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More "Decisive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the truth for three weeks past. I made the discovery by chance. I have important moral proofs; but they are mere presumptive evidence. A word from Widow Lerouge, one single word, would have rendered them decisive. This word she cannot now pronounce, since they have killed her; but she had said it to me. Now, Madame Gerdy will deny all. I know her; with her head on the block, she will deny it. My father doubtless will turn against me. I am certain, and I possess proofs; ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... all about this Chiao Ta?" remarked lady Feng; "but the secret of all this trouble is, that you won't take any decisive step. Why not pack him off to some distant farm, and have done with him?" And as she spoke, "Is our carriage ready?" she went ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... best-stocked crib, whether it leads him to cover the largest creditors and shear the debtor, or to sacrifice the creditors for the future prosperity of the restored merchant. The action of the agent is decisive. This man, together with the bankrupt's solicitor, plays the utility role in the drama, where it may be said neither the one nor the other would accept a part if not sure of their fees. Taking the average of a thousand ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... clean, who mistake the point in argument, waste their strength on trifles, misconceive their adversary, and leave the question more involved than they found it. He may be right or wrong in his opinion: but he is too clear-sighted to be unjust. He is simple as he is forcible, and as brief as he is decisive. ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... convincing and decisive Method of adjudging Causes, being by a comprehensive View and critical Examination of their Effects; of Streams, by a nice Scrutiny and Investigation of their Sources; hence may we, from the shining Characters, and extensive Abilities of our Divines ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... wait and see if it's as easy as you think," retorted Tilly from her pillow. Again Purdy had let slip a golden chance to put the decisive question; and Tilly's temper was ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... thought his privileges were being infringed, and the King drew back. Digby acted throughout as if he had a "publike charge," but he was really little other than a pirate. He sailed from Deal in December, 1627, his ships the "Eagle" and the "George and Elizabeth." It was six months before the decisive fight took place; but on the way he had captured some French and Spanish ships near Gibraltar; and what with skirmishes and sickness, his voyage did not want for risk and episode at any time. Digby the landsman maintained ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... enemy, and it is found that Luis Herrera is wanting at his post; when it is known that he has left the camp in the night-*time, on his own private business, only a few hours before a battle, which all agree will be a bloody and perhaps a decisive one? His advancement, although nobly deserved, has been rapid. There are many who envy him, and such will not fail to attribute his absence to causes by which his friends well know he is incapable of being influenced. It will be pleasant ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... Prince of Conde, who, having collected another army, was met by De Saint Luc near the island of Oleron, who sallied forth from Brouage with a strong force; and a conflict ensued, lasting the whole day, with equal loss on both sides, but with no decisive results. ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... speak the truth, not for the want of not knowing and preferring it, but because they have not the organ to speak it adequately. It requires a clear sight, and, still more, a high spirit, to deal with falsehood in the decisive way. I have known several honest persons who valued truth as much as Peter and John, but, when they tried to speak it, they grew red and black in the face instead of Ananias, until, after a few attempts, they decided that aggressive truth was ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... her garden, eating up all the young peas and beans. She let the garden be utterly destroyed rather than leave Nora to hear words of love that for her could mean nothing but misery. This went on for some weeks, when Hannah was driven to decisive measures by an unexpected event. Early one morning Hannah went to a village called "Baymouth," to procure coffee, tea, and sugar. She went there, did her errand, and returned to the hut as quickly as she could possibly could. ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... terrifying forms of fear; and when Saturday and Saturday night came and passed, and Alfred Stevens did not appear, a lurking dread that would not be chidden or kept down, continued to rise within her soul, which, without assuming any real form or decisive speech, was yet suggestive of complete ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... He took no part in public business, which was directed, as before, by the mayors of the palace. When in 747 Carloman retired into a monastery, Pippin resolved to take the royal crown for himself; taking the decisive step in 751 after having received the celebrated answer of Pope Zacharias that it were better to name king him who possessed the power than him who possessed it not. Childeric was dethroned and placed in the monastery of St Omer; his son, Theuderich, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... mark all the feeling and emotions of the tyrant. Pizarro is stung with jealousy as well as rage; not so much the jealousy of love as of infernal pride; but both rage and jealousy are mastered by triumphant insolence and contempt. The utterance therefore of his laconic decisive sentence, "He dies," should be marked with a triumphant sneer as well ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... time you shall hear of us," she said, addressing herself to Bodza. "Till then avoid every decisive step. Whomsoever you may capture keep a strict watch upon them, and see that no harm befall them. Do you take me? It is possible that the captives may attempt to put an end to their own lives. But we shall require them all on account of their confessions. Therefore ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... I procured, at the Prefecture, a full report of all the evidence elicited, and, at the various newspaper offices, a copy of every paper in which, from first to last, had been published any decisive information in regard to this sad affair. Freed from all that was positively disproved, this mass ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... and stood erect before him. I knew by the deadly pallor of his face, that something decisive was about to ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... him at the decisive moment more than once, and every time he used him as a threat, he was only laughed at. The old man's omnipotence could not continue to exist side by side with his increasing decrepitude; in the boy's eyes it crumbled away from day to day. Unwilling ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... staggered by the defence, for they had no doubt hoped to surprise both fort and residency. In token of this, the attacking party retreated two or three times over, as if to ask for advice or fresh orders from their boats—orders that were pretty decisive, for they came on each time more keenly than before, the last time with bundles of inflammable wood and reeds, with which they boldly advanced to the verandah of the residency, throwing them down ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... having spoken. If Bonnebault and Marie Tonsard had overheard the conversation, nothing but harm could come of it. This event, insignificant as it seems, was destined, in the irritated state of feeling then existing between Les Aigues and the peasantry, to have a decisive influence on the fate of all,—just as victory or defeat in battle sometimes depends upon a brook which shepherds jump while cannon are unable to ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... impeded at first by obstacles of ground, but in the melee the weight of the British troopers gradually broke up the enemy, and the charge of the 4th Dragoon Guards, delivered against the flank of the Russian mass, was decisive. The whole of the Russian cavalry broke and fled to the ridge. This famous charge occupied less than five minutes from first to last, and at the same time some of the Russian squadrons, attempting to charge the 93rd Highlanders (who were near Balaklava) were met by the steady volleys of the "thin ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... smooth verse, detailing the experience of a bride who took to flirting early in her matrimonial career, but was saved from coming to grief by the decisive action of a stern husband. The book contains a capital lesson for the Girl of the Period, whose follies are satirized in it ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various
... against a large stone, and if it produce a complete sound, it is a mark of goodness; but if in hewing it does not shatter before the edge of the sect, or instrument commonly used for that purpose, the criterion is decisive. The goodness of slate may be farther estimated by its colour: the deep black hue is apt to imbibe moisture, but the lighter is always the least penetrable: the touch also may be in some degree a guide, for a good firm stone feels somewhat hard and rough, whereas ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... Gustav Adolf, nor was he a strenuous German patriot, like Frederick the Great. He was not even a great soldier; for while, as the head of a great host of marauding mercenaries, he made himself the scourge and the terror of Germany, he never won a decisive battle against an equal enemy. The history of his fighting is largely a history of futilities. And when he formed the plan of a separate peace,—a plan which if promptly and vigorously executed might possibly have ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... as a young woman, in kilt and plaid and Glengarry cap, a shrewd young woman though, with a very decisive personality, clinching a bargain as the best of dealers might, a little forward. He could think of her as the young girl whose hand Charles the Young Pretender kissed, and who had said to him directly: ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... associations had made. These associations were practically middle-class affairs, and now, compelled by hard times and crashing markets, and aided by the great captains of industry, they gave organized labor an awful and decisive defeat. It was an all-powerful alliance, but it was an alliance of the lion and the lamb, as the middle class was soon ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... is of importance, because the result follows that, as already intimated, a whole series of arguments or claims which may fairly be put forward by a Nationalist are not available to a Home Ruler. A Nationalist, for example, may urge that the will of the Irish people to be independent is decisive of their moral right to independence, and that the perils which a free Ireland may bring upon England need not in any way concern him or his country. Whether indeed the principle of "nationality," or the contention that any portion of a State ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... general triumph of the French arms, that Daganoweda and his warriors had seen advancing, though perhaps no one in all the force dreamed that he was advancing to a battle that in reality would prove one of the most decisive in the world's history, heavy with consequences to which time set scarcely any limit. Nor did Robert himself, vivid as was his imagination, foresee it. His thoughts and energies were bounded for the time, at least, by the ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Meanwhile, the German prisons were thronged with the first batches of recusants. The world shrugged its shoulders, and declared that they had brought it on themselves, while yet it deprecated mob-violence, and requested the attention of the authorities and the decisive repression of this new conspiracy of superstition. And within St. Peter's Church the workmen were busy at the long rows of new altars, affixing to the stone diptychs the brass-forged names of those who had already fulfilled their vows ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... some time yet, my boy," replied Uncle Richard with a sigh; and Tom felt startled, for it seemed to him as if the stern, decisive-looking countenance before him had grown older, and the lines in it ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... her in five minutes' racing. It was really shameful. But the partridge seemed to gain strength as the fox put forth his, and after a quarter of a mile race, racing that was somehow all away from Taylor's Hill, the bird got unaccountably quite well, and, rising with a decisive whirr, flew off through the woods, leaving the fox utterly dumfounded to realize that he had been made a fool of, and, worst of all, he now remembered that this was not the first time he had been served this very trick, though he never ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... with his old life, they espoused his cause almost to a man, and at last he had the joy of seeing himself at the head of a very respectable band of nearly fifty determined men. The majority of them were for advancing to the enemy without a day's delay, and striking a decisive blow once for all. But ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... who had his head-quarters at the village of Plentheim, or Blenheim. At the cost of eleven thousand killed and wounded in the armies of Marlborough and Eugene, and fourteen thousand killed and wounded on the other side, a decisive victory was secured, Tallard himself being made prisoner, and 26 battalions and 12 squadrons capitulating as prisoners of war. 121 of the enemy's standards and 179 colours were brought home and hung up in Westminster Hall. Austria was saved, and Louis XIV. utterly humbled at the time ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... Robertson Smith with the Jewish paschal feast, fell in the spring or early summer, when the camels and other domestic animals brought forth their young and the shepherds offered their sacrifices.[145] Babylonia, the supreme early centre of religious and cosmological culture, presents a more decisive example of the sex festival. The festival of Tammuz is precisely analogous to the European festival of St. John's Day. Tammuz was the solar god of spring vegetation, and closely associated with Ishtar, also an agricultural deity ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... time you would take to count a hundred and one. In the midst of this choral dance, at the fifty-first pulsation, the inhabitants of the Universe pause in full career, and each individual sends forth his richest, fullest, sweetest strain. It is in this decisive moment that all our marriages are made. So exquisite is the adaptation of Bass and Treble, of Tenor to Contralto, that oftentimes the Loved Ones, though twenty thousand leagues away, recognize at once the responsive note of their destined Lover; and, penetrating the paltry obstacles ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... proposal of marriage unless she is free to entertain such a proposal and has not decided in her own mind upon a negative answer. Of course, there are times when she receives, without power to check it, an unwelcome proposal. Her refusal then should be very decisive but very considerate. She should express regret at the situation, and her appreciation of the honor which has been done her, at the same time leaving no opportunity for future hope. In case she is already engaged, ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... months after Sidney's capture of Axel, Leicester reviewed her Majesty's troops at Arnhem; and it was then that Sir Philip at last persuaded him to strike a decisive blow at the Spanish. Having actually obtained his uncle's permission to fight, Sidney lost no time in unsheathing his sword. Five days after the review at Arnhem, he and his brother Robert and the young Earl of Essex, with a small force, stormed and ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... Clem. Hom. c. 1. We still possess in great part verbatim the regula of Apelles, in Epiphan II. 44, 2 Irenaeus (I. 7. 2) and Tertull (de carne. 20) state that the Valentinian regula contained the formula, '[Greek: gennethenta dia Marias]', see on this p. 203. In noting that the two points so decisive for Catholicism the Canon of the New Testament and the Apostolic regula were first, in the strict sense, set up by the Gnostics on the basis of a definite fixing and systematising of the oldest tradition we may see that the weakness of Gnosticism here consisted in its inability ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... He had done something decisive. For the time being he felt happier. "Nothing like getting a thing off your chest!" He took a bath and, having slipped into his dressing-gown, commenced to shave. Between these acts he whistled snatches of street-songs to prove to himself his genuine ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... lies in the possibility of their execution falling into the hands of hard, dull, and cruel administrators. But in the case of a Utopia one assumes the best possible government, a government as merciful and deliberate as it is powerful and decisive. You must not too hastily imagine these things being done—as they would be done on earth at present—by a number of zealous half-educated people in a state of panic at a quite imaginary ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... Caledonia, reduced every state to subjection in the southern parts of the island, and chased before him all the men of fiercer and more intractable spirits, who deemed war and death itself less intolerable than servitude under the victors. He defeated them in a decisive action, which they fought under Galgacus; and having fixed a chain of garrisons between the friths of Clyde and Forth, he cut off the ruder and more barren parts of the island, and secured the Roman ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... with the old manner of choosing assistants. [Footnote: Baldwin, "The Three Constitutions of Conn.," in New Haven Colony Hist. Soc., Papers, V., 210-214.] In the election of 1820 the Republican candidate for governor was elected by a decisive vote, and all of Connecticut's representation in the lower house of Congress was Republican, [Footnote: Niles' Register, XVIII., 128.] although, in 1816, the Federalist candidate had been chosen by a small majority. [Footnote: Adams, United States, IX., 133.] New ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... with the resentment awakened by the attempt to free itself from its bondage to moral corruption. That was the penalty of failure. What made him uneasy was that Charles Gould seemed to him to have weakened at the decisive moment when a frank return to the old methods was the only chance. Listening to Decoud's wild scheme had ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... world's difference between them!" cried Rudolf Rassendyll. He sat down on the bed by me, and went on in quick, decisive words: "You can't move for a day or two. Send my message to Sapt. Tell him to keep you informed of what happens. As soon as you can travel, go to Strelsau, and let Sapt know directly you arrive. We ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... which the actor might have interpolated them;—and secondly, because they interrupt, not only the sense and connection, but likewise the flow both of the passion, and (what is with me still more decisive) of the Shakespearian link of association. As with many another parenthesis or gloss slipt into the text, we have only to read the passage without it, to see that it never was in it. I venture to say there is no instance in Shakespeare ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... with little intermission, is my condition. The hours devoted to study are selected with vigilant caution from among these periods of endurance. It is not for this that I think of travelling to Italy, even if I knew that Italy would relieve me. But I have experienced a decisive pulmonary attack; and although at present it has passed away without any considerable vestige of its existence, yet this symptom sufficiently shows the true nature of my disease to be consumptive. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... then throwing off her subjection; England first throwing off her subjection, and then compelled to reform herself. The old systems of thought were at an end. The change, like all social ones, was not abrupt, but it was decisive and final. It was the earthquake which shattered for ever the crust of ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... It was at times a positive misery to the new conqueror that his opponents were such inefficient fossils. Young and at the same time capable; using the natural advantages of his territory to support the bravery of his troops; with a mind which was not only accurate and decisive, but comprehensive in its observations; unhampered by control or by principle; opposed to generals who could not think of a boy of twenty-six as their equal; with the best army and the finest theater of war in Europe; finally, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... partly owing to her awe for Swift, and partly, perhaps, to the weak state of her rival's health, which, from year to year, seemed to announce speedy dissolution. At length, however, Vanessa's impatience prevailed, and she ventured on the decisive step of writing to Mrs. Johnson herself, requesting to know the nature of that connexion. Stella, in reply, informed her of her marriage with the Dean; and full of the highest resentment against Swift for having given another female such a right in ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... anticipated, not only the best general practice of a later date, but specifically the purpose of Rodney in the action which he himself considered the most meritorious of his whole career,—that of April 17, 1780. The decisive signal given by him on that occasion, as explained by himself, meant that each ship should steer, not for the ship corresponding numerically to her in the enemy's order, but for the one immediately opposite at the time the signal was made. This is what Mathews and ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... sway a circle or a household. Her influence will as surely affect her associates as did the influence of those celebrated French women whose salons were the places where battles were fought and decisive moments gained. Society is in great need of women: it always will be. Now this period of young womanhood is precisely the time for cultivating those principles which will later be most ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... the head was decisive. Fleda crawled off the bed, feeling as if a month's illness had been making its ravages upon her frame and strength. She stood a moment to collect her thoughts; but alas, thinking was impossible; there was a palsy ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... moment indeed the whole Persian army put itself into quick and decisive motion, as if determined to dare all—and achieve all for their ally, if fate should so decree. It was a sight beautiful to behold, but of an interest too painful almost to be endured. The very existence ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... already—and even before meeting Waymarsh—arrived. He had believed he had a limit, but the limit had been transcended within thirty-six hours. By how long a space on the plane of manners or even of morals, moreover, he felt still more sharply after Maria Gostrey had come back to him and with a gay decisive "So now—!" led him forth into the world. This counted, it struck him as he walked beside her with his overcoat on an arm, his umbrella under another and his personal pasteboard a little stiffly retained between forefinger and thumb, this struck him as really, in comparison his introduction ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... child," said he, kissing her forehead, "so there are troubles at home, and you have been hasty and headstrong? That is not like a well-bred child. My Hortense ought not to have taken such a decisive step as that of leaving her house and deserting her husband on her own account, and without consulting her parents. If my darling girl had come to see her kind and admirable mother, she would not have given ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... parting, there could have been no very deep sense of injury on either side. It was not till afterward that, in both bosoms, the repulsive force came into operation, when, to the party which had taken the first decisive step in the strife, it became naturally a point of pride to persevere in it with dignity, and this unbendingness provoked, as naturally, in the haughty spirit of the other, a strong feeling of resentment which overflowed, at last, in acrimony ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... only two nights more before we reach Augsburg, so there must be no more shilly-shallying about the matter. If there is a stove in the room to-night, we may try that; though, if the house be in a pretty safe situation, I should prefer more decisive measures. The charcoal has ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... This trial is decisive. You are now satisfied that the apparition is but a reflex of yourself; and, in uttering your secret feelings to him, you make this phantom the dark symbolic mirror for reflecting to the daylight what else must be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... not permitted to finish the petition. Withdrawing her hand with decisive action, she bade him be silent or speak to her questions. And ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... could see clouds of birds of prey rending the air with their sinister cries. The reflections which this sight excited were profoundly painful. How many victims, and what result! The army had marched from Wilna to Witebsk, from Witebsk to Smolensk, hoping for a decisive battle, seeking this battle at Wiasma, then at Ghjat, and had found it at last at Borodino, a bloody, terrible battle. The army had marched to Moscow in order to earn the fruit of all that sacrifice, and at this place nothing had been found but ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... character to remain satisfied with these simple pleasures, and to have lived the quiet and modest life of a man of letters on such income as he could derive from the best work he could produce. But it is this same Mr. Cooke who gives decisive testimony as to Goldsmith's increasing desire to "shine" by imitating the expenditure of the great; the natural consequence of which was that he only plunged himself into a morass of debt, advances, contracts for hack-work, and misery. "His debts rendered him at times so melancholy ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... only one way out, and that way lay through the inner room. She resolved to take it. She took the small sack and approached the door. A look through the keyhole revealed them engrossed in the decisive "hand." With heaving bosom she turned the handle and ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... applied. The office of Superintendent of Finance I suppose is meant as one means of restoring economy and vigor; and nothing will keep up in the minds of the public servants such a constant sense of their duty, as a knowledge of the power to remove them in the hands of a person of vigilant and decisive character. Whether I shall have sufficient courage and perseverance to act up to that character, and whether my small abilities, supported by application and attention, will enable me to render essential service in the execution of this office, is become an ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various
... way as though nothing had happened. The unwonted scene of a man in Mr. Checkynshaw's position putting a clerk out of his office excited a little comment, and the banker had stopped in the long hall to explain to a bank president the occasion of his prompt and decisive action. Leo and the jaunty man passed him as they left the building; but the boy did not know him ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... before the decisive battle (August, 1806,) Kara Georg sent his cavalry round into a wood, with orders to fall on the enemy's flank as soon as the first ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... of the Fathers are, indeed, as strong and decisive in favour of the Bishop's position as the warmest advocate of Confirmation could wish; but this very circumstance was calculated to create a prejudice against the doctrine in the mind of a zealous Protestant, from the contrast in which the unequivocal and explicit declarations of ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... daylight were piercing the heavens, the Pesitistas were rallying for a decisive charge, the hopes of the little band of besieged were at low ebb when from the west there sounded ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... The decisive moment had arrived, and only by the greatest exercise of will power could Jet prevent his hands ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... of public opinion would result in giving a war a more or less national character. By whatever pretext Germany should justify the European conflagration, nothing can prevent the first decisive blows being struck ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... getting in the other lines by winching them up, making bait and fly fast to the winch bar, rowing to shore, sometimes from the middle of a 200 yards' river, and securing adequate foothold ashore. The fish is to be firmly controlled with a bent rod all the while, and when he comes in there is no decisive finish with the cleek, since your kelt must have his freedom unharmed if possible. The dexterity with which the boatmen carry out these operations is marvellous, the result of being masters of their calling ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... easy to set it on fire, as the enemy were to leeward; but although the rustling in the grass betokened the presence of a great number of men, they were invisible. In a few minutes we emerged in a clearing, where corn had been planted; this was a favourable position for a decisive attack upon the natives, who now closed up. Throwing out skirmishers, with orders that they were to cover themselves behind the trunks of trees, the Baris were driven back. One was now shot through the body, and fell; but ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... chair, when the door from the hall is opened and his daughter MAUD comes in; a pretty girl, rather pale, with fine eyes. Though her face has a determined cast her manner at this moment is by no means decisive. She has a letter in her hand, and advances rather as if she were stalking her father, who, after a "Hallo, Maud!" has begun ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... in the summer of 1920, and with the assistance of Mr. Pease, of the observatory staff, interference fringes were observed in the case of certain stars when the mirrors were as much as 18 feet apart. All was thus in readiness for a decisive test as soon as a suitable star ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale
... is abolished altogether, the Committee being of opinion, unanimous and decisive, that the position is only provocative ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various
... Toiras gave information that everything was preparing in the enemy's camp for a fresh assault, the king judged that it would be best to put an end to the affair, and gave the necessary orders for a decisive action. ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... I desire to place at his disposition an instrument the value of which I am confident you will not underestimate. The 'Echo de la Bievre,' a specialist paper, can have a decisive influence on the election ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... the Dutch on their part constantly implored her to join them openly; but she continued to give evasive answers to both parties until the assassination of William of Orange on 10th July, 1584, sent a thrill of horror through England, and determined the queen and her advisers to take a more decisive part in the struggle. In the following June envoys from the States arrived in London, and were received with great honour, and a treaty between the two countries was agreed upon. Three months later the queen published a declaration to her people and to Europe at large, ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... limitations and fallacies, there can be no doubt as to the enormous value of palaeontology in enabling us to work out the historical succession of the sedimentary rocks. It may even be said that in any case where there should appear to be a clear and decisive discordance between the physical and the palaeontological evidence as to the age of a given series of beds, it is the former that is to be distrusted rather than the latter. The records of geological science contain not ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... him better, his influence over her would vanish. Doubtless he would return, and so she watched for him, ready to go down as soon as she saw him approaching. She waited with feverish shudderings, anxiously believing that this first tete-a-tete in her husband's absence would be decisive. Time passed; it was more than two hours since he had gone out with Sauvresy, and he had not ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... cannot overstate the wisdom and benefit of this act of the Government. The malignant cry of the Secession press within the Free States, and the recent action of the Confederate Congress, are decisive as to its efficiency and correctness of aim. Not less so is the silent joy which has greeted it in all generous hearts, and the new hope it has breathed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... consciousness that the decisive moment had arrived. With the air of a practical Petersburg lady she now, keeping Pierre close beside her, entered the room even more boldly than that afternoon. She felt that as she brought with her the person the dying man wished to see, her own ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... decisive war with the United States ended in the humble submission of Mexico, causing her to lose a large portion of her territory, amounting to more than one half its number of square miles. Probably very few of the readers of these pages could answer correctly, if they were asked what was the real cause ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... a Sikh regiment had been lost. Mr. Barton, in taking up the evening paper, lying beside Diana, which contained the news, had made very much the remark foretold by Captain Roughsedge in the afternoon. It was, he thought, a pity the repulse had not been more decisive—so as to show all the world into what a hornet's nest the Government was going—"and a hornet's nest which will cost us half a million to take before ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... tops'ls weren't cut by an English sail-maker, I'm ready to pass for a Schiedam drinking big-breeched Dutchman for the rest of my born days," observed Job Truefitt, in a decisive tone, as standing up on the forecastle deck, and holding on by the mast, he shaded his eyes with his hand, and took a severe scrutiny ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... you may be the future master of this hacienda, by a marriage with the charming daughter of its present owner, who is to be its heiress. Come presently to my apartment. The conversation which I am about to have with Don Augustin must be decisive, and I shall let you know ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... the German Empire as purely a campaign on the Western Front, all other campaigns in other corners of the globe being mere "side shows." I was always a firm and consistent supporter of the "East End" school of strategy. I looked upon the war as a World War and, since the decisive Battle of the Marne in September, 1914, when the German hopes of complete and crushing victory in the West were shattered (which decision was still more finally confirmed at First Ypres), as primarily a south-eastern war. I held ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... self-seeking. He saw the President hounded and badgered by his own party, assaulted and denounced in the bitterest terms by the opposition, and he knew that the remedy could be found only in a fighting, victorious army. A single decisive victory would turn the tide of public opinion, unite the faction-ridden army and ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... for a while, I guess. This battle was even shorter than the other one—and a lot more decisive. Let's turn on the flood-lights and see ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... "I should have thought so too" (said the King), "if you had not written so well."—Johnson observed to me, upon this, that "No man could have paid a handsomer compliment; and it was fit for a King to pay. It was decisive." When asked by another friend, at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, whether he made any reply to this high compliment, he answered, "No, sir. When the King had said it, it was to be so. It was not for me to bandy civilities with my Sovereign." Perhaps ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... return to Springfield the battle of Pea Ridge was fought. The success of the Union troops in this battle was considerable, and while not of sufficient magnitude to affect the general cause materially, it was decisive as to that particular campaign, and resulted in driving all organized Confederate forces out of the State of Missouri. After Pea Ridge was won, certain efforts were made to deprive Curtis of the credit due him for the victory; but, no ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... of Charles' deeds was his decisive defeat of the advancing Mohammedans who were pressing into Gaul from Spain. Before speaking of this a word must be said of the invaders and their religion, for the Saracens, as the followers of Mohammed were commonly called, will ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... grappled with one of the largest of the Genoese vessels, and a desperate conflict went on. Sometimes the Venetians gained a footing on the deck of the Genoese, sometimes they were driven back, and the Genoese in turn poured on board, but no decisive advantage was gained on either side after an hour's fighting. The Genoese crew was numerically much stronger than that of the Pluto, and although Francis, with Matteo and his comrades, headed their men and cheered them on, they could make no impression ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... is women's duty to help them. I think, if women would only not be quite so afraid of being thought unwomanly, they would be a great deal more womanly than they are. To be brave, and single-minded, and discriminating, and judicious, and clear-sighted, and self-reliant, and decisive, that is pure womanly. To be womanish is not to be womanly. To be flabby, and plastic, and weak, and acquiescent, and insipid, is not womanly. And I could wish sometimes that women would not be quite so patient. They often ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... you say, on impulse," he said; "but I am glad I came, for I have your decisive answer now about the little girl. I have been thinking," he continued, slowly, "since you have been speaking, and before, when I first saw her dancing in front of the footlights, when I did not know who she was, that I could give up a horse or two, if necessary, and support this ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... reason could prompt a woman of Mrs. Collins's caliber to return to a man of Collins's type," he said. "She might hesitate a long while before leaving her husband. But once she took the decisive step, nothing short of a desire to save the life of the man she loved could induce her to return. Don't you see the situation? She must have had knowledge that Whitmore was coming back. And, isn't it more than likely that before she consented to return to her husband she ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... the decision of the German element to cast in their lot with the Republicans. Carl Schurz, one of the best men who ever took part in American public life, and a radical of the radicals, exercised a decisive influence and turned the tide in Illinois and Iowa, where a few thousand votes lost would have defeated Lincoln. Though the enthusiasm of the Republicans was not so great as it had been in 1856, the people of the ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... consideration it was thought that a good way to strike a decisive blow would be to send a vessel loaded with shells and gunpowder into the harbor of Tripoli by night, and explode her there. This might result, it was thought, in the destruction of the forts and ships, and possibly part ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... first law that Solon enacted in his new capacity was bold and decisive. No revolution can ever satisfy a people if it does not lessen their burdens. Poverty disposes men to innovation only because innovation promises relief. Solon therefore applied himself resolutely, and at once, to the great source of dissension between the rich and the poor—namely, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... cause, would certainly have been far less dishonorable to the British name. During the retreat, the heroic sachem had earnestly and repeatedly recommended a sudden and determined face-about on their pursuers, and only the night before the decisive battle he had urged a backward movement, that, under screen of the darkness, they might surprise the sleeping enemy in his camp, and overpower him before any combined resistance could be made. But all in vain. His white ally was but a fat poltroon—"a big, fat, ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... full dose of Dr. Pierce's Pleasant Pellets may he taken at bed-time. Avoidance of exposure to cold, and light vegetable diet, are advisable. In the more severe attacks, especially when complicated by laryngeal or bronchial symptoms, the most decisive measures should be employed. The Compound Extract of Smart-weed should be taken freely, together with hot drinks, or a hot general bath. The patient should be warmly covered in bed to encourage a continued perspiration, to equalize the ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... the past year, though occupied only with State officers, have not failed to elicit in the political discussions which attended them all over the country new and decisive evidence of the deep interest which the great body of citizens take in the progress of the country toward a more general and complete establishment, at whatever cost, of universal security and freedom in the exercise of the elective franchise. While ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Rutherford B. Hayes • Rutherford B. Hayes
... first week of the involuntary cruise of the Adamant that the Syndicate finished its preparations for what it hoped would be the decisive movement of its campaign. To do this a repeller and six crabs, all with extraordinary powers, had been fitted out with great care, and also with great rapidity, for the British Government was working night and day to get its fleet of ironclads in readiness for a descent upon ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... spirit of conciliation he might win back the affections of his people, he was extremely reluctant to take any measures by which he should be arrayed in hostility against them. Maria, on the contrary, knew that decisive action alone could be of any avail. One night, about ten o'clock, the king and queen were sitting in their private apartment of the Tuileries, endeavoring to beguile the melancholy hours by a game of cards. The sister of the king, Madame Elizabeth, with a very pensive countenance, was kneeling ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... could, be brought home to the baronet, to take such public or rather legal proceedings as they might be advised to by competent professional advice. Our readers may already guess, however, that the stranger was influenced by motives sufficiently strong and decisive to prevent him, above all men, from appearing, publicly or at all, in any proceedings that might ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... on gray paper which bore her crest, differed from this hurriedly written scrawl on a heavier paper which he had no means of identifying. Only upon closer inspection did he discover a hesitation in the lower curves and upward strokes of the letters which were not characteristic of the decisive Marishka. ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... the Swedish government had no duty, nor even the right to withdraw without protest. Facts are of more importance than mere forms. The evasive talk of the "spirit" of constitutional law, and the administrative anomalies could not be decisive. Many events both in public annals and administrative legislature are very illogical, and very great anomalies. The main fact which the Swedish government had to hold in view, was this, that the responsibility of the Swedish ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... shock of deadly-hostile creeds, Where the world's best hope and stay By battle's flashes gropes a desperate way, And every turf the fierce foot clings to bleeds. Peace hath her not ignoble wreath, Ere yet the sharp, decisive word Light the black lips of cannon, and the sword Dreams in its easeful sheath; But some day the live coal behind the thought, Whether from Baal's stone obscene, Or from the shrine serene Of God's pure altar brought, Bursts up in ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... grand spacious bunker in front of the tee to the last hole on the golf links. It was a beautiful bunker, consisting of a great slope of loose, steep sand against the face of the hill, and solidly shored up with timber. The Navy had been in better form to-day, and after a decisive victory over the Army in the morning and an indemnity of half-a-crown, its match in the afternoon, with just the last hole to play, was all square. So Captain Puffin, having the honour, hit a low, nervous drive that tapped loudly at the timbered wall of the bunker, and cuddled down ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... passionately studied even its most trifling details, and in the depths of his heart retained a feeling of tender affection and infinite pity for Bernadette. He had just reflected, too, that on the very next day he would be able to begin that decisive inquiry which he had formerly dreamt of making at Lourdes. In fact, this was one of the reasons which had induced him to accompany Marie on her journey. And he was now conscious of an awakening of all his curiosity respecting ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... united opposition of enemies. In the One Hundred and Tenth Psalm this Heir is sharing rule at God's right hand while waiting the subduing of all enemies. He is to be divine, a king, and more, a priest-king. Surrounded by a nation of volunteers full of youthful vigor He will gain a decisive victory over the head of the allied enemies, and yet be Himself undisturbed in the continual freshness of His vigor. And all this rests upon the ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... said Norah at last, almost driven to bay by her terror lest her mistress should return at any moment, and find him there—unable to consider what was best to be done or said-rushing at something decisive, because she could not endure her present state: "Mr. Frank! we never heard a line from you, and the shipowners said you had gone down, you and every one else. We thought you were dead, if ever man was, and poor Miss Alice and her little ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... travelled by easy stages across Germany, where the campaign of Protestantism had begun, they knew that the decisive battle was yet to be fought. Europe was silent. The tumult of Charles V.'s reign was over, and that great monarch marched and countermarched no more from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. Charles had been victorious so long as he fought kings with words of steel. But the ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... bitterest opponents to deny the brilliance of the series of victories which he has won in the law courts. His acquittal in the blasphemy prosecution of Saturday was but the latest of a number of encounters in which he has succeeded in turning the tables upon his opponents in the most decisive fashion. The policy of baiting Mr. Bradlaugh which has been persisted in so long, savours so strongly of a petty and malignant species of persecution that it is well that those who indulge in it should be made to smart for their pains. The wise and weighty words used by the Lord ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... But Lysia was perfectly self-possessed, . . in fact she appeared to accept the threat of a storm as an imposing, and by no means undesirable, adjunct to the mysteries of the Sacrificial Rite, for riveting her basilisk eyes on Niphrata, she said in firm, clear, decisive accents: ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... ever-ready and imperial Douglass," as Colonel Higginson describes him, spoke in behalf of his race. The convention, however, divided upon the question of negro suffrage, and adjourned without decisive action. But under President Grant's administration the Fourteenth Amendment was passed, and by the solemn sanction of the Constitution the ballot was conferred upon the black men upon the same terms as those upon which it was enjoyed ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... final suppression of the Scottish Rebellion of 1715, by the decisive Battle of Preston, a gentleman who had taken a very active share in it escaped to the West Highlands to the residence of a female relative, who afforded him an asylum. As in consequence of the strict search which was made after the ringleaders, it was soon judged unsafe for him ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... invidious allusion is to the disposition, not infrequent at the North, but by no means general, to set a decisive limit to further legislation in favour of the cherished idiosyncrasy of the other half of the country. Hawthorne takes the license of a sympathetic biographer in speaking of his hero's having incurred obloquy by his conservative ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... approaching, we too advanced, sending on our cavalry ahead. After a long and obstinate engagement, our lines were broken, and we began to give ground; and finally our whole army was cut clean in two. One half had not suffered a decisive defeat; with these it was rather a retreat than a flight, nor did the Alanians venture to follow up their advantage for any distance. But the other and smaller division was completely surrounded by the ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... of MSS. or by the Higher Critics in recovering the J. narrative of Joseph or the E. narrative of Lot. But I think I have shown that the incidents selected by me are those which are necessitated by the artistic logic of the Shoe Marriage Test which forms the decisive incident in the Cinder-Maid formula. Where the majority of the incidents contained in the reconstruction occurred in the same order in far distant countries it is practically impossible to imagine that the resemblance is due to chance. Nor is it pertinent to point out that the separate ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... white over his right eyelid, proceeded at a rapid pace in the direction of the Original Pig stables; it is currently reported that this gentleman has arrived here for the purpose of attending the association, and, from what I have heard, I consider it extremely probable, although nothing decisive is yet known regarding him. You may conceive the anxiety with which we are all looking forward to the arrival of the four o'clock coach ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Paris, on September 13, 1820, aged eighty-five years. He left a son, the celebrated general who made the decisive charge at Marengo, and distinguished himself in Spain and at Waterloo, and who died on June 2, 1835; and a daughter, married ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... people in Europe, who have had no experience of the presence among them of a semi-civilized race, destitute of the ideas and habits which lie at the basis of free government, to condemn the action of these Colonies in seeking to preserve a decisive electoral majority for the whites. But any one who has studied the question on the spot, and especially any one who has seen the evils which in America have followed the grant of the suffrage to persons unfit for it, will form a more charitable ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... that "We are Supreme Governor of the Church of England," although the ostensible reason was because of the "curious and unhappy differences" which seemed, in His Majesty's opinion, to show the wisdom of decisive adjudication with respect to those "fond things vainly invented," for which some of his subjects had so ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... moment, a self-reliant, decisive moment. Her eyes sparkled, she caught up the ugly bonnet, she could hardly hurry fast enough to find The Woman's Exchange and Employment Agency. She even remembered the ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... kept so close to him, that, if he tried, he was as likely to hit one as the other. He walked back and forth, on the alert for such a chance, and fortunately had not long to wait. One of the furious birds, circled off a few feet, as if to gather impetus for a decisive charge, when, taking a ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... till I get a wire—," he said. "Then I'll come back and we'll reverse again." He slipped on the coat and moved back towards the table. Now that the decisive moment had come, ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... not be said characteristically to distinguish the pecuniarily successful upper-class man from the rank and file of the industrial classes. The training and the selection to which the latter are exposed in modern industrial life give a similarly decisive weight to this trait. Tenacity of purpose may rather be said to distinguish both these classes from two others; the shiftless ne'er do-well and the lower-class delinquent. In point of natural endowment the pecuniary ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... of atrocious combinations. Chance! The cunning demon! He calls himself Chance so as to better deceive us. With an infernal skilfulness he feigns not to watch us in the decisive moments of our lives, and at the same time leads us like blind fools into the very path he has marked ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... Mr. Clark went round to the widow's one evening with the air of a man who has made up his mind to decisive action. He entered the room with a bounce and, hardly deigning to notice the greeting of Mr. Tucker, planted himself in a chair and surveyed him grimly. "I thought I should ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... trains loaded with ties and steel began to move and the construction gangs followed close on the heels of the graders. And when the last spike in the track to the scene of the decisive battle was driven, the track-men with their sledges stepped aside to clear the way for the panting engines that drew the first train loaded with piling ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... energy, and defeated his enemies on all sides. Austria was the leader of the Catholic party in Europe, which was striving to restore the papal supremacy. Gustavus Adolphus held a similar relation to the Protestant party. He was engaged in the Thirty Years' War, and won many decisive victories. He captured Munich, and overran Bavaria, but was finally killed in the battle of Luetzen, in 1632. By his prowess and skill he raised Sweden to the rank of one of the first ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... and decisive conversation between Mr. Gifford and Mr. Turner about the details of their contract, and 'Ennery was presently called in to append to it his painfully precise signature in vertical writing, Miss Stevens adding hers in a pretty round hand. Then ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... resumed his pen in his "old Cossack manner."[357] Similarly he writes of John Home's tragedy, Douglas, that the finest scene was, "we learn with pleasure but without surprise," unchanged from the first draft;[358] and elsewhere he speaks of the greater chance for popularity of the "bold, decisive, but light-touched strain of poetry or narrative in literary composition," over ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... modernised version of the real Caedmon's poem, by a reviser in the ninth century. At any rate, the latter work may be treated here under the name of Caedmon, by which it is universally known. It consists of a long Scriptural paraphrase, written in the alliterative metre, short, sharp, and decisive, but not without a wild and passionate beauty of its own. In tone it differs wonderfully little from Beowulf, being most at home in the war of heaven and Satan, and in the titanic descriptions of the devils and their deeds. The conduct of the poem is singularly ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... restricted to the character of individuals or the span of human lives. The elements which compose Hinduism had been vigorous long before the eighth century and Buddhism, though decadent, continued to exist in India later. But probably the careers of these two men are the best record of the decisive turn of the tide. It is often said that they revived Hinduism, but however much they insisted on the authority of ancient tradition, the real result of their labours was not to re-establish the order of things which prevailed before the rise of Buddhism, but to give authority ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... of deep-sea sounding seems to be DECISIVE of the question as to the practicability of a submarine telegraph between the two continents in so far as the bottom of the deep sea is concerned. From Newfoundland to Ireland the distance between the nearest points is about 1600 miles, and the bottom of the sea between the two ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... haste, and hurried away to his daily-increasing business. But Theodore had seemed lost in thought, and for some little time had occupied himself with trying to balance his spoon on the edge of his cup, instead of eating his breakfast. At last he let the spoon pitch into the cup with a decisive click, and asked the aforesaid question. Grandma McPherson, looking a little older, it is true, than on the blessed day in which "Tode Mall" first sought her out, but still having the look of a wonderfully ...
— Three People • Pansy
... the prompt and decisive rejoinder. "No soldier of this command shall leave the stockade until the hour for our final departure. The fellow had a chance to come in here with the others before the gates were closed, but was obstinate as a mule, and must now take the consequences. But you need not worry ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... of a decisive battle (forgotten), frequently remembered by a decisive officer, major ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... or as it is done with slack and nerveless hand or with vim and vigor, will test the very character of our churches; will touch the conscience and well-being of the nation; and will, without a doubt, have vital and decisive connection with the future of that most populous empire on ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888 • Various
... negatively. A lady on my left told me that the banker was Count Alfani. Half an hour later, Madame Querini went seven and lost, she increased her stake of ten sequins; it was the last deal of the game, and therefore the decisive one. I rose from my chair, and fixed my eyes on the banker's hands. But in spite of that, he cheated before me, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Of the decisive period of Wordsworth's life, when he was living with his sister Dorothy and with Coleridge at Alfoxden, we have already spoken. The importance of this decision to give himself to poetry is evident ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... and different scene in August, 1821—a scene worthy of a poet or painter—the Great Treaty, in which the Indian chiefs gave up most of their empire east of the Mississippi. There came to this decisive convocation the plumes of the Ottawas, Chippewas, and Pottawattamies. General Cass was there, and the old Indian agents. The chiefs brought with them their great warriors, their wives and children. There the prairie Indians made their last stand but ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... apace, and was being watched with bated breath by the Beaconsfield Town Guard. The numbers of the enemy ensconced at Alexandersfontein had diminished so materially that Major Rodger with a picked force of one hundred men ventured to try conclusions with the residue. A sharp, decisive fight ensued; the few Boers left to defend the place were so startled that they soon fled, leaving bag and baggage behind them. A few on the Boer side were killed (or wounded) and half a dozen were taken prisoners. Of the Major's men, two were injured. Despatches found in the pocket of a prisoner ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... interested in basket weaving. They shook their heads vehemently. Then at Bet's proposal that they sell her some that were already made, the ones they carried along, their heads shook more than ever and their grunts and frowns were decisive. Kit translated it to the girls as a flat refusal. Flat refusals always spurred Bet on ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... however, than that of ambassadors, however numerous they might be, and from whatever country they came; and so, setting everything aside, the king made a sign of interrogation to Saint-Aignan, which the latter answered by a most decisive negative. The king almost entirely lost his courage; but as the queens, the members of the nobility who were present, and the ambassadors, had their eyes fixed upon him, he overcame his emotion by a violent effort, and invited the latter to speak. Whereupon one of the Spanish deputies ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... with breakfast before she went in to an interview, which we all felt to be important and decisive. The time seemed endless to us, and ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of which there were many among the plants, and proceed. Peter had more of the patience of an Indian, and deemed the hour too early. But le Bourdon was not yet entirely free from distrust of his companion, and telling Gershom to follow, he began paddling down one of the passages mentioned. This decisive step compelled the rest to follow, or to separate from their companions. They chose to ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... trenches and wire entanglements. Here also were concentrated the troops withdrawn from other parts of the line, and four armored trains with quick-firing guns from the depot at Rovno. General Ivanoff had no intention of making any decisive stand against the "phalanx"; neither did he think of risking his armies in a battle for Lemberg. That town was certainly of great military and political importance—worth a dozen Przemysls—and worth fighting for. But for that he would need artillery in enormous quantity. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... He did not know whether or not he wanted to go on. "I seem to have lost my grip on things. I used to be rather decisive. But we'll try it one more day, ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... of experiences introduced into the Pilgrim's Progress. Many have died remarkably happy in the Lord, who, till very near their last moments have been in bondage through the fear of death. We may be sure of this, that wherever the Lord has begun a work, He will carry it on to the great decisive day. The proof of this is 'he would not go back!' 'If ye continue in My Word, then are ye ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and was certainly the best writer of heroic rhyme in our language, yet the plays which have, from the time of their first appearance, been considered as his best, are in blank verse. No experiment can be more decisive. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... had never been more definite; but poor Lily, for all the hard glaze of her exterior, was inwardly as malleable as wax. Her faculty for adapting herself, for entering into other people's feelings, if it served her now and then in small contingencies, hampered her in the decisive moments of life. She was like a water-plant in the flux of the tides, and today the whole current of her mood was carrying her toward Lawrence Selden. Why had he come? Was it to see herself or Bertha Dorset? It was the last question which, at that moment, should have engaged ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... neighbouring states, and her name erased from the map. But the brave little state had earned a better fate than that of Poland. When we have come to trace out the results of her action, we shall see that just as it was Massachusetts that took the decisive step in bringing on the Revolutionary War when she threw the tea into Boston harbour, so it was Maryland that, by leading the way toward the creation of a national domain, laid the corner-stone of ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... side of the field, the lighter eleven braced for a last stand. As the "Jeffersons'" youthful quarter attempted to pass the ball, Silvey broke through and knocked the pigskin from his hands towards John, who grabbed it and ran to the other end of the field for the one and decisive ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... elder brother, whom you are to see at supper, if you will do us the favour of your company, was naturally impetuous, decisive, and overbearing. He entered into life with those ardent expectations by which young men are commonly deluded: in his friendships, warm to excess; and equally violent in his dislikes. He was on the brink of marriage with a young lady, when one of those friends, for whose honour he would ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... I had come across so oddly only three days before, was now once again plainly excited and smelled quarry. I remembered, then, that there was nothing very strange in the decisive actions of all my followers; they were being led by this man and told exactly what to do. He had, after all, been outside all the time, and knew what had been going on and where now to strike hard! Quickly, ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... Douay, while the German artillery was thus preparing the way for the decisive movement that should make them masters of the Calvary, resolved to make one last desperate attempt to regain possession of the hill. He dispatched his orders, and throwing himself in person among ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... truce and negotiations for peace, initiated in the summer of 1452, were broken off because the conditions were unbearable to the Ghenters. Another year of warfare followed before the decisive battle of Gaveren, in July, 1453, forced them sadly to succumb. There was no other course open to them. Not only were they defeated but their numbers were decimated.[17] With full allowance for exaggeration, it is certain that the loss was very heavy. Terms scornfully rejected at an earlier ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... 1897 was the decisive period and final turning-point in Oscar Wilde's career. So long as the sunny weather lasted and friends came to visit him from time to time Oscar was content to live in the Chalet Bourgeat; but when the days began to ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... his expiring friend, the brother his brother, or to drag them in that state to Elbing. The insurrection was only alarming as a symptom; it was put down; but the intelligence transmitted by Macdonald was decisive. ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... of two Campaigns, in the Italian, which was the decisive part of it: a continual Being Beaten, as the reader sees; a Being Stript, till one was nearly ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... them. In the end the cops supervised and assisted at the embittered, rebellious emigration of a race. The Huks took off for the far side of the galaxy. They'd neither been conquered nor exterminated. But Sergeant Madden thought of the decisive fracas as a riot rather ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... known for his accurate artillery and rifle fire, but the bayonet is his favorite arm in battle. Through all our wars it has proved a deciding, if not indeed the decisive, factor in the campaign. Once it has been stained in service he fondles it as, next to his pipe, his best friend. And it is the same with the Frenchman. He calls his bayonet his "little Rosalie," and lays its ruddy edges against his ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... crony. When it had been with tall, cold, stately Dr. Pell, Toole was ceremonious and deliberate, and oppressively polite. On the other hand, when he had been shut up with brusque, half-savage, energetic Doctor Rogerson, Tom was laconic, decisive, and insupportably ill-bred, till, as we have said, the mirage melted away, and he gradually acquiesced in his identity. Then, little by little, the irrepressible gossip, jocularity, and ballad minstrelsy were ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... confederates remained silent for some time. The decisive moment had arrived. As yet they were not compromised; but if they intended to carry out their plans, they must no longer remain inactive; and both of these men had sufficient experience to know that they must look at the position boldly, and make up their minds at once. The pleasant smile upon ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... possibility of their execution falling into the hands of hard, dull, and cruel administrators. But in the case of a Utopia one assumes the best possible government, a government as merciful and deliberate as it is powerful and decisive. You must not too hastily imagine these things being done—as they would be done on earth at present—by a number of zealous half-educated people in a state of panic at a quite imaginary "Rapid Multiplication of ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... at General LeRoy. The general had that quizzical expression on his face, the look that meant he was about to do something decisive. ...
— The Next Logical Step • Benjamin William Bova
... BATTLE OF MARATHON.—The battle of Marathon is reckoned as one of the "decisive battles of the world." It marks an epoch, not only in the life of Greece, but in that of Europe. Hellenic civilization was spared to mature its fruit, not for itself alone, but for the world. The battle decided that no longer the ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... criticism, however, the book was universally popular. It was decidedly the best historical romance then written by an American; not without faults, indeed, but with a fair plot, clearly and strongly drawn characters, and exhibiting great boldness and originality of conception. Its success was perhaps decisive of Mr. Cooper's career, and it gave an extraordinary impulse to literature in the country. More than any thing that had before occurred, it roused the people from their feeling of intellectual dependence. The popularity of The Spy has been so universal, that there is scarcely a written ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... advised as to the necessity of wearing a white vest to a party: "But, Mr. Daniel, suppose a man hasn't got a white vest and is too poor these war times to buy one?" "—— it, sir! let him stay at home," was the decisive answer. ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... to the misery of that dark hour that Mat could say nothing, and that he had to let that true and deeply-loved soul pass out of life with its greatest fear unsatisfied, and its brightest hope unassured. For Mat could not utter a decisive word. ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... me very much that these people who spoke of her—your uncle and the others—knew what I didn't know!" cried Daphne, passionately. She stared at Roger, strangely conscious that something epoch-making and decisive had happened. Roger had had a secret from her all these years—that was what had happened; and now she had discovered it. That he could have a secret from her, however, was the real discovery. She ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... may be the material accidents that surround any given concrete grievance that comes up for appraisal and redress, in bringing the case into the arena for trial by combat it is the spiritual value of the offense that is played up and made the decisive ground of action, particularly in so far as appeal is made to the sensibilities of the common man, who will have to bear the cost of the adventure. And in such a case it will commonly happen that the common man is unable, without advice, to see that any given hostile act embodies a sacrilegious ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... room, so that the danger of collisions and other accidents was lessened. The young creatures danced around in wild play, and those of the cows who had not settled the question of mastery fought now a battle that was to be decisive for the whole summer. Soon, however, everything became quiet again, and in a couple of hours all of the animals, even the worst combatants, were grazing placidly ...
— Lisbeth Longfrock • Hans Aanrud
... o'clock in the morning is no time for a man to try to be single-minded and decisive—I wavered. I had intended to tear the thing in pieces without a glance, and fling it into the wastepaper-basket. But I took the glance and ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... to restrain himself. He was disturbed by vague doubts, and felt the importance of a decisive word. Presently Miss Conklin spoke, in a lower voice than usual, but with an accent of coquettish triumph in ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... the first business of the Police was to thus protect the Indians who were the wards of the nation, and so it was that he had struck a decisive blow at the drink traffic, which was bidding fair to exterminate these children of the plains. Once that was done the Colonel set himself to get into touch with the various native tribes, which from the earliest days of the explorers and fur-traders had been looked upon as the most ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... out the papers on the beam, and, while he obligingly kept her from falling, signed seven documents in a full, decisive hand: "Louise ...
— The Day of the Dog • George Barr McCutcheon
... recommends a lubricant composed of camphor dissolved in turpentine for general purposes. With the object of obtaining some decisive information as to the use of this lubricant, and to settle other points, I made the following experiments. Using an old three-cornered French file, I chipped off the point and adjusted the handle carefully. I also ground out the file marks near the point, without hardening the file ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... compromise which Fitzsimmons had just proposed; in fact, the only opposition to the change of phrasing now came from a few extremists who still clamored for the omission of the entire clause. The decisive effect of Madison's intervention was a natural consequence of the leadership he had held in the movement for the new Constitution and of his standing as the representative of the new Administration, of his possessing Washington's confidence and acting as his adviser. ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... in classifying the facts, therefore, progressively change as the growth of culture proceeds; for the end for which the facts of life are apprehended changes, and the point of view consequently changes also. So that what are recognised as the salient and decisive features of a class of activities or of a social class at one stage of culture will not retain the same relative importance for the purposes of classification at ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... worship with which it competed for the popular favour, it contained the necessary elements of mystery-cult, of ethical rule, of social brotherhood, and of personal devotion. But besides many genuine points of superiority, it had a decisive advantage over the religions of Isis and Mithra in the exclusiveness and intolerance which it derived from the Jewish tradition. When the failure of the last persecution forced the Empire to make a concordat with the Church, ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... great battle between Timoujin and the sovereign then occupying the Mongol throne was fought a short distance from Urga. The victory was decisive for the former, who thus became Genghis Khan and commenced that career of conquest ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... June 5.—According to information given out by the Austro-Hungarian military authorities to representatives of the press, heavy fighting is now in progress along virtually the entire Galician front, and the general situation is very favorable to the Austro-Germans. A decisive conclusion to the entire Russian campaign in ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... moment of action is that in which the Saviour announces the treachery of one of his disciples "Dico vobis quia unus vestrum me traditurus est." Matth. xxvi. 21., Joan. xiii. 21., Vulgate edit.; and most of the admirers of this great work have not failed to find in it decisive proofs of the intention of the painter to represent that exact point ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 187, May 28, 1853 • Various
... lay still, however, and did not speak a word; but the next day she went to Antigone, the wife of Pyrrhus, and communicated to her all that she had heard. Pyrrhus now considered the evidence that Neoptolemus was plotting his destruction as complete, and he determined to take decisive measures to prevent it. He accordingly invited Neoptolemus to a banquet. Neoptolemus, suspecting nothing, came, and Pyrrhus slew him at the table. Henceforward Pyrrhus ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... not yet been collected in sufficient number to establish much more than the fact of their presence in the animal creation at that time. I do not offer any opinion respecting the fossil human bones so much discussed recently, because the evidence is at present too scanty to admit of any decisive judgment concerning them. It becomes, however, daily more probable that facts will force us sooner or later to admit that the creation of man lies far beyond any period yet assigned to it, and that a succession ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... had been up most of the night, she showed no signs of fatigue. In spite of her slenderness, the girl was possessed of a fine animal vigor. There was vitality in her crisp tread. She was a decisive young woman who got ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... this time rescued the people from oppression was Wu-wang, the martial king. He found, it is said, the people "hanging with their heads downward" and set them on their feet. On the eve of the decisive battle he harangued his troops, appealing to the Deity as the arbiter, and expressing confidence in the result. "The tyrant," he said, "has ten myriads of soldiers, and I have but one myriad. ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... (the former from 1031 to 1060, and the latter from 1060 to 1108) no important and well-prosecuted design distinguished their government. Their public life was passed at one time in petty warfare, without decisive results, against such and such vassals; at another in acts of capricious intervention in the quarrels of their vassals amongst themselves. Their home-life was neither less irregular nor conducted with more wisdom and regard for the public interest. King Robert ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... precisely as if it were a company or a regiment. Sergeant Meyer was on the right, veteran Kelly on the left, the two recruits in the centre, the pieces at a shoulder, the bayonets fixed. As Thurstane rode up to this diminutive line of battle, Meyer was shouting forth his sharp and decisive orders. They were just the right orders; excited as the young officer was, he comprehended that there was nothing to change; moreover, he had already learned how men are disconcerted in battle by a multiplicity of directions. ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... entire course at the bar, it is hard to say which of the two won the most verdicts. Perhaps, though both of these able men wielded at times an almost omnipotent sway over juries and over the bench; yet it may be said that the style of Tazewell was more decisive with the court, and that of Taylor with the jury. Each seemed necessary to the greatness of the other; and it is probable that, if Tazewell had not been constantly pressed throughout his career by such a man as Taylor, he would never have made those wonderful displays before a jury and in ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... Brazilians frowned. Every man of them itched to close with the enemy in one final decisive battle. Yet— ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... around her. Tears and bitter pangs of grief had the news of that child's birth wrung from Marian, bringing back all the dreadful past, and making her hear again as if it were but yesterday, the cold, decisive words: ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... was careful to explain, depend for the most part upon the right ascensions of Bessel's and Lalande's zones, and are hence subject to large errors. Their study must be regarded as suggestive rather than decisive. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... Tennessee River and was an important strategical point. The two armies met on Chickamauga Creek, twelve miles south of Chattanooga. All through the first day's battle, September 19th, there was hot fighting—charges and countercharges—but no decisive advantage fell to either side. During the night Bragg was reenforced by Longstreet's corps from Virginia, and he opened the next day's fight with an assault upon the Union left. Brigades were moved from the centre to support the left. Through the gap thus made ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... collect them ever since, so that the accumulation is now rather formidable; and, if it is to be used at all, it had better be used at once. Therefore, passing over for the present an intervening period of less decisive importance, I propose to take, as the next subject of this series, "Montcalm and the ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... glance at the three coins, as they are set side by side, will now show you the main differences in the three great Greek styles. The archaic coin is sharp and hard; every line decisive and numbered, set unhesitatingly in its place; nothing is wrong, though everything incomplete, and, to us who have seen finer art, ugly. The central coin is as decisive and clear in arrangement of masses, ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... But the decisive moment had come and gone now, and without a leader to command them Gordon's men seemed loath to adopt a more bloody reprisal. They gave way, therefore, in a half-hearted hesitation that spelled ruin to their ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... my doing this depends, alas, on the caprice of a woman. I would lay my single spear in the rest against ten of the best lances in Christendom, rather than argue with a wilful wench who knows not what is for her own good. What answer, coz, am I to return to the Soldan? It must be decisive." ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... binding all races together into one great, harmonious family. His brilliant conquests are a familiar chapter in the world's history. At Issus, at the northeastern end of the Mediterranean, he won, in 333 B.C., the decisive battle which left him in possession of the western part of the huge Persian Empire. By 332 he was master of Palestine. Tyre, the commercial mistress of the eastern Mediterranean, and Gaza, the key to Egypt, alone offered ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... look at Mary Gowd, went out to confer with the porter about the motor. Papa Gregg, hand in pockets, cigar tilted, eyes narrowed, stood irresolutely in the centre of the great, gaudy foyer. Then, with a decisive little hunch of his shoulders, he came back to where ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... vowing he would have nothing to do either with his sister or the two "nunnery children" which she wanted to impose on him. In spite of her Royal pension Lady Jean only succeeded in getting deeper and deeper involved in debt, until it became clear that some decisive step must be taken to repair her fortunes. Then it was that, at last, she screwed up her courage to pay the dreaded visit to her brother, in the hope that the sight of her children and the pathos of her personal pleading might ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... actors in the political struggles disappear from the scene, the Abbe Sieyes emerged as a veteran associated with the first free impulses of the nation. In 1789, his pamphlet, "What is the Third Estate?" had arrested the attention of all serious minds. He had several times, and in decisive circumstances, played an important part in the Constituent Assembly. Since his vote of the 20th January, and until the 9th Thermidor, he remained in voluntary obscurity; mingling since then in all great theoretical ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... away beneath the same roof but yesterday in the safe keeping of honest Berbel. Greif was safe, thought Rex, as he laid his hand upon the drawer again, to take the other thing from its place. He, Rex, would leave no tell-tale letters behind. It should be sharp, short, complete and decisive. There would be some regrets for the lonely man who was gone, and they would never dream how he had purchased their security with his life. He laid the weapon upon ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... "If I be condemned to evil acts," he said, "there is still one door of freedom open—I can cease from action. If my life be an ill thing, I can lay it down. Though I be, as you say truly, at the beck of every small temptation, I can yet, by one decisive gesture, place myself beyond the reach of all. My love of good is damned to barrenness; it may, and let it be! But I have still my hatred of evil; and from that, to your galling disappointment, you shall see that I can draw ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... I. "Let us go and find the Princess. Hers must be the decisive word;" and with my programme in one hand and my diamonds in the other I repaired to the Duchess's room, Bederhof ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... his calm, determined eye full upon her, and said, in a decisive manner: "You shall not strike, or scald, or skin her, as you call it, if she comes back again. Remember!" and he brought his hand down upon the table. "I have searched an hour for her now, and she is not to be found on the premises. Do YOU know where she ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... hastily picked up the Times. "She is due here the day after to-morrow," he said deliberately. "Frank is as decisive as he is rash. Well, it's ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... And when the feelings are aroused, when the excitement is up, the hearers are urged to come forward, to go to the inquiry-room, to stand up, or do something to show that they are ready to take the decisive step. ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... over the old castle, and gazing on Glastonbury's tower, and wondering when she should see him, and talking to her Ferdinand about every member of his family, that Captain Armine, unable to withstand the irresistible current, postponed from day to day his decisive visit to Bath, and, confident in the future, would not permit his soul to be the least daunted by any possible conjuncture of ill fortune. A week, a whole happy week glided away, and spent almost entirely at Armine. Their presence there was scarcely ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... Ivan's decisive action might have been more difficult had he known that, though his romance was over, there was yet to be a postscript to society from Nice—an epilogue, as it were, to the finished romance that had so inconsiderately turned ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... demon. His castle was fully manned; the drawbridge was never left lowered; the turrets were never left unguarded; and a wide and deep ditch surrounded the whole of his estates, which had been given him by Affonso Henriques, after the complete overthrow of the Saracens at Ourique, in which famous and decisive battle the baron had wrought wondrous ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... and thought how fast he walked and how Tira, as well as Tira's troubles, drew him. If Tira knew the power of her own beauty, how terribly decisive a moment this would be in the great dark kitchen Nan had just left! And yet if Tira, having looked in her mirror and the mirror of life, were cruelly sophisticated enough to play that part, the man would be given odds to resist her. He ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... himself fully able to demolish any and all objections that Viola could bring. He went home and spent the day perusing his text-book on logic. He would conjure up imaginary objections and would proceed to demolish them in short order. He slept somewhat that night, anticipating a decisive ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... dirty, but that did not prevent the analyst from finding a number of blood stains and hairs, and giving valuable and decisive evidence at ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... not die with it." He endeavoured to get Madame de Chatillon, the old mistress of the Duc de Nemours, reinstated in favour, but in this he did not succeed. The Duc de Nemours was soon after killed in a duel. The war went on, and after several indecisive skirmishes, the decisive battle was fought at Paris, in the Faubourg St. Antoine, where the Parisians first learnt the use or the abuse of their favourite defence, the barricade. In this battle, Rochefoucauld behaved with great bravery. He was wounded in the head, a wound which for a time deprived him of his sight. ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... testimony to the Ignatian Epistles being so strong, only the most decisive marks of spuriousness in the Epistles themselves, as, for instance, proved anachronism, would justify us in suspecting them as interpolated, or rejecting them as spurious.—But so far is this from being the case, that one after another ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... course, he must do as Marius did when sent against the Cimbrians, a very courageous people who were laying Italy waste, and by their fierceness and numbers, and from the fact of their having already routed a Roman army, spreading terror wherever they came. For before fighting a decisive battle, Marius judged it necessary to do something to lessen the dread in which these enemies were held by his army; and being a prudent commander, he, on several occasions, posted his men at points where the Cimbrians ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... concealed from view by the thick underwood of the forest. The object of the expedition having been attained, Standish did not pursue the fugitives, but returned in triumph to the settlement, well satisfied that he had given the Indians a salutary impression of the decisive conduct, and the powerful measures, that would ever be adopted by the white men, when their honor was insulted in ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... the first shock of arms between Bois Guilbert and his youthful opponent, which Scott tells us was the most spirited encounter of the day. Both the knights' lances were fairly broken, and they parted, with no decisive ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... upon the daring, dashing, and discriminating ingenuity of D—; upon the fact that the document must always have been at hand, if he intended to use it to good purpose; and upon the decisive evidence, obtained by the Prefect, that it was not hidden within the limits of that dignitary's ordinary search—the more satisfied I became that, to conceal this letter, the Minister had resorted to the comprehensive and sagacious expedient ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... days of Queen Anne, was full of stairs and passages, and as Spargo had forgotten to get the exact number of the set of chambers he wanted, he was obliged to wander about in what was a deserted building. So wandering, he suddenly heard steps, firm, decisive steps coming up a staircase which he himself had just climbed. He looked over the banisters down into the hollow beneath. And there, marching up resolutely, was the figure of a tall, veiled woman, and Spargo suddenly realized, with a sharp quickening of his pulses, that for the second ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... had since kept house for him. As a housekeeper she was an efficient substitute, as a mother to the boys she was a complete failure. How she ever came to be Colonel Wyatt's sister was a puzzle to all their acquaintances. The Colonel was quick and alert, sharp and decisive in speech, strong in his opinions, peremptory in his manner, kindly at heart, but irascible in temper. Mrs. Troutbeck was gentle and almost timid in manner; report said that she had had a hard time of it in her married life, and that Troutbeck had frightened out of her any vestige ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... articles. That notwithstanding the unalterable determination of the United States to support their independence, notwithstanding the virtue and firmness of the citizens in general, the immense pecuniary resources of Great Britain, and her constant naval superiority were advantages too decisive to be counterbalanced by any interior exertions on the part of the United States. That these must infallibly impose a term to the efforts of a nation, whose extended maritime and inland frontier rendered her obnoxious to sudden descents and ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... expeditiously was the first to carry the news to the successor and hail him King. The next step was, to ask who his Majesty would please should draw his speech to the Council. "Sir Spencer Compton," replied the new monarch. The answer was decisive, and implied Sir Robert's dismission. Sir Spencer Compton was Speaker of the House of Commons, and treasurer, I think, at that time, to his Royal Highness, who by that first command, implied his intention ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... felt specially downcast. The musical critic, with whom he had gone to the concert, had been a fellow student with him at the Royal College. Being young the critic was very critical, very sure of himself, very decisive in his worship of the new idols and in his scathing contempt for the old. He spoke of Mendelssohn as if the composer of Elijah had earned undying shame, of Gounod as if he ought to have been hanged for creating his Faust. His glorification of certain modern impressionists in music ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... repented having spoken. If Bonnebault and Marie Tonsard had overheard the conversation, nothing but harm could come of it. This event, insignificant as it seems, was destined, in the irritated state of feeling then existing between Les Aigues and the peasantry, to have a decisive influence on the fate of all,—just as victory or defeat in battle sometimes depends upon a brook which shepherds jump while cannon are ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... Germans that the government withdrew entirely from the country and established itself at Le Havre in France. By the end of the year had occurred the Battle of Yser in Belgium (October 16-28); the first Battle of Ypres (decisive day October 31), in which the British, French and Belgians saved the French channel ports; De Wet's rebellion against the British in South Africa (October 28); German naval victory in the Pacific off the coast of Chile (November 1); fall of Tsingtau, German possession in China, ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... the ordeals had been confined to questions like this, the laity would have had little or no objection to them; but when they were introduced as decisive in all the disputes that might arise between man and man, the opposition of all those whose prime virtue was personal bravery, was necessarily excited. In fact, the nobility, from a very early period, began to look with jealous eyes upon them. They were not slow to perceive their ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... during his visit to Mount Wilson in the summer of 1920, and with the assistance of Mr. Pease, of the observatory staff, interference fringes were observed in the case of certain stars when the mirrors were as much as 18 feet apart. All was thus in readiness for a decisive test as soon as a suitable star ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale
... prodigious number of motions entirely indeliberate, and which yet are performed according to the nicest rules of mechanics. It is the machine alone that follows those rules: which is a fact independent from all philosophy; and matter of fact is ever decisive. What would a man think of a watch that should fly or slip away, turn, again, or defend itself, for its own preservation, if he went about to break it? Would he not admire the skill of the artificer? Could he be induced to believe that the springs of that ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... on the 23d of June, and began his march for Wilna.[126] The weather was intensely hot, and in the course of a few weeks many thousand men fell out of the ranks through sickness and fatigue, and great numbers of horses died. The French hoped to encounter the Russian forces in a decisive battle before advancing far into the country. But it was the policy of the Czar not to fight, but to keep falling back, destroying all supplies as fast as he retreated, and so compelling the French to depend wholly upon ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... the appearance of returning prosperity, but the discovery of the mines was like the coming up of a rear-guard, to turn the tide of battle, when the main army had apparently been all but defeated. The assistance the colony received was complete and decisive, and has seemingly placed her beyond the hazard of failure or reverse: but, admitting the state of depression to which it was reduced, and the length of time it would have taken to bring about a healthy change, I yet believe, that the favourable position ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... previously mentioned unlimited publicity of all productive operations, which on other grounds also would be demanded in the interest of the commonwealth, materially lightened the task of the associations of workers; and as all the members of each such productive association had in this decisive point exactly the same interests, and their whole attention was always directed to these interests, they learnt with remarkable speed to correct the mistakes they had made, so that after a few months the new apparatus worked tolerably well, and in a ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... was halting in its support of the war, the people of the South and West were alive with enthusiasm in favor of prosecuting it with sharp and decisive vigor. They had already suffered much from the Indians under British control, and the massacre at Chicago kindled a flame of indignation not easily to ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... felt as a valid objection to any improvement in the material condition of the working population in our own time. We no longer find the drink bill heavily increasing in years of commercial prosperity as of old. The second argument has experienced an even more decisive fate. Down to my own time it was forcibly contended that any improvement in the material condition of the mass of the people would result in an increase of the birth rate which, by extending the supply of labour, would ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... all-night fight they severely repulsed Mackensen's troops, taking eight German guns. However, this was only a temporary advantage. Some days later the German kaiser, in a telegram to his wife, announced that Mackensen had gained a decisive victory in Dobrudja. While this phraseology is perhaps a little too strong as a description of the situation at that date, the fact was that the Rumanians and the Russians were again forced to retire northward. According to the German reports the retreat was a disorderly flight, but ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... place ten miles from Rama Raya's camp south of the river, wherever that may have been. There is no available information on this point, but it was probably at Mudkal, the celebrated fortress. The ford crossed by the allies would appear to be that at the bend of the river at Ingaligi, and the decisive battle seems to have been fought in the plains about the little village of Bayapur or Bhogapur, on the road leading directly from ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... informed that it was to take place.—ELLIS, first series, vol. ii. p. 32. The belief, however, generally was, that the marriage took place in November; and though Cranmer's evidence is very strong, his language is too vague to be decisive. ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... Higher Critics in recovering the J. narrative of Joseph or the E. narrative of Lot. But I think I have shown that the incidents selected by me are those which are necessitated by the artistic logic of the Shoe Marriage Test which forms the decisive incident in the Cinder-Maid formula. Where the majority of the incidents contained in the reconstruction occurred in the same order in far distant countries it is practically impossible to imagine that the resemblance is due to ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... acts which seem to vibrate between right and wrong, justice and injustice, and demand the most accurate analysis to ascertain on which side they preponderate. Argument is thrown away on such a subject; for to doubt about the nature of a plain decisive act like this must necessarily proceed from something even worse than uncertainty and scepticism concerning the simple fundamental principles of moral action. A little reflection, however, will not be lost on so memorable a portion of history, which opens a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... the modern conditions of War and the heightened demands exacted from Cavalry training. The author lays continual emphasis on the fact that Cavalry trained and organized on his lines should produce in the early stages of a War effects so decisive as to influence and even determine the succeeding phases of ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... the moment they did not know what else to do. The cabinet wished only sixty days—the senate made it ninety. Our government leaves no room to expect a repeal of the order in council, yet they wait for the return of the Hornet. Something decisive must then be known; perhaps when they become completely convinced of Bonaparte's playing upon them, it will end in declaring against France. The question of adjournment was lost, notwithstanding there was an absolute majority known a few minutes before in its favor. ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... immense reinforcement spread consternation among the Angles. In vain their leaders went about among them and exhorted them to courage, promising them another victory as decisive as that they had won that day. Their entreaties were in vain, for when the morning dawned it was found that three-fourths of their number had left the camp during the night, and had made off to the marshes ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... you may not think this preference solely owing to their known contempt of the natives, who ought with every generous mind to claim their first charities, you will find the same rule religiously observed with Europeans too. Attend, Sir, to this decisive case. Since the beginning of the war, besides arrears of every kind, a bond-debt has been contracted at Madras, uncertain in its amount, but represented from four hundred thousand pound to a million sterling. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... suggestions. He listens attentively to each one, and decides quickly whether they shall be presented in the Herald, and at what time; and if he desires any subject to be written upon, he states his wish, and "sketches," in his peculiar and decisive manner, the various headings ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... been impossible:—In a system of reference rotating relatively to an inert system, the laws of disposition of rigid bodies do not correspond to the rules of Euclidean geometry on account of the Lorentz contraction; thus if we admit non-inert systems we must abandon Euclidean geometry. The decisive step in the transition to general co-variant equations would certainly not have been taken if the above interpretation had not served as a stepping-stone. If we deny the relation between the body of axiomatic Euclidean geometry and the practically-rigid body of ...
— Sidelights on Relativity • Albert Einstein
... awake early on the morning of the third of June, and they saw the corps of Longstreet file silently by, the bugle that called them away being the first note of the great and decisive Gettysburg campaign. They were better clothed and in better trim than they had been in a long time. They walked with an easy, springy gait, and the big guns rumbled at the heels of the horses, fat from long rest and the ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... with these simple pleasures, and to have lived the quiet and modest life of a man of letters on such income as he could derive from the best work he could produce. But it is this same Mr. Cooke who gives decisive testimony as to Goldsmith's increasing desire to "shine" by imitating the expenditure of the great; the natural consequence of which was that he only plunged himself into a morass of debt, advances, contracts for hack-work, and misery. "His debts rendered him at times so melancholy and ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... with a dash of kidney in the centre of it, on the end of his fork. He was not aware of the fact, but that was the decisive moment of his ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... himself for not waiting at the dock in Norfolk until his owners should have had an opportunity to answer; he abused himself for his timidity in questioning the judgment of his owners, for indeed he had been content to hint when more decisive action ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... of a hoop, foretells you will form influential friendships. Many will seek counsel of you. To jump through, or see others jumping through hoops, denotes you will have discouraging outlooks, but you will overcome them with decisive victory. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... were three prisons in Bedford—the county jail, the bridewell, and the tower jail. No decisive evidence has been discovered as to which prison Bunyan was committed. Two views of the bridge and prison are given in the plate at ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... built so entirely on success, and formed so many projects, that the disappointment was extreme; it appeared a cruel injury in so old a friend to have overlooked him. He had been much vexed with his grandmother for regarding the veto as decisive; and he viewed all his hopes of happiness ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... except that the cupboard was already crammed with the corpses of his previous wives, and there was no room for her. She was pleading this argument when Miss Letitia's voice broke in upon her dream with decisive accent: ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... abbey at Westminster, assisted at the ceremony. The primate then ruling at Canterbury was the great Stephen Langton, who had won renown both as a scholar and a statesman. He had carried out the division of the Bible into chapters, as it is now arranged, and had won a decisive victory for English liberty by forcing King John to sign the Great Charter. He was now advanced in years, and had recently assisted at the coronation of King ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... line made us regret having no seine, for the hauling of which many of the beaches are particularly well adapted. It is not improbable that Two-fold Bay, like some of the open bays on the east coast of Africa, may be frequented by whales at certain seasons: of this I have no decisive proof; but the reef of rocks, called Whale Spit, received its name from the remains of one found there. The natives had taken their share; and the dogs, crows, and gulls were ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... I would rather see the boy lying dead at my feet than not defend the woman he loves." This came in a decisive tone, as if he had long since made up his mind to this phase ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... that the agent was laying him on the bed, she suddenly shuddered, sat up, and gave a wild hasty kiss, which lighted on the little fellow's cap. She had scarcely opened her tear-dimmed eyes, and could have seen but a vague phantom of that poor feeble creature, wailing and struggling at the decisive moment when he was ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... Murray for The Quarterly Review. . . . The modern literature and things of Wales were not introduced into the article . . . and it appeared anonymously in The Quarterly Review for January, 1861. It is in fact Borrow's own (and the only) review of The Sleeping Bard, which, however, had the decisive result of selling off the whole edition in a month."—[Knapp's Life and Correspondence of George Borrow, 1899, vol. ii, ...
— A Bibliography of the writings in Prose and Verse of George Henry Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... meet this requirement; but the Church's real reason was its own discriminating spiritual experience which approved some books and refused others. Canon Sanday sums up the selective process by saying: "In the fixing of the Canon, as in the fixing of doctrine, the decisive influence proceeded from the bishops and theologians of the period 325-450. But behind them was the practice of the greater churches; and behind that again was not only the lead of a few distinguished individuals, but the instinctive ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... watchword, for the men said that whenever I told them that, it meant that half of them were going to be killed. The battalion rose and fixed bayonets and stood ready for the command to charge. It was a thrilling moment, for we were in the midst of one of the decisive battles of the war. A shrapnel burst just as the men moved off and a man dropped in the rear rank. I went over to him and found he was bleeding in the neck. I bound him up and then taking his kit, which he was loath to lose, was helping him ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... cardinal virtues, is lacking in most good men. Father Faber asserted, on the contrary, that a sense of humour is a great help in the religious life, and emphasized this somewhat unusual point of view with the decisive statement: "Perhaps nature does not contribute a greater ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... new, the better, the everlasting Covenant. It is placed here in the largest and most decisive contrast over against the old covenant, the compact of Sinai, "written and engraven in stones" (2 Cor. iii. 7). That compact had done its mysterious work, in convincing man of his sinful incapacity to meet the will of God. Now emerges its wonderful antithesis, in which ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... tone was decisive and his mien was stern. Otherwise, even the doughty Constable Nute might have refused to take orders, though they were given in the face and eyes of his admiring neighbors. He gnawed at his grizzled beard and fingered doubtfully the badge that, as chief ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... this scene we must turn to the old poem, the "Cursor Mundi," which, written in the fourteenth century, the time when the northern miracle-plays were taking decisive shape, appears to have served their writers as a stock-book. The following passage is own brother to ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... the window and looked out upon the Avenue, her lips taking firmer lines of resolution. He watched her in silence, and when she spoke her tones were short and decisive. ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... you are told, or leave the room!" commanded Miss Rowe in her most decisive tone. "I ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... is to be prolonged," repeated Count Schwarzenberg, when he again found himself alone in his cabinet. "We approach the denouement, and if I could only get decisive tidings from my son, I would hurry on a crisis and begin open war. He keeps me waiting for such tidings a very long while," continued the count, dropping into the armchair in front of his writing table. "He ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... essential, if the reward of our labour is brought suddenly to excite our hope, there is an immediate interruption of all effectual labour; the thoughts take a new direction; the mind becomes tremulous, and nothing decisive can be done, till the emotions of hope and fear either subside or ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... complications, its climax. While it had been going on he had been only half-conscious of its bearings, half-conscious of himself. Wallace's letter had made him sensible of the situation, as it concerned himself, with a decisive sharpness and completeness. There was no possibility of any further self-delusion: the last defences were overcome, the last veil between himself and the pursuing force which had overtaken him had fallen, and Kendal, with a shiver of pain, found ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Prayer Book as a decisive authority, and instances "an humble," &c. If any one will examine the Prayer Book, he will find that it is no authority at all; as "an" is at least as often used erroneously before h as not. In reading over the first sixty-eight ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 208, October 22, 1853 • Various
... long ceased to take any interest in them, that I am sensible I am not qualified to offer opinions on them worthy of any attention. But the question now proposed involves consequences so lasting, and effects so decisive of our future destinies, as to re-kindle all the interest I have heretofore felt on such occasions, and to induce me to the hazard of opinions, which will prove only my wish to contribute still my mite towards any thing which may ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... are alive, and between which the decisive battle for the dominion of the world will have to be fought, are the three missionary religions, Buddhism, Mohammedanism, and Christianity. Though religious statistics are perhaps the most uncertain of all, yet it is well to have a general conception ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... lad may have been one of those in the development of the young when they suddenly behold familiar objects as with eyes more clearly opened; when the neutral becomes the decisive; when the sermon is found in the stone. As he now took curious cognizance of the budding wood which he, seeing it only in winter, had supposed could not bud again, he fell to marvelling how constant each separate ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... was glad they were to be alone. Just because she felt so sure of Strefford it seemed ungenerous to keep him longer in suspense. The moment had come when they must have a decisive talk, and in the crowded rooms below it ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... great many wrong thoughts; but if you take her to the house, you'll be glad in an hour's time you did an old woman's bidding," was the decisive reply. ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... suffered her to do so, Lottchen would stumble on the same discovery, and expire of fright. On the other hand, if she gave her a hint, Lottchen would either fail to understand her, or, gaining but a glimpse of her meaning, would shriek aloud, or by some equally decisive expression convey the fatal news to the assassin that he had been discovered. In this torturing dilemma fear prompted an expedient, which to Lottchen appeared madness, and to Louisa herself the act of a sibyl instinct ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... watched the soul-convulsing game, which some call pastime? Have you not seen the sly deceiver, Fortune, how she leads on her votary with gradual favors, till, heated with success, he rushes headlong and stakes his all upon a single cast? Then in the decisive moment she forsakes him, a victim of his rashness—and stood you then unmoved? Oh, my husband, think not that thou hast but to show thyself among the people to be adored. 'Tis no slight task to rouse republicans from their slumber and turn them loose, like ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... loosely built woman, with her heavy, sliding step, waxed fairly decisive, and her soft, meek-lidded eyes gleamed hard and prominent when her elder sister, Hannah, dared ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... he advanced in the same direction. Both were deeply roused, and, though not reckless alike, Munro was a man quite as decisive in character as his companion was ferocious and vindictive. What might have been the result of their present position, had it not undergone a new interruption, might not well be foreseen. The sash of one of the apartments of the building devoted to the family ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... a foe two hundred times our number, aye, crippled its power for all future years. We were lifting the fetters from the frontier; we were planting the standards westward, westward. In the history of the Plains warfare this fight on the Arickaree, though not the last stroke, was one of the decisive struggles in breaking the savage sovereignty, a sovereignty whose wilderness demesne to-day is a land of fruit and meadow and waving grain, of peaceful homes ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... afternoon at the end of the week following that of the funeral, Perez set out for a call upon his intended which he meant should be a decisive one. He had screwed his courage up to the top notch, and as he told Captain Eri afterwards, he meant to "hail her and git his bearin's, if he foundered the ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... the captain's attentions did not wane. Mr. Delaplaine, who was a man of honour expecting it in others, made up his mind that something decisive must soon be said; while Kate began greatly to fear that something decisive might soon be said. She was in a difficult position. She was not engaged to Martin Newcombe, but had believed she might be. The whole ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... French soil we have watched in the supply bases. Yet here, for us, it culminates; and here and in the North Sea, we can hardly doubt—whatever may be the diversions in other fields—will be fought, for Great Britain, the decisive battles of the war. As I turn to those dim lines on the Messines ridge, I have come at last to sight of whither it all moves. There, in those trenches is The Aggressor—the enemy who has wantonly broken the peace of Europe, who has befouled ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... respects inclined to indolence; the result partly of the climate, partly of their being waited upon from childhood by attendants ready to carry out every wish. He had his father's cheerful disposition and good temper, together with the decisive manner so frequently acquired by a service in the army, and at the same time he had something of the warmth and enthusiasm of the ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... much greater, than on a previous occasion. Men had learned by recent events that momentous changes were taking place in the land. The news of the King's acts had been carried far and wide. Everyone felt that a decisive blow was about to be struck somewhere, and although many hundreds had little or no opinion of their own as to what was best for the interests of the kingdom, they knew that a side must be taken, and were quite willing ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... humiliated the Maroon-and-Grey, winning 30—9 in a contest which reflected little credit on the loser. Brimfield had been caught in the middle of a bad slump on that occasion. This year, however, no slump was apparent as yet and the school thirsted for and expected a victory decisive enough to wipe out the stigma of last Fall's defeat. The game was to be played at Brimfield, a fact which was counted on to aid the home team. The school displayed far more interest in Saturday's game than in any other on the schedule except, of course, the final conflict ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
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