life. Indeed, Abishai proposed to do the deed himself, as though that would leave David clear of guilt in the matter. But no, David was a man of principle, and he knew three very vital things: ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... Allegory; but Noah, with the simplicity of a truly great mind, had made a home thrust at the root of the whole matter; laying about him with the single-first, I made a few apposite remarks on the necessity of respecting the vital ordinances of the body politic, and asked the attention of my hearers while I read to them a particular clause, which it had struck me had some allusion to the very point now in consideration. Having thus cleared the way, I had not the folly ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... teaching the influence of which he rates so highly. 'It has indeed,' writes Sir William Ashley, 'not infrequently been hinted that all the elaborate argumentation of canonists and theologians was "a cobweb of the brain," with no vital relation to real life. Certain German writers have, for instance, maintained that, alongside of the canonist doctrine with regard to trade, there existed in mediaeval Europe a commercial law, recognised in the secular courts, and altogether ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... of inspiration when engaged upon a more than usually difficult case. He had once told Sir James Walton that they clarified his brain and coordinated his thoughts, the cinema in particular. The fact that in the surrounding darkness were hundreds of other brains, vital and active, appeared to ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... or Babylon, or Carthage, the names of Rome might have been erased from the earth, if the city had not been animated by a vital principle, which again restored her to honor and dominion. A vague tradition was embraced, that two Jewish teachers, a tent-maker and a fisherman, had formerly been executed in the circus of Nero, and at the end of five hundred years, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... House of Commons. But the liberty, the only liberty, I mean is a liberty connected with order: that not only exists along with order and virtue, but which cannot exist at all without them. It inheres in good and steady government, as in its substance and vital principle. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the dim hour was on them and they gave themselves to the music entire. The great winged Victory above the bookshelf showed back of the singer's dark head. The real everyday world dropped away and a more real and vital world took its place. One after another, the music students took their place eagerly on the seat, and sang or played the melody that was surging within them, to which the magic ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... result of their short married life; a gulf had opened between them over which they looked at each other with eyes that were on either side a declaration of the deception suffered. It was a strange opposition, of the like of which she had never dreamed—an opposition in which the vital principle of the one was a thing of contempt to the other. It was not her fault—she had practised no deception; she had only admired and believed. She had taken all the first steps in the purest confidence, and then she had suddenly found the infinite ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... shots took effect. The conning tower of the Friedrich Karl was pierced by a shell, and the brave commander with those around him found a glorious soldier's death. Other more or less serious injuries were sustained, and it was almost a miracle that no vital damage was done to any part of the ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... this moment, the ministry being too much occupied with the difficulties surrounding them, to spare a moment on any subject which will admit of delay. Our business must, therefore, be suspended for awhile. To press it out of season would be to defeat it. It would be felt as a vital benefit here, could we relieve their finances, by paying what we owe. Congress will judge by Mr. Adams' letters, how far the transferring all our debts in this country, to Holland, is practicable. On the replenishing ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... the first half of Emerson, but only half; for genius, as he said, is insatiate for expression, and truth has to be clad in the right verbal garment. The form of the garment was so vital with Emerson that it is impossible to separate it from the matter. They form a chemical combination—thoughts which would be trivial expressed otherwise, are important through the nouns and verbs to which he married them. The style is the man, it has been said; the man Emerson's ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... these things with a vital knowledge—a conviction which would remain unshaken were the whole world in arms for wrong—it is before all things necessary to strengthen the inner monitions by the companionship of these noble souls. And If a poet, by strong concentration of thought, by striving in ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... almost equal division of its members as to slavery in the territories. The southern platform was adopted by a majority of one in its committee on resolutions, but rejected by a majority of the convention. This was the vital issue between the followers of Davis and Douglas, and Douglas won. A majority of the delegates from six of the southern states thereupon withdrew from the convention and adjourned to Richmond. Thus, the first secession was from a Democratic convention. The remainder of that ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... the bones, with its fibres contracted and dry; and the little fat that there may be is friable, and shrunk within its integuments. The flesh of animals slaughtered whilst under considerable depression of vital energy (as from previous bleeding) has a diminished tendency to stiffen after death, the feebleness of this tendency being in proportion to the degree of depression. It presents, also, an unnatural blue or pallid appearance, has a faint and slightly sour smell, and soon becomes ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... advertised "personalities" tried to weather out a veritable emaciation of drama, and the result was, of course, a foregone conclusion. Slowly but surely is knowledge being forced upon the deluded manager, and he is learning to appreciate the vital truth of the much battered Shakespearian quotation, "The play's the thing." No trumped-up interest in one particular puppet will take the place of the drama itself. This is a pity. It is easier to create a marionette than it is to ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... dithyrambs rise to the heavens from people among whom the depressing noise called "sacred music" is a standing joke; a flag with Blood and Fire on it is unfurled, not in murderous rancor, but because fire is beautiful and blood a vital and splendid red; Fear, which we flatter by calling Self, vanishes; and transfigured men and women carry their gospel through a transfigured world, calling their leader General, themselves captains and brigadiers, and their whole body an Army: praying, but praying only for ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... of reason, excites our suspicion and eludes our inquiry. Whenever the spirit of fanaticism, at once so credulous and so crafty, has insinuated itself into a noble mind, it insensibly corrodes the vital principles ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... species of marriage must have been in terms of original law among the Highlanders, otherwise it would be difficult to conceive how such a custom could have originated, and it is in fact one which seems naturally to have arisen from the form of their society, which rendered it a matter of such vital importance to secure the lineal succession of their chiefs. It is perhaps not improbable that it was this peculiar custom which gave rise to the report handed down by the Roman and other historians, that the ancient inhabitants of Great Britain had their wives in common, or that it was the foundation ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... nature are corporeal, since whatever acts or suffers must be so. The efficient cause, or God, is pure ether, or fire, inhabiting the exterior surface of the heavens, where every thing which is divine is placed. This ethereal substance, of divine fire, comprehends all the vital principles by which individual beings are necessarily produced, and contains the forms of things, which from the highest regions of the universe, are diffused through every other part of nature. Seneca, indeed, calls God incorporeal reason; but by this term he can ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... and expelled by my own people!" His voice died away in a loud sob. With his head pressed against the wall he sobbed in great anguish. It was enough to hear one of these sobs, which shook his whole frame, to guess that he had been wounded in the most vital part of his soul. ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... them were accomplished in battle. Those sons of thine, uniting together, rushed against Bhimasena and shut him up on all sides. Then Bhima, O monarch, once more mounting on his own car, began to shoot keen shafts at the vital limbs of thy sons. Those sons of thine, covered with arrows by Bhimasena in that dreadful battle, began to drag that warrior like men dragging an elephant from off a cross-way. Excited with rage, Bhimasena, quickly cutting off the head of Durmarshana ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... by intense devotional feeling served to counteract his want of application. The kindness of his heart, and the desire to serve others, which was so prominent a feature of his mind, made him untiring; the dislike of contest which marked him led him to dwell on the vital points common to all religions, and avoid controversial ground. That want of self-esteem, too, which at the university had ever made him distrustful of his own powers, and kept him from claiming the stanzas ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... his intimates he was known as "Dit." Nor is it surprising that his attitude toward women had become in general one of resentment; matrimony he now regarded as unmitigated folly. At five and forty he was a vital, dominating, dust-coloured man six feet and half an inch in height, weighing a hundred and ninety pounds, and thus a trifle fleshy. When relaxed, and in congenial company, he looked rather boyish, an aspect characteristic ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... two more bullets after his first one. Both had found their billet in the body of the bear; but neither had struck a vital spot. The scattering fire, as the beast plowed through the embers, drove the rest of the party out of range in a hurry. Jack dragged Wash to one ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... capricious little passages that seem to have been the unhappy afterthoughts of the architect. But it is a mansion on a grand scale, and with a grand air. The cellar was arranged for the stabling of a troop of thirty horse in times of danger. The council-chamber, where for many years all questions of vital importance to the State were discussed, is a spacious, high-studded room, finished in the richest style of the last century. It is said that the ornamentation of the huge mantel, carved with knife and chisel, cost the workman a year's constant labor. At the entrance to the ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... an inspiration to all who meet her, because she is the embodiment of what this book stands for; namely, fidelity to the principles of Classic Art and watchfulness for the vital new note struck in the cause ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... there is none since risen who sings A song so gotten of the immediate soul, So instant from the vital fount of things Which is our source and goal; And though at touch of later hands there float More artful tones than from his lyre he drew, Ages may pass ere trills another note So sweet, ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... inequality of incomes, it is not socially expedient. Private property, as it is found to-day, is complicated by many historical accidents. Survivals of ancient injustice and relics of feudal institutions that rest on no vital reason remain in our new country as well as in the older ones. The limits of property in many respects are determined not according to the logic of expediency, but by the social inertia which often governs ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... chance carabine attained his head, And stretch'd the hero mid the vulgar dead. His near companions rush with ardent gait, Swift to revenge, but soon to share his fate; Brown, Adams, Coburn, falling side by side, Drench the chill sod with all their vital tide. ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... never grow old. I knew she would learn much, but I also knew she would never become complete and ask no more questions. That voice of hers would always end on a questioning note. You see, I have found my Secret Friend, grown-up, grown old enough to enjoy and understand a new and more vital youth." ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... it is the currency, the currency of the country,—it is this great subject, so interesting, so vital, to all classes of the community, which has been destined to feel the most violent assaults of executive power. The consequences are around us and upon us. Not unforeseen, not unforetold, here they come, bringing distress for the present, and fear and alarm for the future. If it be denied ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... figures—the girl, Woodhull, her brother Jed—broke away and raced over the remaining few hundred yards, coming up abreast, laughing in the glee of youth exhilarated by the feel of good horseflesh under knee and the breath of a vital morning air. ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... asserts that the language of poetry is in no way different, except in respect to metre, from that of good prose. Poetry can boast of no celestial ichor that distinguishes her vital juices from those of prose: the same human blood circulates through the veins of them both. In works of imagination and sentiment, in proportion as ideas and feelings are valuable, whether the composition be in prose or verse, they ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... redolent of hash from the cookery. I'll take off my hat to her. She was a slick duck. Of course she denied nothing to me—her time is up soon; then she will lay her history before the Judge, who is always busy picking hairs from his coat and doing other things of vital import while you pour out your ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... after all, are we born?" said the Doctor. "Where we die, or when is a trifle, since die we must. But why we die and how is vital. It is not only vital to the man that goes—it is vital to the race. It is the struggle, it is the fight, which, no matter what form it takes, makes life worth living. Men struggle for money. Financiers strangle one another at ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... inner spirit and substance into his own personal life. The process of his growth, therefore, is a development of power from within to assimilate objects from without, the power increasing with every vital exercise of it. The result of this assimilation is character. Character is the spiritual body of the person, and represents the individualization of vital experience, the conversion of unconscious things into self-conscious men. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... the fragmentary remains of the early Stoics, we fancy we catch glimpses of the theory held by some modern pantheists, that the material elements, "having body and form," are a vital transformation of the Divine substance; and that the forces of nature—"the generating causes or reasons of things" (logoi spermatikoi)—are a conscious transmutation of the Divine energy. This theory is more than hinted in the following passages, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... and under this title they receive the homage of all. Their existence is held to be a vital thing by all those who would stay their own weaknesses ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... some position from which the reconcilers of science and Genesis will not retreat, some central idea the maintenance of which is vital and its refutation fatal. Even if they now allow that the words "the evening and the morning" have not the least reference to a natural day, but mean a period of any number of millions of years that ...
— The Interpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of Nature - Essay #4 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... "No vital hit!" said the doctor; while Mary bringing water assisted him to bathe the wounds before he dressed them. "No, not from a bullet!" he added, after the dressing was finished and he had one hand on Jack's hot brow and the ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... with fever, to give me digitalis to make me weak—and, when I could not move without fainting (with weakness), to give me quinine to make me feverish again. Yes—and they could tell from the stethoscope, how very little was really wrong in me ... if it were not on a vital organ—and how I should certainly live ... if I didn't die sooner. But then, nothing has power over affections of the chest, except God and his winds—and I do hope that an obvious quick remedy may be found for your head. But do give up the writing ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... except under very exceptional circumstances and with the express permission of the Judges. The Judges must, however, satisfy themselves that the Candidates understand the use of the stick, and could, in emergencies, where speed is vital, increase their speed and steadiness on difficult snow by the use of ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... shriek nor fly, but only gaze, as if bewitched. Then Carver Doone, with his deadly smile, gloating upon her horror, lifted his long gun, and pointed full at Lorna's heart. In vain she strove to turn away; fright had stricken her stiff as stone. With the inborn love of life, she tried to cover the vital part wherein the winged death must lodge—for she knew Carver's certain aim—but her hands hung numbed, and heavy; in nothing but her ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... every detail of model ships and model steam-engines, supplied ready made for those who are "said to be" of an ingenious and mechanical turn. Thus the vital uses of resourcefulness are done away with, and a sham exhibition of mechanical genius is paraded before you by the young impostors—the result, for the most part, of too free a supply of pocket ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... urging the vital importance of wise selection in choosing our reading: "If two-thirds of the shelves of the typical domestic library were emptied of their burden, and choice books put in their stead, there would be reformation in intelligence and ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford |
