"Mainspring" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... peoples has, in fact and inevitably, led to their leadership in government also, and given them the predominant voice in laying down the lines along which the common life of mankind is to develop. If we are to look for the mainspring of the world's activities, for the place where its new ideas are thought out, its policies framed, its aspirations cast into practical shape, we must not seek it in the forests of Africa or in the interior of ...
— Progress and History • Various
... tenet—'Perfect Love and Fulfilment'? If you have any doubts upon these points, Mr. Mario, hold your hand. It can profit the world nothing to restir the witches' cauldron. Love must always be the mainspring of life and honour its loftiest ideal. Teach men how to live and leave it to Death to reveal the hereafter. Not for the good of mankind do I tremble—God has the world in his charge—but for yourself. We all are granted glimpses of our imperfections, perhaps ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... outward prettiness of butterfly and orchid, or with the mere profusion and variety of life, or with the colossal size of animals and trees. He will want to burrow down and get at the very root and mainspring of this forest life. He will want to reach the very Heart of Nature here manifested in such manifold variety. He will want to arrive at the inner significance of all this variety of life. Then only will ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... have been contemptuously called the shop- keepers of the world) the extension and maintenance of their vast empire is the mainspring which keeps the great machine in movement. And one sees tens of thousands of well-born and delicately-bred men cheerfully entering the many branches of public service where the hope of wealth can never come, and retiring on pensions ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... served to show him all that personality may mean. Estelle rejoiced that he should now so swiftly learn what had so long been apparent to her. She always declared an enthusiasm for personality; to her it seemed the force behind everything and the mainspring of all movement. Lack of personality meant stagnation; but granted personality, then advance ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... bowed and courtesied in an unconcerned, wooden way, as if they were moved by some ingenious piece of Swiss clock-work. The stiff old curee, too, had an air of having been wound up and set a-going. I could almost hear the creak of his mainspring. I was smiling at that, perhaps, and thinking how strongly the scenery of some portions of our own country resembles this part ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... nerves, I paced the lonely, sequestered halls in the lower regions of the castle. Two or three times I was sure that my watch had stopped, the hands seemed so stationary. The third time I tried to wind it, I broke the mainspring, but as it was nearly one o'clock not much harm ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... Air. In fact, this tendency of hot air to rise, and of cold air to sink, or rush in and take its place, which is the mainspring of nature's outdoor system of ventilation, is one of our greatest difficulties when we wall in a tiny section of the universe and call it a room. The difficulty is, of course, greatest in winter time, when the only pure air there is—that out of doors—is usually cold. This is ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... among historians, and to govern their thoughts: but you will not find it in the academies. Only in the true historian, the student who, like Herodotus, is also a poet and names the Muses, will you find its clear expression. But it is and must be the mainspring of all good historical writing, for this desire to know the concrete past is, in the end, the only corrective to the propagandist bias, which is, as we have seen, the right motive of useful research. Acton had it not, Froude perhaps a little, Maitland, one might believe, ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... magic which underlies all this tale might perhaps be thought to be inappropriate to the enlightenment of Greek times. We have seen how in the earliest tales magic is a mainspring of the action, and it is at first sight surprising that its sway should last through so many thousands of years. But there may well have been a recrudescence of such beliefs, along with the revival of interest in the earlier history. The enormous spread and popularity ...
— Egyptian Tales, Second Series - Translated from the Papyri • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... focus of Olive's thoughts. The sincerity of her greeting to Clifford was not an assumed emotion. It was inner-real. And yet it might not last for long. The effect of her drug-taking was to make every momentary feeling seem an eternal, ineradicable mainspring of action. Her many moods were each at the moment vitally important to her. They obsessed her. The morphia had not only undermined her physical health, but had made her mind the prey of every ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... only supposing the same malevolent or selfish desires working in every breast, directed against one object, and rendered irresistible from that very multiplication, and we have the envy of the coterie transformed into the fury of revolution. Whoever will closely observe the working of that mainspring of human actions—selfishness—on the society, whether in a village, a city, a country, or a metropolis in which he resides, will have no difficulty in discerning the real but secret, and therefore unobserved spring of the greatest changes that ever occur in the political ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... wistfulness. The only thing that the superintendent could do was to give him surreptitiously a prayer-book, bidding him perfect himself in the Catechism in view of future Confirmation. But, as emulation of his fellows and not religious zeal was the mainspring of Paul's enthusiasm, the pious behest was disregarded. Paul dived into the volume occasionally, ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... which is five hours steaming down river from Matadi. We remained here for a day and a half because the Minister of the Colonies was to go back on "The Anversville." I was glad of the opportunity for it enabled me to see this town, which is the mainspring of the colonial administration. The palace of the Governor-General stands on a commanding hill and is a pretentious establishment. The original capital of the Congo was Vivi, established by Stanley at a point ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... everything and of every sort; this was the more pitiable in that it had got into his head with his promotions, and was less presumption than stupidity, and still less vanity, of which he had none. The joke is, that the mainspring of the king's great affection for him was this very incapacity. He confessed it to the king at every step, and the king was delighted to direct and instruct him; in such sort that he grew jealous for his success as if it were his own, and made ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... places the number of troops in Canada at this time at thirty-two companies of fifty men each.] Denonville was prepared to strike. He had pushed his preparations actively, yet with extreme secrecy; for he meant to fall on the Senecas unawares, and shatter at a blow the mainspring of English intrigue. Harmony reigned among the chiefs of the colony, military, civil, and religious. The intendant Meules had been recalled on the complaints of the governor, who had quarrelled with him; and a new intendant, Champigny, had been sent in his place. He was as ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... never have coalesced; it was a war for liberty or despotism, and the principal of the warriors on both sides were attached to the religion that was by law established. It is true that many Episcopalians, in the reign of Charles II, charged the Puritans, not only as being the mainspring, but as possessing the overwhelming force in that awful struggle, forgetting that the Nonconformists were then but a handful of men, neither possessed of wealth nor influence. To attribute victory to so small a band, must refer it to the immediate interposition of the Most High, as in the case ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... again, but not until after a flood of light had been let into her mind. In a flash she understood that Fantomas himself must have been the mainspring of the incomprehensible events enveloping the King's visit to Paris. Furthermore, she divined that Mme. Ceiron and Fantomas were the same person. It was she who offered the salts, undoubtedly inducing her unconsciousness. The sound of a steady tic-tac she recognized as coming ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... the children interested? While, as we have seen, the atmosphere or spirit of the classroom supplies the condition necessary to successful work, interest supplies the motive force. For interest is the mainspring of action. A child may politely listen, or from a sense of courtesy or good will sit quietly passive and not disturb others, but this does not meet the requirement. His thought, interest, and enthusiasm must ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... man has become wealthy while in the services by making wise investments, through writings, by skill at invention, or through some other means. But he is the exception. The majority have no such prospect. Indeed, if love of money were the mainspring of all American action, the officer corps long since would have disintegrated. But it is well said that the only truly happy people on earth are those who are indifferent to money because they have some positive purpose which forecloses it. Than the service, there is no ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... the party to Crystal Brook, Shanty Brook, Mainspring Brook, Tenement Brook, and more little mountain gutters of the kind than you could count on your fingers and toes. As an aristocratic residence, this region is certainly superior to New York, for the Murray Hills are as plenty as ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 23, September 3, 1870 • Various
... Thump:—thump! Thump, thump, thump!" with even regularity; and then would suddenly break off this movement, whizzing away at a great rate, as the "send" of the sea lifted the blades out of the water, buzzing furiously the while like some marine alarum clock running down, or the mainspring of your watch breaking! ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... and his countenance blackened, as the letter was read, and Ellieslaw exclaimed,—"Why, this affects the very mainspring of our enterprise. If the French fleet, with the king on board, has been chased off by the English, as this d—d scrawl seems to intimate, ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... The mainspring of all progress, individual and social, is the desire to fulfill in character all one has planned in thought. Man's life is one long pursuit of the visions of possible excellence which disquiet, rebuke and tempt him upward. ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... from punishment, he regards the social union as a pestilent nuisance, the mischiefs of which it is fitting that he in his degree should do his best to repair, by means however violent. Revenge is the mainspring of his conduct; but he ennobles it in his own eyes, by giving it the colour of a disinterested concern for the maintenance of justice,—the abasement of vice from its high places, and the exaltation of suffering virtue. Single against the universe, ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... up. Now, equally of course, Mr. Viner, in all these cases, in my experience, the subordinates immediately try to save their own skins by denouncing the principal, and it was so in this instance. Mrs. Killenhall and Cave at once denounced Cortelyon as the mainspring, and the woman, who's a regular coward, got me aside and offered to turn King's evidence, and whispered that Cortelyon actually killed Ashton himself, unaided, as he let him out of his ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... paper," he said in a firm voice: "the clock is yours, and the principle of the movement is to be found engraved on a small plate under the mainspring." ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... transmitted, our ignorance of nature and of past time reduces us to silence or to wild conjectures. Something—let us call it matter—must always have existed, and some of its parts, under pressure of the others, must have got tied up into knots, like the mainspring of a watch, in such a violent and unhappy manner that when the pressure is relaxed they fly open as fast as they can, and unravel themselves with a vast sense of relief. Hence the longing to satisfy latent passions, with the fugitive pleasure in doing so. But the external agencies ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... plan of the Aeneid are derived from Homer. As the wrath of Achilles is the mainspring of the Iliad, so the unity of the Aeneid results from the anger of Juno. The arrival of Aeneas in Italy after the destruction of Troy, the obstacles that opposed him through the intervention of Juno, and the adventures and the victories of the hero form the subject of the poem. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... trifle of cost. The shrewdness which all women more or less possess, not being employed in the service of her heart, had drifted into that of speculation. A business to pay for,—that thought was the mainspring which kept the machine going and ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... SAUNDERS deftly possessed himself of a set of examination-papers, enabled him to take his degree with an ease and brilliance which very considerably astonished his instructors. By adroitly using his good fortune, SAUNDERS accumulated a pile of most egregious testimonials, and these he regarded as the mainspring of success in life. He had early discovered in himself a singular capacity for drawing salaries, and as he had unbounded conceit and unqualified ignorance, he conceived himself to be fit for any post in life to which a salary is attached. He had also really great gifts as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... Religion was the mainspring of his entire life, the real source of all his success. Without it, he might have been honored of men; with it, he was honored of God. Encircling all the separate parts of his character, like a golden chain, it bound them in one grand, ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... vengeance will rise, until the soul has learnt to transform imprecation into prayer, and the desire for justice into supplication for the guilty. But if, in the presence of crime, we were forced to believe that there will never be either vengeance or pardon, the mainspring of the moral life would be broken, and humanity would at length exclaim, like Brutus in the plains of Philippi:—"Virtue! thou art but ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... of spiritual desire, and his psalms ring with the cry of the seeker and the glad shout of the finder. Paul confessed the mainspring of his life to be his burning desire after Christ. "That I may know Him," was the goal of his heart, and to this he sacrificed everything. "Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer
... animals. Cows and pigs, horses, goats, sheep and rabbits abandoned by the husbandman, startled, puzzled; the clock with the broken mainspring running backward. The small game: deer, antlered, striped, and spotted; wildsheep, ovis poli, TeddyRooseveltshot and Audubonprinted, mountaingoats leaping in terror to hazardous safety on babel's top, upward to the pinpoint where no angels dance. ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... his purpose aside. It appeared, on mature consideration, that astrology, though its influence was once received and admitted by Bacon himself, does not now retain influence over the general mind sufficient even to constitute the mainspring of a romance. Besides, it occurred that to do justice to such a subject would have required not only more talent than the Author could be conscious of possessing, but also involved doctrines and discussions of a ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... reverence towards God was the foundation of this pure faith, which accompanied her from youth to extreme old age, indeed to her last moments, which gave her strength to endure many sorrows, and was the mainspring of that extreme humility which was so remarkable a feature ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... relation. An unvarying monotone of sentiment, in fact, runs through them. They are so many different expressions, answering to so many different observations taken at different angles, of one and the same persisting estimate of human nature. 'Self-love is the mainspring and motive of every thing we do, or say, or feel, or think:' that is the total result of the "Maxims" of ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... we relegate some of them to the sphere of mystery, others to the book of riddles, and go on our way rejoicing. Most men (like Aristotle) have been accustomed to regard a contradiction in terms as the end of strife; to be told that contradiction is the life and mainspring of the intellectual world is indeed a paradox to them. Every abstraction is at first the enemy of every other, yet they are linked together, each with all, in the chain of Being. The struggle for existence is not confined to the animals, but appears in the kingdom of thought. ...
— Sophist • Plato
... to find out if possible, during my stay in the factory, what it is that clogs this mainspring of "spirit" ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... superstition expressed in such terms as "too good to live." The child A seemed destined for the fate thus suggested. The needs of the body did not greatly concern him, and he seemed equally indifferent to those of the mind; goodness was the mainspring of his being. If society does not note such dispositions, and assume the special protection of such frail lives, children of this type go forward to premature ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... soberness have never been seriously challenged. It found that the long series of crimes of which it recorded the genesis and growth had been "directed towards one and the same objective, the overthrow by force of British rule in India," and nothing revealed more clearly the mainspring of the movement than the statistics given as to age, caste, and occupation of persons who had been actually convicted of revolutionary crimes or killed whilst committing them. The large majority were between 16 and 25 years of age; most of them students and teachers; all of them ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... ready access along various lines to all his knowledge stores. Concentration draws the feelings and the will equally into its circle of operations. To imagine a character without feeling and will would be like thinking a watch without a mainspring. All knowledge properly taught generates feeling. The will is steadily laying out, during the formative period of education, the highways of its future ambitions and activities. Habits of willing are formed along the lines of associated thought and feeling. The ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... place, and, as if the day- god claimed his own, the rising sun shot his first rays upon this edifice, striking from it instantly all colour, leaving its rows of pillars a dazzling white as if they were fashioned from the pure snows of distant Lebanon. The sun seemed a mainspring of activity, as well as an object of adoration, for before it had been many minutes above the horizon the ambassador saw emerging from the newly opened gate the mounted convoy that was to act as his escort into the city; so, turning, ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... muzzle of the gun with the intention of wrecking the railway station in Dar-es-Salaam became, by evil chance, deflected in its path and struck the brewery instead. Not the office or the non-essential part of the building, but the very heart, the mainspring of the whole, the precious vats and machinery for making beer. And there will be no more "lager" in German East Africa until the war ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... not the same strong mainspring urge and guide Our hearts to meet in love's eternal bond? Linked to thine arm, O Raphael, by thy side Might I aspire to reach to souls beyond Our earth, and bid the bright ambition go To that perfection which ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... and to think that perhaps, after all, she had better have left it alone. Her mother came into the room and said, "What are you doing, Bessie? You must have broken the mainspring of the clock." ...
— The Nursery, March 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various
... but I have no time for it. As for the religion and love of art of the builders, it is much the same all the world over, whether the building be an Egyptian temple or the United States Bank. It costs more than it comes to. The mainspring is vanity, assisted by the love of garlic and bread and butter. Mr. Balcom, a promising young architect, designs it on the back of his Vitruvius, with hard pencil and ruler, and the job is let out to Dobson & Sons, stonecutters. When the thirty centuries begin to look ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... would not give it to Freddy, for he is a man, and I should be breaking the mainspring of his life. But I will give half my money to Ethel, provided that you will consent to let ...
— The Naturewoman • Upton Sinclair
... the invention of the pendulum. 9. James Ferguson was a poor Scotch shepherd boy. Once, seeing the inside of a watch, he was filled with wonder. "Why should I not make a watch?" thought he. 10. But how was he to get the materials out of which to make the wheels and the mainspring? He soon found how to get them: he made the mainspring out of a piece of whalebone. He then made a wooden clock which kept good time. 11. He began, also, to copy pictures with a pen, and portraits with oil colors. In a few years, while still ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... In Berlin, Rome, London, it aroused the indignation of those whose sympathy with the spiritual life of their respective nations was still a living force. It would seem, however, to be the natural reaction produced by a tremendous national calamity, under which the mainspring of the collective mind temporarily gives way and the psychical equilibrium is upset. Disillusion, despondency, and contempt for the passions that lately stirred them drive the people to seek relief in the distractions of pleasures, among which dancing is perhaps one of the mildest. ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... would agree in. Were those views as true as they are questionable, they could not take effect until the unanimity among positive thinkers, to which he looked forward, shall have been attained; since the mainspring of his system is a Spiritual Power composed of positive philosophers, which only the previous attainment of the unanimity in question could call into existence. A few words will sufficiently express the outline of his scheme. A corporation of philosophers, receiving a modest support from the state, ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... laws of Connecticut, as well as in all those of New England, we find the germ and gradual development of that township independence which is the life and mainspring of American liberty at the present day. The political existence of the majority of the nations of Europe commenced in the superior ranks of society, and was gradually and imperfectly communicated to the different members of the social body. In America, on the other hand, ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... for the person who desires good health to obtain it, or having it, to retain it, without consistent effort. A watch will not run without the proper regulation of the mainspring. We must keep up our activities. We have taken the earth and are turning it into something to serve us—therefore the need of fine bodily preparedness. Nothing can take the place of achievement and it ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... give expression to the emotions excited, the hopes inspired, and the duties imposed by this stormy and perilous period. They afford brilliant illustrations of the statesmanship of the crisis. Sumner exposes the origin and mainspring of the rebellion, Douglass strips off its pretext, Everett paints its crime, Boutwell boldly proclaims its remedy in emancipation, and Banks pronounces a benediction on the first act of reconstruction on the solid basis of freedom to all. They furnish ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... I know, and every other woman knows, that women treat their hair as they treat their watches—to unpardonable abuse. Of course, one's hair isn't dropped on the sidewalk or prodded with stickpins until the mainspring breaks, but it is subjected to even deeper and more trying insults. One night, when the little woman is in a real good, amiable mood, the tresses are carefully taken down, brushed, doctored with a nice "smelly" ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... to forget that, seeing that Dick's love for him was his safeguard from all evil, and his love for Dick was the mainspring of his life. But—though his development was stunted and imperfect—there were certain facts of existence which he was beginning slowly but surely to grasp. And one of these—before but dimly suspected—he had realized fully to-night, ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... its heroes a man possessing the military talents of a Miltiades, with the purity of an Aristides; one whose character was without reproach, whose fame was unstained with a blot. Simple, earnest faith was the mainspring of the actions of Maccabeus. The clear, piercing gaze of the eagle, energy like that with which the strong wing of the royal bird cleaves the air, marked the noble Asmonean; for the soul's gaze was upward toward its ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... the mainspring of Maggie's character—the motive for most of her actions? Does Tom seem to you worthy of the intense affection she bestows upon him? Do you think a person with Maggie's nature would be likely to live a happy or ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... bent, and set and clinched one by one. These cards were laboriously made by many persons at home, for their household use. As early as 1667 wire was made in Massachusetts; and its chief use was for wool-cards. By Revolutionary times it was realized that the use of wool-cards was almost the mainspring of the wool industry, and L100 bounty was offered by Massachusetts for card-wire made in the state from iron mined in what they called then the "United American States." In 1784 a machine was invented by an American which would cut and bend thirty-six ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... enough upon this head to give an idea of the kind and busy brain not too deeply immersed in its own projects to have a tender regard for those of others. Meanwhile his own work was continually progressing. Lowell had already made him feel that he was the mainspring of the "Atlantic," which at the time of the war attained the height of its popularity, and achieved a position where it found no peer. The care which Dr. Holmes bestowed upon the finish of his work, the endless labor over its details, are almost inconceivable when we remember that ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... continuity has no more material existence than has the thread of lineal descent. To insist upon its importance is to obscure, as has been obscured, the epic range of Mr. Cabell's creative genius. It is to fail to observe that he has treated in his many books every mainspring of human action and that his themes have been the cardinal dreams and impulses which have in them heroic qualities. Each separate volume has a unity and harmony of a complete and separate life, for the excellent reason that with the consummate skill of an artist he is concerned exclusively ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... Strassburg is an example; the detail of workmanship is infinite; even the striking apparatus and the dials showing planetary motions are far beyond our own means, or perhaps our taste. When Peter Henlein invented the watch, using as the mainspring a coiled feather, he may not have made chronometers as exact as those turned out nowadays, but the "Nuremberg eggs"—so called from their place of origin and their shape, not a disk, but a sphere—were marvels of chasing and incrustation ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... view, which not only form a great part of the interest of human life, but, by bringing intellects into stimulating collision and by presenting to each innumerable notions that he would not have conceived of himself, are the mainspring of mental ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... soon as he could get him from Mrs. Garnet's presence, that Virginia was the Mother of Presidents; that the first slaves ever brought to this country came in Yankee ships; that Northern envy of Southern opulence and refinement had been the mainspring of the abolition movement; and—with a smile of almost womanly heroism—that he—or his father at least—had lost all his ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... history, John de Bermingham, created for his former victory Baron of Athenry, had now the Earldom of Louth conferred on him with a royal pension. He promptly followed up his blow at Faughard by expelling Donald O'Neil, the mainspring of the invasion, from Tyrone; but Donald, after a short sojourn among the mountains of Fermanagh, returned during the winter and resumed his lordship, though he never wholly recovered from the losses he had sustained. The new Earl of Louth continued to hold the rank of Commander-in-Chief ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... the mainspring of everything. Money is indispensable, even for going without money. But though that dross is necessary to any one who wishes to think in peace, I have not courage enough to make it the sole motive power ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... then to the child, a bone to the dogs, and a smile to the philosopher. Not once did Heurtebise turn towards us, and yet he was not asleep. I hardly know whether he thought. Dear, valiant fellow! In those paltry and ceaseless struggles, the mainspring of his strong nature had broken, and he was already beginning to die. The silent death agony, which however was rather an abandonment of life, lasted several months; and then Madame Heurtebise found herself ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... greatness is sometimes thrust upon us; others, more liberal, say it is inborn; others argue that it is acquired. We say that this is an instance where classical musical ability reigned uppermost, controlling and directing the possessor as the mainspring of all her infantile life; but on becoming cognizant of this state of affairs, she was advised by good Northern friends to turn her whole attention to the pursuit for which her heart and mind thirsted. Hence, after a few weeks with the classic masters, the whole Negro ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... and the reports of them are both a part of and a stimulus to the "back to the land movement." This movement has its mainspring in two plain economic facts, namely: first, clerical and other indoor vocations have become overcrowded; second, while crops grow bigger year by year, the number of mouths to feed multiplies even faster, and unless more land ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... case. Yet they were affecting the cams and cogs and pulleys of young Mr. Perry's love affairs, and he felt the matter must be repaired, and put in running order. For he knew that love affair was the mainspring of his life. And the mechanic in him—the Yankee that talked in his rasping, high-keyed tenor voice, that shone from his thin, lean face, and cadaverous body, the Yankee in him, the dreaming, sentimental Yankee, half poet and ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... result not of innate tendencies, but of external circumstances. When these are perfected, evil will necessarily disappear from the world. He had so successfully subordinated his own emotions, that in his philosophical system he calmly ignores passion as a mainspring of human activity. This is exemplified by the rule he lays down for the regulation of a man's conduct to his fellow-beings. He must always measure their respective worth, and not the strength of his affection for them, even if the individuals concerned be ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... was this, which could not be bent or broken, or even bitten into? The more Black Bruin pushed at the iron bars of his cage, the fainter grew that spark of hope which is the mainspring of all life, until at last he ceased to hope altogether, and bowing to the inevitable, no longer sought to be free. Sullenly he glared at the gaping crowds that passed his cage daily, and the only thing to which he looked forward was his food. This he received ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... his iron will. Years of quasi-respectability, of financial position, of autocratic power as Vice-Governor had modified the ideas of the old buccaneer, and the co-operative principle which had been the mainspring of action as well as tie which produced unity among the brethren-of-the-coast had ceased to be regarded, so far as he was concerned. He took care, however, to be upon fairly amicable terms with the officers in command and the veterans, though he treated the rest of the riff-raff like the dogs ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... then spoken in the ear of "my beloved" were not a lie; you would have a right to scorn me if I could change. I shall never cease to worship you in my solitude. In spite of the gulf set between us, you will still be the mainspring of all my actions, and all the virtues are inspired by penitence and love. Though you have filled my heart with bitterness, I shall never have bitter thoughts of you; would it not be an ill beginning of the new tasks that I have set myself if I did ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... he went on just the same to find out for himself. He had a rare faculty of inducing enthusiasm in others, and by reposing complete confidence in the individual, impelled him to do his very best. Thus he became the mainspring for much that was never credited to him, and which was really his in the germ or original idea. Gilbert truly says, "it is not easy to separate the product of his personal work from that which he accomplished through the organisation of the work of others. He was extremely ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... to even the largest element in war, it will be seen that it is not primarily a cause which makes men loyal to each other, but the loyalty of men to each other which makes a cause. The unity which develops from man's recognition of his dependence upon his fellows is the mainspring of every movement by which society, or any ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... live in the life of the streets; and the busy men and women who pass within their range of vision, sometimes every day at the same hour, do not suspect that they serve as the mainspring of other lives, that interested eyes watch for their coming and miss them if they happen to go to their ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... Preussen; attends him everywhere, becoming quite a necessary of life to his Majesty; and does not go away at all. Seckendorf's business, if his Majesty knew it, will not lead him "away;" but lies here on this spot; and is now going on; the magic-apparatus, Grumkow the mainspring of it, getting all into gear! Grumkow was once clear for King George and the Hanover Treaty, having his reasons then; but now he has other reasons, and is clear against those foreign connections. "Hm, hah—Yes, my ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... roots in the fact of nationality. Nationality is to political life what personality is to mental life, the mainspring, namely, of the mechanism. The two principles of organisation have this in common, that although by, through, and for them the entire pageant of our experience is unfolded, we are unable to capture either of them in a precise ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... of impeachment and of trial by the Legislature is the mainspring of the great machine of government. It is the pivot on which it turns. If preserved in full vigor, and exercised with perfect integrity, every branch will ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... two years the mainspring of Indian hostility to the Americans in the northwest. From the beginning he had been anxious to employ the savages against the settlers, and when the home government bade him hire them he soon proved himself very expert, as well as very ruthless, in their use. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Germaine ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the royal authority is the mainspring which controls all movements and all actions in every part of the State. Let this source of energy grow weak, and decline at once shows itself throughout the entire body politic. It is as when a fatal malady seizes on the seat of life in an individual—instantly ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... weeks, the drug had gained fresh hold upon him; had resuscitated the old paralysing pessimism and dread of defeat, so that he asked himself bitterly what right had he to sit in judgment upon any one, least of all upon the dear woman who was the core and mainspring ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... powerful medium for establishing the system of absolute power, did not suffer himself, by any show of affection from his people, to be diverted from his design of rendering his government independent of them. To this design we must look as the mainspring of all his actions at this period; for with regard to the Roman Catholic religion, it is by no means certain that he yet thought of obtaining for it anything more than a complete toleration. With this view, ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... let down afresh. Before, the attack had been directed against the worldly hopes of a man, such as all see crushed at some time in life, but now it was his spirit that was aimed at. It was that strong, living soul which was the mainspring of his ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... summing-up which was to be delivered by his pen instead of his lips. He had become articulate only at the last. It must have taken him weeks upon weeks to write it all down, this autobiography which had been the mainspring of his son's actions for nearly two years. There was wind and sun in it, and blue sky and the gray Gulf heaving; somber colors, passion and grief, ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... transparent honesty of purpose, and unceasing efforts to help those most in need of help and encouragement. As the aged General put it on his arrival in Johannesburg, the Organisation of which he is the mainspring has set before itself the task of giving a helping hand to the very poor, those who are without friends, and those who have fallen ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... been given and received, Miss Abingdon did not know. Beauty itself was almost at a discount nowadays. Even feminine vanity, so long accepted as the mainspring of feminine action, had lost its force. Pale cheeks were not in vogue, and ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... that he had ever dreamt of possessed so many tones in it as hers—even one of pathos, as she lingered over the word "shadow," All his annoyance melted. He only felt he would change the very mainspring of his life if necessary to give her ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... repressive measures excited indignation in England; and discussions arose conducted with a bitterness not often paralleled. The Gordon case was the chief topic of controversy. Governor Eyre had arrested Gordon, whom he considered to be the mainspring of the insurrection, and sent him to the district in which martial law had been proclaimed. There he was tried by a court-martial ordered by General Nelson, and speedily hanged. The controversy which followed is a curious illustration of the ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... to her whole trade: beside, his manner was rather loose, and not of the most modest and attractive kind." I believe the practical lesson then learned has, since that, been worth to me thousands of pounds—namely, Self-interest is the mainspring of human actions: you have only to lay before persons, in a strong light, that what you propose is to their own interest, and you will generally accomplish your purpose.' There are certainly few boys of twelve years who would have caught up such an idea as this ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... Deprive a man, then, of his dignity, and you not only deprive him of his moral strength but you also make him useless even for those who wish to make use of him. Every creature has its stimulus, its mainspring: man's is his self-esteem. Take it away from him and he is a corpse, and he who seeks activity in a corpse will ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... himself, the Arch-Enemy of honest neighbors in a time of stress!")—but it does appear they had got it into their sagacious heads that the bad neighbor at Berlin was, in effect, the Arch-Enemy, probably mainspring of the whole matter; and that it would be in the highest degree interesting to see clearly what Lee and he had on hand. Order thereupon to Elliot: "Do it, at any price;" and finally, as mere price will not answer, "Do it by any method,—STEAL Lee's ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... when two events at home changed the whole face of affairs. After eight years of childlessness the king became in October the father of a son. With the birth of this boy the rivalry of York and the Beauforts for the right of succession ceased to be the mainspring of English politics; and the crown seemed again to rise out of the turmoil of warring factions. But with the birth of the son came the madness of the father. Henry the Sixth sank into a state of idiotcy which made his rule impossible, and his ministers were forced to call a great Council ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... shortly before his death, and when it was quite certain that the doom which had so long hung over him was at hand.[23] He had the love of doing, for the mere sake of doing, what was difficult or even dangerous to do, which is the mainspring of characteristic English sports and games. He loved the sea; he liked to sail his own boat, and enjoyed rough weather, and took interest in the niceties of seamanship and shipcraft. He was a bold rider across country. With a powerful grasp on mathematical truths and principles, ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... MAY, 1732. "You will see by this that I am exact to follow your instruction; and that the SCHULZ of Tremmen [Village in the Brandenburg quarter, with a SCHULZ or Mayor to be depended on], becomes for the present the mainspring of our correspondence. I return you all the things (PIECES) you had the goodness to communicate to me,—except Charles Douze, [Voltaire's new Book; lately come out, "Bale, 1731."] which attaches me infinitely. The particulars hitherto ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... he cried, "the same impetuous youth that is at this very moment hacking out for Germany a world empire amidst the nations in arms. A wonderful race, a race of giants, our German youth, Herr Doktor ... the mainspring of our great German machine—as they find who resist ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... this discomfort, loss, and privation if thereby their country marches triumphantly out of this great struggle. [Cheers.] We have every reason for confidence; we have none for complacency. Hope is the mainspring of ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... followed burgess, but the old guild hall lived on, the central mainspring of the borough's life. Therein were stored the archives of the town, the charters won, bargained for, and granted by kings and queens, which gave them privileges of trade, authority to hold fairs and markets, liberty to convey and sell their goods in other towns. Therein were preserved the civic ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... against ratification which were advanced by the opponents of the Constitution of 1844. However, that instrument was not so defective as pictured, since back of all objections and all opposition was the mainspring of partisan politics. The Whigs were bent on frustrating the program of the Democrats. Were they able to defeat the Constitution on the issue of its imperfections? No, not even with the assistance of the radical Democrats! But fortunately for the cause of the opposition ...
— History of the Constitutions of Iowa • Benjamin F. Shambaugh
... demands close observation. The will, you see, is the mainspring of the mind, and if it is affected the whole mind ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg
... the prebends to make certain declarations, which were fraudulent and misleading, so that it was difficult not to blunder in the replies, which were directed by Father Verart, the mainspring of all these plots. They made the prebends take an oath; the latter consented to this, and submitted to everything, in order to extricate themselves from so much annoyance and to be free from enemies so powerful ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... friends will publish some of the conversations that he had with him, of which I have heard. But this man who had so strong a faith was also very independent. In his religion he had no doubts: it was the mainspring of his life; though faith with him was much more a matter of feeling than a matter of doctrine. But all was feeling with Franck, and reason made little appeal to him. His religious faith did not disturb his mind, for he did not measure men and their works ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland |
